Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1502: Running Interference

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about walk-off balks, a Zack Greinke oral history, and how teams will use the new 26th roster spot, break down the responses to a Jayson Stark survey of baseball insiders about the winter and upcoming season, and answer listener emails about players’ outspoken criticisms of the Astros’ sign-stealing and […]

And don't be afraid of the language I know you don't mean what you said Well your tongue can get sharp but it's soft in my mouth and there's towels and ice we could use We could use... Good morning and welcome to episode 1502 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast at vangraphs.com, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello. Hello. How are you?

Doing all right. All right. How many walk-off box do you think there have been in history? How many walk-off box? Yeah. Hmm. Seven. Yeah.

There are 21. At least 21. Wow. Yeah. That's going to... That'll come up later. Okay. I'm sensing a stat blast on that.

Not on that. Yeah. On rarer than that. Yeah. Walk-off box don't qualify. All right. Do we have even good records of that going back all the way you're confident of that number no no you said at least i guess so yeah

yeah at least i'm going the first one is 1939 the last one is 2016 so uh there could have actually been some i don't know there could have been i don't know how confident i am of anything but you know whenever you see sometimes you see like that little, what is it? I forget. What is the, is it an eye? When baseball reference denotes that there's missing information, like for instance, like pitch tracking, pitch counting, or count stats. They only have count stats since like 1988.

or count stats. They only have count stats since like 1988. But for the first seven or eight years, even those were a little bit incompletely recorded. And so there are some games where a bunch of pitches didn't get recorded. And so there'll be a little note that once you know it in baseball reference means incomplete stats. And so I never know. One of the things about that, that is frustrating is you never know whether it's one pitch that's missing or if it's like 45 000 pitches that are missing and so in this case uh yeah sure it's i'm i'm never too confident but i think 21 box walk-off box is probably pretty close would you guess that the balk rate is lower in walk-off situations or higher than the regular baseline balk rate because on the one hand that's the one time you really, really can't balk.

But on the other hand, you might be thinking, well, just don't balk. Whatever you do, don't balk. And maybe that would contribute to balking. Well, hmm. There aren't a lot of balks in most years. No. I don't really have a sense of, I mean, the baseline rate is really low. So I couldn't tell you whether this is higher than expected or lower.

Probably exactly what you'd expect. You think so? I would think higher. I think it would be higher. I think a lot of box are, there are a lot of box that are box of nerves that are, it's just a little twitch or it's's a little hesitance, or it's the ball falling out of your hand. And I would think all those things would be outside of your control to prevent when you're nervous, and in fact, would be more likely when you're nervous. Mike Stanton once balked before he had thrown a pitch. He had a no-pitch walk-off. See, I'm going to say lower, I think,

because there are probably a couple other factors that might make it lower like a if you're an umpire you're probably a little bit reluctant to call a walk off bach obviously it happens but it's such a weird way to win yeah and then the other thing is that you're not i mean you're checking the runners but you're not throwing you're not making a pickoff throw usually that might be something that could contribute to a buck is if you're trying to pick someone off. And if you wouldn't be doing that, then I would think fewer bucks. By the way, I'd like to credit Adam Gilfix is actually the person who discovered the 21 walk-off box. It wasn't me. Adam Gilfix wrote this up for the Harvard Sports Analysis blog, the official blog of the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective. So that's where that came from.

I will link to it. And I will also link to something else I wanted to give a quick plug to. The Athletic did an oral history of Zach Granke's years with the Royals. And we always like great Granke stories around here. And this is full of them. So Jason Jenks and Alec Lewis talked to a lot of Granke's former teammates and coaches and executives and just came up with a lot of great Granke stories. And there are a few different genres of Granke story.

There's the one where he is just preternaturally aware of something. He just knows exactly what he's doing and what he did. So he sets out to throw a pitch a certain number of miles per hour and he throws it exactly that number of miles per hour. a pitch a certain number of miles per hour and he throws it exactly that number of miles per hour or he has a perfect memory for exactly how many pitches of each type he has thrown in a start or he just has perfect command and he can put it an inch away from where he wants it to be so that's one genre of cranky story and then there's like the idiosyncratic behavior cranky story like he goes golfing barefoot or in sandals or something that's another good one and then i think my favorite is the one where he just totally demolishes someone

just just casually just says something that uh almost reduces their existence to insignificance but does so without any animosity whatsoever. Everyone agrees that he's not trying to be a jerk. He's not trying to insult anyone. He is just honest all the time. And sometimes he's honest in a way that most people are not. So one of these is Mitch Meyer is telling a story. Zach was in the video room. He was preparing for his next start. He was very advanced with the scouting reports and using the video. He had a heat map pulled up. As hitters, we didn't really know what that was.

Long story short, a hitter walked in. It was like, Zach, what are you looking at? He said, I'm looking at their heat maps, their nitro zones, where I need to stay away from, damage zones. But don't worry, you don't have one of those. That's what he told the poor guy who just happened to walk in and ask what he was doing. Why would he be worried anyway? They're teammates. He doesn't have to face that, Granky.

Well, he doesn't need to worry about what the heat maps are. You just said that he's not trying to be mean. He's just being honest. That was unnecessary. All right. That one might be. Yeah. Mark Tien tells a story about how grinky just said like

man you really had a bad game after he had a bad game and like usually he would say you had a good game when he had a good game and it's just hey this is what i saw and i'm just gonna say it but yeah you're right the heat map that's probably intentional trolling i would think but there are a lot of good ones in here. There's also just some stories about how he thinks hitting is easy, and he's always happy to tell people that it's easy, and then often he will back it up and hit a home run or something. And he has been a better hitter than Jeff Mathis over the course of his career without actually hitting regularly. So if he had been a full-time hitter, probably could have been passable not gonna say

he could have been good but he can clearly hold his own what do you think would be the weird recurring quirk that lots of your acquaintances would have examples of if for some reason you got the profile treatment oh probably my weird diet which uh you you put some stories in the only rule about me eating raw mushrooms at the ballpark. Yeah. That's one of my two or three most told stories in the world. Do you want to hear my most told story? I don't even like raw mushrooms that much.

That was like not a regular thing I do. I do weird eating things and everyone knows that, well, I guess is the most told one. You don't know the most one. The most one has nothing to do with you or me. It's just a thing that happened to a friend. And I don't know why, but I love telling this story. It only takes a minute. So I had a friend. I have a friend. Well, I can call a friend by his name. His name's Daniel. I have another friend. Her name, we'll make up a name. We'll call her Adrian. So we were all friends in high school. Pretty good friends. Like we were in a lot of the same

classes. We hung out. We were friends. We were friends. Like this was not like acquaintances. We hung out a lot, right? All right. Now I've probably given away too much of this story. So we, a few years after, a few years after college, my friend Daniel was driving through town, same town. They both live in the same town that we grew up in and sees Adrian walking in this mega rainstorm, like it's pouring rain. And so Daniel pulls her over and he says, Adrian, you want to ride? And she goes, yeah. And he goes, oh my gosh, get in. It's pouring. So she jumps in. Thank you so much. Oh, my goodness. We moved. Me and my husband moved in. So we're just down the street.

But yeah, the rain just really got me. And like, I was shocked. And so Daniel and her are like kind of catching up. And she says, you know, we got to have you over. Like me and my husband, we would love to have you and your wife over. You know, when's a good day? Okay. So, you know, then they pull up in front of her house. she looks at him and says well thank you so much and he says you're welcome and

she says what was your name i knew it it's the ricky henderson john olrood story yeah it was yeah that's pretty good yeah which is funny because i just made up a fake name for her all right i thought you were gonna tell the me eating a burrito from the middle story. No, the mushroom is the one much more common because I give people a long time to guess what you had in that baggie. Or the open cans of garbanzo beans. To me, it goes mushrooms is number one, salad with a spoon is number two. mushrooms is number one salad with a spoon is number two the pizza box though the one crust your entire fridge had a massive like a 24 inch pizza box and nothing else in it and i went oh i'll have some pizza then and all that was in it was one crust that you had saved the whole box to

keep sometimes you have to improvise with the utensils. I use this food. Amy Klobuchar used a comb. She used a comb. It happens. I feel really abashed because I just told my most told story and I didn't tell it well. Now I feel like I have not demonstrated growth. Well, all right. I have one question for you.

Your colleague, David Schoenfield, wrote an article about the possible uses of the 26th man on the roster this year. Now that the rosters are expanding, teams have to figure out how they are going to use that roster spot. It can't be a pitcher. So he has five possibilities here, and I'm wondering which you think it will be. Signsteer. Yeah. Well, that's already positioned. But professional pinch hitter is one of them. So the Lenny Harris type, which has been more or less extinct in recent years. The pinch runner defensive specialist. So basically the Terrence Gore, who has been limited to September and October for the most part in recent years. The extra platoon bat. So just more platoons, or the

third catcher, or the two-way player. And the two-way player has its own rules and regulations, at least to qualify as a two-way player. But he's not talking about the Shohei Otani or Brendan McKay type. He's talking about more like the Jared Walsh type or Jake Cronenworth type, who's kind of more of a fringy one or the other. So, yeah, I am on the record as saying that I thought it would be the third catcher. I feel like it's the most boring one. I feel like it is the most boring one.

That's one of the reasons that I wasn't that excited about this rule. I think that the two catchers to me is where managers feel the most tension over scarcity. They don't like having only two catchers. They want to be able to take a catcher out of the game. And they're way too scared to do that because once you've used your last catcher, then you are prone to disaster. And they really, really don't want to do that. And so there's just so much less pinch running for catchers than I think managers would like less pinch hitting for catchers than I think managers would like, maybe even maybe even less defensive replay, you could imagine that maybe catchers would develop into sort of more defensive replacement late in the game options the way that

you sometimes see at other positions. But as it has been managers won't do any of that because there's basically a rule that you don't bring in your second catcher unless you have to, or it's like late in extra innings because you don't want to be one foul tip away from having to use your third base coach as your emergency catcher. So I think that they will do that. I don't know if that'll happen immediately, but I think that's where managers are most nervous. And it helps that i think there are lots of roughly equivalent third catchers available so i don't think that like the difference between most teams backup catcher and the third catcher that they would pull up is kind of not visible to the naked eye and so i don't think that they would feel like they have a non

major league quality player in that spot. Whereas if you go with another pinch hitter, it's still kind of clear a lot of times that that pinch hitter is, you know, not very good and you don't want to pinch, you don't want to use them unless it's for the pitcher. And so particularly for AL teams, what are you going to do with an extra pinch hitter? You're not going to use them. You're not going to pinch hit for your, you know, number six hitter with some guy who's, you know, couldn't make a major league roster eight months ago. Whereas with catchers, it's not quite the same way. I think that they're all pretty replaceable and they all look the part. Jan, yeah. If I had to choose- He's more of a backup, I would say. That's a Jan Gomes joke.

I'd probably welcome the return of the professional pinch hitter. I like that figure. I don't know that it ever made sense. I don't know that it would make sense now, especially now that we know about the pinch hit penalty. So you've got that. You've got fewer pinch hitting opportunities across baseball. And there just aren't that many players who ever fit that description to begin with of, like, good enough that you would want them in that role but not good enough to start or play regularly i just you know and how do you even know if someone's a good pinch hitter because it's just such small sample and it fluctuates wildly so i don't know that it makes sense to do that but i just like that figure the the john vanderwaal the mark sweeney

just that kind of guy who's just gone the mat stairs. So I would like that. But I think we will see more platoons, though. I think that that's possible. More platoon bats, at least. People do like platoons. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of appetite for platoons, I think, out there. I think everybody feels like they're one good platoon away from having a much better lineup. Right.

And of course, I like two way players, but there aren't that many players who are that well-suited to it. And I'm much more invested in the true two-way player, the Otani type, which is, of course, extremely rare than the guy who can maybe do both in a nominal way and is really better at one, but can fake a few innings here and there. That's nice, but I'm not going to get too excited about it. So give me more platoons, I guess, realistically. All right. So we may get to a few emails. It's been a while. I don't know.

We'll see if we have time. People evidently have science dealing scandal questions. Who knew? But before we do, what I want to focus on is something that Jason Stark wrote and evidently something Jason Stark's been doing for a decade now, but I don't know that we have ever really talked about it on the podcast, which is sort of a beginning of the season Krasnix. So people are familiar with the former ESPN writer Jerry Krasnix.

Surveys of baseball people and executives at the beginning of every offseason, we would talk about the responses to those surveys, and you would analyze them and find that people in baseball, not really that much better than random at predicting things that happen in baseball. And we are endlessly entertained by that. But Jason has sort of done a season preview offseason in review version of that, where he has surveyed 30 baseball people. and he didn't really get more specific than that he polled 30 of the smartest baseball people we know which uh i want some more specificity here i am genuinely offended by this because i do know jason stark uh-huh he didn't ask me he didn't ask you yeah unbelievable yeah i look he can't give away his sources, but I would like to know baseball people.

Is that his buddy who happens to know a lot about baseball? Is that writers, media members? Is it people inside baseball? He does quote people anonymously throughout the piece, and it seems like a lot of the sources at least are people who work for baseball teams. So I'm assuming it's that. We can call them executives or insiders or whatever. So we were excluded. We were disqualified. Yeah, let's tell ourselves that at least. So I'm not going to go through all of these, but I'm going to go through some and make you guess what the most common responses by the baseball people were. And you can disagree with them if you'd like.

So it's stuff like best offseason moves and most improved teams and all of that. So not everything is suited to our format here, but here we go. Let's do the best and worst free agent signings. So best free agent signing, he just had people pick a move and give votes. So there is one signing actually that is clearly above the others. I genuinely cannot remember anything that happened this offseason before sign stealing. This is going to take me a long time. So, okay.

This was the offseason that Drew Pomerantz signed a four-year deal, isn't it? It was, yeah. All right. Do you know, by the way, if our is doing the off-season hibernation again and is going to watch open day with no i not that i have heard that may have been a one-time thing too bad because this would be a good off-season to have done it that's right best so this is the best can you give me the wording again best free agent signing doesn't get specific, does it? Garrett Cole.

Yes. Garrett Cole. After more than a decade of doing the survey, that's pretty much unprecedented for any monster contract. Not one single voter included Cole on the worst signing list. So usually he's saying someone will take the giant deal and say it's one of the worst signings. And this winter, it's just the biggest signing, the longest term deal, best free agent signing, which is kind of nice. I mean, it's not best player, best free agent signed its best deal, which could be like dollars per war or efficiency or whatever. But people just think so highly of Garrett Cole and his talents that pretty much whatever anyone paid for him, it would have been the best signing of the winter. All right. And the runner's up. So Cole got 18 votes. And then Didi Gregorius got 12, second place. Wait, didn't he interview 30 people? Yes. So that's it?

That should be it, right? Yeah, wait, how does this work? No, lots of other people have votes. I guess people named more than one. I don't know why, but yeah, there's a bunch more. Didi Gregorius, I would not have expected to be up there. But after that, it's Rendon and Strasburg, like the two next biggest deals. So this was just a winter where the biggest free agents were like really, really good.

I mean, there weren't really any knocks against this year's top free agents, which is why they got great deals and they didn't have to wait around to get them. So it was a weird winter eventful in many ways. All right. Worst free agent signing? By the way, MLB trade. The Didi Gregorius thing is interesting because it feels like it's answering a different question. And so maybe it is. Maybe those people were actually answering a slightly different question because I'm just noticing this now.

I think I was aware that Didi Gregorius was seen as a potential bargain coming off of a, of a, of a lesser year, an injury shortened year and, you know, had had a fairly high profile before that. And he signed a one-year deal. And so it makes sense to me that people would think, oh, that's a really good bargain or a good value pick. But MLB trade rumors had actually predicted three years and 42. And so it was even by the standards of what we were thinking in November, it ended up being a lot less than that. So I bet that's sort of what those people were answering. Yeah. Was the question the worst one? Yes.

I'm going to say, well, first, okay, I'm going to guess a hitter. And if it's not the hitter, then I'll guess the pitcher. I'm going to guess Mike Moustakis. It is not the hitter. I'm going to guess a hitter, and if it's not the hitter, then I'll guess the pitcher. I'm going to guess Mike Moustakas. It is not the hitter. I'm going to guess Zach Wheeler. No, he's on the list, but he's not there. Yeah, Moustakas is actually the highest-ranked hitter on here, so he was named by four people. That's the most of any hitter, but there is a pitcher who people really felt was the worst signing.

Is he a reliever? Yes. Is he Drew Pomeranz? He is, yes. 15 really felt was the worst signing. Is he a reliever? Yes. Is he Drew Pomeranz? Yes, yes. 15 votes for Drew Pomeranz. And then Hyunjin Ryu, eight. Zach Wheeler, six. So, yeah.

And as you noted, the Gregorius, that may have been a value thing. And Marcelo Zuna got five votes. So that's another one where it was like, hey, didn't expect him to get a one-year deal. And he did. So good signing. All right. most improved teams in each league most improved teams in each league all right most improved teams in each league let's do nl first all right angels a's astros blue jays braves brewers cardinals i'm gonna say that the most improved team in each league, the most improved teams. So in the NL, it's going to be the Reds.

Yep. And in the AL, it's going to be the White Sox. That's right. The Reds actually tied for first in the NL with the Dodgers, which is scary considering how great the Dodgers already were. But yes, it goes Reds and Dodgers got 23 votes. Again, I'm not really clear on the number of votes here. Maybe this was ranked choice voting or something. And then Diamondbacks, 19. And that was the only other one that was close. And that was the only other one that was close And then yes in the AL It was all about the White Sox

And White Sox got 25 votes And after that It was Yankees, Twins, Angels Got 15 or more apiece I think I don't know how to answer The question without thinking about it But just I mean I'm guessing That most people sort of did like

Well who started out fairly low and ended up kind of competitors, right? So like, I don't know, the Reds' chances of winning the World Series, I'm just going to throw out some fake numbers. Maybe they went from 2% to 7%, and that's like, you know, triple. So they tripled it, but it's also only 5%, and those are just fake numbers. But who do you think, if the question was whose raw total went up by the most, not as a ratio, but just in absolute terms, who do you think improved their World Series odds by the most? Huh. Trying to think if it would actually be different. I mean, it would depend on the division. on the division so maybe it still is the reds because they are in a very winnable division and they were already kind of on the cusp of contention there and other teams mostly didn't

improve by as much in that division so i don't know that there would be a better answer really because like you know yankees were probably going to win the division anyway dodgers were probably going to win the division anyway i don't know probably going to win the division anyway. I don't know who else really beyond. So I would think though that maybe the fact that they were going to win the division anyway might make them actually the right answer for this because they were going to make the playoffs. Now they're certainly going to make the playoffs. And now that they're in the playoffs, I mean, you don't want to, you wouldn't pick a team that has a decent chance of missing the playoffs, which the Reds and the White Sox still have pretty good chances of missing the playoffs. Yeah, wouldn't pick the White Sox.

And so, yeah. Well, yeah. But the Reds, depending on which system you use, the Reds have a better chance of making the playoffs. So the Reds might be the answer still. But I feel like the Yankees and the Dodgers might be the answer here. Yeah. Well, if you think that having an ace is particularly important when you get to the playoffs which i don't know but if you think that if you think that's what was

holding the inky's back the last few years if you think that having the best team is important in the playoffs and that over the course of three and a half rounds the talent difference really does matter a great deal which i've come to think that that's true, that it's not nearly the coin flip kind of thing that we used to talk about or that I used to talk about. But in fact, the better team does win more postseason series. And in order to win three postseason series, you do usually have to be, if not the best team, then one of the best teams. And so I think that the Dodgers going from like the Dodgers are going to go into each

postseason series this year up to the World Series like the Dodgers are going to go into each postseason series this year, up to the World Series at least. They're going to go into the first two rounds as like 70, 30 favorites. They're probably going to win them. So they're roughly 50-50 probably to make the World Series as it is with Mookie Betts. And maybe they were already very close. And maybe with Mookie Betts in the World Series, then the difference is smaller. So maybe it's not them. But I would not be shocked if the answer to this question was that in absolute terms, the Dodgers and the Yankees

are the most improved for World Series odds. All right. So I would guess also that the team that typically wins this question, the team that won the winter, what would you guess like the average win total for that team in the following season is 79 yeah i'd go a little higher i'd say like 84 or something like that yeah it's i mean if you're really good already it's tough to get that much better or you have less incentive to get that much better maybe so you're usually not that great in the year before you win the winter or you wouldn't probably have felt it necessary to win the winter and it's also hard to go from not a very good team to a great team in a single offseason no matter how much you did so i think yeah that sort of mediocre range is probably where most of them end up and then

that scene is sort of disappointing because it's like hey they won the winter they splurged they made the big splashes and then often it won't really turn into anything but yeah yeah all right i should note he he mentioned that nine of the 15 nl teams got at least one vote for most improved which is nice so many of those teams were active we've talked about that he also did least improved in each league do you have any guesses there there's a big difference between least improved and got the most worse too yeah i picked the i picked the cardinals and the astros because neither one did anything right neither one improved but like the astros also didn't really lose anybody except cole and you know there are other teams that got worse that they lost like the red socks obviously you know got worse they traded away their best player and didn't do anything to cancel that out.

If it's got the worst, I'm taking different answers. Okay. So most unimproved NL team was the Rockies at 23. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then Cubs, Pirates, Giants, Brewers, Cardinals, all the usual suspects. And then most unimproved AL team, also probably not that surprising, the Orioles at 22. So the Astros did get seven votes, but I think most people were probably focusing on the talent.

And I guess the Astros still have a case there. But Orioles at 22, and then Red Sox 16, Mariners, Tigers, Astros. So he also mentions that there are five teams that got votes for most improved and least improved, which is interesting. That's not easy to do. So the Mets, Marlins, Padres, Braves, and Nationals got votes for most and least improved. I don't really know how some of those teams would have gotten one or the other like how would how would the mets be most improved i guess if you are just comparing last year to this year and saying like they got stroman and other guys

will be good or something but it's not like they did that much this this winter how are you going to put marlins in least improved like they they were pretty active. They did some stuff. They probably still won't be good, but they improved. So yeah, that's odd. All right. Next up is the wobbly chair answer. So teams, front offices, and managers who are under the most pressure. So it could be any of the above.

All right. Teams, front offices, or managers that are under the most pressure. So it could be any of the above. All right. Teams, front offices, or managers that are under the most pressure, it could be any of the above. All right. I'm going to say, well, like the, for instance, the Angels manager does not have a wobbly chair at all. Right. It can just be front office. He distinguished, so it doesn't have to be the combination. Yeah. But I'm trying to think, would as many people answer that if they're thinking about Joe Maddon? Some percentage of people are going to answer this manager. Some are going to answer it front office, and some are going to think way too long on it before sending in a thoughtful answer. And so I have to get an answer that is likely to build a

coalition among all three groups. All right. I'm going to say that the wobbliest chairs out there are the, well, the pirates all are gone. So not them. I'll say that it's the Rockies and Angels. Angels front office comes in third. Oh, okay. I'm saying Rockies and Royals. Okay, it is the Padres front office. 15 votes they led. Reasonable. Reasonable answer. I guess so.

Especially because everyone apparently hated the Drew Pomerantz signing, but yeah. And then the Phillies front office with 13 votes. That's next. And then Angels front office with 11 votes. Rockies front office gets 10 votes. So they are next. And there were some managers, five managers got at least one vote. Gabe Kapler, Dave Roberts, David Bell, Scott Service and Jace Tingler.

Jace Tingler already on the wobbly chair, according to someone. He hasn't managed a single game. Come on. That's harsh. I mean, I get that if the Padres front office is on the wobbly chair, then maybe another front office comes in and wants its own manager. But boy, that's rough. All right. And I think there's only maybe one more worth doing here.

So this is the rookie that people are most looking forward to, the Phenom watch. All right. So I'm going to, is it for one for each league or is it just one? No, overall. All right. Well, I'm going to say that the answer, so here's the thing. I think it would be, don't respond to this. I think it would be Gavin Lux, except I think some people are not going to say Gavin Lux

because they're going to think he's already been here. I'm not, like, he's not new. So I'm going to say that it is Luis Robert. That's right. He got 16 votes, but Lux was next with 15. So most people were counting him. And then it was Joe Adele, Jesus Lizardo, Nate Pearson, Mackenzie Gore, and 29 players got votes for this, which I don't totally understand the format. But still, it's kind of cool that 29 people got votes that there are that many young, exciting talents in the game.

So that's nice. All right. I will link to this and you can peruse the full responses. There's some more that didn't really make sense for this format, but maybe of interest to readers. You want to do a step plus now? Yeah, sure. And the D-R-A-M-I-N-E-S-O-R-O-B-S-P-L-U-S And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit Discuss it at length and analyze it for us In amazing ways

Here's to daystoplust Alright, so May talking about walk-offs that end on on goofs got me thinking about how many different goofy ways there are to lose a walk-off what are the what are the least likely this was a vague thought that got more specific as i started thinking about this so first i thought that there would be a lot more that were super rare, but they play so many baseball games that, you know, like any weird, goofy ending that you can think of, has usually been probably done. And so, like I noted, there have been no fewer than 21 walk-off box. And so that gives you a sense of the scale we're talking about. We're talking about

hundreds of thousands of games, and some of them are going to end in walk-off box. And so finally, though, just before I get to the finally, though, so like walk-off strikeout, of course, is also pretty rare, but not that rare. But a walk-off strikeout with two outs where the game is in this sort of state where the third strike of the final out has been made, but the ball is still alive. Those are very rare. There have only been two of those, I believe, one of which was Nelson Cruz in 2010. And in that case, the runner didn't even score on the strikeout slash wild pitch, but on the wild throw to first. So that wasn't even a walk-off strikeout. It was a walk-off throwing air that followed a strikeout. So maybe you could say that there's only been one walk-off, a true walk-off two-out

strikeout, which was Charlie Huff threw that one sometime in the 80s. And that runner actually scored from second on a two-base pass ball. Knuckleball. Knuckleball, exactly. But I started thinking about walk-off catcher's interference. Now, there are two walk-off catcher's interference now there are two walk-off catcher's interferences that i could find and they're actually very different as you're going to find out and in a sense neither one is what you are thinking of so if i tell you there's a walk-off catcher's interference what do you think i think that the catcher got hit on the backswing exactly that's that's the classic catcher's interference yeah neither one of these is that so the first one is in 1971 and this is a really an odd one the bases are loaded this is

the dodgers and some other team and the bases are loaded there are two outs in the 11th inning, and suddenly the runner on third, Manny Mota, decides he's going to steal home. And so he steals home. Pitch comes in. Johnny Bench fields the pitch, tags Mota out. Third out of the inning, except no, because Johnny Bench jumped the gun. He jumped too far up in front of the plate,

caught the ball before it had passed the plate. So even though the batter wasn't going to swing with the base runner bearing down on him, he is, you know, he is allowed the option. And Johnny Bench took that option from him. And because of that, he was called for catcher's interference. Now, that play right there, the catching a ball before it has crossed the plate, is catcher's interference. Now, that play right there, the catching a ball before it has crossed the plate,

is catcher's interference. There was another call on the same play because the base runner was going. It is also called a balk. So, I'm going to read a little bit here. This is from 1971, August 1st, LA Times, Ron Rappaport with the game story. On a play that was a combination air-balk interference attempted stolen base double penalty,

the Dodgers beat the Reds 5-4 in 11 innings Sunday. And then skip down. Since Moda was stealing, he would have been allowed to score regardless of the fact that Crawford, automatically sent to first on the play, would have forced him in anyway, umpire Harry Wendelstad explained. It's the only rule in the book that carries a double penalty, he said. If the runner is stealing, he gets the base and the batter is sent to first. Later, it was determined that Bench gets an error on the play, Gibbons, the pitcher, gets a balk, and Crawford, the batter, gets a run batted in, but Moda, the only man who did what he meant to do on the play,

does not get a stolen base. So why, with two out and the bases loaded, was Moda stealing in the first place? As slow as Gibbon was throwing, said third base coach Danny Ozark, I thought it might be worth a try. Manny did it several times last year. So did the runner score on a walk-off catcher's interference or a walk-off balk that is the question and so bob timmerman actually uh has written about this play twice as he writes rule 707 is peculiar because it imposes two different penalties for one act catcher's interference which allows the batter to reach first and the runners move up if forced, as in this case, and a balk, which allows all the runners to move up.

One base. How did Moda score? Did he score on catcher's interference or on a balk? I discussed the play with Dave Smith of Retro Sheet two years ago at the Sabre Convention in St. Louis, and we agreed that the play had to be catcher's interference first because Crawford was awarded an RBI on the play, which he wouldn't have received for a buck. And so sure enough, the official log is that this was a catcher's interference. And so that's one of them. Okay. So an unusual one, but it is one of them. All right. Second one. This is from 1995.

And this one we have video of. It's between the Pirates and the Dodgers. And this was runners on second and third in the 11th inning, tie game, two outs, I believe. No, one out at this time. And there was a pitch in the dirt, and this catcher, Angelo Encarnacion, made a pretty good block on it. Sort of a, kind of a, I don't know, it was a great block. Kind of an accidental block maybe, but also kind of a great block. Saves the runners from coming in. And the ball kind of, you know, bounced in. And he picks up the ball.

The umpire asks him for the ball to replace it. He hands him the ball. And then the third base coach comes running down. And so I'm going to write down. This is Chris Baker again of the LA Times. Joe Amalfitano, the Dodgers third base coach, spotted it right away. He came racing toward home plate, screaming at home plate umpire Brian Gorman after he saw that catcher Angelo Encarnacion picked up a pitch in the dirt

with his mask in the bottom of the 11th inning of Saturday night's game at Dodger Stadium. Encarnacion was called for catcher's interference, which allowed Roberto Kelly to score the winning run from third as the Dodgers defeated the Pirates 11-10 in one of the most bizarre innings, blah, blah. When Gorman asked for the ball, Encarnacion even handed it to him with his mask. It was something that happened so quickly, Encarnacion said. I didn't even realize that I got the ball with my mask. I thought I grabbed it with my glove. Then I heard the umpires say, let me see the ball. So when I put the ball inside my mask and gave it

to him, they said I caught the ball with my mask. Encarnacion, by the way, is not correct in his recollection. He scoops it up in his mask. He does not put the ball in his mask afterward. It's very clear, but his memory is a little foggy. He says, it was unintentional. You don't want to make a mistake in that situation. You just want to keep the ball in front of you. I feel a bit bad because it happened in that situation with the winning run on third base. I thought I made a good block. Crew chief Harry Wendell said didn't hesitate to award the Dodgers the winning run because of Encarnacion's error. Quote, you cannot catch a throw or pitched ball with equipment detached from its proper place on the body, he said. So in this case, we had to score the guy. It doesn't happen every day. I've seen it twice in my 30 years in the National League. Pirates manager Jim Leland immediately

lodged a protest. However, Leland said that he didn't plan to follow through because the umpires made the correct ruling. Most people don't realize what the catcher had done, the umpire said. When they saw it on the replay, I believe they understood why we ruled that way. Dodger manager Tom Lasorda didn't have any trouble convincing them of the violation. Quote, we lost a game exactly like that here against San Diego in 1992, so we gave one away and we got one back because of that. Now, the game that they lost in 1992 was not a walk-off. It happened in the eighth inning, and Mike Socha was the catcher, and it was the same play, basically, and it was

the pivotal play in that game. So is that a catcher's interference? I wouldn't call that a catcher's interference, but that's what they called it. That's what the umpire called it, and that's what the MLB highlight of it currently calls it, and so those are the two catcher's interference calls. They're extremely different from each other right they're totally different violations totally different strange plays strange ways to lose but did you catch did you catch it ben no same umpire two catchers interferences in history to walk off catcher's interference. Both Harry Wendelstadt.

Think that's a coincidence? Yes. Okay. They were also both in the 11th inning. They were also both in early August. They were also both won by the Dodgers. I think those are all coincidences. Wow.

But Harry Wendelstadt, twice. Twice. Wild. Jeff used to own The catcher's Interference beat He did So nice to see someone

Occupying that corner again Yeah Alright Good stuff Let us answer A couple questions If we can here Alright

This one is From Dwayne One of our Patreon supporters Do you think The Astros Sign stealing scandal Will be a turning point

for baseball players expressing their actual thoughts? More like the NBA and not just platitudes. There's a generational shift afoot, of course, and it's always going to be more of the stars speaking out, but seems like the last few days have been a significant shift. I will say that Manfred in, I think, his most recent press conference said, I've been around a long time and I've never seen this kind of commentary from players about other players in the entire time that I've been involved. Of course, much of the commentary has been about Manfred, which is probably one of the reasons why he's paying close attention but i do think this is just a more heightened kind of discourse that we have seen like i kind of think that maybe the turning point if there was one

possibly steroids in the pd era because that did lead to some backlash and players calling for testing and players who were upset about other players doing things that they were claiming not to do but i don't think that was close to this, maybe because more people were doing that than were signs doing. I don't know. We definitely don't know that. wrote about a year ago in Sports Illustrated, it seemed like players had suddenly started harnessing their social media voices and expressing outrage about the frozen free agent market and owners talking about, you know, crying poor and competitive balance tax and all that. And it seemed like players were really starting to take to the social media streets. And obviously the CPA negotiations were approaching and it just seemed like maybe whether organically or because of some union directive, players were really starting to

put the pressure on the league and owners and management just over economic issues. And I wonder whether that sort of radicalized some of them in a way that made them more likely to be so vocal about this. Obviously, it's a different matter, and it's more sensational. And I think players would have been talking about this anyway. But when you see Mike Trout speaking up like this, and Aaron Judge, and not only big stars, but big stars who usually are not quite so quotable and not quite so pointed, it's definitely more than I can remember in my time following the game, at least. Yeah, there's definitely safety in numbers.

A lot of the reason baseball players are boring is that they don't want to stand out. There's an idea that you don't want to be the one who stands out or who's getting attention, who's being a distraction. And so I'm sure there are a lot of behaviors that they would do if other people in their clubhouse were doing, I don't know, like stealing, actually, now that I think about it, like stealing signs. Right, exactly. So the fact that there has just emerged a kind of a permission structure for players

to be out there talking about this. And in some ways, I think they feel like they need to do this because they don't think that the commissioner penalized the players, that they would like the players penalized because they know that in order to discourage behaviors like this, there has to be an effective incentive to not do them. And so they are taking that up where the commissioner has failed. And when they see lots of people doing it, it feels safe to do it. You're not going to be standing out. You're not going to be the only one who's doing it. It's speculative, but my guess is that it also helps that we've now reached the point where there are retired players

who are on Twitter. Because Twitter has now been around long enough, Twitter tends to skew a lot younger than Facebook. And because Twitter has been around now quite some time, there's a number of players who probably had really boring Twitter accounts when they were players, but now they're not players anymore. They're ex-players and they can just say whatever they want. And so there's just a lot more blue check marks with uniform numbers in their handle who are tweeting somewhat colorfully because they're now retired. And I think that probably makes it a little easier for active players too, too, because

you're not the only guy with a Bible verse from Romans in your bio and your uniform number in your handle who's tweeting about whatever it is. Yeah, I think because this has been going on for days at this heightened level and weeks and months since the story broke i think some players are starting to pump the brakes a little bit and want to move on from this as i think probably some fans are and potentially some podcast listeners like anthony randon said i figured they would get backlash but the anger that's been coming out is definitely surprising none of us are perfect people we've all all made mistakes. We've all fallen short. I'm not sure I've seen any other players acknowledge that,

like the fact that, well, if they were in that Astros clubhouse, there's a pretty decent chance that they would have gone along with this because, you know, just about everyone on the Astros did, and there's no real reason to think that the players on the Astros at that time were collectively more amoral than players on other teams. So, you know, some of the players who are jumping all over them right now, if they had, you know, circumstances had sent them to a different team at a different time. Oh, my gosh. They might be one of the ones getting yelled at. I just filed an article that is all about this. And I do not know if it's going to run because i don't know if it's good or not i don't know why i interrupted you to say that

because i don't know if i want to acknowledge that i just filed an article that may or may not run and now i've just stepped all over what you were saying maybe it was because i wanted that thought to be semi-original if it does run i just wrote that exact article and submitted it like right before well i think john shamby tweeted it before i said it even so he did neither of us invented that thought but yes and i saw jd martinez say i understand players frustration and stuff like that but i think in my opinion it's already getting a little bit too much we have to move past it at some point. At some point, it will just die out. I think the flames will consume all the flammable material, and we will just move on. The games will start. The season will start. It's going to keep recurring for all the reasons that we've

mentioned on previous episodes, but not quite at this level where I wake up every day and it's like, okay, who said we should tar and feather the Astros and investigating everything when these rumors were swirling. That was the big thing and not building into the CBA the ability to punish players for sign stealing because he and the league specified that it would just be club personnel that would be punishable. And that essentially made it untenable for the league to suspend the Astros or punish the Astros players. That was one of the things. So I think that's the big thing, just being so slow to this story. And Manfred has kind of belatedly acknowledged that.

And then there's just the, you know, run of the mill misspeaking or saying things that sound bad, like his calling the World Series trophy a piece of metal. That's obviously a dumb thing to say. Everyone hated that. It devalues the accomplishment of winning a World Series. Everyone's going to be mad at that. He has apologized for that too. Then there was maybe leaving some details out of the MLB published report that were subsequently reported that then made that report look somewhat sketchy and less comprehensive. That's another thing. But then there are some other things that I think Manfred is just getting blasted for that I'm not sure he really deserves to be. There are plenty of ways in which he has made mistakes that we can criticize that I don't

know that we need to go looking for more. But for instance, like, you know, Buster only just wrote about how a lot of people in baseball are upset that Manfred is preemptively trying to protect the Astros hitters by warning the managers of all the opposing teamsros' hands again, that if umpires are going to be hypervigilant about, you know, throwing out anyone who throws in an Astros hitter, then maybe pitchers will be afraid to pitch inside. And now Astros hitters will know what's coming again in a different way. But I don't know how Manfred could have handled that differently. I think he had to do something about that, right? I mean, you had players, pitchers hinting or strongly suggesting that they were going to throw at Astros players, other veterans saying that it would be policed on the field, Markekis saying that they need a beating or whatever. It was kind of getting out of hand, and you don't want a vigilante justice situation once the games begin. Even if you don't care about the Astros hitter's safety, it's not even just an Astros hitter's safety question,

because if Astros hitters get hit, then suddenly Justin Verlander or whoever will be obligated to hit someone else, and then you'll get brawls, and you can get accidents, and you can get serious injuries, and that's not going to help in any way. can get accidents and you can get serious injuries and that's not going to help in any way so i feel like that kind of was his job to step in and say you know we get it but you cannot actually throw at these people yeah yeah you just want to say that players should be careful of what they say because the league will be taking any indications of targeting very seriously and i hope it doesn't get in the way of another great baseball season i mean no one's making it out of this unscathed like this is just gonna grow and grow until we are all a puddle uh it's uh yeah this is just uh i oh wow this season could get

could get really dark couldn't it yeah you don't want the umpires to get so vigilant that't want to throw out anyone who happens to hit an Astros batter. So it has to be whatever suspicious circumstances or just very clearly trying to hit him. It's hard to tell, but- I think probably if I were an umpire and a commissioner, I would look the other way at almost everything unless players start bragging about it, which these players, they are sort of dumbly bragging about it. And so I mean, I think that you just want to say, you know, what happens between your ears is your own business. And as soon as you open your mouth, then I've got to do something about it, which is not what Rob Manfred wanted to do in the first place. And he's not what he wants to be doing for the next year.

So just everybody probably just shut up. Yeah, Rob Manfred doesn't want to have to suspend a non-Astros player for going after an Astros player. That's the worst case scenario. Right, because now it's a longer punishment for throwing in an Astros player for doing your job of punishing them for the thing that you didn't suspend them at all for. Yeah, that is the worst case.

But once it was out there, I think he had to say something about it. And the other thing is that players are saying, well, they should have been suspended. And I don't know if they realize that they wouldn't want the league and the commissioner to have the power to unilaterally suspend anyone for anything. This is a CBA thing. It's a collectively barkin thing so manfred really couldn't suspend the players because there was nothing built into the cba that gave him the power to do so really and then also the fact that the instructions to the teams about not stealing signs that were kind of ramped up after the Apple Watch scandal. Those were not relayed to the

Astros players by Luno and by Hinch. And so an arbitrator would probably say, well, they weren't officially informed, so you can't hold them responsible, even though obviously they knew what they were doing was wrong. But these are like built-in protections, and the union would be legally obligated to represent the Astros players and protect the Astros players if they had been suspended. And players on the whole want their union to have that power. So it's this weird situation where it's like everyone in the league against 3% of the union, and yet you don't want to undermine the union's power there.

So you can get mad at Rob Manfred for not having negotiated maybe the ability to punish players beforehand with the players association which is something that i think will happen now but given what was on the books at the time i don't know that he could have done anything differently and when the players are saying he should have done that i don't know if they're all fully considering the implications of that so it's sort of a weird situation where he's screwing up in a lot of ways, but there are some ways in which his earlier screw-ups kind of, I don't know, handcuffed him when it came to what he could actually do now. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's hard to know. I wonder, this is a Galaxy Brain take. I'm going to walk it back as soon as I say it. I wonder if the ideal thing for the players is that the astros players all get long suspensions that then get overturned on appeal so that the the statement of official disapproval is made and a sort of an established idea of how serious it is is now made official but that you know like the league's power to unilaterally punish you know for for things that have not previously had punishments spelled out for them has not been expanded yeah nate silver of course considering the political implications tweeted

that politically it may have been wise for manfred to overreach and to suspend the players just so that he could say he tried, basically. And the Players Association would then be placed in the position of having to defend those players, which would be their obligation, but also probably unpopular with the public and maybe with their own union members even. On the other hand, he may not have wanted to risk alienating the union as the CBA negotiations are ramping up. Although I suppose he has alienated the union anyway by making some comments that the union disputed about its role in preventing the suspensions. Yeah, I mean, he gambled on that. I think he gambled on it being enough for everybody to move on. Like we talked about earlier

like there are a bunch of actors in this not obviously not all of them but there are a bunch of actors in this who are just desperate to get to the we've addressed this and now it's time to move on point and i think that manfred's my guess is that manfred's goal with those suspensions was to get himself and he was way off but to get himself to the we've addressed that now we can move on right point of this and having appeals hanging over everything for a long time would not do that and then ultimately having no punishments for players that he was on the record saying should be punished would then make it look like in fact he had not addressed it so the long-term political you know stakes of that would be that he would not be able to say that he had accomplished what

he was on the record saying should be accomplished in order to do that right and then the other thing that players are angry about and everyone's angry about is the decision not to vacate the title or take away their rings or something and generally i agree with manfred not vacating the title at least i don't know can you take away rings? Can you confiscate? Can Rob Manfred confiscate someone's personal property? I don't really know if he has the power to do that, but not vacating the title. That's been quite controversial, but I kind of think he was right about that, even though he is getting killed for that decision. And do we have time for one more on that topic here? Well, first, I just got to clarify that uh i said romans but the uh baseball twitter bible

verse is philippians 413 that's always how i know that a person is a college or minor league ball player if i don't recognize their name philippians 413 the official verse of major league baseball go ahead so adam patreon supporter says i think most people are against vacating the 2017 World Series title due to some combination of it wasn't that serious and what would vacating it even accomplish anyway? And also, I think the slippery slope argument, which is maybe more powerful than both of those, really. But Adam continues that. It's a smallpox email, isn't it? Yes. I disagree with him about that.

Anyway, go ahead. it yes yes i have i disagree with him about the anyway go ahead i think we can all agree that the title would be vacated if it turned out that the astros were say lacing the visitors clubhouse water supply with smallpox i do not agree with that i do not think that we would say well we have no choice but to vacate the title now now we've addressed it let's move on i think they would dissolve the team if they laced the water with smallpox. Get the smallpox. Go ahead. The question, what would it make sense for a title to be vacated?

How bad? Yeah. What terrible atrocity do you have to commit for everyone to agree? I think that, I don't know. I don't know if this is practical, but I do think that dissolving a franchise would happen. Dissolving, I don't know if that's the right word, but dissolving a franchise would maybe come before vacating a title. In a sense, it's much more serious. I mean, obviously, it's obviously much more serious.

But to take the ownership of the team from the owner seems like would happen before you'd vacate a title. Vacating a title, I think. Donald Sterling sort of punishment. Right. vacate a title vacating a title i think donald sterling sort of right i think that vacating a title while it is something that a lot of people want i think it would end up being extremely unsatisfying for many more people and so i don't think that a commissioner would look at that ever as a solution or as a we've addressed this and now we're going to move on. Like to me, if your goal is to get to we've addressed this and now we're going to move on, vacating a title doesn't feel like it gets you there.

And so I think that you would just skip right over that. Obviously, that's not as big of a deal as forcing the team from the owner. It's a much bigger deal and a much longer process to get the owner to no longer own the team. But I think you would just skip over vacating the title and go to more serious things It's a much bigger deal and a much longer process to get the owner to no longer own the team. But I think you would just skip over vacating the title and go to more serious things if it were something like, you know, smallpox. Yeah. Yeah, because, well, Manfred's justification for that is basically like there's no precedent for that and slippery slope because who knows what constitutes something that is worth taking a title away, and how many titles are we going to have to take away if we find out that other teams were doing things. And I think those are good arguments. And he also said essentially that,

well, he thinks, you know, the facts are out there, people know what happened, and they can reach their own judgments. So if you think that the title is illegitimate, then in your mind, it's illegitimate, and you don't give them the honor that they would otherwise get for that accomplishment. And that could really apply to any transgression. I mean, sign stealing is not a crime in the sense that it's, you know, not against, it's not the penal code. I mean, steroids were illegal illegal sign stealing is not illegal so if the team were to commit criminal acts on its way to winning world series i mean you know take it to the absolute extreme like you know what if they are i guess the smallpox scenario is pretty much the extreme you know you're poisoning the other team and that's why you won it would be weird obviously to like still have them as the world champions but they would be in prison they would be they'd like being yeah risen for life and you know once that happens then does anyone even care about the title it's

like i don't at a certain is it just such a stain on baseball's honor that it's like we are going to wipe away these murderers, these attempted murderers? We don't even want them associated with our sport anymore. Then maybe there is a point at which you get to that, but maybe also other punishments just supersede whatever baseball could do and it doesn't even matter anymore. Yeah, I just envisioned them doing it and just lived with that reality for a minute. And it actually seemed okay. So now I have come around to the possibility that maybe they would do it for something and that whatever I just said was wrong. I could go either way on that. But let me ask you this question, which I think is more relevant and less smallpox related. Do you think that after this, there will be put in place some formal system whereby certain acts of, you know, dishonesty and unfair actions would trigger a

forfeit so that you actually could have in place a system to overturn a title or overturn a single game or overturn a team's entire season? Is that a going forward solution that the league will consider? Well, I don't actually know for sure that they couldn't currently do that because I was reading in the Hidden Language of Baseball, politics and science dealing book that in the early 60s when there was a big uproar about sign stealing, at least the NL owners got together and voted to give the NL league president the power to forfeit a game if it could be proven that that game was won via sign stealing, which was essentially impossible. Because A, how do you prove that it happened if there's no hard evidence of a banging scheme or something? And B, how do you prove that they won because of the sign stealing evidence of a banging scheme or something and b how do you prove that they won because of the sign stealing so it was sort of toothless but oh well i see i thought it was kind of the opposite it was toothless because it was never enforced and

the commissioner could always say i can't prove it but it actually set a very low bar for for what it would take like proving it prove is not necessarily a clear word but there are lots of ways you could prove it. I mean, they had all these teams had somebody out with a spyglass in the outfield and they were sending signals to somebody in the scoreboard who was then sending signals to the players. There's a lot of ways that you could prove that, right? All you need is one person to say, oh yeah, I was the spyglass guy or, you know, one player to say that they were getting the signals.

And so it felt to me like it was actually would have been very easy at that point to establish the forfeit. Yeah. If they voted to grant that power at the time, for all I know, they still have that power. And I don't know all the ways in which you can qualify for a forfeit, obviously, like not having enough players on the field or something, but there may very well already be rule-breaking forfeit scenarios. But I don't think that we'll get like a title vacating rule added to the books because of this. I think we'll definitely get, you know, punishments for future players who do this sort of thing. Absolutely. But the vacating the title thing, that just seems like something that Rob Manfred is not going to go there. And I don't entirely blame him, at least for this offense. What if a future commissioner,

after all these people have been retired, were to vacate the title? Yeah, well, the longer you go, maybe the less dangerous it is, or I don't know, maybe the more dangerous it is, but the less satisfying it would be for one thing, right? Especially if you wait long enough that those players aren't alive anymore or something like that it's like the posthumous pardon or you know that's nice but the person didn't get to enjoy it so it's it's the reverse of that and yeah you know if the fans who are aggrieved right now and the players who are aggrieved don't get to enjoy their vengeance then i don't know what's the point even yeah i'm coming around on the idea not i'm not in i'm not

like uh i'm not thinking that it's gonna fix everything or anything like that but it feels more realistic than i thought it did five minutes ago i mean i just keep thinking about how seamlessly people lose their gold medals and everybody moves up you know a spot yeah and it's not satisfying in the same way that winning a gold medal is obviously and it's different because you know it's different for a lot of reasons but there is a precedent in sports for this there's you know college basketball teams who you know do this and all sorts of things so i don't know my thinking that it was so outlandishly radical because baseball hadn't done it before, I'm just kind of backing off that.

Yeah. Obviously, as history goes along and our perspectives change, we revise what we revere, right? So monuments to people who we no longer think were good people get torn down, but you don't say that those people didn't exist or say that they didn't do what they did. So that's a little different. Like you're not going to get, you know, plaques honoring the 2017 Astros as it is. I doubt that the Astros team will have, you know, 10th anniversary, 20th anniversary gatherings

for the veterans of the 2017 Astros like the 2010 Giants are having their reunion that Aubrey Huff is not attending. I'm guessing the Astros will not have that. So you don't get honored, but I guess you don't get the title taken

away. Last year, Stark described it as 30 esteemed baseball managers, coaches, scouts, and executives. Aha. Okay. All right. We can end there. That will do it for today. By the way, there was one really touching entry in the Zach Greinke oral history. This was from former Royals catcher John Buck, who said, I have a coin that he gave me. This coin was his lucky coin. As I was getting let go, he was like, Dude, I don't know when our paths will cross, but this is my lucky coin, and I just wanted to give it to you. Zach doesn't open up like that, so I took it as something that was very cool, which I still have.

That's really nice. And it's also very baseball player-y that someone as analytical as Grinky would have a lucky coin. Baseball players are contradictions, layers upon layers, and players upon players. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged their support to the podcast. They are contributing some small monthly amount to help keep us going and get themselves access to some perks. Today's favorite five are Stephen Cardone, Kyle Wojcik, Joe Rosbars, Andrew Lindsay, and John Vanderloot. 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. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg 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. And we will be back with one more episode this week. It'll be a team preview pod. And I believe we will be covering Cleveland and Texas. Talk to you soon. Speaking out! speaking out

knuckleball exactly but i started thinking about walk-off catcher's interference um now there are two uh as far as there there are listed two i'm pausing so that you can get a drink of water or rinse your All right. Okay. Doing great. Looks clean to me. All right. All right. There are two walk-off captures interferences that I could find, and they're actually very different.