Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1532: Dirty Watkins

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller discuss the results of MLB’s investigation into Boston Red Sox sign stealing, touching on Boston’s lighter penalties and seemingly lesser offenses compared to the Astros’, whether Boston’s front office and coaches deserved to be absolved, the moral hazard of the advance scout who doubles as a replay-room operator, and more. […]

It's pissing rain, the leaves are all scattered on the lawn The women are stuffing the back of the car They're headed on uptown And nothing's going on This night has left you alone Hello and welcome to episode 1532 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast with fan graphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hi, Ben.

How's it going? It's the same. Yeah, same with me too. So we did get, finally, a resolution to MLB's investigation into the 2018 Red Sox sign stealing. After months and months, Rob Manfred released his report. And the findings are certainly a lot less sensational than the Astros' findings were. It's funny, there was sort of an air of disappointment, I think, when the news came out. It just sort of landed with a wet thump. We were waiting all these months and that's all we get. That's all that happened. But that is kind of what we should have been hoping for, right? We don't want them to have cheated even more than they did, and for it to have been even more egregious, and for another World Series team to be tainted further, right? I mean, unless you think that they just didn't uncover what was happening,

or you think that Rob Manfred went easy on the Red Sox, even given what his findings were. I understand that, but it's kind of the best outcome is not, oh, we uncovered another Astros style operation here, unless you're maybe an Astros fan who wants some other team to take the heat for a while, right? It's not terrible for baseball that another team does not have a huge stain against it, at least any more than we had already understood from Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellick's reporting. I guess. I feel like the nice thing, I think I've said this, but the nice thing about rooting is that you don't actually have any influence. And so you can root for things irresponsibly.

You can root for things sociopathically, if you would like, because you don't have any power. Your rooting is merely energy that does not escape your head. And so if you want to be entertained and you like drama and you also like to feel emotions like grievance and resentment and anger at a team that is not your favorite team, I could see being a little, I don't know. I mean, I could see feeling let down while recognizing that, you know, this is good for the sport that you love as well. But you don't have, I mean, I don't know. It's what I'm saying. You don't have to root for the thing that is good for the sport in a weird way. You can just root for

fireworks, right? Like we all- We need stuff to talk about. Nothing's happening. There's no baseball, right? We all have something where we're the Joker. And I feel like baseball fans can definitely just root for chaos if they want to. But as to the question of whether it's good for the game that this turned out to not yield the same level of cheating, that all depends on whether you think that this was a true and effective investigation that really did turn up everything. And beyond that, stage two, if you believe that it will be broadly accepted as such. Because if you end up with a situation where the broader public does not find the findings credible, then you have more of a

lingering doubt, which I think took hold but i'm trying to remember the timeline of the cheating in the middle of the last century but what it was like for much of the century there was a feeling that teams probably were cheating and that the league wasn't doing anything about it and then in the 60s the league came down. Well, somehow the league basically convinced everybody that cheating had stopped and was done. And for decades, everybody, my recollection, everybody felt sure that, in fact, this was a thing that they used to do, but they don't do it anymore. And now we have a game that's played fairly and honestly, which maybe wasn't entirely

true, but they managed to convince people. And if this closes the book, I mean, like I would say, for instance, with PEDs, there are people who still think that PEDs are anytime someone hits, you know, 12 more home runs in their projections, they're probably juicing. And there are people who think that one player getting caught every four months is proof that it's still an epidemic rather than the fact that the system is working. But I think broadly speaking, people believe that PEDs got mostly cleared out of the game, mostly, and that the crisis that the sport was in in the early 2000s got resolved. And so the question is whether you think that this will do the same thing going forward. So what did they, what did the find, be specific, what did they find? So the Red Sox investigation, which was kind of kicked off by the Athletic Report, found after months of interviews, many, many interviews, repeated interviews, thousands of the Red Sox, JT Watkins, who was a member of their

advanced scouting staff and was the guy in the video replay room. So he sort of had both of those jobs. One of his jobs, which I want to talk about for a second, was decoding the opponent's signs, but in a legal way before and after games, not during games. I should also mention this was the guy at the center of the 2017 Apple Watch incident. This was the guy who was passing along those signs, and he was warned very strenuously not to do that again, and he seemed to be aware of the new rules and everything, but the finding was that he still, at least on occasion during the 2018 regular season, it wasn't established that this continued in the postseason, used information that he was gleaning during games to relay information about

signs to players, not using an Apple Watch or anything, just talking to them, and that those insights would on occasion be relayed during games from a runner on second base. So this is not as comprehensive nearly as the Astros scheme because it did not affect plate appearances where there was not a runner on second base. And if you read the report, there is a lot of uncertainty about how often this actually happened because many of the people who were interviewed said that it didn't and that he wasn't doing anything wrong. And that's why the reading the report is kind of interesting because unlike the Astros case, you don't have banging. You don't have very obvious evidence that this happened, which is typically the case in all previous science dealing scandals. The Astros one was really

the exception because we could all hear it ourselves and it was so obvious once we knew about it so the upshot is that this guy jt watkins is suspended for this season and postseason if we even have this season and postseason and when his suspension is over next year he can't be a replay room operator and also yes just one year you'd'd think that he'd be banned for life from the replay room. From the replay room, right. Yeah, because this is the second time. So I think that job, at least, he's shown that he probably shouldn't be doing that job anymore. And then the only team punishment is that the Red Sox lose their second round draft pick in this year's draft, which may only be a five-round draft.

And otherwise, front office was cleared and the coaching staff was cleared. So Alex Cora, who, of course, was heavily implicated in the Astros report, was not implicated in this one, but he was finally officially suspended through the end of this postseason, but just for what he did with the Astros, not for anything he did with the Red Sox. So unlike the Astros case, there was a lot of evidence that the front office did relay these new rules about sign stealing to at least the non-player staff. And so you don't have what you had with Luno, where basically they sent him a memo and he didn't do anything with it as far as anyone could tell.

The Red Sox were more diligent about it, probably because they had already been caught in 2017. So there are a couple things that stand out to me in the report that I think are kind of interesting. And one of them is the idea that the front office basically just has to tell the non-player staff, like it has to make sure the coaching staff knew and make sure JT Watkins knew about these new regulations. But really, the report makes it pretty clear that the players didn't know, or at least according to them, they didn't know. So I'm just going to read a little part here. Based on these and other similar communications, as well as the consistent statement of witnesses, I cannot fault either Dombrowski or O'Halloran, that's another high-ranking front office member,

for any non-player staff member's lack of adherence to the sign-stealing rules. While I strongly believe in the accountability of leadership, given that Dombrowski and O'Halloran were emphatic that MLB's rules be followed, there must be limits when leaders' resolute and active support for the rules is knowingly defied. So whereas he condemned the Astros' front office culture, he is saying that the Red Sox front office culture was fine here and that JT Watkins acted alone. However, it continues, despite the notification efforts for non-player staff, the specifics of the sign-stealing rules apparently did not consistently and effectively reach the Red Sox players. While some witnesses believe that the Red Sox may have provided physical copies of

the relevant memoranda to players, most players could not recall receiving any rules described that they largely discarded any such memoranda and gave mixed accounts of whether they received other guidance or understood the parameters of the sign-stealing rules. Many players told my investigators that they were unaware that in-game decoding from the replay station had been prohibited in 2018 and 2019. Watkins said that prior to the 2018 season, he told multiple players in one-on-one discussions that he could no longer use the replay station to decode signed sequences, but no players confirmed this. And last paragraph, in addition, most players did not believe that MLB rules prohibited them from using video clips provided to them during the game of their prior at-bats to decode a pitcher's signed sequences. They also did not believe it violated the rules to attempt to utilize the broadcast feed on monitors in the

clubhouse to decode sign sequences. While players may have varied in their success in decoding sign sequences using game video that was available to them under the rules, it is clear that some players attempted to decode signs using those sources. So it's kind of odd, I guess, that this is essentially saying, well, the Red Sox did everything they could, and yet the players weren't told. Like, you'd think that would be part of they did everything they could, right? Actually informing the players. And there was one email from O'Halloran, it says, that ended with, I would also encourage coaches and other staff members, make sure players are aware of these rules as well. But, you know, encourage, you'd think he would mandate or make sure that that actually happens. So it is clearing the Red Sox. And yet, if most of the team didn't know or says they didn't, and they did have immunity here to speak freely, I don't know. Can both of those things be true, that the Red Sox leadership did everything that they should have done,

and yet also the players weren't aware of any of this? You know, there's such a big distinction being drawn here, and I don't know if it's just because, you know, this is like, you know, a quasi-legal document, but there's such a big distinction between whether the activity happened before the memo went out or after, whether it was violated with knowledge of the memo or without knowledge of the memo.

It puts like pretty much all of the morality, all of the ethics on the existence of the memo and sort of implies that whatever players were stealing signs using video before this were fine because there wasn't a memo yet and that whatever we're doing it afterward we're not fine because now there's a memo and that like the letter of the law is is the really crucial change here sort of like the the pd stuff right because that was officially prohibited for years but like no one paid attention no one enforced it and then a lot of people draw a distinction between that period and after testing was in place. Well, yeah, sort of, except that nobody draws a distinction there. Pretty much, it is almost universally condemned to have used PEDs even before the memo.

Some Hall of Fame voters do, but yeah, probably not most people. Almost nobody. Some Hall of Fame voters do, but yeah, probably not most people. It's not that that was wrong. It's that it violated a league-wide memo. And if that's the case, then I wish we had debated that memo a lot more at the time. Like, I wish... Because the way that it came out at the time was, okay, so you have the Apple Watch thing, and we all go, oh, well, that's cheating, and now the league has to make it official with a memo. But at the time, there wasn't a lot of disagreement about whether the Red Sox had done something wrong. It was presented as they had done something wrong.

And now there's a memo to really clarify that this thing has always been wrong, but now there's a memo. If I had known that everything before the memo for the rest of time was going to be treated as just players being players, and that everything after the memo was going to be treated as just, you know, players being players and that everything after the memo was going to be treated as come down with the hammer of the law, I would have probably, I don't know, I might have not wanted that memo written. I might have wanted to keep some more continuity. It feels like a little bit odd that suddenly, well, maybe it doesn't feel odd and maybe I'm happy with it, but it feels a little bit odd that suddenly with this one memo that Rob Manfred sends a hundred years of baseball history is, is now like over.

And now it's like brand new era where like all the culture of like the, the sort of complicated and nuanced way that we navigate cheating or sign stealing, I should say is out the window. And now it's, it's going to be, it's going to be black and white. And I suppose that's what Rob Manfred wanted. I, I feel, I feel like, um, I personally felt like the penalties for the Astros were stronger than I expected them to be. I know that some people think that they were not strong enough, but I thought they were stronger than I expected them to be. And I thought that the clear purpose of that was Rob Manfred saying that from now on, it is not going

to be this way in the league. Like it has been a hundred years of, of gray and a hundred years of not exactly knowing what you're going to, whether you're going to be in trouble, whether you're going to get caught, whether what you're doing is part of the game, whether it's part of competition or whether it's scurrilous. And I hear right now, I am going to be the commissioner that, that chain that has a doctrine on, on sign ceiling. And my doctrine is it's bad all the time and I'm going to come down hard on it. And so I don't know. I'm just noting that the memo felt quite innocuous at the time.

It didn't feel like a shift in the sport. And now in retrospect, reading this investigation and hearing the way that the before and after is treated differently and the with or without knowledge is treated differently. It really feels like that memo was really momentous. Yeah. Well, when he came out and he sort of slapped the Red Sox wrist in 2017 and fined them, I guess, he said, all right, well, don't do this again. Whoever does this in the future, there are really going to be consequences. And so that's, I think, part of why he had to do something here, because he had warned everyone and the Red Sox specifically, and then the Red Sox are doing something again. So he did say in this report that maybe in contrast to the Astros report, he had offered the Red Sox players

immunity to talk. And so again, he wasn't going to suspend them no matter what they said. But in this report, he says he wouldn't have tried to suspend them even if he hadn't given them immunity based on what he discovered, because this was less serious, less rampant. But what I think is really interesting is put yourself in the position of this J.T. Watkins or imagining how he could have actually done his jobs and kept his nose clean because he was kind of in a tough position and I don't want to absolve him here but the fact that he had these two jobs in tandem would have made it very difficult for him to not run afoul of these rules because again his job part of his job is that he's supposed to decode the opposing team signs and he can do that right after the last pitch and right up until the first

pitch and it's even his job to brief the players and give them a scouting report he would give them like a handout with here's what the other guy's signs have been at least up until this point and sort of prepare them for all that. And that's all legal. You can do that. But then his job was to go to the video room during the game and watch the game with these monitors that at least part of the time were giving him a view of the catcher signs. And he was also being asked like during games by players, sign related questions. And so what he would have had to do

to stay on the straight and narrow here was if he saw things as he was watching the game not use any of that information and not tell the players any of that information even though it may have contradicted the scouting report that he gave them before the game. And so there's no hard evidence here that he actually did things that he wasn't supposed to do. It was just that some of the players that were interviewed said that they suspected that he had done this. And again, not like there's a paper trail or something. It's just that they would see him writing things sometimes, or they heard him give a certain scouting report before the game about signs, and then during the game he would give different information. And so the implication

there is that he was incorporating something he had seen on the video during the game, which you're not allowed to do. And he denies this, and he said no, he just talked to runners who were on second, and maybe sometimes they contradicted the pregame scouting report. His capability to decode sign sequences in 2018 and 2019 was limited because of a reduction in access to the centerfield video feed in the replay station. While Watkins' ability to see catcher signs in the replay system did decrease significantly in 2018 and 2019, he still had sufficient access during many games to, at a minimum, confirm whether the sign sequences he had predicted in his pregame research were actually in use. the sign sequences he had predicted in his pregame research were actually in use. Indeed, Watkins conceded to my investigators that in sequences while working replay, explaining that there were instances when I watched and intuitively picked up that signs were wrong or different than the advance work, in those instances he, quote, kept a mental log of it, but claimed he would not share the information with any player. In addition to mental notes, Watkins regularly electronically bookmarked games whenever a player reached second base

so that he could incorporate the ensuing at-bat into his post-game research. So essentially he's saying that if he saw something that contradicted his own scouting report that he had given the players in-game, he would not tell them that or he would continue to give them the wrong scouting report because he just couldn't possibly use the information that he had gotten here. But that's a pretty tough spot to be in because it's almost like what they say on The Good Wife and The Good Fight all the time, the Chinese wall, right? Where you set up this barrier that supposedly one part of your law firm doesn't know something that the other part of your law firm does. And in this case, it's like, you know, you need a wall between

one half of Watkins' job and the other half, or else he is just going to know that the information that he has been legally charged with getting is inaccurate. And so that's what I was thinking as I was reading that. And then there was actually a paragraph that acknowledges that so Manfred writes in my view Watkins was placed in a very difficult position by virtue of his dual role as the person responsible for decoding signs pregame and as the person responsible for operating the Red Sox replay system a structure as I have previously noted that was not uncommon within MLB clubs. Watkins admitted that because he watched the game feeds during the entire game, he was able to determine during the game when the sign sequences he provided to players prior to the game were wrong, thus placed in the difficult position of often knowing what the correct sequences were, but being prohibited by rule from assisting the players by providing the correct information. While this does not excuse or justify his conduct, I do believe that it created a situation in which he felt pressure

as the club's primary expert on decoding sign sequences to relay information that was consistent with what he naturally observed on the in-game video. Yeah, it's impossible. It's a tough spot. It's a tough spot. And if, as the report says, it was common for teams at that time to have one person doing both of these jobs, then what are the odds that every other team except the Red Sox and the Astros stuck to the letter of the law? Not great, probably. So we may never know about other teams and whether they did this or not. But you have to figure that if the Red Sox players didn't realize that this was against the rules, and if the Red Sox, who had already been caught and been advised not to do this, were still doing it sometimes, you'd think

another team out there, or perhaps several other teams out there, were occasionally engaging in similar activity. And I suppose it's sort of strange that in the Red Sox case, this replay person is being disciplined, whereas in the Astros case, the replay people were not disciplined. It was Hinch in the front office that were blamed for what they did. But this whole dilemma reminds me of something that happened during our Sonoma Stoppers experience, when we would give the players scouting reports, usually you, and would draw it up on a whiteboard or something and stick it in the dugout. And there were instances, right, where where the scattering report was supposedly inaccurate like a pitcher had thrown something that our scattering report said he didn't throw or something and

wasn't it uh what joel caranza or someone once uh snapped at you or something because someone had thrown something that contradicted the scattering report right there was a lot of pressure to like if we were giving the players information to have it be correct information. So imagine like we're in the replay room if the Sonoma Stompers had had a replay room and we're not allowed to change what we told them before the game. And so we have to just knowingly tell them the wrong thing so as not to violate the rules, knowing that they will chew us out after the game about how our information was bad or something it's just it's an awkward position so i think probably those two jobs should not be the same person's responsibility yeah yeah totally yeah all right i think the only other thing that stands out about the report is that it made becker belief to claim that cora had no knowledge of what was happening here because if any

sign stealing rule was violated, and at least some players were aware of that, then shouldn't Cora have been aware of that? And knowing what we know about Cora's violations in Houston, you sort of have to bake that into your prior that we know he's willing to bend the rules here. Plus, he's just come off a World Series winning season with the Astros where they were doing this in a really rampant way. And we know that the Astros continued to do the Red Sox style sign stealing into 2018. And so if Alex Coren knows that this is going on in Houston and we know from what he's implied in the past that he suspected that the Yankees were doing something.

So would he really have not tried to push things? It's possible, right? not tried to push things? It's possible, right? It's possible that he could have done what he did in Houston and then gotten the job in Boston and decided to clean up his act because the Red Sox have already been caught and warned about this, and because his new bosses are breathing down his neck on this stuff in a way that Luno and Hinch were not. And maybe he figures, well, I'm the manager, I'll be the fall guy now if anything happens, so I will reform. I'll toe the sign-stealing line here. So I'm not saying it's not possible. It's just sort of a tough sell, I think, to some people,

given what we know about Cora's behavior in Houston. Anything else? No. Okay, let's do some emails. All right, question from Jamie, Patreon supporter. I'd like to hypothetically put you in the position of Peter Angelos or Dan Duquette watching the 2016 AO wildcard game as Buck Showalter stubbornly refused to put Zach Britton in the game as seven pitchers towed the rubber that day, including Ubaldo Jimenez with a 544 ERA that year who lost the game in the 11th inning. If you were in the position of owner or GM, would you have watched the inexplicable debacle unfold, or would you have attempted to take action, trying to find a way to get advice or even an order down to the field to get Britain into the game, even if that is illegal, which is my assumption? Yeah, not illegal, though, right? Well, you can't call the dugout from upstairs during the game.

There's no communication, but i guess you can send someone down right there's nothing really prohibiting you from doing that you can sit behind the dugout and scream real loud if you wanted yeah i've seen right i've seen gms and managers talking yeah well i mean supposedly brody van wagenen was ordering the Mets to make changes from afar. I don't know, but yeah, I'm sure that happens. So, you know, if you are the GM and you feel that you need to go tell your manager to pull a pitcher, what you're really saying is that, that he can't be the manager anymore, right? If he is, if, if he is not, if he can't be trusted with a basic job of managing, then he just shouldn't be your manager. And so when you go down there, you basically need to

go down there and fire him. Or if you don't, then you need to be prepared for him to quit. Probably not in that exact moment. But I think, I think at that point, I mean, look, it's not like, it's not like Buck Showalter wasn't aware that he had a decision to make. It's not like he was just, his mind was drifting. He had other things on his mind and someone needed to come over and go, Hey, just so you know, there's a pot boiling and you know, the timer in the kitchen went off. Did you need to get that? Like Buck Showalter intentionally made a decision. He, he stared at it and thought about it and thought and thought and thought. I mean, that was the hardest decision of his life. Well, maybe, I hope. And so if you go down and say

that the decision he made is wrong, then you just need to be prepared for that to be the last game that Buck Showalter is ever going to manage for you. And given that he managed a whole nother season for them after that- Two seasons. Two seasons after that, then I presume that they did not want that to happen that that was not the position that the decision that they were making so you just have to i think you just have to to roll with it now you could i mean obviously you this is something that you could be usually if you can anticipate decisions like this happening in the future then it's great because then you can really talk about them and suss them out and do like all the mental modeling that you need to make this decision.

And if a similar decision has been made that you disagreed with, then definitely talk about it after the fact so that, again, you can go over it and everybody knows it comes to the right conclusion and you're all happy with each other. But ultimately, I think Buck Showalter's job there is to to make that decision and while you would love as a you know i mean we are all way too confident in our own in our own beliefs right we all think that we're right pretty much all the time so as a gm you would love for that decision to always reflect your own and to never be ghastly. You know, sometimes you just have to, I mean, not sometimes, every single game, you have to stop your involvement and let the game happen.

And that's true for the pitcher who's trying to throw a good pitch, and it's true for the manager who's trying to manage a good manage. trying to manage a good manage. Yeah, this is another thing that came up during the Stompers experience because there were times where there were pitching changes or non-pitching changes that we really disagreed with. And at least my instinct, I think both of our instincts was to do something about it in the moment. But again, that was something we wrestled with, you know, can we intervene? Yeah. In that case, though, I think that we did, we wanted to establish the precedent that we were going to be in the dugout and having these conversations in real time. And we established that precedent by being there on the first inning of the first game. And so it wasn't a fabric tearing moment when we showed up and said, you know, you should

pull the picture it was part of the part of the dugouts decision making process in theory was that we were also there and i don't think we ever well we didn't we never commanded a decision to be made no and if we had i think that well i don't know like okay so there was the game where what paul Paul? Paul came in? Who was it? Who was in there? Paul was involved, yeah. So if we had said that whatever decision they were making was wrong and we weren't going to let it happen, I think we would have probably, well, I don't know.

We weren't firing anybody in the second week of the season, and I don't think anybody was probably quitting either. So, yeah, maybe you just think it will work itself out, and then you don't think anybody was probably quitting either so yeah maybe you just think it will work itself out and then you don't have to fire them well later in the season after Yoshi took over as manager I remember there was one time he got mad at me because I had asked some pointed questions maybe I think I forget exactly what happened but I was asking about you know maybe having someone warm up or something or just kind of asking what he was thinking but like clearly i had some agenda there and i think

he was upset because he didn't want us undermining him very visibly and publicly during games and so we worked out the system where we would bring whatever objection we had to him about how the game had been managed after the game or before the game. And we would come up with a plan for this is how we want the game to be managed. And we would talk about it so that we weren't actually intervening in sight of the rest of the team, which he thought would make him look powerless and just a puppet of the front office. And we kind of came to this compromise agreement where we got to have our say, but he didn't have us actually coming up to him and kind of showing him up during the game. And so that's sort of the same thing with a big league team and managers. And as you said, I think if you actually do come down and say you have to make this move right now, then many managers are probably just going to quit on the spot or refuse, and you'll have to be prepared to fire them. Now, maybe that's changing a little because modern managers are used to the front office having more of a say than it used to, and maybe there are some that would be okay with it, but on the whole, I think they're going to look at that as a challenge,

and it is something that if you want your manager to have control of the clubhouse and look like he has the authority to tell players to stop doing things like stop sign stealing, let's say, then you do want it to seem like he has some autonomy at least. And then if you're going to get upset about a move that he made or didn't make, you save it for the meeting afterward. And hopefully he changes his ways. And if not, then maybe you change your ways as far as what manager is in charge of your team so the question is i guess are there circumstances are there games that are so important it's such a pivotal moment that you can't wait for that post game post-mortem you just have to insist that he make the move now and if he quits he quits and really the important thing is

getting the pitcher who should be in the game into the game and clearly the fact that they kept show walter for two more years even though he had made a pretty clearing mistake seems to indicate that they really liked him in other ways and they thought he was helping the team in other ways and of course we know now with the benefit of hindsight that those weren't great years for the Orioles and that Showalter's tenure didn't end all that well or all that amicably. And Duquette sort of sniped about him on their way out. But, you know, you put Britton in the game, you may still lose it anyway. And if you have forced his hand, then you have also lost the manager that you like. So that's the question, I guess. Is this moment so important that it can't wait that you'll risk losing this guy in order to give yourself a better chance of winning the game? And it could be conceivably, I guess, that you think that this move that he's making or not making is so wrongheaded that it actually does change your mind about whether you want him to be the manager. that it actually does change your mind about whether you want him to be the manager because you know ultimately you do hope that this guy is going to get you to a playoff game and that he's going to have pretty momentous decisions to make and if you lose confidence in him as the person who can make the right decision then maybe the other stuff doesn't

make up for it maybe the fact that he's good in the clubhouse or he keeps players motivated or whatever if you think there's some achilles heel where when game seven comes, he's not going to put Zach Britton in, maybe you decide, well, that overshadows everything else. And I'm okay with forcing a pitching change, even if it means making a managerial change. I think you and Jeff, actually, I think it was you and Jeff, it might have been you and me. Answered a question wondering if a manager started intentionally walking every batter, how long would it be before somebody did something and what would they do? And I think even in that case, I think you and Jeff agreed that it would be like four or five batters before you would do anything.

And what you would do is actually have him like probably institutionalized, like, like, like seek mental health counseling. And so that's even more, more extreme. I think that look, I think if you if you are in the situation, and you feel so strongly about it, that you absolutely must do something about it. The only thing that you can do that is that both respects the manager that you hired and that you don't want to fire, but also allows you, you know, as a free acting human being is you walk down there and you say, I'll give you $5 million to make a pitching change right now. And you just bribe them. You pay them. You want, you want them to do something that is, goes against their authority. You got to bribe them.

That could get expensive. It could, but it's worth it. No, it's like it's totally worth it though, right? Like winning that game was worth $5 million to the Orioles. And now you wouldn't necessarily win it. Even if they put Britain in, you might still have lost. I would imagine that as egregious as it was, my guess is that the difference between Britain and Ubaldo Jimenez in that situation

is is i don't know maybe a tenth of a win because you're still you know you still have to score a run at some point maybe it's two tenths of a win maybe it's three tenths of a win but you you know you figure out what it's worth and you give show alter a cut of that yeah i mean you do hear like on twitter during playoff games oh that's a fireable offense right there. Using the wrong pitcher, using the wrong pinch hitter, not pinch hitting, whatever it is, you'll see people fire off a tweet that says, oh, fireable offense. I'd get rid of that guy right now. Sometimes people will fire off a podcast the next day. I think we've done it. Well, I was going to say that I think in general, that's overblown, that managers have value outside

of in-game moves. And most in-game moves, they're only affecting your actual win expectancy by a few percentage points maybe, and the wrong move works out a lot of the time, the right move, the Mike Matheny, the can't use a closer because tie game on the road or whatever. That one, to me, I don't know if that's a – maybe it's not a fireable offense if it happens one time and you talk to the person and say, let's do things a different way. Let's talk through this and it can come to an agreement here. here but if that persists like that to me just seems so wrongheaded that not only does it make me question the managerial acumen but then it starts to make me question well can i trust this person just as a thinker as a logical person who i want in this powerful position or does this reflect on their process in a way that makes me uncomfortable with them on the whole ultimately though if you're the gm you also have to have a lot of self-reflection in this situation because this is not, it's not like this is the first time that situation's ever come up in baseball history.

This is a well-known situation. This is a well-known debate, a well-known controversy. And Showalter is not out there on an island. He represents the mainstream major league manager. It did at the time. I don't know if 16 of 30 would still do that now, but I bet 16 of 30. Well, in a postseason game, I honestly don't know.

Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. And maybe in a postseason game, the number drops way down. I don't know. But this is a situation that is 100% foreseeable as the GM.

And if you haven't had that conversation with Buck Showalter, then that is 100% foreseeable as the GM. And if you haven't had that conversation with Buck Showalter, then that is your failure because I guarantee you Buck Showalter made that decision that regular season. There was certainly a game where the Orioles were tied and didn't go to Zach Britton on the road. Is it when you're on the road? It's when you're at home. So at that point, I bet they had a conversation with Buck Showalter and they either were unable to persuade him, in which case that's on them and they knew what they were getting and all you can do is cross your fingers and hope it doesn't come up. And if it does come up, all you can do is cross your fingers and hope it works

out. Or what did I say was the first thing? They did discuss it and they couldn't persuade him, or they didn't discuss it, in which case should have done that. Right. I mean, it should be an interview question. And granted, an interview candidate might say one thing to get the job and then do something different when they're in the dugout. But you should ask. And then if they do go against what they said in the interview, then you said, hey, I hired you with the understanding

that you were going to handle the situation this way. And now you did something different. So, yeah, right. hired you with the understanding that you were going to handle the situation this way and now you did something different so yeah right i would i would not i would not begrudge a gm who if a manager had told him that i i do think i i do think managers choke in the postseason and i'm going to write an article this postseason if there is one about that because i actually have in my head i think i have collected evidence and come up with a pretty good argument that choking in baseball i don't know if it's if it happens or not for players, but I am quite confident saying that managers choke in the postseason. And so maybe Buck Showalter that morning would have agreed that Zach Britton is coming into any game where he's needed, even if it's a tie game, and then just choked.

And so then you go back to the original question, which is what do you do if you're the GM? I guess in that case, I would say that it would be perfectly fine as the GM to go down there and say, Buck, do you remember what we talked about today? Can we do that? I don't know that it gets to the point where you command him because again, he's making the decision, but getting the message to him that we talked about this and you said, and there's, I'm going, you know, you will be thrown under the bus if it fails right probably seems reasonable the exact same situation is what created the moment where where you lost

faith in mike matheny some years ago and i'm looking and we got a question on episode 563 that's very similar to this one so this is matt from portland oregon matt cory maybe yeah maybe could be all right so my initial thinking was along the lines of you two if i were the gm i This is Matt from Portland, Oregon. Matt Corey, maybe? Yeah, maybe. Could be. All right. So my initial thinking was along the lines of you two. If I were the GM, I think that would be it from Athene. The fact that holding your closer until you have a lead is common practice shouldn't matter and should be changed. But thinking about this more here is why it is not a fireable offense.

A well-run team has clear and consistent lines of communication between the GM and the manager. Let's assume St. Louis has that. So the GM and the manager have clearly discussed this before. You have to think there are strategy meetings where they talk about how to deploy specific personnel in certain situations. So any situations like that should already have a plan and shouldn't be a surprise. The team already knows what they're going to do. It's not like the manager is like, well, then what the heck do we do now? If the GM and the manager disagreed about how to approach this, they would have worked it out by now. So by this theory, the GM is also on board with the strategy that was deployed, which means that

now we are at, it's a fireable offense for the GM, not the manager. Now I do think it's possible that you could have a disagreement, have a, you know, have not been able to reach an agreement on this situation, and you still consider that manager worth having as your manager. Maybe you agree about 99.9% of things and you disagree about that. That is a very healthy aspect of a relationship. So I think that you could have that manager even if you disagree wholeheartedly about a specific thing in a specific situation like that. However, the fact that the situation that you disagree wholeheartedly about a specific thing in a specific situation like that. However, the fact that the situation that you disagree with comes up in a situation that is extremely high leverage and backfires does not elevate the disagreement.

You have already agreed to live with the disagreement. And if you liked Buck Showalter before it came up in a wildcard game, knowing that that's what he would do in a wildcard game, then you can't suddenly say, I don't like him because it didn't work out unless you have some sort of weird bet with him. Yeah. And playoff managing is and should be a little bit different from regular season managing. And there are some decisions that should be different. But again, that should be part of the pre postseason planning session that you have too, where you make sure that the manager is aware that this is a different environment with

different demands and certain situations you might make a different decision. And if the manager says, well, 28 other teams would have done the same thing or something, and I still think it's a mistake, then that's not going to fly with me, that kind of argument. But again, that is kind of on me for hiring someone who would make that kind of argument or not making it clear to the person before that this was sort of a deal breaker. So yeah, I think we're on the same page there. All right. StatBlast? All right. It's a quick one. Okay. I've got a guest theme today. Today's StatBlast song cover comes from mike conti and it's sort of a punk approach All right.

Quick one. I don't know how to get into this one. Season has been delayed. Of course, it's going to be delayed for a lot longer. Might get delayed all the way. And we answered a question a few weeks ago. I don't remember the wording of the question, but it was like something about, you know, do players whose career record pursuits get disrupted by this?

Do they, I don't know, get a positive asterisk or something? I don't remember what the question was, but it was like, how seriously do you think this affects certain players' career milestone pursuits? And, you know, I am really not looking forward to ever hearing episodes from February and March of this year, because I'm just going to hear the slow process of, well, it's actually the very fast process of our assumptions becoming incredibly out of date very quickly when we answered that question i think we we were still thinking well how much does six weeks of a season really matter yeah for a career pursuit and now it's it's obviously very different and you know like it's not you know important in any way but you know every year for the last eight

we've had the mike trout is the greatest has the most war through age and um and he i haven't looked but he probably doesn't now he's probably been quote unquote passed by ty cobb in you know the the month that he's missed anyway that's not what this is about i was thinking about other things other other i don't know what the right word is for this i guess heartbreak i guess I think it's fair to say that what I'm describing is a heartbreak, which is that some players will not appear in the majors ever who would have appeared in the majors. There are some players who get called up in April, play a week, get sent back down, and never show up again.

And if that April is the April that the world is fighting a pandemic, then that was your shot. And so I wondered how many, how many people, how many humans are going to have this particular heartbreak? So I looked just for a sample, I looked at three years, 2009, 2010, 2011, on average, about 200 major leaguers make their debut every year, which is quite a bit when you think about it. And of those 200, about 30 or so on average only play in one season. And so if the whole season were to get canceled, then you would expect about 30 major league careers to not happen. I'm not going there yet. But if you assume the first half gets

canceled, then it's about nine per year, about nine players per year appear in the first half of a season and their entire career happens in the first half of the season. Now, I don't know. It's hard to say that these exact careers wouldn't have happened. You know, maybe they came up in April and never got called up again because they were really bad in april and if they had not been called up in april they would have been called up in august and then maybe they would have you know played played in august or maybe they got hurt or maybe whatever who who even knows and maybe if we are lucky enough to have a half season this year maybe it is a maybe it's bigger rosters right and so then maybe there are more players making their debuts in that time and maybe the better analogy in that

situation would be that that the 81 games that they play would be more like the first half rather than the second half or maybe it would be a lot like the first half because it's the start of the season with some september mixed in because then eventually it becomes the end of the season so maybe none of this would would would be affected affected. But I'm sadly assuming that something like, you know, three players a month or so who would have had a career are not having a career. And that's just a part of this season. It's a part of, it's real, it's, I think what is sad about it to me is that you have disappointments in life where you know that you're planning on something you you expect something to happen and in fact you know that it would have happened but

for x so like for instance i know a i know a third grader who had a birthday in march and so she was gonna have a birthday party and it was gonna be her first birthday party where her parents like rented out a thing like a like you know like a trampoline park it was gonna be her first birthday party where her parents like rented out a thing like a like you know like a trampoline park it was going to be a trampoline party which i know i know i know no i know that you guys think that but i actually think that trampoline parks are only dangerous for adults i don't think kids have the requisite force to create most trampoline injuries i don't know about that i've seen some pretty compelling evidence to the contrary but all right all right so not rent out but you know like you pay the package right and so so she was really excited

about a birthday party and then a few weeks before that it became clear that like parents are not going to want to send their kids into a germy trampoline park and so the party became not a trampoline park party but it became a after after school ice cream party in the backyard, which seemed safe. And then it became clear over another week, school got canceled. So all of a sudden, now it's like you're not even around your friends. became not a after-school backyard ice cream party but a socially distanced one hour in the park ice cream party where the kids all get served a bowl but nobody goes within six feet of each other and like after a week everything was totally like you don't see anybody like we're not seeing our grandparents or anything and it's unthinkable and. And so then we cancel. We, I said, I gave it away.

This was my daughter. Okay. So then we, we canceled that and it was going to be, we're going to a candy shop that she has been dying to go to and she is just going to get candy. And so we say, well, we better go quick before businesses get shut down. And so we call to see how late they're open that day. And they have closed down. And so four stages of party that she knew would have happened, but four, right?

Like this was a sure thing. And each one of those was a heartbreak. Each one came with tears. It was four waves of crying because each one was a loss. Then there are other things that you lose that you just never even knew that it was an option. So like I know a teacher and the teacher had a field trip that was planned and the kids were all really excited to go. And then the field trip got canceled because school got closed and they were all sad because they lose a field trip there was another field trip that was planned that they didn't even know about they had never heard of they also lose that one they don't know they

lost it but it is still sad because it's a one less great field trip that they're going to get to go to in their life so you have the ones where you know that the thing is going to happen but for the event that costs you and And you, you know, that you cry and it's sad. And then you have the ones where you don't even know that they were going to happen, but you still, there is still a loss in your life that you're unaware of. And your life is, is worse because of it. And you just absorb the sadness without even being conscious of, of the lowered standard of living. And then you have these in the middle where also sad, where these players,

let's say there are nine players who never get a career because of this. They will neither, they're neither like blind to the fact that they might have gotten a shot, but also it wasn't promised to them. Like I'm looking at the players who, from 2009,

who had one-half careers, and it's Daniel Davidson, Arturo Lopez, Edwin Moreno, Anthony Ortega, Walter Silva, Graham Taylor, Jason Waddell, Wes Weisler. I doubt Omar Beltre. I doubt any of them went into spring training saying, I'm making the majors this year for sure. It was a surprise when it happened. And so they got this surprise when it happened and so they they got this

validation when it happened so for the players in 2020 who won't have that career that they might have otherwise had they will not even get the validation of knowing it would have happened but for coronavirus they will always live uncertain of whether it would have happened of whether they would have earned their their promotion and so they are they're gonna live in a state of of uncertainty forever and besides not getting to play in the majors i think not getting to play in the majors and also not knowing if you would have made it to the majors is i think also quite hard like no one's no one's going to they can't even say that they lost this and get sympathy from people because people would say well how do you know i don't know if there is an imaginary conversation that

wouldn't happen but people would say like well how do you know that you were going to make it and like they wouldn't know they were going to make it so they don't even get the full sympathy of having lost something anyway i don't know I'm just talking right now. This is obviously part of the giant stew of mourning that is going on in the world. And it's a very, very extremely low priority part of it. But that's what I was thinking about. Yeah. Yeah. And there have been more people making their major league debuts in recent seasons. Like last year, there were 261 major league debuts up from 200-ish for many earlier years because of the shuffling back and forth from AAA to the backs of Major League bullpens

and benches. And maybe that would have changed this year with the September roster expansion being decreased and also with the option rules changing so that when you send someone down, he has to stay for a while longer. But yes, there have been even more major leaguers being made in recent years and not this year, obviously. Someone just posted in our Facebook group a link to multiple studies about the dangers of pediatric trampoline use. So I'll back up since Jeff's not here. I'm speaking on his behalf. I have to caution everyone. Did you?

Wait, by coincidence? Yes. Someone did this or did you go? You did not go soliciting people to find their most damning studies of my child's birthday party? No, no. There was actually a threat on this just yesterday because someone's wife, I think, is a research librarian and was reading the studies and just relayed to him the great dangers and how no one should use trampolines except for specific sports training. So I'll link. I'm just saying probably saved a fracture. So not all bad.

All right. Question from Sean, also a Patreon supporter. Perhaps this question has been asked before, but maybe not this one in particular. I've certainly heard questions of what would happen if you teleported Mike Trout back to the 1920s or whatever era or a modern GM. But what would happen if you took a contemporary hitting or pitching coach and teleported them back to the early days of baseball? Would they have a tangible impact? Would they be worse than a coach of the era, as they would not have the technological tools they rely on so heavily? Would it be better to have a pitching coach or a hitting coach?

So it's a good question. I don't think we've answered this particular. It's a good question. I want to hear you answer this. I just want to say one last thing. What I'm saying is that i wish i knew the nine yeah so that i could reach out to them and and comfort them in this time and i don't i don't we don't get to know the nine that's what i think is really a bit like a 19th level sadness of the 18th level heartbreak so if you were to teleport a coach to an earlier era and say do

your best and not provide them with any support, but send them to a team that would actually give them a shot at it. Hope that they didn't have them committed when they said they were from the future. I mean, first of all, their first thought would probably be, these players are terrible. Players are garbage. I mean, depending on how far back you sent them. But after they got over their disgust at the talent that they were asked to whip into shape, I think you'd be able to do some things.

I mean, certain things that are good practice for coaches today probably wouldn't be for that era because baseball was different and certain things that it's advantageous to do today, it wasn't advantageous to do at earlier eras. Like I was talking to Jared Diamond when he came on recently about how the whole idea of the level swing or swinging down, that was something that made more sense when the ball was like a bunch of rags tied together and it didn't move. together and it didn't move. And also when people had tiny gloves or no gloves and the infields weren't groomed and so you could get on base putting the ball on the ground. And so if you came back to 1910 and tried to implement your 2020 swing with the ball that flies over the wall, that would probably be counterproductive. So there are certain things that I think coaches would be kind of out of their depth. And maybe some of the things we think of as archaic practices now,

they were actually there for good reason at the time. But aside from that, I think you'd be able to do some pretty good things, right? I mean, if only just say arm strengthening programs, like I might rather have a trainer come back from today than a coach maybe coaches know a lot of the things that trainers know but like just basic like arm strengthening wash your hands yeah wash your hands don't get syphilis i don't know if they could stop them all from getting syphilis but they could tell ski malillo don't eat only spinach and that'd probably be good for Ski Malillo. But that basic thing, being able to strengthen shoulders and, hey, lift weights.

It's okay. Have you heard of weights? Just find a heavy object, lift it repeatedly. Sack of flour. Yeah, it'll make you stronger and it won't make you worse at baseball. So like the most basic things about like strength training and nutrition, I think would have a pretty huge impact, right? I mean, that's a big part of the difference in talent between then and now. It's not just that, but that's a big part of it. So I think that would help. And like if you brought some weighted balls back or, you know, you could

make some weighted balls, you could get some small cannon balls or something, use them as weighted balls. That would be pretty big, right? Like you could definitely get guys to add velocity because like the human body was similar 100 years ago to what it is now. big because they didn't eat as well and have as much protein at their disposal while they were growing and all of that. But if you were to take someone and, you know, had a pretty good physique, I feel like you could really make them stronger and healthier and throw the ball harder and swing the bat harder. So like, I think that very basic thing, that'd be pretty, that'd be pretty big. Like there were old school teams, like the first teams to have a trainer, at least they thought, got pretty big benefits out of that. Because for most of baseball history or early baseball history, that is, there was no trainer. There was no one really getting guys in shape. And when the first teams did that, and I think they had boxing coaches come in, and those teams did well you know was it because the players were better conditioned i don't know but they certainly thought so at the time so just that it's like

the whole idea of uh whatever the saying is about how you can make up for for being stupid faster than you can distinguish yourself by being smart i think they're very counterproductive practices of the time that a coach of today could come in and say, no, we're not going to do things this way. And that'd be a pretty tangible impact. So you wouldn't have the technology, obviously, right? Teach them a cutter. There are pitches that did not exist at the time that, I mean, now maybe they're not even that effective anymore. Like a splitter isn't even something that many guys throw really, but it was effective for a while and then people caught on and adjusted to it and then people went away from it. Back then, it would be like introducing something no one had ever seen before. So I would say pitching coach would be more valuable,

if only because you could stop the overwork of pitchers. If you had input into pitcher usage, that'd be big. And you could strengthen guys' arms and make them rest when their elbows hurt. I'm not saying you could perform Tommy John surgery yourself, but you might know when someone needed that and when you could actually get them back on the mound and when they couldn't. So I think it'd be a pretty big advantage, not even just from like mechanics, but just from what we consider common sense now.

Yeah, I feel like part of the benefit of having, you know, a modern trainer in 1920 or a pitching coach, a modern pitching coach in 1920 or a modern anything in 1920 is just having that thing in 1920. There were no pitching coaches in 1920. There were no pitching coaches as there are now. There were not dedicated pitching coaches that were like full-time staff member, pitching coaches that were like full-time staff member pitcher whisperer expert at the you know like well well trained and like dedicated entirely to thinking about and studying and observing a pitcher until basically the 1950s the late 1940s early 1950s and you know how sometimes you'll hear like oh harvard is uh is offering a course on the wire or like Stanford is offering a course on big pun or whatever.

And it like elevates that thing to, you know, it elevates it, elevates it to something serious and important. And I feel like the optics to the side, I not only did I just say optics but it's not even necessary it's not even a great use of optics here so i feel like that if you have a player that you can convince to take training and or you know pitching craft even more seriously to see it as a as a field as a field in and of itself as a something where you are really truly dedicated to perfecting it, to studying it, observing it, to working with experts on it, then there's probably a lot of gains to be made just from that. So you could have like anybody in 1920 as a pitching coach if they were in that job and you had the team thinking about pitching differently for that, and certainly for training, I mean, it much more for a trainer because yeah,

you sort of professionalize the idea of being in shape of being maximized of being like, you know, healthy instead of like what the players were at the time, which was quite careless. Right. Yeah. So something like, you know, throw high fastballs or something, like I don't even know if that would have been applicable at the time. But even if you think that would have helped a little, that's a pretty minor gain. You wouldn't be able to measure spin rate. Maybe you could kind of pick up on it once you know that it exists.

But like that sort of thing, that's minor, I think, compared to like you'd be able to preserve entire careers that they just didn't because they completely mishandled someone and misdiagnosed someone. So and you could tell everyone to stop smoking, save some lives. By the way, Mike Trout, as you noted, he is the war leader all time through age 27 by a fairly wide margin to by like four and a half wins or something according to fan graphs at least over Ty Cobb if he does not play this season at all he will be in fourth place through age 28 it's not just Cobb who had a big age 28 season but it's also Rogers Hornsby and Mickey Mantle if you want to keep up your pace as the best ever through a certain age, you can't really spot anyone a

season because there have been a lot of great players through that age and they will overtake you if you don't keep up the greatest of all time pace. Yeah. Well, and so Cobb started age 28, four and a half behind him. And then Cobb had a nine and a half win player. So you probably can't even spot a half season. Nope. He basically needs a five win year to maintain that status. So that'd be pretty tough to do. All right. All right. Since we were just on the topic of Trout,

I do have one more question here that was on my list and Sam has already answered it via Patreon message. So I will read his response. This is a question from another Patreon supporter, Bill, who says, from the bone. If I want to appreciate a football or basketball player's career, I can watch his games and watch him on every play. Very few players go very long between plays in which they're involved. With Trout or Otani or whoever else, though, even if I watch a full Angels game, there might be literally an hour between him having any impact on the play, and the shape

of his greatness is a shape that's drawn over weeks or months rather than in moments. So, do I just become an Angels fan when we're back to baseball and watch every game? And Sam responded, I don't think you need to do much. What you really want to do is make sure that you don't find yourself in a position where you take a position that he's overrated, which would obligate you to argue against him, which would lead you to rooting against him. That's the only way to blow this. Otherwise, if you're a baseball fan living through this period and are aware that Mike Trout is the greatest player alive and one of the greatest of all time, you're definitely going to get the portion that is right for you. And you're definitely going to know so much more about what it was like to experience Mike Trout than any future generation or previous generation will. You'll know his quirks, how he fits into the broader baseball ecosystem, what it was like to see him in moments of both high and low adrenaline.

What it was like to see him in moments of both high and low adrenaline. You'll know what it felt like to see him bat when you didn't know what was going to happen, as opposed to what it's like to watch Willie Mays or Babe Ruth bat decades later when they're consumed almost entirely through their predetermined highlights. You'll appreciate him, I promise. There won't be any regrets. If you must take a further step to appreciate him, here's what you should do. At the start of a season, root for him to set the all-time single-season war record. Then wake up every day and check his war just as you check the standings for a season, root for him to set the all-time single-season war record. Then wake up every day and check his war just as you check the standings for the team you root for. When it

moves, try to find out what he did to move it. I did this a couple seasons for articles like this one. Then he links, which I will link. And Sam says, and was great. And I think that's true. I don't watch every Mike Trout game. I probably play closer attention to Mike Trout's career and to his stats certainly than most fans do. But I'm missing many Mike Trout moments, and unless I were an Angels fan who was watching every game, I think that's inevitable. And I have watched more just random Angels games than I have for any other team that I don't follow closely for professional reasons because of Trout and Otani, but even I'm aware that I can't monitor Mike Trout at all times. I'm going to miss some at-bats. I'm going to miss some great plays. And that's okay. I think the nice thing now

that earlier generations didn't have is that, A, we have MLB TV, we have the internet, we have Twitter. I mean, just think of how much more accessible players that we don't root for or don't follow the team of on an everyday basis are to us than they were to any previous generation. I mean, until TV came in, you couldn't even see your own team's players unless you went to the game and you can't go to every game. And so for most of baseball history, I mean, you were never really seeing out-of-town players. That's why the All-Star game in the World Series was such a big deal because you were

actually seeing players in the other league that you never got to see. You just heard their names. Maybe you saw where they stood in the box scores, but you might not have known what they looked like or what their swing looked like or what their delivery looked like. So I think we are far better educated about the great players of today that don't play in front of our eyes all the time than earlier baseball fans were. So that's something you can console yourself with.

Plus, we have war. We have great stats. So not only can we turn on MLB TV and actually see these guys or look at highlights online, but you have a very good sense of how good they've been at all times. You can even look at stat spout or the outcome of every pitch and plate appearance if you want to. And war gives us a sense, I think, of the historic nature of Trout's performance that we might have lacked otherwise. So, yeah, don't worry about it. Don't feel bad about the plate appearances you do miss.

Feel good about the plate appearances you see. That said, there is a certain relationship that I think fans have with players on that team. Just from seeing these guys day in and day out, seeing them not in highlights, but just at the most routine moments. day out, seeing them not in highlights, but just at the most routine moments. Maybe you are aware of some mannerisms or some little tics that the player has, some habit that doesn't show up in the proverbial box score, but that you can kind of summon in your mind's eye when you think of that player. That's nice. Fans should have, I think, a special relationship and awareness of the players that they are putting the time in to see. All right, a couple other follow-ups. First, that they are putting the time in to see.

All right, a couple other follow-ups. First, we talked not long ago about the story that in the 1988 World Series, an advanced scout supposedly tipped off Kirk Gibson that Dennis Eckersley happened to throw a particular kind of pitch on a particular kind of count, and then that happened, and Gibson hit the homer because of the advanced scouting report, and Sam said he doubted that this story is true, and we talked about why it sounds somewhat implausible although a fun story anyway patreon supporter kyle alerted us that sandy alderson who

at the time was the oakland a's gm he spoke about that this week on buster olney's podcast and as you'll hear he's not buying that story either so gibson i guess hit an off-speed 3-2 pitch. And the story was that the Dodger scouts knew that on a 3-2 pitch, Eckersley always threw an off-speed breaking ball. And that had been in the scouting report and yada, yada, yada. And most of us with the A's thought that was total BS because, number one, he seldom got to a 3-2 count during the course of the season. He just had that pinpoint accuracy. And even at a 3-2 count, none of us could really recall specifically that he threw these off-speed breaking balls. Alderson did admit that he might be biased. He was on the other side in that series, but the

reasons he gave there were among the reasons that Sam and I gave for why it might not be true when we talked about it. And then the other thing I alluded earlier in the episode to the teams that had the first trainers in big league history really benefiting from that, I was summoning a memory there from the excellent historical slash statistical newsletter written by Craig Wright called Pages from Baseball's Past. You've probably heard me praise it before. Baseballspast.com. I really recommend subscribing. I've learned a ton from it.

And one of the things that I learned was that the first team to really employ a full-time trainer was the 1906 Cubs. Frank Chance, the Hall of Fame first baseman, was the player manager of that team, and he was an amateur boxer. He liked to box to stay in shape, and he hired a boxing trainer named Jack McCormick to be the Cubs full-time trainer. And it really seemed to work, or at least it coincided with a very successful period for the Cubs.

So from Chance's first full season as manager of the Cubs, 1906, to his last, 1912, the Cubs had06 to his last 1912 the Cubs had a 667 winning percentage they won 51 games more than any other team in the majors of course they won 116 games in 1906 the first year with the trainer and they lost the World Series to the White Sox which was the only other team with a trainer at the time although I think theirs was part-time so I'm reading from pages from baseball's past here the Cubs regimen when they showed up in spring training in 1906 for a conditioning camp, which was unusual or unheard of at the time. Out of bed at 6 a.m. Drink as many glasses of hot water from the hot springs as are necessary to stir up a good appetite.

Breakfast at 7. Time for meal to settle. Don uniforms and sweaters to begin two hours of road work at 9. Return for baths and rub downs at 11 o'clock. Lunch at 12. After time for meal to settle, don uniforms and sweaters to begin two hours of road work at nine, return for baths and rub downs at 11 o'clock, lunch at 12, after time for meal to settle, report at three to gymnasium and handball courts for two hours of exercise. So they really worked hard. A lot of guys had career years. And here's what Craig writes. Did Frank Chance really do something revolutionary in 1906 that helped change the game? I think so, in two regards. For one, he established

at the club level an emphasis on physical conditioning that was separate from the exercise of baseball skills. That was something that had previously existed in the game only at the individual level. And of course, while he was not the first manager to employ a quote-unquote trainer, he elevated the importance and commitment to the position to a whole new level. There are also two ways that Chance was revolutionary but did not change the game. Those who tried to imitate what Chance was doing did not fully grasp the dual role of his trainer, that besides rubdowns and tending to injuries, his trainer was to be a forerunner of what we would today call a strength and conditioning coach.

That's a job that did not settle into the bones of the game until about 75 years later, long past any influence from Chance's innovation. Frank's vision of a spring conditioning camp prior to a spring baseball camp also did not take hold. There was some mild imitation, but it eventually faded out and vanished with the passing of Chance as a manager. The eventual norm was a merging of the two camps into one. Chance's distinct separation of the two was probably unnecessary in later times, but I

suspect it was quite helpful in his day, giving a firm attention to a new idea in the game. I should also note I made a joke earlier about people using cannonballs as weighted balls. Well, it turns out they did use cannonballs. The second trainer that Chance had, Doc Simmons, I'm quoting here, had an inventive mind and the players were fascinated by his cannonball massage technique. The former artilleryman had a small eight-pound cannonball that he would use to massage sore backs. He rolled it to and fro along the naked spine, and it became so popular with some players

that they would stand in line to get the cannonball treatment. The cannonball was part of Simmons' first gaffe as a baseball trainer. In his first spring training in 1908, Doc was holding the small cannonball in one hand as he examined a corn on the left foot of rookie infielder Heine Zimmerman, and Simmons accidentally dropped the cannonball on Zimmerman's other foot. By the way, speaking of painful injuries, Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, this was 2012. Pediatricians should counsel their patients and families against recreational trampoline use and explain that current data indicate safety measures have not

significantly reduced injury rates and that catastrophic injuries do occur. The trampoline use and explain that current data indicate safety measures have not significantly reduced injury rates and that catastrophic injuries do occur. The trampoline was designed as a piece of specialized training equipment for specific sports. Pediatricians should only endorse use of trampolines as part of a structured training program with appropriate coaching, supervision, and safety measures in place. Here's another study. This is from January 2020. Brand new. Hot off the presses. Between 2008 and 2017, there was a significant increase in the national incidence of trampoline-related fractures. We identified a significant increase in the proportion of trampoline fractures that occurred at a place of recreation or sport. Advocacy campaigns should consider these sites in their

prevention efforts. Trampoline prevention advocacy. That was Jeff's job until he went to work for the Rays. And then this one, this is from April 2019. This is a study from England, I think. Conclusion. Trampoline park injuries pose a significant financial cost for local orthopedic and emergency services. Contrary to studies evaluating home trampoline injuries, the majority of fractures at trampoline parks occurred in the lower limbs. Improved injury prevention strategies are required to help reduce morbidity and lower the financial implications for local National Health Services trusts. Telling you people, it's dangerous out there. Sorry to rain on your parade if you're a trampoline person. I'm sure there are people who trampoline responsibly. Just saying. The stats are scary. Go back and listen to our interview with Astro's catcher

and childhood trampoline victim, Garrett Stubbs. Episode 1040. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Julie Huebsch, Ashley Schauer, Dan Thomas, Jason Amico, and Isaiah Shea. 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. Talk to you then. First instant Last report We threw that away