Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1544: The Baseball Butterfly Effect

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the reliability of betting on baseball using the Grays Sports Almanac from Back to the Future Part II, then answer listener emails about a baseball broadcaster reality show, awarding bonuses for success in specific batter-pitcher matchups, and whether there’s any way to make pitchers into less terrible hitters, […]

Life is funny, skies are sunny, bees make honey, honey, honey, honey. And I don't want to So I'm going to give it to you Hello and welcome to episode 1544 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. baseball podcast from fangraphs presented by our patreon supporters i'm the mentor of the ringer joined by sam miller of espn oh sam hey ben doing some emails today but you want to kick it off with a bit of banter i do so i watched back to the future 2 the other day solid baseball movie for a lot of reasons daryl strawberry appears in a picture on a wall, for instance. But I wanted to break down a little bit of The Grey's Almanac. So Grey's Almanac, of course, is a magazine, a little book, a little pamphlet that purports to have the score of every sports event for the previous 50 years.

And Biff delivers it to a younger version of himself. A younger version of himself makes a lot of money and then alters the future. So fine, fine. It's a little matter we need to talk about. Yeah, money, right? Well, forget it. No, not money. Grey's Sports Almanac. You heard him, girls. Party's over. you heard him girls party's over start talking ken what else you know about that book now here's my question okay because this is a baseball this is i'm not that interested in the movie uh i'm interested in the baseball part of this say you got this book and you place the first bet and you know it's like uh cardinals six two over the cubs so you place like you know eight hundred dollars on it and it wins and you're like wow this thing works at that point there's a game the next day but at that point you've now changed the world right like you've affected the world pretty pretty dramatically by, you know, walking around and being one extra car to stop sign.

And, you know, lots of people are going to be one step ahead or one step behind where they would have been. And presumably that will affect the world a fairly substantial amount more and more as time goes on and the change, the butterfly flaps get exponential. So let's say that the next day gray's almanac said that the uh cardinals were going to win again say they were going to win five to three and let's say that in a normal world you would study these teams and you would say well they're they're coin flip 50 50 no no favor in this game but you, in the almanac, it says that the Cardinals are going to win with just one day of you having, you know, walked around. How confident would you be that the Cardinals would still win?

Almost completely. Okay. What about one year later when presumably nothing in the world is operating the same way? Presumably nothing in the world is operating the same way. Now, the rosters will be the same and the weather will probably be the same. And in some ways, like the pitcher's personal life is probably going to be fairly unaffected. whether the other team's pitcher actually has a, you know, a bad elbow ligament that's been getting progressively worse for the previous four years and is now really bothering him. That will all be the same. So if you believe that the Cardinals a year from now, and the book says

they're going to win five to three, if you believe that they win five to three, because they're actually the better team and that there's just something about them that day that was, you know, that they were not 50-50, that something something about that day they were actually considerably better than 50 50 to win that game and that is why they won the game then you might still consider them to be the favorites but if you believe that it is that a single day is like entirely unrelated to how everybody feels and things like momentum and stuff, then you would say, well, now you've probably stepped on too many things, too many cracks. And so how many, I guess what I'm asking is how many days would you feel confident

betting on baseball with this old document? So am I me or am I just an average random person? What's the difference? I think it actually does make a difference because I don't want to inflate my own importance here, but if I'm writing articles about baseball for that year and making podcasts about baseball, and there are members of the Cardinals front office

I know of who listen to the show, I don't want to imply that they're listening to us and making decisions based on anything we've ever said, but... Yeah, you're not you. We're going to say you're not you. Okay. The odds are higher that I might somehow say something that sparks a thought in one of their heads and they say, oh, we'll make this move instead of that move. Maybe they do the opposite of what I say because they think I'm so bad at everything. Who knows? It's unlikely, but there's more of a chance that I could influence something the Cardinals say than someone who doesn't work at all connected to baseball.

Right. So say it's not me. I think I'd still be pretty confident. And I guess if I could discern other changes in the world from what I knew was going to happen, that would decrease my confidence, right? Like if I knew how history went and suddenly I realized a different person got elected president or something than I know did, then suddenly I'd be a lot less confident. You don't. You only spent, you spent like an hour and a half in the future and like 50 minutes of it was for some reason trying to recover your girlfriend doc brought for no good reason at all and then incapacitated for no good reason at all so

there's this point in the movie where he goes bring her with us okay and then as soon as they get there he incapacitates her because she wouldn't be able to handle a time machine but she's in a time machine like like he was saying that they had to bring her because she wouldn't be able to handle like the shock of a time machine or something she was totally handling it she was fine there was nothing she handled it as well as anybody else did and then they just drop her in an alley which is the weirdest thing i very very dark and very i think never mind i don't want to get into that if we wanted to get into back to the future plot holes we'd be here for a few weeks probably so so anyway

you you did not you don't know anything about history all you have is but you can fact check the you know the horse races and the college football that happened the same day so you could actually like you would have some warning signs but let's say that this almanac does not give you that opportunity. It only gives you baseball games. And so when do you I don't know, I guess I'm just wondering when you would stop betting on on baseball. It's kind of it's two questions. One is how much do you think that the result of a game is in any way kind of preordained

and reflects something real as opposed to just a coin flip. And two is how much you think you're walking around society would affect things. And if you think that it's just a coin flip, then it really is only going to take the smallest push. Well, I mean, the tiniest, like, like quite literally one millionth of a second in the pitcher's routine would probably change the outcome of the game because his first pitch would be one millionth of a second different. And then every pitch after that would be completely different. Like his routine would be off. Now that goes to the question of does a pitcher throw a one hitter because he felt good that

day? He probably still would feel good that day. That seems reasonable. But if you think that he doesn't throw a one hitter because he feels good that day he probably still would feel good that day that seems reasonable but if you think that he doesn't throw a one-hitter because he feels good that day and rather it's just a sequence of discrete events that cluster in ways that are advantageous to him then knocking that sequence off of its timing by just the tiniest tiniest tiniest amount would would obliterate it so yeah like i think you could make the case like so biff doesn't make his first bet for two years according to the newspaper according to the promotional

video that bifco puts tracking the his his life story so he actually walks around society for two years before he places a bet and i don't think that you could make a bet after two years of existing i think that you would have have bet after two years of existing I think that you would have have caused everything to be different and I think that baseball games are more than anything a series of events that that don't reflect anything and you know kind of intrinsic in the players that day yeah so I don't think that you could make a bet now if could you could biff did not make a bet the first day I think you could probably make a bet. Now, could you – Biff did not make a bet the first day. I think you could probably make a bet the first day that you have the book.

But you can't wait two years. And then in the movie – now, okay. So I'm going to let you answer that and then I'm going to take this one extra different place. So if I've been betting all along, then I might as well just keep betting until it stops working, right? Because I'm only going to lose that one day's stake, right? So that's kind of a cop-out. You're asking when I think it'll actually change, really. So I guess according to some theories about time travel,

like when you went back in time, it would just be a totally different timeline, right? It would be like an alternate universe or something, and all the same people would be there, and they'd be playing the same game, but it would have a different outcome because, you know, any game, if you play it with the same people in a different day or something, I mean, you could replay every game that's ever been played and many of them would end differently unless you think that every action everyone made that day was totally predetermined and we don't have free will. and i guess that's getting into deeper philosophical questions than you were asking here maybe so you're really asking

like when does the butterfly effect matter enough that my actions start disrupting what baseball players would have done if i hadn't been there right and i kind of am i mean i'm asking two things and it seems like you are saying no to the first one. Well, the first one is whether there's... So there's a line in there when they realized that Biff has taken the book back to November 12th, 1955, which is the exact date that Marty had previously been there. And Doc Brown, and this is a very meta joke, and so I'm not necessarily sure that we should take this to explain what the physics of the universe are. But Doc Brown says, unbelievable that Biff had chosen that date. It could mean that this date might hold some special significance being the temporal junction point for the entire space-time continuum.

Or it could just be an amazing coincidence. And if you believe that there is something about the cardinals winning 5-3 that holds some special significance being the temporal junction point for the entire cardinals cubs or whatever team i said game that day then it would take a lot to knock it off but if you believe that the score the final score and everything that happens is just a coincidence with the reality that we live in then you would knock it out and so it sounds like you're saying nothing significant about the outcome and it is all just fairly arbitrary probably well i think if it were the scenario where it's just like same people same place but different actions and not even because i'm there necessarily but just because if you replay something that happened, it's like a different universe and a parallel universe. And so it looks the same in some ways, but then it starts diverging. So I could certainly see that being the case, but you'd know right away, right? I mean, you'd know the first day that things weren't the same, right? So there wouldn't be much suspense there. I mean, you might place the bet and then it would turn out that it happened differently and then you'd know and you wouldn't be able to bet anymore.

But I think if you did it on day one and everything happened exactly according to what you were told or knew from the future, then the question is, how long does it take for things to veer off the tracks because of your presence and your actions. And this is not one of those time travel scenarios where like the person tries to change things and then they find out that they can't because the universe is just on rails somehow and it keeps self-correcting so that you can't actually change anything. If it's not one of those scenarios, then really hard for me to judge because on the one hand, like going about my typical day, it's hard for me to figure or, you know, not my typical day, but a typical day, how that could ever affect anything that the Cardinals do.

And yet it would eventually. Something would change. And I guess it would take a while, though. I would think it would take years for something. I think so. Like if I don't, I mean, it depends on who you are and what you're doing. If you're just out in the woods somewhere, then it would take longer. And if you're living in St. Louis, then it probably wouldn't take as long. But if I'm here,

you know, hundreds of miles away from that game or thousands of miles and i don't have any job that's connected to that at all i do think that it would take quite some time but i have no idea i i mean i think that it really is only all it takes is getting one person in line one spot back and every at that point it's very quick that the whole world changes. Because if you're if you have one person who is going to be a minute behind the routine, I think that they will affect 50 other people throughout the course of just that afternoon, because now they get to a stop sign a minute later, and then someone else has to wait a minute and someone else is now in line. And then you start getting like, well, you know, you're chit-chatting with somebody

in St. Louis and you're, you know, maybe that, maybe you, you're, they have to wait an extra 10 seconds for you to respond before they get up and leave. And then now it's in the St. Louis community. So I think it would happen very quickly. What, if you, let me quickly, and then I'm going to, I want to take this to the, if let's just say that a baseball game, you know, 5-3 Cardinals, all right? If I told you that that game for some unknown reason was going to start one half second later, just one half second later, that like the umpire would give the pitcher the ball one half second later, would you still bet on the Cardinals? Yeah.

Okay, I would not. So there we are. All right, now, here we go. Here's the second. The fact that Biff was reliably winning these bets and made all this money, I'm going to give the movie the benefit of the doubt, as some people probably are already thinking, which is that we know that Marty's Polaroid photo from the future

was changing based on circumstances. So presumably the almanac itself was changing. So Biff was almost certainly changing the outcome of scores. And every time he did, the scores in the book would change. And so he actually had a book that was constantly updating itself, which is pretty cool. All right, but now here's the thing. You're Biff. Everything's cool. You're looking at the scores. You're biff. Everything's cool.

You're looking at the scores. Normal, normal, normal. You're looking. And then suddenly all the scores in all the sports in the year 2020 go blank. And you know that the only thing that has changed is you. Like this was the future where the future where you didn't bet they played sports and the future where you were betting is now wiped out and now maybe it's maybe it's not 2020 in the pandemic but at some point you see something change and you realize that the reason it changed is because maybe maybe there's a war Maybe there's a year where there's a season canceled for war.

Maybe there's a game that is canceled because the manager falls off a building. And you know every time that happens, or even just the one time it happens, that you did that, which is the worst. I mean, we are all doing that all the time, right? If you believe this butterfly effect thing, then you and I right now are responsible for the worst tragedies that are going to happen in the year 2180, like just accidentally. Of course, there are other tragedies that will not happen because of us. Good job.

But we are, I mean, we're responsible for everything in the future if you believe this and we are we managed to not have any responsibility for it we don't like we couldn't we're we're unknowing agents in this sequence we can't be blamed for what happens in 2180 but biff does like would kind of see it he would not necessarily he couldn't control it so he wouldn't have the power to prevent it from happening, but he would know very clearly, it would be very clearly reflected that his actions caused these,

like an entire lost season for a world war or a pandemic. That would be heavy. Yeah, it would. I wouldn't want that. All right. I just wanted to talk about the Biff and the pandemic. That's all. Yeah. Even Back to the Future 2, I think, is different in the Netflix version. Is that why you were watching it? Because it just got added to Netflix. I think Netflix edited

Back to the Future 2 and a few seconds of the movie are different from how it used to be. They took out the risque magazine cover that you glimpse for a second when he takes out the almanac in the movie. And now in the streaming version, you don't see that magazine anymore because they wanted it to be family friendly and not see that cover.

So everything's changing all the time and you might not even know it. I did see the cover, but I didn't necessarily, I don't know, maybe it wasn't as risque. There are some other things they could have taken out. Yeah. All right. Let's answer some emails.

This one is from Julia. It seems sports channels could use something other than old world series games and documentaries in the dearth of fresh baseball content this summer. Would you watch a reality show in which college student baseball commentators compete to win a major league job? This is an even darker question. Would I? I actually have to think about it, and that's really bleak. All right. Suspiciously specific question. I'm trying to figure out what the grift is here. Why such interest in this exact specific scenario, Julia? Are you pitching? Are you a college baseball commentator?

Could be. Per chance. What are they, oh, on a previous season? That's the problem. Yeah. Yeah. I would absolutely watch a broadcast, a reality show. And in fact, there was one sort of, ESPN did like a anchor, sports center anchor reality show like 15 years ago, Dream Job.

And Stuart Scott hosted it. And I think it ran for a few years and so i would absolutely watch that with a baseball broadcaster but the lack of live action to commentate on that would be a problem i think huh yeah i'm trying to figure you know it's a lot so the thing about a like like if you take a show like the great british baking show yeah that's like a week's worth of baking that they are able to just sort of you can you can edit four hours of baking down into eight minutes and you actually sort of feel like as a viewer you you almost sort of feel like you did see it all. And it didn't take you four hours to watch. In this, I don't know, it feels like you

sort of have to see the whole thing because you're not being judged on the finished product. Like if you're talking about, can you design and sew a dress? Well, they show a little bit of the drama and then they show the dress and we can judge the dress. Or they show a little bit of the drama and then they show the dress and we can judge the dress or they show a little bit of the drama and then they show the cake and we can judge the cake but with this you just you can't show a little bit of the broadcast and then we judge the broadcast in order to judge the broadcast we have to to watch the whole thing and i don't think i'm interested in watching a lot of an old game broadcast by a college broadcaster. So the idea that I do, I do like the idea that when there's baseball again, that there could be, I like the idea of having different feeds with different broadcasters and use one for this, maybe,

maybe I'd be interested in that. But as a reality reality show i don't think that it's a great fit just because of what i said about it being hard to make it concise yeah i mean you could have broadcasting challenges like you could have specific calls like here's your home run call here's your walk-off call give us a taste of that or even just a certain play you show a certain play and you have all the broadcasters call that particular play let's say but that does only give you a little slice of the picture right because you need to hear i mean so much of a baseball broadcast is not just the seconds that something exciting is happening it's maybe more important the times when nothing is happening

or nothing that exciting is happening, and you want to judge, do I want to spend three hours of my day with this person when I'm not watching something riveting? Are they going to have something to tell me? Are they going to be able to keep the conversation going? Is there going to be chemistry? So it would be sort of tough to simulate that, I agree.

Yeah, the challenge is specifically the the length of it that i i think that there are there have been a a small handful very small handful of broadcasters who can't handle action who can't handle a you know a two base air who like you know in particular i don't i mean i don't want to you know sometimes you you're a broadcaster and uh after 40 years you have more value as as being like the voice of that team and having that emotional register that fans particularly the team relate to and so maybe you're not really as you know adept anymore And I'm not talking about anybody that we all love. Just, I'm not even going to say the names of the people I'm not talking about, but I just really

don't want you thinking that I'm talking about skin foley. Okay. But sometimes that happens. So occasionally there's a broadcaster who just can't handle the play by play, but for the most part, everybody can handle the play by play. That's the easy stuff, right? I mean, it would be hard for me and you because we don't have the rhythm and the concision of language that is required and we haven't called every play and we're not really prepared for it.

But the real challenge is being likable for three and a half hours and keeping a commentary without either forcing the conversation to make noise just so that you make noise or dropping out of it because you can't think of anything. And if you want to talk about college commentators, I mean, probably you just want to hear them do a podcast. Can you do a podcast? Although I guess it's a little harder when you have to do a live podcast with things going on.

Yeah, I mean, there is action going on. There are people calling games remotely, obviously KBO and CPPL games, but also other sports. And maybe there will be some more sports at some point. So you could do that. I'd rather watch even a league that I don't know, I think, than watching old games. Because then a lot of it's preparation too. And that's a skill that broadcasters need. And so how would you have them prepare? Would you tell them what old game you're going to watch? And then don't they know

the outcome? And doesn't that skew their broadcast totally? So I don't know how you would do that. A lot of it is are you reading are you going to the clubhouse are you talking to these people are you picking up little tidbits that you can drop in and so if you did have them just do it cold like hey here's a cpbl game you don't know any of these players go get it then you could get a sense of you know do they think well on the fly and are they competent at basic play-by-play but then they wouldn't be able to tell you anything they know about those players and the research they've done and the personalities and all that so it wouldn't be a complete picture then either so

it's not perfect it's not an ideal situation and i guess the espn show worked better because it was like you know an anchor for a highlight show you can have them do a highlight reel, but it's harder to have a three hour broadcast. So yeah, I don't know. I like the idea though, of a baseball broadcaster reality show. I'm just not sure exactly how you work out the details. Yeah. Do you think if you took a, let's say you took a, an A broadcaster and a C minus broadcaster, Let's say you took an A broadcaster and a C-minus broadcaster, and you gave them each the other one's script. Like, not script, but, you know, teleplay. You gave them all, you know, you had them read all the other one's words.

Would the A broadcaster be a C-minus, and would the C-minus broadcaster be an A? Or, since it would probably be somewhere in the middle, like the A wouldn't drop all the way down to C-minus somewhere in the middle like the a wouldn't drop all the way down to c minus and the c minus wouldn't get all the way up to a who would who would be better in that scenario who do you think would actually be better if you had vin scully reading the broadcast by the worst broadcaster that you can think of in your head right now or that broadcaster reading vin scully's you know clouds of cotton candy whose would be whose broadcast would actually be better and take out the emotional connection that you specific that you specifically have with that person from having this i think this is like the question of like a batter versus pitcher matchup or something like who has the upper hand

in that does the great batter make the pitcher worse or vice versa or whatever i think probably i don't know i guess the question is like do you think the the words matter does the delivery matter more or the intonation or the timing and all of that and obviously it all matters but i think like there are times with vinscully right where everyone says that the great great thing about Vin Scully is that he doesn't say anything, right, is that he just gets out of the way and lets the moment speak for itself. Whereas some other broadcaster would have some scripted call that they automatically went into, right, and just kind of spoils the moment by trying to make it too much of a production. And so in those cases, I could see where having the great broadcaster script, even if that script was just blank, and even if it was just not talking instead of talking,

that would probably benefit you more. So I'm going to say having the script, because if you're a professional broadcaster, probably you have the voice for it and you have something of the patter down right and in this scenario you don't have any deep attachment to the person so i would say if you have the other person's words then even the c minus broadcaster could do a competent enough job of delivering those words that he would sound quite a bit better than the great broadcaster would with

the bad broadcaster script. I do not agree with that. I think that the A broadcaster might drop as far as B plus and the C minus broadcaster would move up not one bit. I think that if you've got that sort of tone that people don't like listening to, then it's very hard to make it up with the words, particularly because I would imagine that the words that even, I mean, I know there are examples.

And Vin, probably we need to just take Vin Scully out of this because Vin Scully is a legend and he's an outlier. So take another great broadcaster though. And I imagine that for the most part, the words look pretty banal on paper. Like I'm trying to remember if this was Nick Hornby or my dad. I don't remember which one pointed out that. I think it was Nick Hornby. And then my dad might have repeated it after he read High Fidelity. But like the lyrics to something like Love love hurts are the most simple banal thing

the most simple and banal lyrics and yet emotionally you respond to them more than you would respond to like you know all but the very very very best poetry and if you read it on paper love hurts love scars love wounds and mars is like the worst like it's it's the worst kind of poetry and yet you you know you hear a person sing it well and it can make you cry and i i think that again putting vin scully aside because i have seen you know block quote of vin scully that's quite quite moving yeah i think that probably on paper most of it looks pretty unimpressive. And it is the way that you, it's your flow. It's the way that you sell it that matters, I think, in your pace. I don't think the music analogy quite holds. I know what you mean. There is certainly a rhythm

and a music to broadcasting, of course, but I think it's more important relative to the words in music. Like when we were doing our baseball songs episode, I said as much, right, that I'm a melody man and I don't even pay that much attention to the lyrics often, or it's the song that gets me more so than the words. But with broadcasting, I don't think it's quite the same. There is an element to that, absolutely. But I think almost every broadcaster has like a pretty decent voice, right? And yes, their intonation, you know, some people are hyper and they get too excited about things or they sound like they're trying to be a broadcaster. They sound like, you know, the Brockmire voice or something and that puts you off.

That's mostly what I'm thinking of is, yeah, if you're doing the Brockmire voice, then I think some people just aren't going to respond to that. Yeah, but... And some people are. I mean, obviously, that's a voice that the market has chosen. But I think some people really, they do kind of pull back from that. I think part of that is the words, though, that the Brockmire voice is saying, right? I don't think it's just the voice.

I think it's partly that they're sounding like that stereotypical baseball broadcaster and they're saying these cliche things, you know, and it's like, oh, this is what you're expected to say in that situation. I've heard this a million times and maybe the voice amplifies it, but if you gave me that voice, but you gave me good words, I think I'd still enjoy it I don't know, hard to say But yeah, I'm going to take the words Alright, okay, question from Aaron in Chicago This is kind of an old question That was prompted by Max Muncy's contract extension

That was a few months ago But he says, stemming from the announcement of that extension I saw a joke on Twitter That Muncy would also receive a $250,000 bonus for every ball he makes Madison Bumgarner fish out of the pond. This made me think that contract bonuses for hitting a home run off a specific player or bonuses for a pitcher striking out a specific player could be kind of fun. Even though baseball is a team sport, I'm not sure we hype up the competition of specific pitcher versus specific batter enough.

Is this silly enough to work, or would there be too many consequences to help players approach these rivalry at-bats? And we'll just clarify that you cannot have a bonus. Under the current rules, you can't have a bonus like this. This would be a bonus that is prohibited by current major league bonus rules, which can only reward you for basically playing time right rather than specific stats all right would it be fun if there was a bonus for a player on player success i think in the basically yes but also there's a point where in order to have enough of these that they would be showing up a lot, that you'd have one. Like you'd want Max Muncy would only face Bumgarner a couple times a year. And so most of the time, this isn't really a factor. And then most of the time, he's not going to Homer also.

And I guess that doesn't really matter. But most of the time, he's not facing Madison Bumgarner. Sometimes he might miss him for a whole series. And so it's not like it's going to dramatically change much. So then you'd want to have one for Bumgarner and you'd want to have one for Granke. And you'd want to have like you'd want to turn it into like an entire sport of prop bets. Like would he can he Homer in the seventh inning tonight? You'd be interested in that seventh inning more you

might be well i mean if you care that much about max muncy's success you might care more in that seventh inning but then what about the eighth do you have to have one in the eighth now so you would have to probably to get into this idea you probably would just start loading more and more on top of each other until they were constant and and then it would be too hard to keep track of then it would be like it could like you know slot machines used to be three things like the classic slot machine from the 50s was like three things and if they were all cherries a bunch of coins spit out and now there's like 36 permutations of each screen where like you can have them if it's in the shape of an r then you get you know a certain amount of payout and if it's like across and down you get a certain amount

of payout and it's it's like extra complex even though all you're really doing is saying computer did i win and there's a kind of a forced complexity to it that apparently we need and i think i think when you have 35 permutations of winning the 36th seems better but when you have zero and you're like looking at a world where you need 36 it looks not that fun the slippery slope starts to look kind of unpleasant and so i think here where we are now where we have a pretty simple game, and it's just Max Muncy trying to get his team to the World Series, I don't feel a great need to start down that path. the game itself. But it's not like it's a pickup game to begin with. It's not just like a couple friends who are screwing around on the court or something, and then one of them says, let's put some money on it. And then they both raise their games, and suddenly they're taking it seriously. Presumably, Muncy and Pumgarner are already taking it seriously because they're in a major league

game, and there's already a lot of money riding on every plate appearance for Major League players, right? That's how Max Muncy got his contract extension was a succession of successful plate appearances. And so there's already, I think, high enough stakes that you wouldn't notice any difference. Like sitting at home, I guess you'd know, but it's not like you would see it on their faces or like suddenly Bumgarner would be throwing five miles per hour harder or Muncie would be swinging way harder. I don't think you could actually tell that there is any difference. Plus, if the idea is that it's a pre-existing rivalry between these two players, then it's already got that juice, right? Like you already figure, oh, these guys want to beat each other because there's some history here. And maybe there's some bad blood or something and there's, you know, bragging rights at stake. And so if that's the case, then will $250,000 actually change anything? Or do they

just want to beat each other because they want to beat each other? So I kind of like the idea in theory, but I just don't think we would actually be able to tell the difference, really. That's a great point. I agree entirely. I have not thought what I'm about to say next through all the way, so I'll just try it out. I think it would be obviously not realistic if you're playing canonical games, but I think it would be fun if there were some sort of like side bets, not in terms of money of who wins but side bets like for instance i'll give you four strikes this plate appearance but you do something like i don't i don't even know what it would be what the trade-off would be but like if they are on their own tinkering

with the rules to give each other better odds like sort of like a tin cup kind of a thing where it's like, I'll give you six strikes, but you're swinging a shovel. Or, you know, I'll throw nothing but curve balls, but it's a, you know, it's the count starts O2 kind of a thing. I would like to see more variations of baseball played between the players.

And there's not really room for that in games that matter. And so that's why it appeals to me because I can never see it happen, but it would really room for that in games that matter. And so that's why it appeals to me because I can never see it happen, but it would be fun for me to see it happen. Yeah. And you also can't choose when these matchups would occur. Maybe that's a benefit of it. I don't know that this might happen in a blowout in a meaningless game or in the third inning or something. And so it would give you greater stakes theoretically at a moment when you don't have high stakes already but it would be even better if you could engineer it so that this was like you know

bottom of the ninth two out bases loaded or whatever and it were really a major moment but in baseball you can't actually do that so you just it's kind of luck of the draw as to when they actually face each other so yeah i like the, but it's got some problems, I think, in practice. All right. Do you have a stat blast? Sure do. Okay. This is a stat blast song cover of the week by Garrett Crone, instrumental, and it is

using the French horn. French horn is not a funny instrument. it's just a funny sounding instrument i mean not sounding it sounds normal but can i hear it yeah it's got a video to go with it all right Thank you. oh that's fantastic if i hadn't seen the video i would have thought that was one person playing one horn one time and it really would have knocked me out yeah it's one person playing one horn five times yes all right still good this question comes from sivan who asks me say you're designing a ballpark and because of some restrictions on the plot of land the only way you can make your ballpark not be an absurd hitter's park so like say the plot of land is such that you have to have 310 foot fences or something like that or it's

14 000 feet above sea level is to move the fences back at the expense of the bleachers. All right, forget what I said. Anyway, that's not the question. Then it occurs to you, what if I make the foul territory super large, like absurdly large, twice as large as in Oakland, if necessary, anything to save your precious bleachers? Could this work? So Sivan's question is basically, if you had a band box, could you nullify some of that by having super large foul territory? And this is, I'm going to sort of work through the question with very, very back of the envelope numbers. And so this is not going to be like the final say or anything like that. This is all pretty irresponsible. But I was I was kind of interested in this question. So the average ballpark right now has about 22,000 square feet of foul territory. That's according to Andrew

Clem's baseball blog. So 22,000 square feet is the average. The smallest foul territories are only about 19,000. Those are the Dodgers and the Rangers. So there's 3,000 square feet of difference between the median and the smallest. So 3,000. But then the difference between the median and the largest is already quite big. So the A's foul territory is 41,000 square feet, which is 19,000 square feet more than the median, not quite double, but almost double. And then you have the Blue Jays that are, I believe, the second largest, and they're kind of right in between the median and the A's. So they're at about 30,000 square feet. So I'm just going to look at those first. There, over the past five years, the average team has hit about 102 foul outs. And so, of course, the average pitching staff has also allowed 112 foul outs per year.

So you put those together and every team is involved in about 224 foul outs per year. That's on the road and also at home. Now, the Dodgers and the Rangers, our smallest foul territories, are lower than that. They're both lower than that, pretty comparably lower for both their hitters and their pitchers. And so they have collectively averaged about 10 fewer foul outs per year, which is not that much, right? 224 was our average. They're 214, 10 fewer, which is like, what is that? Like 5%, close to 5% fewer. And I'm going to just assume that that's entirely home ballpark effect. There's no reason to assume that their road foul territories would be

significantly different. And while I could check to see whether these are coming more at home or on the road, that was a little bit complicated. And so we're just going to assume that the 10 fewer that they're involved in each year is specifically because they have 3,000 fewer square feet of foul territory. Now the Blue Jays have the bigger foul territory. And over the past five seasons, their hitters and pitchers, their team has been involved in about 270 foul outs per year, which is a lot more. That's a big difference.

That's 45 extra foul outs for the team. And the A's, who are the largest, they are more than the Blue Jays. And so they have hit into, or I guess they've been involved in 280 pop-outs per season. So that's 56 extra, 56 extra compared to the league. So, so far we have looked at the smallest and they were in fact, less likely to hit into foul outs, the largest, and they were more likely to hit into foul outs by a lot. And then the second largest, and they were also more likely to hit into foul outs, but not quite And then the second largest, and they were also more likely to hit into foul outs, but not quite as likely as the largest.

So everything checks out, right? This is all like logical. The foul outs do seem to be capturing something about the foul territory. So then 56 extra outs. We're going to look at the A's. 56 extra outs. How much does that change the offensive environment?

Is 56 outs, which is a lot, but it's about, you know, for the hitters, it's about one every like three games. And then also for the pitchers, it's about one every three games. So if you look at the value of an out in linear weights, an out costs a team about 0.3 runs and we're talking about 0.3 runs every three games since this is about what the decrease is on each side so we're talking about the runs per game on each side only going down about one tenth of a run per game which is just not that much. And that's for almost double the foul territory as is. Now, not only is that not that much, but I think that actually the actual number is even less because we have to assume a strike, a ball that is fouled for an out. If it were not

an out, it would be a strike. And a strike is also bad for the offense. It would already have been bad for the offense. And so if you take the linear weights of a strike away from that, now you're talking about maybe 0.7 runs per game, roughly. So like one run every 14 or so games. And it is true that not all fouls add a strike because some fouls come with two strikes, but those in those situations, the batter come with two strikes, but those, in those situations, the batter would have two strikes and would be less likely to produce offense. And so the, the, the value of that out for the pitcher would actually be a little less because he already has the batter in a two strike count for the most part. So anyway,

0.7 runs per game is pretty small. So we've doubled the foul territory and we have only 0.7 runs per game. Now, does he mean to have double the A's foul territory? Does that mean 80,000, which would then be four times? Or does he mean 60,000 because the A's are 20,000 over the median? I mean, do we treat the median as basically the line and the A's have 20,000 more than that and double would be 40,000 more than that, which would be about 60,000? That's a question that I should have asked him and it's relevant to this, but I'm not totally sure that it actually matters because I think that going beyond what the A's have, as you can sort of see with the Blue Jays example, which I'll go back over in a minute, I think you do get diminishing returns because you must, right? Because the players won't be able to reach the ball. Exactly. Two things dictate whether the ball can be caught. One is whether you're allowed to run under it. And two is whether you're physically capable of getting there in time. And I think that there are definitely some foul balls where we see a fielder, you know, reach

the end of his running space and he wishes he could run further. But for the most part, I think the extra foul balls start to get out of range pretty quickly, particularly for anything that's like lower than a pop up. And so like, for instance, you look at the Blue Jays. that's like lower than a pop-up. And so like, for instance, you look at the Blue Jays, of course, these are not particularly convincing analyses, but the Blue Jays had an extra 8,000 square feet and that got them 45 extra foul outs.

The A's got an extra 10,000 on top of that and it only got them an extra 11 foul outs compared to the Blue Jays. Now, who knows, but it's, you know, at least a hint that maybe the A's are already kind of reaching that point where you're not able to reach that, that many more foul balls. Of course, there's also the factor that we haven't considered, which is how is the foul territory shaped. And so it, depending on where you shaped it, if you, if you had all

that extra space in certain parts, it might give you more. Anyway, so I'm kind of thinking that the answer is that it wouldn't do that much, that as it is, it doesn't do that much for the A's in terms of suppressing offense, a little bit, but not that much. And if you expanded beyond that, you would actually see a declining rate of impact. And if there's anything to me that's kind of interesting, it's more the opposite. That, I mean, if you think about this question realistically, what owners would love to do is to have less foul territory, less and less and less and less and less and less and less. In fact, they are doing that. Travis Sawchuk wrote a piece for Fangraphs a couple years ago,

noting that foul territory has been shrinking around the league. And you would think that they would like to shrink that even further. And it turns out that that doesn't matter that much. So the smallest foul territories don't lose many outs. It doesn't affect the play that much. So if you were going to take this question in either direction, you would actually say, well, this sort of makes the case for more seats closer

to the field, less foul territory. I do kind of feel like foul territory doesn't make as much sense if you really think about it. I don't know who's served by the foul territory. I guess you've got to have some, and maybe it helps fielders for safety reasons. And maybe there's just not that much more you could shrink from the modern park. But you certainly wouldn't say that foul territory is doing much right now. And generally speaking, people like to sit closer to the field. And people like I think people sort of like funny angles, too. So if you get that foul territory shrunken, then you end up with more funny angles, I think for balls to bounce around. And anyway,, that's the answer to that question.

Probably would not solve your weird ballpark plot question. Okay. I have kind of a statplasty quick one, and this might be of interest to you because you've been rewatching all the World Series and writing about them too. This one is from Drew who says, I'm a big Royals fan, and so I spend a good amount of time looking over stuff from 2014 and 2015. Anyway, I remember when Salvi won World Series MVP in 2015, and I love Salvi, don't get me wrong, but I remember even at the moment being a little surprised, especially with it being unanimous. His slashline was great, if not very Salvi-like, His slashline was great, if not very Salvi-like, 364-391-455.

But when it was announced, I was surprised because the series didn't viscerally feel like an MVP series. Except you expect the MVP to have some big clutch moments and to swing games like Gordon's home run or Cueto's start. Anyway, long story short, I noticed today that Salvi had a negative WPA for the series. That's when Probability added he had the highest OPS on the team among players with more than three plate appearances, but finished with negative.12 WPA. So my question is, how often does that happen? How often does the World Series MVP finish with a negative WPA? And who is the worst World Series MVP? So I put this question to Dan Hirsch, who works for Baseball Reference now, but also has his own site, The Baseball Gauge, that has WPA and championship win probability added for every postseason series. And he sent

me a list of the WPA and CWPA for every World Series MVP. And as you would expect, it is not common for those numbers to be negative. And it has happened other times, though, and Salvi is one of them. So there have been seven World Series MVPs, and I think they've been awarding the World Series MVP since 1955, or at least that's how far back Dan's list that he sent me here goes. And in that time, there have been seven World Series MVPs who have had a negative win probability added, starting from the bottom here. Ray Knight, 1986. Reggie Jackson, 1973. Mike Schmidt, 1980, Bobby Richardson, 1960, Sal Perez, 2015, Pablo Sandoval, 2012, and Frank Viola, 1987. I was kind of more interested in championship when probability added, because the difference here is that this takes into account when in the series certain things happen. So if you had a huge hit in game seven, that would matter more than a hit in game one or a mistake in game one. And so you could sort of make up for errors earlier in a series if you had a great ending at very important moments. And if you look at championship win probability added,

it's even rarer for there to be a negative number. And Salvi is actually one of two World Series MVPs who've ever had a negative championship win probability added, which if you take it very literally would mean that they actually hurt their team's chances of winning that series. And yet we're the World Series MVPs. So Salvi is at the bottom of the list. And then the only other one in negative territory is Bobby Richardson in 1960 with the Yankees so that is quite rare and Drew's visceral feeling here about Salvi not feeling like an MVP is supported by the stats and I'll put the whole list online but if you're curious about the guys with the greatest championship win probability added the top one is ralph terry with the 1962 yankees and he's the guy who allowed the batted ball to willie mccovey that we talked about not

long ago right which was the highest leverage plate appearance ever the one that ironically bobby bobby richardson no it wasn't the highest well right it was But we talked ourselves into it being the non-mathematical but in fact highest. In the 1960 series, he caught that ball. And then you have Jack Morris, 1991, and the man we just talked about, Madison Baumgartner in 2014, David Fries, 2011, Sandy Koufax, 1965. So like the big names, the people you associate with World Series heroics, they are at the top of the list and Salvi's at the bottom. Yeah, yeah. Ralph Terry also allowed the Bill Mazerovsky home run. Yes, that's right yeah yeah so you know i'm trying to decide if i think that this was the wrong pick and partly what i'm just struck by is how little i notice mvp world series mvps like it just happens

so fast like they like you're all caught up in the moment you've got a world series champion they're about to present the trophy the name of the winner seems like it just flashes up like it's like the the you know it's like the promotional considerations provided by at the end of the price is right that's like how quickly they name the mvp of the world series and so you don't have a lot of time to dwell on it salvi did besides being a catcher and you know probably having been talked up a lot that series for managing the staff and controlling the running game and things of that nature i believe he at the time also what he had been doing. I think he had done a pretending he was a journalist thing, which as you know,

is one of my ballplayer pet peeves. I think he had gotten a bunch of attention for pretending he was a journalist. And I think, I think maybe your Donovan Turo got mad at him and like swatted at him or something. I think that was a story in the maybe 2015 world series. Anyway,

Salvi catcher shut down the running game etc etc also he did have the highest ops on the team in that world series and if you look at the other contenders uh so eric hosmer led the team in both win probability added and championship win probably added he hit he hit 190 240 238 he had a 478 ops not only did he lead the team in championship win probability added but he's the dude who ran home on lucas duda and so he probably should have gotten it but i mean i can understand why people aren't gonna vote for a 190 for hitting first baseman who doesn't have an extra base hit i guess he had one double in the world in the world series baseman who doesn't have an extra base hit i guess he had one double in the world in the world series after that you have your top pitcher in that series was luke hochever i can never say it the

first time okay i'm out of practice come back luke hochaver so i can get on the treadmill with you again all right luke hochaver i used to be able to do it. I used to be good at it. All right. Anyway, he appeared in four games, but he was a non-closing reliever. And you might remember that that bullpen had some famous relievers. And so he wasn't going to get it. Chris Young, I guess, could have gotten it, but he had one start.

You generally need two starts to get the World Series MVP as a starting pitcher. And then you have Ben Zobrist, who probably should have got it, or Alex Gordon. Actually, maybe Alex Gordon. Well, Alex Gordon had basically the same numbers as Salve, except that he had a lower batting average. So everything else was the same, and his win probability added was good. So anyway, the point is, I don't know. There's not an obvious one. Maybe just reward the player with the best overall numbers and feel fine about that.

Yeah, it's funny because when I'm talking about a regular season MVP, I'm totally comfortable giving it to the guy with the best overall numbers, even if he was very unclutch. I might use clutchness as a tiebreaker, but it's not the first or the fifth or even the 10th thing that I look at probably. So I don't know if it makes sense philosophically that I'm totally fine with giving a World Series MVP to the guy who had the highest championship win probably added, even if he batted 190. Whereas if this were a regular season question and Salvi had had the highest OPS on the team, I'd say, sure, give it to Salvi. So I don't know, in a single series, I guess for me, it's just more

important when you do the things that you do. And also it's like, you know, it's not really like a great measure of true talent, what you do in a best of seven series. So it's all kind of fluky and random. And so if you came up in a clutch moment, then I guess I would give you credit for that. Plus, as you said, it's just not an award that I think of or remember, really. And I don't know, if you looked back at World Series, I imagine there were probably some where they gave it to the wrong person, but history remembers the right person. I don't actually know, because again, I don't really remember who was the World Series MVP, but probably at some point, like I'm sure they usually get it right. But there's probably some case where someone was not the World Series MVP, but ended up having the moment in that series that we really remember as the hero.

Like, oh, that was the star of that series, but he didn't get the World Series MVP. That's probably happened at some point, but I'd be fine giving it to someone with lousy overall numbers, especially if there weren't a combination of someone with great numbers and clutchness, because that would make it kind of an easy call. Yeah, Hosmer, I'm looking at this now and Hosmer is even more complicated because while he did, he had the big hit in game two, He had the big hit in game two, which was a fifth inning single that broke a 1-1 tie that drove in two runs with a two out single. And the Royals ended up winning that game, never trailed again. That was the biggest hit of the game by win probability added. It was big.

I'm not taking anything away from it. That was a big hit. And that's part of why he's the championship win probability added champ of the series. But you could also appreciate that in a 7-1 game to the fifth inning single is not like on the writer's mind four days later. And then the other thing that he did that was a big championship win probability added move. His second biggest thing was in game four when he came up trailing three to two, two on eighth

inning, one out, he reached on an error. And so that goes to him for when probability added the tying run scored. That was huge. The go ahead run went to third with one out. That was huge. He ended up scoring. That was huge. All huge.

But he grounded to the second baseman and i think dan murphy botched it and so so that's not really him i would say that the the most uh the biggest play of that series was was hosmer running home by a by a long shot and so i would give it to him for that yeah i agree all right and that ironically that doesn't go to his win probability at it. True. Yeah. And so he doesn't get credit for that, but he did get credit for the air call to wash. All right. Okay. This is from David, Patreon supporter. This was sent actually before the recent news that the DH will probably not be a part of

the 2020 season if there is one. But David was just thinking ahead. Let's just suppose for the sake of discussion that you guys agree with me in disdaining the DH. Yeah, I know, but work with me here. What, if anything, do you think would incentivize pitchers to be at least acceptable hitters? Backup catchers are usually lousy hitters, but they at least vaguely resemble

Major League Baseball players in the batter's box. If most pitchers could get even to the bad backup catcher level, managers would still face a tough choice when a pitcher's lineup spot came up in a key moment while he was having a strong outing and would still be forced to use their bench to make it through the game, which I like. But when they did bat, they would still mostly suck, but not at a level that makes a mockery of the game. So is there anything that baseball could do that anyone could do to make pitchers be not completely terrible hitters? I think you replied, so I'll mostly get out of yourers be not completely terrible hitters? I think you

replied, so I'll mostly get out of your way and let you answer this. But I think the only thing that you could realistically do is create an offensive environment that is so bananas that even really bad hitters can get a lot of hits. I think as it is now, it's just not worth the effort because pitching is too good. You not gonna you're not gonna practice your way into becoming a you know a 640 ops or or anything even close to it like it's just it's borderline impossible to do yeah to do if you're not you know if you're not one of the very small number of people in the world capable of doing it now if you made it so that hitting was really easy, like if you mandated that, I don't know, that double A pitchers were all pitching, then I think pitchers could make some

real strides in their hitting. I mean, obviously it goes without saying that they would be better because they would be facing easier competition, but I'm not saying that. I'm saying that if it were easier, you could also improve more. There would be room to improve because you're no longer being asked to do an absolutely impossible task. It goes, it sort of goes back to the analogy that I was trying to make a couple of weeks ago where a weightlifter who's trying to, you know, who can lift 500 pounds, and then you give them, you know, 550, it gives him something to work with or work toward and maybe he can't do it yet but maybe he could train to do that i don't know 500 pounds is a lot i don't know i don't know if it is or not but if you gave him 80 000 pounds and said work toward

that and like why work toward it you'll never get there it's impossible you're never going to move that you're never going to move 80 000 pounds just. Just give up. And I think that pitching is just too good right now. It's not like it. A, it's like hard even to practice now because most guys, when they get to the majors, like there are a lot of DH leagues at lower levels now. So you're not even working on hitting on your way up to the National League if you're a National Leaguer. There's just less incentive to work on it. There's never been that much incentive because you're not selected for it. You're selected for your pitching ability. And if you can hit, that's a nice perk, but it's not really something

anyone's basing decisions on. And now I think that pitchers get fewer at-bats than they used to because they're not going as deep into games and because they're already interleague games. So you're just, even if you work on it and get good at it, it's not going to help you as much as you once did. And so, you know, if you did away with every DH league and you made training mandatory for pitchers and you said, yeah, this is really important now, you've got to like, you know, 80, 90 years ago is that he thought this was kind of a competitive advantage that if he really worked with his pitchers on getting good at hitting, then that would be something the other teams weren't doing. And he did have some success and he made his pitchers better. And, you know, guys like Walter Johnson, who was a really good hitter for a pitcher. But again, that was so long ago that I think it was more feasible then than it

is now when the pitching is just otherworldly. So I don't think so. And there could be opportunity costs. I mean, maybe if pitchers are working really hard on hitting, they're not working on something else. They're more fatigued. They're not getting the recovery. You know, they hurt their arm. Who knows? They pull pull a hamstring it's just not worth it there's just the the returns are not that great and it's just impossible really at this point to do it like pitchers have never been good at hitting but at this point they're just you know pitiable hitters so that's why i've generally been fine with the dh or even pro dh it's just they're totally overmatched,

and I don't think there's any realistic way to even that matchup. Okay, in the spirit of this question, let me ask you a follow-up. Last year, pitchers hitting hit 128, 159, 163. It's a 322 OPS. We'll call that the true talent of the pitchers in the majors 322 as it is right now if they mandated that the pitcher that gets the last out of an inning must bat first in the next inning you cannot pinch hit for them you can't do anything and so now pitchers are forced into becoming a crucial part of a team's offense. What do you think that, let's say they mandated this rule for, I don't know, I want to give

them time to work on it. What do you think pitchers could max out at? And just for the sake of funness, because I want to know your answer of how much you think they could improve, assume that no pitchers are being replaced by better hitting pitchers. So these are the same group that had a 322 OPS last year. Now you're telling them you're going to lead off every inning. Your team is either going to have one out every inning because you suck, or you're going to start learning how to hit. What do you think they would get that up to? 3.75.

Okay, that's pretty good. I could imagine if that were true, if there is a level of work that could get you 50 points of OPS, I could see it. I could see a team committing to it. Yeah, yeah, maybe. But in that scenario, it might actually be worth committing to it. Yeah.

In this one, not so much. Even the pitchers that people think of as good hitters are really pretty terrible hitters, usually like, you know, Zach Greinke or Madison Bumgarner or whoever. Like, they're not good, you know. They're good compared to everyone who's terrible, but they're not good. Yeah, I wrote a piece after bum garner had had his best year as a hitter and had started with like a multi-homer game early in the season and had like a 1400 ops and everybody was talking about how he's actually a good hitter and

i wrote a piece asking is he actually a good hitter and i think i talked to dan zimborski about some assumptions that you would make and so on and so forth. And so I'm just checking now. And since then, he had 458 OPS last year, 378 OPS the year before, 378. That's not even really above average. Above average. Yeah. And then let's see what he did in 2017 itself after his two-homer game, which is when I wrote it.

He hit, he had a 432. So he's basically about a 400 OPS since then. Yeah. I guess he got hurt. Maybe it affected his hitting as well as his pitching, but probably not that much. I think there was a time. Didn't Jeff or someone write a post like when he was at the peak of his powers, like pitchers were actually pitching him a little bit more like a real hitter, I think? Like they were throwing him harder fastballs or more breaking balls maybe like they were actually treating him as a little bit more of a threat. But I think he was like the only one and it still wasn't comparable to a real hitter.

So, yeah. Allter. So yeah. All right. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. By the way, if you were worried, the original version of Back to the Future 2 has evidently been restored to Netflix. They seem to have heard the complaints.

So that edit I referenced earlier of the magazine cover has been fixed for anyone who was concerned about the sanctity of Back to the Future 2. One more follow-up on the discussion that Meg and I had last week about the perception of the players in disputes between the league and the union and why so many fans seem to side with the owners. Tom Glavin commented on this in an article that was published this week. He was, of course, a player rep during the strike years. He was heavily involved, and he said essentially what we were saying last week and what our guest Greg Boris was saying is that the players are just sort of in this no-win situation from a PR standpoint. Glavin said, if it were to come down to an economic issue, and that's the reason baseball didn't come back, you're looking at

a situation similar to the strike of 94-95 as far as fans are concerned. Even if players were 100% justified in what they were complaining about, they're still going to look bad. And during the strike, he tried to be very visible and accessible and talk and thought he could make his case, and he says now, looking back, the accessibility thing was a miscalculation on my part. I just felt like if I did an interview on the radio or TV, if I had five or ten minutes, I could make somebody understand what was going on and come to our side. That just wasn't going to happen. Anyway, just something to be aware of. Even if many or most fans see things one way,

you don't necessarily have to see it the same way. 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 their support. In order to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks katie razor sean viziac dan friedman will brown and ryan mclaughlin thanks to all of you you can also join our facebook group coming up on 10 000 members at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild you can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and other podcast platforms your positive reviews really do brighten our days. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will

have one more episode coming your way a little later this week. Talk to you then. Nothing will change