Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1573: Make Some Noise

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Shohei Ohtani’s arm injury and his short- and long-term prospects as a two-way player, Mike Soroka and the ongoing pitcher-injury epidemic, the latest positive tests and player opt outs, Tigers reliever Tyler Alexander’s record-setting nine consecutive strikeouts, Clayton Kershaw’s comeback and other heartening news, MLB’s uptick in TV […]

For the team race, the fight Check my head that you don't try anything fresh Catch you with a limbo Take you by surprise, wanna get you in the ball Baby Baby Fall of the smash Baby Hello and welcome to episode 1573 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

Oh, I'm in mourning a little bit. We'll talk about why in just a moment. Yeah, we'll talk about why in a moment. We'll also be joined later in this episode by Ben Martins, who's the Mariners' Senior Director of Productions, who's going to answer all of our burning questions about the soundboard and the fake crowd sound and the seat fleet as the mariners have dubbed their uh crowd of of cardboard cutout fans so we will be joined by him a little bit later but first ben i'm you know it is all of our loss it is most especially showy otani's loss yeah i feel like of all of the members of the baseball writing community you are feeling this

sting perhaps the most keenly oh I'm sure there are a lot of others out there who care just as deeply about Shohei's career prospects as I do but yes this is painful figuratively painful for me perhaps physically painful for him but in his second start on Sunday he initially looked great you know which made it all the more disappointing when things went south again for him so he had a one two three first inning and his velocity seemed to be up from his previous start and he threw a splitter and he got a strikeout and he looked almost like his old self. And then he came back out for the second inning and at some point suffered a pretty precipitous velocity loss. And that is never a good sign. And then his control kind of went too and he walked a few guys and he didn't make it out of that inning.

And that was bad enough. But when you couple it with the velocity decline, it was quite worrisome, and the Angels sent him for an MRI after the game. He complained of some discomfort, and on Monday we got the results, which guess, more technically a grade one to two strain of the flexor pronator mass. And there's a pretty big difference, I guess, between a grade one strain and a grade two strain. So it's one of those things. But for now, he is not on the injured list. It sounds like he is not going to pitch for four to six weeks, which is basically the rest of the season almost. So that's very depressing. And he may be able to hit. He may be able to DH and be day-to-day in that role.

But we have either seen the last of his pitching efforts this season or just about. And, you know, if four to six weeks takes him up to almost the end of the season, if we get that far, then you might wonder whether the Angels will just decide to say, let's not push it. Let's just give him even more rest, you know, so that may be it. Two extremely brief starts, and that might be the end of Tuey Otani for another season. Yeah, and it makes you wonder what his long-term prospects as a pitcher really will end up being, which we don't have to grapple with that loss. It is a theoretical one at this point. As my mom would say, save your panic until you need it.

But it certainly makes the proposition look dicier and dicier. I think that there will be a fair amount of hand-wringing and sort of questioning of why Joe Madden made some of the managerial decisions he did in Sunday's start. I don't know why Otani was allowed to throw 42 pitches in an inning. His second start back from surgery, and granted, Madden knows well, or at least I think has a better handle on what he thinks Otani's abilities are in any given moment, but given how he was

laboring and the walks and his recent injury history, I think that, you know, a skeptical eyebrow raise is warranted, even if we are not ready to make a sink about this. But yeah, it's just, it's just a real bummer. I think one of the things that we were all excited about in this abbreviated season was that its start date was brought about by awful circumstances, but was at least going to allow for a number of players who were injured in some way, shape, or form to be ready to do baseball stuff. Yeah. And we like how Otani can do both of the baseball stuff that's a great

combination of stuff to be able to do so it's really a bummer you know I hope that he is that this does not affect his ability to DH I know that the Angels were kind of conservative in their assessment of that in the statement that they released which makes sense that he's sort of day to day

as a DH but the only thing that would be worse than no two way Otani would be no Otani at all. So I hope that he is able to kind of do what he needs to there. Yeah, I mean, as soon as anything happens to him, as soon as he has an injury, as soon as he has a lousy start, you do see people start to say, well, I wonder if he can do this. I mean, people were saying that before he got over here, just because there's so little precedent, so little recent precedent for this, that you're

always going to be doubting and skeptical, and that's absolutely understandable. And because he's proved himself to be a good hitter, that makes it all the more dicey to have him start, because if he's endangering his health on the mound, then he's endangering his availability as a DH, and that hurts the Angels also. So I hope that it's too soon to make that sort of decision. I mean, yes, he had Tommy John surgery, but hey, a lot of pitchers unfortunately have Tommy John surgery, and many of them are fine for years thereafter. And this year, we're seeing just a really unprecedented rash of injuries, particularly forearm strains and shoulder issues about this, and it's really just a huge spike in injuries, even relative to early in previous seasons, which tends to guys are just really hurting themselves left and right. And even on Monday when we got the news about Otani, Rich Hill was scratched from a start. Okay, we love Rich Hill, but he's scratched from every other start. So that's not the most shocking thing. But, you know, Mike Soroka seems to have potentially seriously injured himself.

And it looks like maybe an Achilles injury. Yeah, right before we started recording, it looks like we might have lost Soroka for the duration here. Yeah, based on what it looks like, that's not particularly surprising. And Carlos Rodon was pulled from his start because of shoulder soreness. And these are all different injuries. I mean, what happened to Soroka is different from what happened to Otani or Rodon, but there are just so many arm injuries, and I think it's well past the point where we could say it's a coincidence. And really, that just drives home why players really stuck to getting prorated salaries, because they were taking a lot of risks playing this year, not just the coronavirus, but also injuries and irregular training routines. And it's really manifesting itself. So the fact that this happened to Otani at this particular time, when it's happening to so many pitchers and some pitching staffs are really just devastated right now. I

mean, the Astros have lost seemingly half their staff to elbow injuries, shoulder injuries, etc. So Otani's not alone there, but yeah, you have to worry about it. And if he can DH while he is recovering, then that does take some of this thing out of it because he's not unavailable at that thing that he does well. But yeah, long-term, you do have to worry just because he is such a good hitter potentially. But yeah, long term, you do have to worry just because he is such a good hitter potentially. But if he were to become a full-time position player, you would want him to play the field, ideally, just because he does have some experience in the outfield and certainly seems to have the skills and the athleticism to do that. But on the Angels, at least you have Trout out there.

You have Joe Adele out there, who was called up on Monday. So that's exciting. Circle of life, I guess. Angel's loose. Otani, at least in one way, they get Joe Adele. And then you have Justin Upton out there, at least for now. So there isn't really an obvious opening for Otani. And so if you were to put him at first base or something, then his defensive value is pretty diminished there too. So I don't know, I have to almost separate what my heart wants from what my head says, or at a certain point, you might have to say, well, he tried, but you have to get what you can out of him. But I'm not at that point yet. I hope the Angels are not at that point yet. And if we do get to that point where that is sort of on paper the right move, and if he is okay with it and that happens, then it'll just be something that I lament for a long time that we only got the fully

operational Otani for really just a month or two of his debut season because it was so tantalizing. And if it doesn't work out longer than that, then it'll probably just go to show that it's not really feasible for most Kai's because even if you have the rare skills that he has, you may just not be able to hold up to that strain. And that's why it was so special that he was doing it and may still do it because it's so difficult to do. Yeah. And it makes the fact that the rules around international free agent signings and bonuses changing the way they did right before he signed makes it more painful, right? Because his prospects, when he is in a position to sort of make money again, are really different if he is DH only than if he is a viable starter

who can also DH in a meaningful way. So that's a bummer. It seemed like at the onset of the KBO season that we were seeing a lot of soft tissue injuries. You had a lot of guys coming up like tweet hammies and this and that. And it seemed, I guess there were some pitcher misfortunes in the midst of that. But I don't know that at the time then or even now, I mean, your article was very good, but I think it is hard to isolate the abbreviated start and the sort of start and stop nature

of the season to this, but it can't be helping. And I don't want anything to stop their season. But to do all that work and then find yourself felled by something so pedestrian and normal, right? In some ways, good is the wrong word, but at least it's not COVID, right? There are things that would be much more concerning and sort of immediately threatening to a player's health, but it does just, you know, it feels so 2020. But like, you know, they do all this and then like Mike's work tears his Achilles of all things, right?

So it's just, it's really unfortunate. I hope these guys can come back, you know, healthy and that the fact that this is happening in august for some of these guys doesn't have any effect on their off season or the beginning of their year next year so it's just it's just really a bummer yep yep and it's not really a purely post-hoc thing it's not like we had all these injuries happen and then everyone said oh it must be because of this strange season. People were sounding that alarm and spreading those warnings well before the season started. And teams were trying to structure their training

programs to compensate for that if they could. And teams have lightened the workloads of their starters a little. If you compare this season to last season at the same point guys are going less deep into games they're throwing fewer pitches although that's partly because pitchers keep getting pulled after a couple innings because they keep hurting themselves so that is dragging down the pitch counts too but it's not solely that so no yeah it's concerning based on my conversations for that piece the people I spoke to said that maybe within the next couple of weeks, the elevated risk should decline at least. So if you are going to have an injury that is related to that brief ramp up to the season, then it will probably manifest pretty early on or not at all. pretty early on or not at all. So I guess the guys who are still unscathed, if they can get through this very vulnerable period, then maybe if the season continues, they won't be at greater risk than usual after that. Although Trevor Williams on the Pirates said that people are

going to be talking about this over this coming off season too, just because pitchers will have had such light workloads going into next year then it will continue to be a question how how heavy can the workloads be next year and what do you have to do for those training routines so we shall see and i hope that we will see otani on the mound again yeah it's it's such a i mean we've had conversations about this sort of throughout the layoff and then into camp it It's such a difficult problem to solve. It's so unlike anything that we've seen before. It's not quite like any injury, even any in-season injury that you've seen pitchers or hitters, for that matter, really experience before.

Because you're not building up from nothing. And they aren't hurt, at least for the most part as far as we know but they are then sort of ramping down and not seeing game action so i don't envy any of the training staffs throughout baseball for the the sort of task they had coming into this year and like you said i doubt it's going to immediately resolve itself when this weird season does so hopefully we don't have too much of a in every possible respect hopefully we don't have too much of a, in every possible respect, hopefully we don't have too much of a 2020 hangover going into 2021.

Yes. Yeah. And at least the season is still going, which is not entirely clear that it would be on Monday when we last spoke. So I guess that's a minor victory. Although again, it has continued to come at a cost, not only with those injuries, but with continued positive tests and the Cardinals, their tally is now up to what, seven players and six staff members and their

whole series this week against the Tigers has been called off, so they won't play until at least Friday. And their Field of Dreams game with the White Sox for next week has been canceled, supposedly for non-COVID-related reasons, but still seems almost symbolic. But the season rolls on regardless. We've lost a couple players to opt-outs too. Lorenzo Cain opted out. Ioannis Cespedes opted out under

somewhat confounding circumstances because it's the Mets and nothing seems to go smoothly over there. But it keeps rolling on and some fun things have happened, like Nick Madrigal having a four hit game. That was fun. And Clayton Kershaw came back and looked like not his vintage self, but something closer to his vintage self. And he was getting the fastball up over 93, which was not something that he was doing ever or with any regularity when we last saw him. So maybe his winter trip to driveline paid off. And you have Aaron Judge hitting home runs every day and you have Tyler Alexander striking out the Major League record, which Tom Seaver still owns. But the headline on the Fangraphs post about that by Tony Wolfe was, anyone can strike out nine batters in a row, which is a slight hyperbole. But certainly, Tyler Alexander would not have been high on my list of candidates before that actually happened.

Yes, I promise that Tyler Alexander is given his due. It's a little bit sassy. It's an appropriately sassy headline to make you say, oh, really now? But yeah, Tony took a look at his three and two-thirds innings. And he benefited, as any pitcher pitcher does in a very good performance. He benefited a little bit from, you know, he had a wide zone that worked in his favor. But yeah, he had a lot of stuff going for him that day. And the Reds certainly struggled to get anywhere.

I worried. You know, there are times in the in the early going when you know everybody's kind of working out the kinks of stuff and i looked at the sort of live scoreboard and i was like oh no we have a data issue it's like something oh something's wrong i i was like i gotta alert david and let him know we gotta we got a problem we gotta got to look at this. And then I was like, oh, my goodness. I'm pleasantly surprised to be wrong. What a delightful thing in this year to be like, oh, no, someone's just having a really good day. Yeah.

Tigers, Tyler Alexander. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. He's in his sophomore season. He was a starter last year and not a particularly remarkable one. I guess he had good strikeout to walk ratio, but was certainly not really a strikeout artist. And this year he has moved to the bullpen and you might think, okay, he's one of these guys who really takes to the pen and is suddenly throwing super fastballs and striking everyone out. But that's not really the case either. As Tony pointed out in his post, it doesn't seem like his stuff has taken a huge leap. And coming into that outing in which he suddenly started striking out everyone, he had only struck out three guys in four innings of work in his three games this year. And yet he came within one hit by pitch of striking out 11 consecutive guys

because he ended up with 10, and he got to two strikes on the guy he hit, Mike Moustakas, I think. So it was really kind of incredible. He's just not the player that you would have expected. And, yeah, it's a high strikeout era, and strikeouts have been more common than ever, but the Reds have been kind of a tough team to strike out this season apart from Tyler Alexander. So these weird, wacky things happen sometimes, which is why we're happy that baseball is around most of the time.

Yeah, I think that there are a couple of things that, you know, there are some performances and guys succeeding that are exciting. performances and guys succeeding that are exciting and it's very easy to lose sight of those and you know we need to put them in their proper perspective in terms of how important they are in a year like this but if we're gonna do it at all yeah you know i'm glad that like shane bieber's pitching the way he is it's nice to see cory seeger just always hitting cory seeger just is always hitting ben yeah i feel like we kind of forgot about Corey Seager a little bit. I mean, he understandably, I guess, did not get the same sort of preseason hype that Bellinger or Betts did. I mean, if you're a former MVP, you're going to overshadow someone else. But Corey Seager was a total superstar.

Corey Seager was a total superstar. Like a couple of years ago, he was an MVP contender himself. Back in 2016, 2017, he was that kind of player. And he's only 26 years old. And it's just the Dodgers are so deep. And like even last year, coming off of his injury-shortened 2018 season, he was still a really good player, just not the star that he had been before so the Dodgers are just so deep that you can kind of forget about Corey Seager whereas like on a lot of other franchises he would be on the cover of the media guide yeah I was talking to someone about this earlier today where because you know like the matchup tonight for San Diego

and LA was just like really great and enticing. Bueller and Paddock, what a delight. And Corey Seager, again, we don't know what stats mean this year, but everyone can appreciate this line. So Corey Seager, granted his 40 plate appearances on the season, is now hitting 395, 452, 737.

He has a 227 WRC+. He and his brother are both having two hit nights, so that's sort of fun. Corey Sear is doing this. This is amazing. He's been worth .7 wins in nine games. This is great. This year means nothing, but it means everything. I don't know.

Up is down. And, you know, he's doing this, and he's like a very quiet, early-going MVP candidate. And, you know, granted, like nine games, whatever, but he's hitting sixth. Yeah. He's hitting sixth for the Dodgers. It's like, what is this lineup?

What are we doing? Mookie Betts isn't even playing tonight. Yeah. Oh, Lord. Yeah, it's pretty unbelievable. Yeah, so that part, you know, that's the thing we're doing. Yeah, and, you know, the ratings have been strong for this season so far. The Wall Street Journal had an article about the ratings,

which were up in the first weekend, but have continued to be up compared to previous seasons, which makes sense. I think people are starved for sports probably and missed baseball and have more time on their hands and fewer other entertainment options. embraced baseball despite all of the misgivings about some of the things that are going on I think it is unsurprising that people are happy to see baseball and are watching it in greater numbers and so that would make it even sadder if we lost it again I think at this point MLB is maybe just hoping to stick it out as long as possible to get to the playoffs. I don't know how many games or what percentage of the season they would need to complete to be comfortable saying, okay, let's just do the playoffs now. Because 60 games, it's not going to be all that telling anyway.

But if we got through 40 or something, or if we got through more than half the schedule, then could we just say, all right, we'll just get the remaining teams in a bubble or something. And, you know, we'll have them play for a month at most because, of course, they want the TV money and their broadcast partners want those games. And the players want the playoff pool money that they would be getting too. So I don't know how much of the season you need to get through for it to be viewed as legitimate. I mean, at this point, I don't know that people are really viewing this season as particularly legitimate anyway, just because so many teams have been sidelined. So many players have been hurt. I think we're all squarely in asterisk territory here now so maybe if you just get through most of the season then you could just say okay we'll isolate the

remaining teams and we'll have a fun little tournament which is maybe what should have happened in the first place so i could see that happening too. Do you think that the fact that the playoffs have expanded and so the barrier to entry is now lower anyway helps or hurts in that regard? Do you think they need to play more or less of the season in order for them to say, okay, we have enough to seed the field in a way that we feel comfortable with and everyone's going to reconvene in Arizona or Florida or wherever. Because again, those are just the very best places

to bring a bunch of people together. And we're going to test everybody and we're going to do a bubble. And that's how we're going to do the playoffs. I can't decide if the fact that the barrier is lower means that they're more likely to call it sooner or less likely. I can't decide. plain because just, you know, more teams would be represented. And also, I think there just, there would have been a bunch of maybe mediocre teams in the playoff field anyway, and you're less likely to exclude a team that everyone thinks is deserving of being in the playoffs. So I think for those reasons, and for the fact that it's just such a deviation from the norm

already, that once you break that seal, it's like, all right, well, we're doing 16-team playoff field that was announced literally on opening day as the first game was going on. So sure, whatever. We'll just end the season and start that now, and it'll be a fun little tournament. So I think more likely. Yeah, I guess it just depends on how tight the races are and which teams that have been affected in the early going here by the pandemic are close or not right like i think we you know when we look at the fan graphs playoff odds the central i mean the cardinals playoff odds have dipped slightly oh god um but if you round up to the nearest whole number the cubs reds brewers and cardinals all have 50 odds or better to make

the playoffs so i guess it sort of just depends on who's close and how many teams are close if we have you know a couple of run, then maybe we just get comfortable saying, okay, we've done as much as we reasonably can. We're concerned about COVID and let's do a tourney and do it in a place where... Because with fewer teams later in the year, some of the practical hurdles of the bubble become, I think, more surmountable in a place like Arizona because it'll be, well, hopefully for the people who live in the greater Phoenix area, it will not be 115 degrees every day. And you'll have 16 teams instead of 30. And so that's like spring training. You're used to sort of dealing with that kind of infl. And so that's, you know, it's like spring training, you're used to

sort of dealing with that kind of influx. So of course, that all assumes that that things in Arizona continue to improve because you don't want to introduce 16 teams worth of players and testing to a region that's as overwhelmed by Corona as sort of Arizona is right now. So I imagine that that will, well, I hope that that will factor into MLB's decision-making when it comes to this stuff, but it might be a little more practicable in a couple of months or weeks than it is now. Yeah. As many people have pointed out, the standings look so strange right now. Oh my gosh.

It breaks your brain every time you look at it because like teams are listed by winning percentage which i guess you have to do right now but the result of that is that you have the marlins in first place in the nl east right now with a two and one record and they're one game ahead of the braves who are-4. So the Braves have played 11 games, the Marlins have played three games, and the Marlins are in first place. So I don't really know what to make of that. Then you have the Nationals at 3-4, the Mets at 4-7, the Phillies at 1-2, or I guess they're about to lose, so maybe 1-3. So it really runs the gamut from three games to 11 games and yet they're all squeezed into the same standings which happened in 1981 there were differences i think the games played totals that year ranged from something like a 103 to 111 or 112 but that was over a great many games

and this is over very few games and we're seeing the same sort of differential and it's just hard to imagine all or even most of those games getting made up even if those teams recover even if they play a bunch of seven inning doubleheaders so we're gonna be stuck with these strange looking standings all season long so i guess we're just gonna have to get used to that yeah i mean like okay let's i'm to do one of those things where I make you react to something on the fly, but it'll be quick just because of how wonky this is. So when you hit a team where their placement throws you, say, stop, it's going to be really fast.

So right now in the AOE, we have the Yankees with the best record, best winning percentage, then the Twins, then the Orioles. Stop. Okay. It's going to go even faster in the NL. You have the Cubs up top. That seems weird and fluky, but weird stuff happens in nine games. Then you have the Rockies.

Stop. Okay. Because then it's the Dodgers, the Marlins. That doesn't count. It's three games. But then it's like you look at our leaderboards just on the position player side, and again, at most 10 games, right? But right now, and these numbers are so small that there isn't really a meaningful difference

in any kind of real way that you would feel comfortable saying, well, this proves that this guy is so much better than that guy. But Mike Ustremsky is leading baseball in war right now on the position player side. Then you have Luis Robert, who's played nine games. You have Judge, Castellanos, Corey Seager, Mookie Betts, Trevor Story, Donovan Solano, Hans-Earl Alberto, J.P. Crawford, and Kyle Lewis. When you have multiple mariners breaking the top

15 in a year like this and and i should say jp crawford having a terrific start kyle lewis a wonderful start i think michael bauman put it well on twitter he spent so much time thinking about whether kyle lewis would be healthy that he didn't even stop to consider whether he would be good yeah and so here he is being good. Trent Grisham is 12th. Michael Brantley is 13th. Jose Ramirez at 14th. And Marcelo Zuna at 15. It's just some of those names make sense.

And some of them really don't. No. Yeah. Well, that's going to continue to be the case as long as we're playing baseball this season. And on the other end of the spectrum, Christian Jowich is batting 097 and the White Sox are walking Keston Hura to face him. But Luis Robert has been very exciting and has looked very legitimately great.

And if we do a conversation with Eric Langenhagen later in this week to talk about all of these great prospects who have come up already, I'm sure he will be heavily featured in that conversation. So just the last thing I wanted to mention is that related to our conversation in the last episode about why we haven't seen robot umps in this MLB season, it was reported that the KPO will be implementing electronic strike zones in the Futures League, which is the KPO equivalent of the minor leagues, which, as you pointed out offline to me, is a much better name. Way better name. Yeah, Futures League. I

like it. So that will be happening in, I think, two minor league stadiums now. And a lot of those games will be called with the electronic zone, which was supposed to happen at some levels in this minor league season when there was supposed to be a minor league season. So we would have seen this stateside too, but we didn't get to have a minor league season. valuable data, I'm sure, to go along with the Atlantic League data and future minor league data that will be used when MLB is making decisions about whether to port the system to the big leagues. Yeah, I would imagine so. Futures League is just, it's so bright and optimistic. It's like these young people, they are the future of our endeavor. They are the future of our sport it's shiny you know it like confers importance and status on the folks playing at that level and so much you know i doubt i don't know i'm gonna say a thing that i actually have no i have no way of knowing if i'm right or wrong and i am very open

to correction but i have asserted that the meanest in a very small and quiet way the meanest transaction that we we refer to in baseball is recalling because it just suggests like i forgot you existed until i had to like sub you in because that guy blew his arm out so yeah i doubt in the futures league you ever recall a picture of course you don't you you you think about the future all the time because it's bright and shiny and optimistic so that doesn't have anything to do with robot ops but it does have to do with me wishing that we called stuff different stuff yeah minors sound so negative it's less than the majors why can't we concentrate on the positive they're the future their brightest days are ahead of them i guess we do have the futures game but

these days guys are getting recalled from the alternate site, which is always capitalized alternate site. And it sounds so dystopian. It's like alternate site. Can't we come up with a nicer name than that? I guess there's no sugarcoating it. But really, just like, I don't know, just call it camp or something. I don't know. I mean, maybe if summer camp was too lighthearted for some people, alternate site is too foreboding for me. Yeah, it sounds like a deleted scene from Zero Dark Thirty. Yeah. It's very upsetting.

I mean, sometimes I appreciate when brands, they don't try to make a thing cutesy that isn't cutesy. You know, it's like or like when corporations engage in this like double speak that makes a thing that is actually awful sound great. Like when I think this is still true. When I worked at Goldman, it wasn't HR. It was human capital management, which like that's some alternate site kind of nonsense. And so that was terrible in like an objective way. So I guess it's better to be honest. We're saying the quiet part out

loud a lot. So I guess why stop there? Yeah. Yeah. At least it's not alternate site sponsored by Camping World. Yeah. And speaking of kind of creepy titles, MLB hired a chief people and culture officer on Monday, which sounds like a much needed position. It does. And Michelle Myership, who was hired to do that job, sounds like she is much needed in that world. But chief people and culture officer is also just kind of a strange term to me yeah i don't know the brands man they're they're out of the out of control how are the a's ahead nine to one now what has happened i don't know we i mean i guess it's the seventh and it's the mariners bullpen but my stars that's brutal

is this game taking place in T-Mobile Park or is this on the road? it is taking place in T-Mobile Park Ben what a lovely transition you just introduced you know what else happens in T-Mobile Park a lot of fake crown sound I know and the fake fans are probably not pleased

right now and it is the responsibility of our guest ben mertens to make them sound appropriately sad about this a's rally so we will take a quick break and we will be back with other ben to tell us how the fake fan sausage is made a good little transition I can't drive straight Counting your faith rounds I can't drive straight Over the last couple of weeks, we've had a number of questions about piped-in sound and fake fans in the stands. And to answer those questions and help us get a handle on how MLB broadcasts will be run this year. We are joined now by Ben Mertens, who's the Senior Director of Productions for the

Seattle Mariners. Ben, thanks so much for joining us. Good morning and thanks for having me on the show. We're happy to have you. So last week, the Mariners sent out a press release quoting you that said, before the start of the season,b distributed digital touch pads loaded with the sound effects to all 30 teams ben mertens here with us today senior director of production says the mariners will use the effects to create some 75 different crowd reactions to bring a realistic atmosphere to games cheers and boos i get but what are some of the other reactions that you are supplied by the league how many different kinds of boos are? And do you anticipate you're going to be able to cycle through all of them in this season? You know, it's a fun question that a lot of people have asked. And just for formality's sake, on the touchpad, they're not called boos, Meg. They're called disappointments

or reactions. So I'll probably refer to them as that as we talk. But, you know, there's a lot of different effects. You know, we worked with Sony and MLB The Show, and their library has nearly 1,000 different sound effects that they use for that game. And those are all built by or they're playing the game based off algorithms of what happens. And so double plays and all those type of things get a different response. And obviously, if we would have given those to our operators, 1,000 different sound effects to work with would be kind of hard to manage. So with inputs from the teams and then at the league level, we narrowed that list of sound effects down to the 70-some that we mentioned in the press release. And they're as basic as that crowd

murmur that you would hear when you'd enter the ballpark to even louder just rumbles in the crowd as maybe you get later in the inning and you know maybe when the Mariners get somebody in scoring position on second base and maybe they're down by one run or it's tied and so that level of just the crowd murmur raises and then there's different effects from you know once the ball makes contact with the bat you know initially the crowd always reacts to that so the anticipation of what's going to happen and then of course within the resolve for the play if it's you know let's just say it's it's kyle lewis at the in the batter's box and he crushes one and let's say it goes fair and over the wall you get that eruption of the crowd noise but let's just say maybe it hooks foul and you get that oh disappointment of almost home run and so

those are kind of the different things that the league has provided every team. And, you know, if you're not looking into the ballpark and you're just listening to either the sound of the game or broadcast it, it does make you feel like there are, you know, that T-Mobile Park is full of fans. And so it's been a fun experience for our operators to try out. And I think it's, we're learning, but I do think it adds a sense of normalcy to the game. Yeah, I want to know everything about the touchpad.

So tell me about the layout. How do you access the various sounds? And what kind of learning curve is there? Because something like the example you just mentioned, that would require a pretty tight turnaround time. I mean, if you want to get an organic sounding reaction to a ball that looks like it's going to go fair and then goes foul, I mean, that happens in real time with a real crowd because people are having that reaction as they see it and they're uttering these sounds. But for you to recapture that, you'd have to have the operator of the touchpad very, very quickly just think of what to do and then find the right button to press the thing.

It seems like it would be difficult to actually get those sounds out in sequence in time. So how does it work just on a very mechanical level? You know, you're talking to a guy who actually hasn't run it during a game yet, but I have messed with the device. And to that point, the operator, this is somebody who has to be paying attention to every moment of the game, every pitch. You can't be checking your phone. You can't be responding to a text message. You have to be dialed in. And so the touchpad itself has four tabs. And so the first tab is the beds tab. And on there, there's about five to six

different generic beds. And those are almost like a constant bed. So once you kind of pick, like I was alluding to earlier, early in the game, maybe it's just a normal crowd murmur. Once that's clicked, that's just always kind of running as a loop in the background. And so the operator can advance off that tab and be kind of sitting on the tabs that have the reactions and the build-ups and so that they can get to those pretty quick like I said there's only four tabs on there

one of them you can like I said toss off to the side once you kind of have your bed going and they're really easy to get it's one touch and like I said on each page there's there's anywhere from six to 18 buttons and so it's it's it's pretty easy for the operator once they kind of get familiar with the tablet where to go and how to do it and and the and all the reactions and all those things have a natural fade up and a natural fade out you can mix them on top of each other so you can layer different crowd reactions and the ambience with the buildup to the reactions of the moment. So the software that we're using, and forgive me, I don't know the name exactly off the top of my head, you know, allows that functionality to kind of react to the moment, layer effects,

and get out of the effects in a pretty almost instant capacity. And you guys just wrapped up your first home series. Were there any goofs in that process? Did the operator, we won't name any names and everyone's learning on the fly here, but were there any moments where they produced a cheer where they should have had a disappointed sound when someone struck out on the home team or, you know, cheered when a home run was hit by the A's? No, Meg, I think we were able to avoid those. And part of that was because, you know, we were able to start testing these during the

intra-squad games and the lead sent the tablet to us, you know, at least for that last week of intra-squad games. And our operators, you know, learned a lot there and about the loops and, you know, what, you know, so it didn't just cut out in the middle. Some of those early, early games, we had a few of those, but once the season had started, a lot of the operators that had been excellent had been really dialed into the game. Knock on wood. How many operators are there?

Is it a rotating crew and how much training does it take to get good at this yeah right now we have two primary operators who who handled most of our games we are training up additional staff just to have it like those like i mentioned the summer camp game certainly helped but because it's a tablet you know some of our operators have also taken the tablet home and watched other games and played along with it at home and just to get more familiar with it. And we'll continue to do that with other members of our team as we get that cross-training continued. I imagine that since you were trying to imitate the effect of a home crowd,

you have a fair amount of latitude when it comes to this, but were you guys given any instruction from MLB in terms of just how hometown heavy you can go with your sound effects? Are you limited to how many disappointed reactions you can do in a game or how many sort of very boisterous cheers you can have the crowd emulate? There certainly was a memo issued, but the big thing for all of us in what was issued in State of the League is we want it to sound like a true home game in the sense of don't do anything you wouldn't do, but if your crowd would be cheering during a moment, bases loaded, you can build up that sound or that reaction to them. And so there's not a limit on it.

You know, we got to make sure that we're not doing anything that a normal crowd here at the ballpark wouldn't do, Meg. But, you know, the league trusts all the teams. And so far, I think all the teams have done a good job of respecting the game and what would it sound like at their home ballpark. Yeah, that's got to be a tough line to walk i mean there's almost like a moral hazard there right because you want to be realistic but you know when you're the person who is deciding on the booze and cheers and you work for the

mariners you know not you specifically but someone in your department that's something that i assume the players are aware of you know and so And so if they are hearing disappointments, then they know who to blame for that. It's not just fans who paid their money to come to the park and be disappointed. It is someone who's employed by the team. So I guess that's got to be kind of a tricky thing. Like you have to mirror real fan behavior, as you said,

but you don't want to show up your players. So how do you think about that? Yeah. And kind of going back to League, you know, they issued the same device to all the clubs. All the clubs had the same sound effects. So it's not like one ballpark has a different reaction, either disappointment or positive than another. And so that also helps create some of that consistency across the league. But, you know, we try to play it as straight as possible with our sound effects and the crowd reaction. How much latitude do you guys have beyond the sound effects that are supposed to

imitate the crowd? Like, for instance, if you wanted to play music cues that featured the word bang while Houston is in town later this season, have you guys gotten any guidance from MLB on that? Or are you going to be able to be a little sassy if you want to be? You know, I think throughout just the history of baseball, you know, we certainly have situational music. I don't think you'll see us do that with the Houston Ashers. We have fun, you know, when obviously a pitcher leaves the game and they hit the road jack and those type of things.

But we try to keep it lighthearted. But I think as an organization, we'll treat every team like we treat every team that comes in here. It's very dignified of you. Do you know if the sounds that you're using that were provided to you were originally recorded at T-Boneville Park

or were some of them or are they from all over the place? I think they're a little bit from all over the place. And if anyone has played MLB The Show, you'll notice obviously in the game, they try to make the ballparks seem as realistic as possible with just even the graphics on the video board or scoreboard. And so what those folks for San Diego Studios who develops the game itself you know they reach out to clubs for for those assets and images and photos and they and they do go out to ballparks and report audio one the conversations that has come out

of this is trying to get them more access in the future actually come out and get you know sound effects specific to each ballpark too and And so I'm not sure where all their recordings came from, but yeah, they try to get in ballparks and get the legit sound. I'm sure some of it is also done in post and some Foley sound also added in, but they pride themselves on trying to make that game as realistic as possible. And to do that, they do send out sound engineers to collect sound effects from different ballpoint. Have you or your operators come up with any favorite sounds so far or least favorite sounds, ones that you find most convincing or least convincing that have kind of become your go-tos? I mean, if there are multiple types of cheers, let's say, is there a certain cheer that you favor?

You know, there is a sequence i think our and it was funny we were on a call with a bunch of other teams a week or two ago and it was all the different operators from different teams were talking about how they handle a certain sequence and what sound effects you know they felt for example you know they're you use some of the maybe the reactions for like the bat off the ball for the initial content. And it's funny, one operator would say, hey, I used the low one. Another operator, I used the medium one. And everybody has this different sense of what it sounds like in their ballpark. So I think to each operator their own.

And in talking to our operators, I do think they have a little sequence that they go through of you start here, then you go here. If this happens, you do this one and working through all the different combinations. So obviously, the reason that you're having to think through this stuff at all is the pandemic and the inability of fans to be present at T-Mobile in person. So I'm curious how this has affected the ability of your staff to be present at the park and what guidelines or protocols you guys are having to adhere to in order to stay safe? Yeah, it is certainly a different environment. And it's a new way of operating. And first and foremost, I commend the staff here at T-Mobile Park, the folks on our ballpark operations who set up the protocols and made sure that all of us, not just the players, but everybody in the front office who was coming to the ballpark feel safe but i also uh compliment and commend the marketing and production staff and all

the others in the communications department and other departments that come in who are who are working in this new norm if you were to come into the control room at t-mobile park on a normal you know game last year you'd have anywhere from 16 to 20 operators in this room. And this year, you've got to cut that in half, if not more. And we've taken certain positions like our public address announcer and our producer and the person who's doing the crowd effects. They are now in a completely different location. And so we're working as a group that usually is cohesive in the same

room, but now using different ways of communicating and not seeing each other a lot of a lot of times during the game it's a glance over your shoulder you make eye contact with somebody and they know what what you mean and you don't have to say anything and now it has to be done obviously over over over a calm but you come in the room and there's plexiglass that's dividing different operating stations. All of our operators, you know, coming into the ballpark just to get in, everyone has to, you know, do a home screening health check and get to the ballpark. And depending on, well, all of us have to also have our temperature taken before you come in the park. And depending on what tiered access you have, there are other steps to it.

Everyone is wearing a mask. Come into the control room, everyone has to has to you know sanitize their hands your workstation your clear common which you talk to everybody has been sanitized at the end of the night all the equipment gets wiped down and cleaned up and and sometimes because of the limited amount of folks we could have in the control room you know some people are also now running maybe two positions because the two workstations are right next to each other so it's definitely unique it is i'm not going to say it's challenging there's certainly been some challenges but our group has responded to them pretty darn

well and and i think uh when you see what we're still able to do with with a lighter staff and and new protocols put in place we're still i I feel like we're still providing that level of production that people expect from our Mariners Vision staff here at Fall Park. Under more normal circumstances, do you conceive of your audience as mostly the people in the park as opposed to TV viewers? And how has that changed with no fans in the stands? There are still some people in the park and the players are obviously in the park, but in order to have things kind of translate to TV, do you need to do things differently than you would otherwise? And are you just sort of thinking of the spectators as the people who are not there as opposed to the people who are there as you would more normally? are there as you would more normally? Yeah, that's a great question. And even if we have fans in the ballpark, they're our number one priority always. But we do have different

constituents even during the regular season that, you know, what we do affects them. And, you know, that can be the viewing audience at home and the broadcast. That can be obviously the fans here at Tumul Park when they're here who are our number one priority, but also the team on the field. You know, what we do impacts them just as much as the fans. And so coming into this season, you know, when we were kind of mapping out how do we present Mariners baseball inside T-Mobile Park, you know, the two groups that we were probably more focusing on is the broadcast experience for those of you watching at home and then also the team on the field and staff of ours Mandy Lincoln who's our director of marketing had a conversation with Scott Service before the season started and talked to the skipper about you know

what what do what does he and what does the team want to experience for these games without fans to also talking with our broadcast partners both with Root Sports and in our Mariners radio network and what do they need and and talking especially with the television director about okay you know we have some additional assets to work with I think everyone has obviously seen the seat fleet or even our virtual cheers hey these are things that we want to do we want to make sure you're aware of them. Is there a way to incorporate those into the broadcast? We may get into that, which is a fine line to tow as well. But as we kind of went through this year in particular, it was the focus of the broadcast and the team on the field and for those here in the ballpark to make sure that the experience was good for everybody. I imagine that the action on the

field dictates some of this, but it has to be difficult to know just how much crowd noise to interject into the broadcast at any given moment. You want it to feel like there are fans there, but when a ballpark is actually full of people, how lively the crowd is can really ebb and flow depending on what's going on in the game, what inning it's in, what the score is.

How are you guys thinking about what the ideal level of sound is when the game, what inning it's in, or what the score is. So how are you guys thinking about what the sort of ideal level of sound is when the game action isn't dictating, you know, disappointment or excitement? Yeah, I think the main thing, Megan, that you said there is really relying on what's happening on the field to kind of dictate that and the situation. So, you know, giving an example of, you know, if it's the fourth inning and someone's on, let's just say Marco's pitching and he may have a runner on second with a guy in scoring position and two outs have been recorded and he's worked the count to, you know, one-two, we're going to run the two-strike noise prompt in the ballpark, which then

would obviously elicit a crowd response. And so if you're watching the broadcast, you'll occasionally see that they will take a wide shot. And if the situation would be a normal, like a situation from last year, if we would have been putting up a crowd prompt, we're still putting up a crowd prompt in the 2020 season. And thus that would elicit a bigger cheer from the crowd. And we treat it the same way that if we take the crowd prompt off, usually our crowd would die down after the noise animation ran. And so we fade it out.

But the situations, we're treating the same from a game presentation standpoint. And so if we put up a crowd effect or a crowd noise, we knew that would elicit a cheer from the crowd. And thus our audio player will also play that crowd sound effect if that makes sense yeah you don't need to make some noise graphic now that you are literally making the noise yourself and along those lines i know mlb has made it possible for fans to send feedback about whether they want cheers or booze or some other sound right in the game day app or various other places you can vote on those things so how do you see that and and how do you

incorporate that if you do there's a i'm gonna call it gooey interface but it's really just a website where that feedback is coming back real time that that is in front of our producer and our producer can react to that and work with our audio operator on implementing some of that feedback into the show. So it's a really cool feature that it'll be implemented for this year. And it's a tool that our producer has at their disposal to look at and review and use that to help influence other things in the ballpark. You mentioned Scott Service earlier. I'm curious if you have a sense of how the players and the coaching staff have taken to the crowd sound. Is it just business as usual for them or are there players, and you don't have to name any names, but are there players

who would prefer a quiet ballpark? That's a great question. And we heard early on, and I don't know if you guys have had a chance to watch any of our inside corners that were with Marco Gonzalez and Aaron Goldsmith. But even in one of those interviews early on with one of the players, it was mentioned how much crowd noise they rely on it during the game and how that would be weird if there wasn't. And so we got initial feedback early on that we got a sense that the players would like some crowd noise. we got a sense that the players would like some crowd noise. And part of my job function now is post-game, is to go down and help set up the virtual post-game interviews. And on Friday night, we had Scott Service spoke,

I believe Tywon Walker spoke, Kyle Lewis spoke, and all three of them mentioned the atmosphere and the crowd noise and the music and all had positive things to say about it and the energy it created and how it made it feel like a real typical home game for the Mariners and so you know initial response from the players that we've heard from and from the skipper and words that they've said publicly has has been has has said that you know this is is helpful and that they helpful and that they appreciate it. And so that feedback has been good. Information from our broadcasters has also been positive from their standpoint. I think we're going to continue to dial in as we go, but initial feedback seems to be

on the positive side. Yeah, I mean, there's been some research that suggests that that fan effect really does have some bearing on the home field advantage that teams enjoy. And so you guys maybe have some actual wins above replacement this year that are possibly attributable to the scoreboard team and the production's crew. So no pressure on you. Some of the Fox Sports broadcasts we've seen have used CGI fans to try to make the park not only sound full, but also appear full. So was there any thought to doing that on the root broadcasts and why or why not? You know, I'm not in on those levels, but I think when you do the CGI type fan bases, you know, it's more of a generic fan and it tends to be a duplicated fan, meaning that not every single person that is generated via graphics is the same thing. They

tend to repeat and there's algorithms in there that just kind of mix up the pattern. Whereas at least the Seat Fleet provides every fan an opportunity to put themselves in the ballpark, to provide their image that they submit. So I think it personalizes it a little bit more. Yeah, do we miss the crowd moving and that type of stuff? Absolutely. But I think the solution that we've been able to develop and a few other teams as well, it creates that personal connection with the fans here. And it's funny to hear them.

You know, you see posts from fans about how they're at the ballpark, but you know, it's their cardboard cutout, but they take pride in that. So I think the solution we have, maybe not as dynamic, but just as important for our fan base here. Was there an uncanny valley effect for you? Sort of a disorienting sense of a full park versus the sight of no one in the park? I don't know whether that applied either at the beginning or even now sometimes, or whether you sometimes forget that it's actually an empty park if your operators are doing their

job and you're not currently looking out at the stands, whether you can almost kind of convince yourself that it's a full house out there. It depends where you are. And if you're looking out the field and I, you know, on Friday on opening day, you know, we're used to a full T-Mobile park and,

and for our opening day ceremonies, you know, we take pride in what we do here. And I just remember like, man, we're two minutes from going live with our pregame presentation. And it just, it felt weird just because if you were,

when I was looking out the window i'm just like where is everybody in that sense but if you're operating like that it's it's funny when i'm in the control room i'm often not near the front window i tend to be you know 10 15 feet back i'm as close to the field as you can get but you can't see it and when i'm in that mode or at a workstation or any of our operators are kind of in those spots, it's funny. It feels like a full ballpark just because the sense that you're using at that point is you're hearing. And even looking at some of the camera shots that Root has, if it's the low first shot back into the batter's box and the way our seat pleats angled it, you kind of get this false sense of, hey, there are fans in the ballpark.

And I think the seat pleats are going to continue to grow. I think you're going to see it as this homestand continues to get larger. The response has been great by Mariners fans. And depending on where you are, it does certainly feel like not an empty ballpark. The more they get added and once again, they're not moving, but it's a great visual and the texture of each individual photo just kind of provides that sense of a little bit of normalcy in the ballpark, not just seeing three chairs. Ben, you brought up the seat fleet, and I'm curious, what is the production process like? I have a lot of basic questions about the seat fleet, not the least of which because I am in the seat fleet. What are they made out of?

How durable do you think they are? How often do you think they might have to be replaced? Tell us the nuts and bolts of the Seat Fleet. I'll do my best, Meg. So first and foremost, if you want to purchase a Seat Fleet or if you want to learn about any of some of the things or the ways of the ways of being a participant virtually here at T-Mobile Park, you can go to mariners.com slash fans and

in there, there'll be a link to the seat fleet and it talks about how you order them and how they're in the process behind that. But they're made by a local company here. They're not made of paper. It's a coated, I don't want to call it vinyl, but it's durable. In other words, if they get some water on them, they're not going to welt up or anything like that. And they're pretty sturdy, pretty rigid. So that being said, if they do take a foul ball, they have a little gift to them so they don't just break or part of them come off. But they're designed also with a couple slats, basically where your arms arms would be and those fit the seats here at T-Mobile Park and so they're secured within the seat as I said they're pretty durable we anticipate

them lasting for the full 30 games here at T-Mobile Park and and so far the few that have been hit by a foul ball I think have survived the initial contact we got to work on their catching ability a little bit but they look great also when you get right up close to them. What's happening to foul balls in general, even the ones that don't hit the cardboard cutouts? Do you know what's being done with them? You know, I do know if a foul ball hits the cardboard cutouts on the fly that our ballpark

operations staff is sending those to the person who is the seat fleet. As far as the other balls, there's certain protocols in place with Major League Baseball about the ball and the cleanliness of it and when it can be used. I believe those are just taken out of commission. I'll try to get an answer for you guys and share that with you, what's happening with the other foul balls. Is there anything about your job this year and the way that you're handling the Paul Park entertainment that you think could carry over into the future if and when hopefully fans return and things go back to looking more or less normal? Have you learned anything or incorporated anything that you think might still apply or will it just be back to what you used to do?

No, I think this whole year is going to be a learning experience. And I don't think it's just one thing that we've identified yet, Finn. But what we have learned is, and we knew this already, but just the great response that we've had from our fans to be involved in a Mariners game. And maybe there's ways to, there will be ways to continue to do this. And I'm not saying we continue virtual cheers but there's things like that that you know we found that the fans are willing to

submit video content via you know their mobile devices that we could play in ballpark you know how do we continue to use the social media networks to get fans involved in the show here at Tumult Park I mean if you still use the hashtag True to the Blue, we are still putting up your social media posts in the ballpark because we want our players to see we're managed fans and what they're doing at home and what they're watching.

I do think there will be hopefully some things that come out of this season as well. You know, for example, during summer camp and the inter-squad, you know, we did some live streaming of those practices and some of those games. know, we did some live streaming of those practices and some of those games. And so we may continue to look for opportunities like that. But I think just like any experience that we all have, I think there are going to be some things

we learn from this that that will carry over not just for next year, but in the future. Well, we certainly appreciate you making the broadcast feel a little more normal than it might in this strange time. And we really appreciate you joining us, feel a little more normal than it might in this strange time. And we really appreciate you joining us, Ben. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. And you guys have a great day. And go Mariners.

All right. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. Congrats to Jessica and Mike Trout on the birth of their son, Beckham Aaron Trout. And welcome to the world, Beckham. As Senator Palpatine once said, we will watch your career with great interest. By the way, after we spoke to Ben, we saw a tweet from Maury Brown that has a photo of the left field foul line at T-Mobile Park, and one of the cardboard cutouts is Steve Bartman. I get the joke, but come on, Mariners. Meg and I agree that this is mean.

Leave Bartman alone. I know Ben is not responsible for the placement of the cutouts, so I am not criticizing him, but I think Bartman has suffered much more than his fair share of abuse. Just replace him with a cutout of some abnormally large child instead. Scare us all when the camera pans over there. 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. Benjamin Baker, Kyle Rechtenwald, Robert Beretta, Paul Bellows, and Michael Hunter.

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 Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcastatfangrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. I will likely do emails with Sam on our next episode. And thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will talk to you again a little later this week. Until then, we wish for few forearm strains and even fewer positive tests. Talk to you again a little later this week. Until then, we wish for a few forearm strains and even fewer positive tests.

Talk to you soon. And perhaps someday I'll forget you, and lose this heartache that you left with me. At night I'm never alone, I'm afraid that I'll weaken and fall And I'm afraid that you will be gone I'm with a crowd but oh so alone