Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1625: Baseball After Dark

Episode Date: December 5, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley offer an update about Sam Miller’s status on the podcast, banter about the Rangers hiring former pitcher Chris Young as their new GM and play-by-play man Len Kasper’s move from Cubs TV broadcasts to White Sox radio broadcasts, and answer listener emails about how tanking teams could be more entertaining, […]

Now promise me you won't forget the nights that haven't happened yet Separate the smoke from all the cinders Put another sticker on the van The carpet at the party house Tear it up and take it out Somebody should check out Blackout Sound Hello and welcome to episode 1625 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast with Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So, it is announcement time. I was just thinking, I guess our announcements are usually not the best news when we do announcements. I mean, I don't know. Is it an announcement when we say Secret Santa's sign-ups are open? That's an announcement?

Yeah, I guess so. I don't really build it up and say, here's an announcement. It's announcement time. When I do that, it's probably not a great sign. We're a pretty unimportant podcast. What could we have to announce that would have great import and positive impact on the world? I don't know. Mostly our announcements are pretty parochial and related to this podcast.

And that is what this one will be. So as some of you have seen, Sam, our co-host and friend Sam Miller, was among ESPN's latest layoffs, and the good news for him is that he is still under contract for a little while, which kind of cushions the blow of this news. The bad news for us and for you is that while he is still under contract, he can't cover baseball for a competing publication, which means that Meg and I will be back to a three times a week to host setup for the foreseeable future, as we were earlier this year when Sam was off for a while with migraine related issues. But in the meantime, Sam is going to figure out what's next for him. And hopefully he'll be back here for

his third stint sometime before Mike Trout's decline phase, which is actually how he told me to put it. And now that I'm saying it out loud, I realize that that sets up sort of a moral hazard here. Because if you want Sam to be back soon, then that would mean that you would want Mike Trout's decline phase to start soon. But none of us want that. Whereas if Mike Trout doesn't decline for years and years to come, which would be nice, then that kind of doesn't put a lower limit on when Sam might be back. But, you know, hopefully Sam can come back and Mike Trout can not decline and both of those things can happen at some point. So that's the news.

That's the announcement. And we're sad to say it. And I'm sure you're sad to hear it. And I'm sure that many people were sad when they saw Sam's announcement on Sam's behalf it turns out that if anything we should all feel sorry for ourselves because we are being temporarily deprived of Sam I think Sam is okay it seems like it's not great news I suppose but because he is under contract for a while it it's not an immediate shock to the system. But it does mean that we will be deprived of Sam's speaking and writing for a while,

which is a bummer for both of us. Yeah, you know, Sam gets really uncomfortable when you say nice things about him. Like it makes him physically squirm. And so I struggled with how much to say here because on the one hand, I think it's important to express gratitude and sympathy for your friends. But it also isn't especially nice to make your friends squirm. Yeah. There's a decent chance he's not listening. Yeah, that part's true.

That part's true. Okay, then I get to say whatever I want, which is that. Even just in anticipation that we might say something nice. You know, I think that every baseball writer has someone in, or a couple of someones in their career who ask them to do a job that they either aren't quite qualified for yet or don't feel like they're qualified for. And Sam is one of the people

in my career that did that. And, you know, before I wrote for Sam, I read Sam. And I think that while I would not dare to compare my own work to his, I think that we have a similar appreciation for whimsy. And so it was just very important to my confidence or desire to write about baseball to see that someone else who appreciated that could do so and do it really well and do it to some amount of acclaim and recognition and so that part of my journey that Sam was a part of he doesn't even really know he was a part of and then there was the part of uh being a a young baseball writer at baseball prospectus and getting to be edited by him and that was a really important education so getting to call him a pal now is also very special but you know they're just there's just some people

in your life who you end up in debt to and you'll never really be able to pay them back because of the impact they had. And, you know, it's like Sam's still kicking around Southern California, so I don't want to talk about him like he's died or anything. But it's a sad day, even if I am hopeful that the hiatus will be temporary because, you know, Sam notices really interesting things about the game. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to think that each of us brings our own special something to this mix on the podcast, but Sam definitely has a special something that we will be without as long as we are without him. And I'm sorry about that. And, you know, I've been working pretty closely with Sam in some capacity now for almost 10 years really, I guess, except for a break when he first went to ESPN,

whether it was editing at BP or him editing me, me editing him, me hiring him when I took over the site there. He was sort of my first choice to be kind of my right-hand man as an editor. And he was with the OC Register at the time, and he was contributing to BP already. And it just seemed like I wanted much more Sam in my life, just as a coworker, but also as a reader. And he just has such a great mix of whimsy and weirdness and humanity and profundity and wit and wordplay and analysis. It's going to be a bummer for as long as it lasts not to have that. But I think that one of the nice things

that has come out of this has been the outpouring of appreciation for Sam on Twitter, which he typically avoids as much as possible, I think. But he did have to tweet a little bit to tell people about this and share some of his favorite pieces from his time at ESPN. And that prompted a lot of people to share their favorite pieces or their little Sam stories. And so that was a nice nice warm feeling that was going around on Friday morning when he announced that. And, you know, we wrote a book together and spent a summer together in Sonoma and have been doing this podcast for a long time together. And I hope that that will be the case again. So we will, of course, let you know if and when there's anything to say on that score.

And for now, it's you and me. And I'm excited about that, too, because I like doing this show with you. I like doing this show with you, too, Ben. Three times a week, Meg. Yeah. All right. Well, this is probably not the announcement people were expecting. Probably people were thinking, oh, ESPN laid off Sam.

That means he'll have even more time to podcast and he'll be on all the episodes. Well, sorry to disappoint you there. But again, we will let you know if and when that will change. And we wish Sam the best as he figures out what to do next, because I'm sure that many people will be soliciting his services. So we will look forward to his next act, whatever that may be. All right. So a couple other transactions that I guess we can talk about in the baseball world. One of them I think was also sort of a surprise.

And I should say we have not been sitting on this Sam news for a while either. This happened very abruptly. So I think he found out Thursday, we found out Thursday. So when he and I recorded an episode on Wednesday, we didn't know, which is why we didn't allude to it or anything. So it happened very suddenly for all of us. And also sudden, I think, was the Rangers hiring of Chris Young as their general manager on Friday, which kind of came out of nowhere, at least for me. This was not a public

process. The Rangers were not known to be looking for a GM, but they have hired one. And of course, John Daniels will remain there as the president Of Baseball Operations but evidently They decided that it would be good to Have a GM just for Separating responsibilities or workflow Related reasons so They've hired Chris Young who

This is the former pitcher Chris Young not the former hitter Chris Young And I think Chris Young was actually pitching for the Rangers when John Daniels was hired as GM which is way back in 2005 John Daniels is 43 years old right now which is kind of incredible because it seems like he's had that job forever like he's he's had that job for 15 years yeah he was 28 when he was hired. Yeah, he's still a young man, barely older than Chris Young. So this was kind of a stealthy process because Chris Young was said to be in the running for the Mets GM job.

And then he reportedly pulled out of that because he didn't want to work far from home, which happens to be in Texas, in Dallas, I believe. So he found a job close to home. So it worked out well for him. I came up with two height-related jokes while you were talking. Do you want to hear both of them? Yes, please. The first one is kind of surprising. It was hard to see him coming.

He's so tall. Ooh, yeah. Yeah, that one's not very good, but I think the second one is better, which is they hired him because they had stuff on really high shelves. I think that from everything I have heard of Chris Young, both as a person when he was a player and then in his subsequent role with the league, he seems to be very well thought of and highly respected and viewed as a smart and sort of level-headed guy. I think it is always valuable societally for us to ask questions about whether a person is very good or handsome or talented or if they're just tall. I think like that's just a worthwhile preoccupation for us as a country to like you know really grapple with and then and then we can say it turns out Chris Young like seems like a good smart guy who I can understand wanting in your baseball organization

and not just because he can reach stuff on very dull yeah although is there a point at which height becomes a disadvantage i mean it's when it's when you have an extra arm coming out of the top of your head yeah he does not have that i have met him and i'm pretty sure he does not have that but he's 6 10 and uh unless you're a basketball player, I mean, I guess if you're a baseball player and you're Chris Young, maybe it was useful for you or Randy Johnson or John Rausch or whoever is that huge. But yeah, I just in regular life, like when you get up to a certain height, things are not made for people your size anymore. And you're like hitting your head on door frames and you can't find comfortable chairs and you are crammed into cars and airplane seats and it just seems sort of uncomfortable. So he is at that level of height, I think. But I was kind of fascinated by Chris Young as a player. In a

Grantland article, I called him one of the sport's strangest statistical case studies, and I said he's either extraordinarily lucky or the all-time king of weak contact. And it might be the latter. He had a career.255 BABIP in almost 1,300 innings. Really, he has the lowest BABIP of any pitcher with 1,000 innings pitched in the past 30-plus years. So he consistently beat the ERA estimators. His ERA for his career is like more than six-tenths of a run lower than his FIP. And I think he really did just get a lot of soft contact. He pitched up in the zone before a lot of pitchers were doing that. He got a ton of pop-ups year after year, which are almost automatic outs.

And he kept succeeding with a really pedestrian fastball, especially later in his career. Of course, he released it a little bit closer to the plate than most pitchers do. And after his playing career, I met him once or twice. We were on a panel together a couple of years ago at Sloan Sports, and I have corresponded with him a few times. And yeah, I found him to be pretty impressive too and i think the rangers gain is mlb's loss here because chris young was a pretty high ranking executive with mlb he was the senior vice president of on-field operations so he was the one who was like looking at rules and discipline and just talking to him on that panel and off the panel. It seemed like he was a very forward thinking, open minded person. I remember talking to him about moving the mound back and he seemed pretty receptive to that, which I'm always in favor of and particularly when a pitcher is in favor of something that hurts pitchers

as a species i appreciate that although if you're 6'10 maybe you just need more room but that sort of makes me sad because it seemed like he was a good person to have in that role to be thinking of all the things that we talk about how do you make baseball better he seemed like someone who was willing to entertain some out-of-the-box ideas and maybe put some things into practice. And he was the one who sent the memo around earlier this year about trying to crack down on the use of foreign substances. And he seemed receptive to trying to use data to monitor that, if possible. I think he was involved in the Atlantic League partnership and trying out some of the ideas there. So I guess for the sport, it's sort of a shame that he won't be in that role

anymore, but I guess it's good for the Rangers. It's good for the Rangers. He's tall enough that like at winter meetings, if he is walking through a crowd, you're like, hey, it's Chris Young. Yeah. There aren't many other options. Yeah. That's what that is. I think that one of my favorite playing memories of Chris Young yeah like he's that kind of the other options yeah that's what that is I think that one of my favorite playing memories of Chris Young was when he was on the Royals uh World Series winning team in 2015 and had like a very normal Chris Young kind of season right he had a very Chris Young kind of approach and then he hit the postseason and had like the best k per nine he'd had in like seven years and was like a weird strikeout

machine for at least one start and you're like chris yuck look at you so that that was uh great fun but yeah i think you're right that at a time when we want clear-headed and sort of incisive perspective on the future of the game and rules and how we might make the on-field product more dynamic and engaging for fans it's never a good thing when a person who's sort of known to be thoughtful and has a reputation for that departs for for other opportunities but i guess at least he's staying within baseball and and yeah and now uh we'll get to enjoy a very new home office. And I don't know exactly what went into his decision here. I'm sure there were quality of life concerns and salary you've been trying to win the World Series, that's your goal.

And then suddenly you're in this MLB league level role where you're not really trying to win anything or outsmart anyone. You're just kind of trying to make baseball better for everyone, which seems like a noble goal, but I wonder if maybe it doesn't get the competitive juices flowing as much as it would to work for one team where the scope of what you do is somewhat reduced and maybe you have less of an impact on the sport as a whole, but you're back in the running again. You're trying to win games and outsmart your opponents and get yourself a ring. So I would think that maybe for some people, not necessarily Chris Young, but maybe that is an adjustment that not everyone likes. And maybe some people just

want to work for a team instead of working for the league that kind of oversees all the teams. Yeah, I would imagine that if you've spent your adult life being a professional athlete, even one where the broadcast just takes great pains to remind everyone you went to Princeton, that sort of perspective is kind of hard to short circuit, right? That you have that mentality because it's really hard i think to do that job if you don't so i i will be curious to hear him talk more about uh what appealed to him apart from the proximity to home which we just will never fault anyone for prioritizing because he is in a sort of interesting spot there are plenty of people who do that kind of back and forth dance but i i

struggle to think of a player a former player who's done that so yeah it would be interesting to hear hear more from him um from his great great height you'd have to get special pants oh yeah definitely you you would um have a a narrower range of cars that you could buy which ben i realize doesn't matter for you um but like in texas you gotta have a you gotta have a car really public transit not quite quite up to snuff you'd have to like stick your head out the sunroof or something i yeah it doesn't seem like there would be a car with a roof high enough i don't know i guess some sort of suv or something and 610 is tall enough that like if you go to the big and tall store, they're going to look at you and be like, yeah, you're big and tall.

Yeah, you need bigger and taller. That's big and tall for the big and tall. I wonder, this is a Friday episode, and we had weird, sad news about a friend. So we get to be a little like this today. We're going to allow ourselves that. I wonder who the shortest man to think he needed the big and tall store and to go into a big and tall store has been like who is the

shortest man who walked in and was like i am big and tall and then they're like nah yeah no because some people they have inflated senses of their size i think Like you see the guys at the gym who have their arms like held out to the side as if they have imaginary muscles that are preventing them from lowering their arms. Really, they do not. So that probably happens. And I wonder how the big and tall people handle it. Like, do they break it to the wannabe big and tall person? Like, sorry, you're just, you're not big or tall enough. Like, you can shop at a regular store. Or do they humor the person and say, well, here's our smallest size. I guess maybe it's a little loose on you, but you can try it on. I don't know what the protocol, what would the etiquette be there?

I think allowing them to realize the dearth of both bigness and tallness that they possess by trying on a suit and having it be like kids playing dress up. Yeah. That's probably the easiest way to break it to them because then they can be like, oh, I see. Because I assume that big and tall, I assume that it's more expensive to shop it because it's a specialty store, right? And so they can probably charge.

More fabric. Yeah, they can probably charge a markup just by virtue of being, you know, being kind of having the market cornered, right? And so. They can't manufacture in bulk. Ironically, they're producing these things for bulky people, but not in as great quantities. It would be funny if they said, you know, good news, bad news.

On the one hand, you are not as tall as you thought you were. Good news, less expensive suits. Anyway, we can move on from this, but I'm going to be thinking about it. Yeah, me too. Ben. It's like if you're working on commission, I feel like you're not obligated to break it to the person that they're not big and tall. They can just come to that decision themselves. Yeah, that's what their friends and family are for.

Right. And if they look like Vincent Adultman from BoJack and it's like multiple people crammed into a trench coat or something, then, well, they'll find out about that the hard way, I guess, but you will have made a sale. All right. One more thought, by the way, on the man who prompted this digression, Chris Young. It is notable that a former player was hired as a general manager because there are very few of those, especially if Billy Bean is about to leave the A's, there just aren't a lot of former players in the highest ranking executive roles or even very high ranking executive roles for baseball teams now. There's Jerry DiPoto, of course, in Seattle, but I think he was alone until Chris

Young was hired. And we've gone from a lot of or most GMs being former players to almost none being former players. And that's largely because of the demographics of GMs who get hired these days, right? Sapermetrically inclined and Ivy leaguers. But this is something we mentioned in the MVP machine, that it might be time for the pendulum to swing back a bit toward former players because you do have this generation now of players who are analytically savvy and have the benefit of playing experience and an analytical approach. And so I wouldn't be surprised to see a few more of those guys get jobs. Craig Breslow was just promoted to assistant GM of the Cubs. John Baker was just hired as farm

director for the Pirates. We might start to see a new generation of that type of executive. And I think that's good. I think it's nice that that career path at least is open to players. Not that former players are always player-friendly executives, but still, playing at a high level shouldn't be a prerequisite for that job, but I don't think it should be a disqualifier either. Of course, Chris Young doesn't do anything to disrupt the trend toward Ivy League white guys, but that's a separate problem so the other transaction that i was alluding to is len casper making the crosstown move in chicago so i guess following in the footsteps of steve stone and harry carey and jack brickhouse len casper is switching from

cubs tv play by play which he has been doing for 16 years, to White Sox radio. So I think it'll be Casper and Darren Jackson. And then you have Benetti and Stone on TV. And that just seems like an embarrassment of riches. of riches. I mean, that seems like the FTC should step in and break up these broadcasting teams or something because they're concentrating too much talent with one team. If you're a White Sox fan, maybe you're still sort of dazed from the Tony La Russa hiring, but this has to make your day because no matter how La Russa does, no matter how well the team does, you can't go wrong if you're listening on TV.

You've got Panetti. If you're listening on radio, you've got Kasper. It almost seems like because you can't listen to both of these at the same time, it almost seems like if you were allocating their skills in a utilitarian way, you would want to spread them out a little bit. in a utilitarian way, you would want to spread them out a little bit. But I guess there are situations where a White Sox fan wants to listen to the game on TV and sometimes wants to listen to the game on the radio. And now you just have the best of both worlds. So sorry, Cubs fans, but congratulations, White Sox fans. You've kind of cornered the market on really engaging, sabermetrically savvy baseball play-by-play people.

I think that it is for the benefit of the sport to have really fun, exciting teams tied to good, dynamic, exciting booths. Because I want a random person who's like, yeah, I've been hearing good things about this White Sox team and turns on their TV and they're like, wow, this is a great broadcast, good booth, awesome team, fun time. Or they're flipping through the radio and they're like, look at this. You want people to be able to happen upon a really good and fun and dynamic group because then you get them excited about baseball generally.

And while the cubs once occupied that role i think that next season is likely to be kind of uh painful for them so this way we don't have to engage with that we can just pretend it's not happening and watch the white socks inside i mean we talked about this it was one of the best things about the White Sox being a fun and relevant team for you and I, because when we're picking around to see what we want to watch, like sometimes that's motivated by the booth, but a lot of the time it's motivated by wanting to see a particular player or a particular squad play because we have to know about all the teams. And so we're sort of at the mercy of whatever broadcast options we have. And since MLB TV took away the field sound option, you're going to be engaged with a booth. And so it's just a really lovely treat, not only for White Sox fans, but for more casual fans who are kind of trying to keep up with the good dynamic young squads to get to have good options across the board. I think it's great. Sorry, Cubs fans.

Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, it's a tough time for Cubs fans. You lose Theo and you lose Kasper and you lose Kyle Schwarber, I guess. And there's a lot of change all of a sudden. So Kasper and Jim Deshaies were a great crew too. So anyway, good news for White Sox fans. And it sounds like, reportedly, according to Sahad of Sharma, who broke this news, it sounds like Kasper just prefers radio. He just wanted to do radio.

And I guess he really wants to work World Series. And it's easier to do that if you're a local broadcaster, if you're working radio. So that's nice. Everyone's happy except Cubs fans, I guess. So almost makes me want to be a White Sox fan just so I could enjoy those two teams. But I am mired in neutrality. So we can answer some emails, I guess, because Sam and I failed to answer some of the emails that we had intended to answer earlier this week. One of the things that I will miss about doing episodes with Sam is that sometimes we set out to do something on an episode and then don't end up doing that thing at all. I mean, I guess it's the same with

us too, because we just talked about hypothetical big and tall people who are not actually big and tall for five minutes. That's not the nicest way to describe people, as an aside. Like, that kind of has, like, a weird body shaming thing in it, too. You're big and tall. Like, you can just imagine someone being like, eh. You know, in a street fight, you know how people talk like they're, like, 20s gangsters? Right. Eh.

You know how that's how 20s gangsters talk? Yeah. Don't worry, Ben. ben i'm gonna have plenty for you i'm gonna have to do more step last though oh boy yeah i guess so i we doubled up on step less earlier this week too bad i didn't save one for this uh unscheduled email episode we actually meant to talk about all the minor league upheaval that is happening now, but the dust hasn't settled yet. We're sort of waiting for MLB to announce what the 120 lucky, I guess, affiliates are actually going to be before we can break down what it all means and do some analysis and discuss the ramifications. So as soon as that news comes out, we will probably devote an episode to it. But it didn't happen in time for today.

So emails. And yeah, I was just saying Sam would go in some odd directions. You just never know where Sam's going to go with a sentence or an email answer. And that is one of the wonders of Sam. That is one of the magical things about Sam. I'm not sure he always knows where he is going to go. That is one of the magical things about Sam. I'm not sure he always knows where he is going to go, but it usually goes somewhere good and interesting and intriguing that most people would not have thought to go.

And sometimes when we're doing emails, like he'll return to something he said maybe 40 minutes ago with no acknowledgement of the things that happened in between. And I always wonder, was he thinking about that the entire time? Did this just occur to him? Has he heard anything that I said since he was saying that thing? I don't know. I might never know, but I always find that to be an endearing quirk of Sam. All right. So emails. Let's start with this one.

In response to our most recent discussion, this is Roger in Fairfax, Virginia. I appreciated Ben and Meg's comments about how it's not fun that the Orioles are tanking and not even pretending to want to put a good team on the field. They clearly non-tendered Hanser Alberto to be bad, not to save money, but the fans deserve something interesting. So how would you tank fun? The 1962 to 1965 Mets were awful, but they had at some point Richie Ashburn, still good, Duke Snyder, still good-ish, Gil Hodges, done, Yogi Berra, done, and Warren Spahn, done. They also had Casey Stengel managing, and guys like Marv Throneberry and Don Zimmer and a bunch of other old Dodgers to amuse the fans,

management was trying to appeal to the fans maybe more than they were trying to win. Should the O's take a lesson from the expansion Mets? Get Albert Pujols, Anibal Sanchez, Felix Hernandez, Bartol Cologne. Let those guys keep compiling their counting stats, put on a good show, and give the fans something to remember, even as they are taking a dive for the future so i worry that my perspective on other people's potential embarrassment is going to warp my answer to this question because i think that it's nice to have veterans who are in sort of the twilight of their career to float around but if you concentrate a bunch of them and then they all end up being bad in a

in a bummer kind of a way then it's not that's not fun either right i know so i think that if you if you're gonna have a veteran who's in that range you probably want well you you probably want someone who is you know still decent and not into the decline phase in a serious kind of way. Because it's just after a while, you can't help but be aware of their struggle. And on the one hand, it's fine, because they're not, they're not really keeping anyone back, right? They're not taking a spot on the field that someone else needs this is always part of the problem with pool holes where you're like well they can probably rearrange their lineup in a way that would be a lot more productive but they have

to have him at first so what else are they gonna do right so like that part's okay because it isn't necessarily delaying anyone great but then if it's not delaying anyone great you're really conscious of the fact that gosh they really have no reason to not play that guy because the help is very far away so i don't know that that reinforces a great message about the team and their sort of shorter term prospects for improving so i think that decent veterans who are still pretty good and are serviceable and can play just like competent baseball. Like Estrebo Cabrera is a great guy for this kind of thing, right? He's not going to be the best player on any team, but he is. He is perfectly serviceable in the field still. He hits fine.

He's got a veteran presence, so you're doing something for the young guys. You want like that caliber of veteran where it's like, that guy can play baseball still. He is a professional baseball player. As opposed to a guy where you're sitting there like, shouldn't you just retire to spare yourself this embarrassment? And it's like, how is that fun for anybody? Right. Yeah. I mean, no one's going to go to the park probably to see Estrebo Caprera.

He's had a quality career. He's been worth almost 30 war according to Fangraphs. That's more than I would have guessed. That is like halfway to a Hall of Famer. That is quite good. Congratulations, Estrubal. But you would not necessarily think of someone who is like, well, I've got to go see him to say that i saw him you know i'll tell my kids and my grandkids that i saw estrupo cabrera sure that he is going to

recapture some semblance of his former greatness like he's been very consistent but he's never been great like he's been worth kind of like you, two or three wins every year for quite a while, which is good and valuable, but it's not like he was ever a star. Whereas if you do collect a bunch of fading or faded superstars that it's fun to watch Albert Pujols very slowly run out ground balls and have the infield play way back against him and have him just strike out a lot compared to how often he used to strike out. But he might still hit some dingers. And that's fun because he has big career numbers. And so maybe you get to see a milestone or at least you get to see hey i saw pooh holes play and yeah he was past his prime but for that one swing maybe i couldn't tell the difference between post peak pooh holes and peak pooh holes it was a home run so that was fun so there's something to that like i i guess i would rather see a team of famous past their prime guys than I would guys who are maybe a little bit better but not good enough to contend but are just not famous or spectacular in any way.

It's sort of a fine needle to thread there because you're right. It can be very depressing if you feel like you're watching a whole team full of guys who were good a decade ago and now it's just sort of sad to see them struggle okay i have a i have an amendment to my own proposal then okay i think the answer is a team of astruval cabreras and your top prospect i think that the answer is to field a competent but unspectacular team a team that clearly like has holes that needs to improve in order to be a real postseason contender but if you bring up one of your better prospects and you surround that prospect with competent real big

leaguers then people start to look around and they go i can i can imagine this now i i have enough grist for the imaginative mill to be able to see our next window of contention and that's what you're selling people on right you're selling people on the next window of contention and why that's exciting and sufficiently so that they should remain invested in the team and spend money on the team and watch it every night, and know who your dudes in AA are, that's what you're selling them on. So give them one really good prospect, and mostly competent, if unspectacular, veterans,

and then people are going to be like, oh, we're getting close. And this is the thing that fans do, right? Fans always assume that their window of contention is a year or two earlier than it actually is. Right. And if you're a franchise, I'm not saying you should trick people. assume that their window of contention is a year or two earlier than it actually is right and if you're a franchise i'm not saying you should trick people i'm saying that you should help to feed their natural instinct which is to believe that their team is good and has a chance and at least

a couple of the guys on the field are likely to uh fake it well enough for them to continue to believe that and they'll go to the park for two summers. And then one year they'll look around and they'll be like, wow, we're a wildcard team. Look at that. And it'll be so exciting. Yeah. I don't know that there's anything that a tanking team can do to be more entertaining or as entertaining as a true contender. Like there's only so much you can do to cover up the losing. And maybe if you do go get a bunch of Estrubo Cabreras and you win 70 games instead of 60, you're not really a realistic contender, but you're in more games, you're closer,

you're giving people more joy when they go to the ballpark if it's post-pandemic and you actually get to go to the ballpark so there's something to be said for that but i like the idea of collecting characters and i don't know how easy it would be to do that it seems like maybe there are fewer characters than there used to be that is just anecdotal and maybe not true but i think maybe players watch what they say or things get reported that might not have gotten reported in the past and i guess that could create characters at times but if you just go get a bunch of quotable guys or sort of silly guys or weird guys and they keep you entertained regardless of how good they are. That's something like Casey Stengel was obviously a great and successful manager, but he was also a complete character and incredibly quotable. if there's someone just sitting out there who is entertaining like a ozzy guienne or or someone like that who maybe he is uh too quotable or entertaining at times but if you're out of it

and you know you're not going to win someone like that who is just uh he's going to say some stuff that's going to make headlines and maybe boggle the mind from time to time. I kind of like that idea because those, you know, expansion Mets were lovable in part because they were a brand new team. Right. And because they were so terrible, you know, no one expected that much of them. They were an expansion team. You kind of get a grace period, I think. And old Dodgers fans who had lost their team were happy to have the Mets or former Giants fans. And now there was a team that they could embrace and they were just sort of the lovable losers for a while. And that gets tired and tiresome after some time, but it works for a

few years. So I don't know that that works with an established franchise that is just going through a drought. It's not quite as endearing in that case. Right. And, you know, those Mets teams also benefited from the sort of pleasant contrast that they formed with the Yankees. Yeah. And so there was that dynamic, which I think is also difficult to replicate. But I think that maybe the answer is that teams should just try to win consistently. And then you don't have to go through a bunch of rigmarole to appeal to your fans because you can just say, we're trying to win a World Series. And if you say that every year and mean it, I think people want to hang out with you.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of your suggestions was to bring up some top prospects. And I guess if you do that, you're no longer really tanking. Yeah, I guess that's true. But, yeah, or I don't know, maybe there's some weird strategies you could try or experiment with some odd ideas that maybe, I don't know, there's too much scrutiny if you're a contending team or the risks are too great. But whatever, you can play a five man infield or something if you're not going to win anyway, so might as well try something new. Or go get the best broadcasters so that at least the experience of listening to your games is pleasant.

Or spruce up your park so that it's a nice place to spend an afternoon. Maybe you can improve the product on the field, but you can still improve the fan experience. Anyway, there are limits, I think, to how entertaining a tanking team can be, but the Orioles are not coming close to those limits right now. All right. Tommy, Patreon supporter, says, I'm a medical resident and have been working a lot of long hours recently. Theoretically, I know there are rampant issues with healthcare access for many reasons, someone can access hospital care 24 hours a day. What would baseball look like if it were a 24-hour service? Would the minor leagues exist solely as some graveyard shift? Would prime players only play from 6 to 10 p.m.? How would they measure wins or success? I imagine fans could come and go as they please, and the cost of attendance would be some prorated amount based on amount of time in the stadium. thing that I value living in Manhattan. There are multiple places that are open 24 hours or

at least are not during the pandemic. And as someone who is often up at weird hours, I like the fact that I can go out and get some food or something or whatever toiletry or some necessity that I need at any hour, which is nice. So what if you could do that for baseball? What if there were a baseball stadium where people were playing in the middle of the night? I would fret so profoundly for all of my insomniac friends who would just have this option constantly. I guess it sort of depends in that scenario what the structure of baseball looks like, because naturally you would be inclined to play your big leaguers who are the big draw during broadcast hours so that people who i was about to say normal people but that's so judgmental of your sleeping habits about it i don't i don't mean it like that at all

but people who uh say work at a nine to five and so attempt to sleep overnight let's put it that way that's a that's a shop at the the late and sleep deprived store late and pale yeah the late and pale yes but i think that you know for for those folks who sort of work a normal jane job you would want to have your big leaguers on in prime time as we do now but what are the developmental effects on minor leaguers if they're only ever playing in some strange great graveyard shift like what does that do to their circadian rhythms does that make them better or worse baseball players so you'd have to answer some important health related questions and then it's like you're not just having the minor leaguers play at night like

your entire player development staff has to be fine with working strange hours right so that would make recruitment more difficult and i guess one potentially appealing thing about this is that you would have american baseball on in what is the middle of our night but that is more perhaps easily accessible in other parts of the world so perhaps that could end up having a strange and sort of unintended growing the game consequence but i think the the places that are most inclined to engage with baseball you know just have robust and exciting leagues of their own so maybe people will be like yeah there's a triple a guys so perhaps you would look. So maybe people will be like, yeah, those are AAA guys. So perhaps you would look at AAA teams and be like, wow,

maybe that guy will be one of the players that my preferred baseball team signs in the offseason because he's, you know, a quad A guy who typically comes over to Korea or what have you. So maybe there would be some fun cultural exchange bits and bobs going on there. But generally, I think that people really need to sleep a lot more than they do. You need to sleep more than you do. Yes. And so I think that it's probably best that we have our existing setup. Although if we end up with any significant delays in the vaccine

and remain in lockdown for much of next year i would vote rather than games at night that there would be more games during the day please how they'd be games during the day yeah this would be hard on friends and families so you'd have to be on a whole inverted schedule then what do your kids do do you you ever see them? It would be pretty rough. I was just thinking, well, maybe the American players could go play in Asia, and then the Asian players could come play in North America, and then they could each play in the middle of the night, and then their families could watch them at regular times.

But I don't know what we would actually gain there, except for making the players tired and far from home because they could just play in the day and stay where they are. That just seems like a more logical arrangement for everyone. So yeah, I mean, it would never be the marquee league and the top caliber of competition, obviously, but if you could somehow get a broadcast deal, like if you could offer people some exposure and you could put it on TV so that there would be some revenue

for this nocturnal league and people would get a chance to be seen and maybe move up to the daytime league, it would be like, not only do you get to go from AAA to MLB and suddenly you get big league service time and you get a big salary bump and a pension and everything, but also you get to sleep at night and be awake during the day. So that would be a big perk for most people. I don't know, unless you could find a bunch of night owls who would be up anyway and would want to play baseball all night for people's entertainment.

The night watchmen of the world and the insomniacs and the people who are working weird shifts or whatever. I don't know that it would have huge mainstream appeal. But personally, it'd be kind of nice to be able to wander in and out of a baseball game at two in the morning maybe they could play host to like the graveyard shift rec league softball team yeah they could they could be a up all night amateur team and uh we would watch it for exactly two days thinking it was charming and then yeah yeah sam actually answered this one on patreon and he said that this hypothetical reminded him of his favorite slash least favorite historical sport which is a real thing marathon

dancing where fans could just wander in and out in the middle of the night or in the morning or the more exciting prime time events and it's like they shoot horses don't they and these things would just go on and on so there's some precedent i guess for this happening but yeah that's very sad precedent though good jane fond Fonda rule. Yep. All right. That was a weird one. Okay. Let's answer this one from Louie. We have invented pitching machines that can do superhuman things, such as throwing a ball 140 miles per hour with various spins, and hence probably being better than any human pitcher. My question is, would it be possible to invent a hitting machine that could

hit better than any batter? If so, wouldn't it be a great tool for pitchers to practice against? Of course, we'd need to have rules. I can think of five. One, it must use a legal MLB bat. Two, it must produce a high barrel rate and exit velocity. Three, it should have a low chase rate. Four, it should weigh less than the heaviest MLB player. Let's say 250 pounds max. Hey, Chris Young listed at 255. He's big and tall. Five, I'm conflicted as to whether it should be allowed to be anchored into the ground.

Obviously, it would not be able to run because if it could run, that would be too amazing. And I'd spend the rest of my life begging MLp to commission an all robot baseball team so this is uh something sam and i sort of touched on the other day when we discussed the strokes recent robot versus strokes baseball game but yeah we have pitching machines do we need hitting machines and could we have them if we wanted to ben i've never tried to build a robot i imagine that teaching a robot to be able to recognize pitches i can't decide if this would be very hard or very easy like the people who what's the lab in massachusetts that is teaching robots to run as if it's not there's a Boston Dynamics. Yeah, so like on the one hand, there's Boston Dynamics. On the other hand, have you seen the Boston Dynamics robots? Yes.

Like I struggle to believe that our existing sort of robotics capabilities would allow us to build a machine that could successfully recognize like a big league pitcher's full arsenal, but that might be incredibly naive on my part. Yeah, I wonder because so much of pitching is deception, is confusing hitters and making them think that they're seeing one thing when in fact they're seeing another. But if this hitting machine were able to quantify certain things that are not easily visible with the human eye. Presumably, if you had a fast enough processor and a sensitive enough computer, you could

predict with great accuracy where the pitch was going to go. As soon as it left the pitcher's hand, you'd get a quick reading of the spin and the initial movement and the velocity, and you'd be able to predict where the pitch was going to end up probably better than a human could, I would think. So I think it's doable. I think it's hard. It's certainly harder than a pitching machine, but I think you probably could do it. But the question is, would you want to, or would there be any benefit to doing it because the the benefit to a pitching machine is obvious someone has to throw the ball if you're practicing hitting and the opposite is not true right you you don't have to have someone swinging if you are practicing

pitching and some pitchers do find it helpful to have someone standing there, right? Like when they do a simulated game, they'll have an actual person standing there, even if they're not swinging. Sometimes they'll stand in there just to sort of simulate a real plate appearance. that sense it might be helpful but like when you are practicing hitting it's very helpful to be able to practice against realistic looking pitches right but if you're pitching you know what the batter does it's not irrelevant but you're throwing the best pitches you can and trying to locate them in the place that you want to locate them. And then either the hitter is good enough to hit it or not. And maybe you can pick up on some trends or some cues and you can learn maybe about sequencing and confusing hitters, but you can just throw a bullpen and you don't need anyone there. Whereas if you're taking batting practice, you do need someone or something to throw to you. Or you could hit off a tee, but that's not as challenging also what if the robot is really really strong and it hits a comebacker and it

kills the pitcher that's also a concern i really just don't think that we should be teaching robots to do human stuff i think we spent an entire era of cinema cautioning humanity against this and at some point arnold schwarzenegger is going to be too old to protect us so i think we should stop teaching robots how to do human stuff yeah leave leave human stuff to the humans yeah stop teaching them to write in particular yeah i would appreciate if uh people would just uh stop making the ai so good that you can't tell the difference between like a human writer and a computer. I mean, I know there's still some differences, but it's getting a little scary, personally speaking.

Yeah, I think that we would be best served. Like you said, there is a utility to having good and accurate pitching machines who, who, I'm using who, that's not the right way to describe that at all anthropomorphizing them already but there is a utility to that and it also is sparing some poor young arm having to sit there and lob stuff at a hitter all day so like there is there is good person saving utility to that but this uh strikes me as um ignoring all of the signs of dystopian literature and as anti-labor. So I say no robots doing human stuff. Yeah. No more.

Now, if I didn't have a radar gun or a track man or a Rapsodo or whatever, then I kind of would want something because I would want some form of feedback telling me, are my pitches good? So if I had none of that technology and equipment, then I think it would be helpful to have a hitting machine or an actual hitter just so you could gauge, like, am I good? Are these pitches moving? Am I putting them where I want to put them? And are they actually capable of beating batters and missing bats? So that would be helpful to know. But if you do have a radar gun and you know all of your pitches characteristics and you can see if it's located where you want it to be located, then I think it's less helpful because you can sort of extrapolate from, well, how hard is this thing traveling? And is it moving? And is it moving?

And is it spinning? And from that, I can probably tell whether I have good stuff or not. But see, then what you do, instead of spending all this time and money building a robot to do human things, which we have learned, very dangerous for the future, what you should do is go out to all the young guys who got released because you've insisted on contracting the minors and say hey come be our designated batting practice or pitching practice guy come be our guy to stand in there give some young baseball person who wants to stay in the game but doesn't have a a real future as a player some give him a role give them a job and get him a union card i don't know

what my references are today ben or just offer them a spot in the overnight baseball league right exactly the obl i'm just saying that we should give we should give human jobs to humans and not to robots we're all about job creation here we're just, we're trying to find ways to employ people. Alright, maybe one more here. This is from Jeff, a Patreon supporter. He says, my 13-year-old son Logan asked me this the other day, so I had the

opportunity to explain to him the concept of if baseball were different, how different would it be? Here's his question. When they go to robot umps, what if they did a universal strike zone? As in, instead of basing it on the batter, just have a universal anything over the plate and between 20 and 40 inches off the ground is a strike kind of thing. I'm just throwing numbers out there.

I don't have any idea if 20 to 40 is close to right. Obviously, it's a terrible idea and they shouldn't do it. A lot of our questions stipulate that but what if they did it would be an advantage to tall guys and a disadvantage to short guys but would it be enough that we'd see an actual shift in the types of players who make the big leagues it's fun to see david fletcher hit the shoulder high pitch but would it be as fun if he had to swing at it because he's just a little guy? As for a guy like Aaron Judge, the zone would be relatively smaller for him, which is an advantage, but it would also be relatively lower.

Would that disadvantage outweigh the advantage of the smaller zone, or would he be more able to adjust knowing anything above his belt was a ball? Any other ramifications we're not thinking of i'm just imagining jose el tuve and aaron judge having the same strike zone yeah i mean like i i do appreciate him being like this is a terrible idea because it is truly terrible yeah and they do already they have zones that are probably closer to each other's zones than they should be, right? Yes. Because umpires don't adjust appropriately when they're dealing with extremes. This is a fair point, yes.

Yeah, Aaron Judge will have some low strikes called on him, and Altuve will probably have some high strikes called on him. So those guys may still get jobbed just on the fringes there there but this would be really tough for them yeah i think i don't like this proposal for a serious reason which is that as we have talked about on this program think that aesthetic diversity in baseball is really important and that means having a variety of different styles of play and also a variety of different sorts of folks who who can play the game and i think that if you don't have a personalized strike zone, you will end up tailoring hitters to look a particular way. Now, I think we should probably also acknowledge here that the difference,

as you said, for Altuve and Judge, that's an extreme difference. And the difference in size for most guys' strike zones is going to be considerably smaller than that, right? There's going to be a lot more overlap for your typical hitter because they kind of fall into a range that's predictable but i think that it's important for us to be able to have the extremes because it's great fun and so you want something that allows for as many different kinds of bodies to participate in the sport at a high level if they can clear the other bars that are important to being productive big leaguers. So that's why I think that it's not actually a good idea.

Although it would be, you know, I think that we underutilize, say, the All-Star game as a place to put all of this nonsense in one game, if only to show people that it's really, really bad and that they would only like it for an inning. They should put us in charge of the All-star game is what i'm saying ben just to just to demonstrate in mlb's showcase event what baseball should not look like yeah exactly let's confirm that this is a terrible idea we're gonna have we're gonna have a nine inning schedule and we will have a different crazy if if baseball were different, how different would it be rule for each inning.

And at the end of it, no one will want to talk to us ever again. We'll make their gloves small. We'll make them really big. We'll make somebody bat on stilts. We'll make somebody field on stilts. We'll sew a hand onto the top of someone's head. That's pretty much the premise for this entire podcast. So we just put it into practice.

I wonder what the ratings would be for that after the first year. It does strike me that the strike zone is somewhat unusual, though, in the sense that it is height adjusted. Like not that many things in sports are height adjusted, like in team sports i guess i mean you know like in basketball the the hoop is in the same height for everyone so if you're big and tall if you're chris young then that's great and if you're muggsy bogues or whoever then that's not so great and you have to overcome that but it doesn't lower and raise depending on who's shooting the ball i mean just feasibly you couldn't actually do that because you have people of all different sizes and shapes on the court at all times and so it's not like you say well this possession

we're giving this guy the shot so let's lower or raise the basket here. You can't do that. And so it just has to be at a set height. And because it's at a set height, basketball players tend to be very tall. And that is the homogeneity that we're talking about, where you would get a lot of baseball players who were sort of around the same size, which, you know, most baseball players are. There aren't such extremes, maybe. Most baseball players are. There aren't such extremes maybe, but I think you would get less of the outliers and fewer judges and fewer alt-2-Vs. And that would be a bummer because one of the nice things about baseball is that people of all sizes and shapes can play it at a really high level, which is great. high level which is great but there aren't really that many comps that are coming to mind immediately for me in the larger professional sports world when it comes to yeah we're just gonna change the playing field basically we're gonna make an attempt to level the playing field based on your

physical characteristics uh gosh yeah i can't think of uh another instance where that is really true i'm trying to think and it needs to be true at in baseball like it would be bad if it weren't true because uh we would just end up either with a bunch of same size players or just a bunch of hitters getting pitches that they can't really do anything with and that won't really be fun for anyone so i don't see any great advantage to that. So it makes sense that it works this way. And I guess it dates back to the beginning of baseball when you could say, I want a high pitch or a low pitch, and you could sort of choose.

So maybe it comes from that sort of, or it just had to be this way because it just wouldn't work really any other way but it could i mean it could be like basketball where you just had the same zone for everyone and you would just have to have a lot of players who are the same size so i don't know it's sort of an exception i think and a good one i guess that they probably the rings aren't different heights in in gymnastics right they're probably the same i don't they don't actually know they don't lower them or probably right because they're probably the same gymnasts tend to be sort of a similar size and dimensions too i guess that the the places where it happens where you have something that's sort of instrumental to the sport that's

bespoke like that tends to be more on the equipment side than the field of play side, right? Like they don't make every cyclist ride the same size bike. They should do that. That would be very funny. Can we design the Tour de France all-star leg? We're going to get so many emails from cyclists. I don't mean to disrespect your sport.

I'm disrespecting myself by not knowing yours better. It's also, is it kind of unfair? Like pitchers have no input on the height or shape or size of the strike zone. Like if you're a big and tall pitcher, if you're Chris Young, then- We've got to come up with a better way of describing that. Yeah. But the mound height obviously doesn't vary depending on the pitcher height. And when it comes to the strike zone, Chris Young doesn't get to say, hey, I'm so tall and I'm on this mound. I'm way up here. It's kind of hard for me to throw a ball all the way down there. Maybe the strike

zone should be moved up so that, I mean, I guess maybe if the downhill plane matters, I guess you want it to be coming in at as steep an angle as possible. But I'm just saying the pitcher has no input on the size of the strike zone and the catcher and the umpire have no input on the size of the strike zone. It's really just the batter who gets to have the zone sort of shaped to his preference and uh it's just kind of weird and it's not even like i'm trying to think like even on a one-on-one sport like it's not that baseball is a team sport but it's sort of like an individual sport inside a team sport because you get these series of pitcher batter matchups that are almost like one-on-one but even you know like tennis or golf or whatever sort of one-on-one or one versus the field like

you still don't really get I mean you might get like the the t is moved back or up depending on your age group or whatever they might reshape the course but even then it's like for the group of players i think not for just one individual player in the field i suppose that it's good for the hitter to have something in the at bat be in their control though right because to be a hitter is to react right it's not like when you're the pitcher who's throwing the pitch or the catcher who has some input on what it's going to be and so i think that it's not like when you're the pitcher who's throwing the pitch or the catcher who has some input on what it's going to be and so i think that it's fine for there to be one aspect of the at-bat that is that is i mean not that they're sitting there being like bring it up a little bit

yeah scooch it down but that is reactive and dictated by i guess is a better way of putting that by the hitter in an interaction that is almost entirely reactive on their part. So I think I'm actually okay with that piece of it because it's nice for them to have a little something. Umpires would be better and more accurate, I suppose, right? If they were just used to the same zone for everyone so that they could judge what's a strike based on where it is in relation to their own body instead of having to adjust it from batter to batter or even

theoretically pitch to pitch if the batter is changing his stance or crouching more or less on a particular pitch he's supposed to adjust for that and it's a hard enough job to do anyway so if you have to be switching from pitch to pitch or even just batter to batter, that's tough. Whereas if you had exactly the same dimensions for everyone, then umpires would probably be better at their jobs. It would just be an easier job. mark in its favor but it is still dramatically outweighed by um what what it would mean for the bodies that fall on sort of the the tails of the bell curve so i say no yes and jeff says no too we're all agreed on no for this i do like jeff introducing this concept to his uh child at such a such a young age yeah that's terrific too and. It's terrific. I like that too.

And yeah, good question, 13-year-old Logan. Yeah, good job, Logan. We all agree that this is a horrible idea, but we enjoyed the thought experiment. And it's a clever question because it made me consider the fact that this is actually sort of unusual in sports, but it would not work nearly as well any other way. All right. So i think we have come to the end of this episode we have successfully answered some emails which was our goal it was our goal and uh we miss you bye bye for now sam yes i don't know man it's hard to talk about yeah i'm just sort of sad but uh sam still exists. He's still out there. We can G-chat him.

Not everyone. That's true. He's still on our emails for now. Yeah. So you can still send him emails if you want to tell him that you appreciate his podcasting or his writing. As noted earlier, he may or may not actually enjoy receiving those emails. Very hard to say at any given time. Yes.

actually enjoy receiving those emails. Very hard to say at any given time. Yes. I think there's a part of him that appreciates compliments, at least at certain times. So yeah, I think it might be a nice thing if you feel like it. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening.

The silver lining about this lineup change is that this time we had three co-hosts to start with. So when we lost one, we did not have to go searching for another one, whereas in the previous two cases, when we lost a co-host, at least temporarily in both of those cases because the co-host was starting a job, not ending a job, both of those times, that subtraction left one co-host, or one host and zero co-hosts, which caused the search for a replacement. Not necessary this time, thankfully. Speaking of one of those departed co-hosts, Jeff Sullivan, he tweeted in response to Sam's announcement tweet, Your work is always effectively filed and effectively styled. Whenever reading,

I effectively smiled. You have the imagination of an effectively child. Although your public response to this news is effectively mild, trust me when I say I'm effectively riled. Thank you for that bit of verse, Jeff. We miss you too. And thanks to those of you who have stuck with us and supported the show through multiple lineup changes and job changes. It's nice to know you're there as co-hosts come and go from time to time. It's kind of like different run environments in baseball.

Sort of nice to have a change, I think, from season to season. Even if there's a particular brand of baseball you prefer, if it were that same brand of baseball year in and year out, you might get bored of that brand of baseball. So I think a variety of voices and styles has probably been to the benefit of the show. As has your Patreon support, which Meg and I and Fangraphs will continue to welcome and appreciate. 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.

Steve Smeaton, Lex Potter, Graham Lesch, Francesca Osi, and Greg. 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 coming via

email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back with another episode early next week. Talk to you then. I ride a big white horse. He rides from Texas on a big white horse. Well, people look at me and say, Aurora, is that your horse? He rides from Texas on a big white horse.