Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1642: Supply and Pent-Up Demand

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Blue Jays missing out on several free-agent or trade targets, then answer listener emails about whether fans feel pride in their division/league, the history (and future) of fundamental changes to baseball technique, how many championships one would win if transported back to 2000 and appointed as GM […]

Almost my every dream came true Almost I heard you say I do But I hear now instead all those unkind words you say Oh, how close we were, almost Hello and welcome to episode 1642 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs, who just finished her chat with Fangraphs readers. And now we'll be chatting with me. Hello, Meg. Hello.

So I wanted to express my sympathy for Blue Jays fans for a second before we get to emails and a stat blast, for Blue Jays fans for a second before we get to emails and a stat blast because Blue Jays fans and the Blue Jays are having a pretty tantalizing offseason but also an agonizing offseason like the ratio of rumors to done deals has to be higher for the Blue Jays than any other team and I was thinking of this Wednesday because the Blue Jays signed their president and CEO, Mark Shapiro, to a five-year extension. And there are reasons to be pleased about that, I'm sure, but that's not really the move that Blue Jays fans have been wanting and waiting and hoping for the team to make. They want some big star free agent. And the Jays got the offseason started when they re-signed Robbie Ray to a one-year deal. But that's it. That is the only major league move they've made so far. And of course, there's plenty of time for them to make a major move or two still, because as we were saying yesterday, there are many attractive free agents still unsigned. But the Blue Jays came into this winter with pretty high expectations, which they set themselves. Like back in November, Ross Atkins, their GM, said,

much like last year when we were active and to categorize it as aggressive is relatively fair. We will do that again this year and continue doing it until we are in a position where we're contending year in and year out. And then in December, Shapiro reaffirmed that and he said, there's uncertainty in the budget, but not As it pertains to major league payroll He said whether it's four very Good players or two elite players Quote I'm a hundred percent

Confident we will get better So they probably still will But the clock is kind of ticking and I don't know if you've noticed but the Blue Jays Have been connected to just about every Player who has signed Or been traded and every player who is not yet signed but will be at some point i was just browsing the mlb trade rumors blue jays tag

and you have to click like more posts like 10 times to get to the beginning of the off season even though they haven't really done anything so just kind of running down the list and i hope i'm not missing anything here but the blue jays have been rumored to be talking to the Cubs about a Chris Bryant trade. They've been one of the most active teams in expressing interest in George Springer. That's been going on for ages now, and it's been like six or seven weeks since they were reported to have, quote, progressed beyond just talking with Springer, that means presumably over the shirt generally yeah right i did it man i didn't hold it back this time maybe it means they made some sort of offer i don't know but i'm sorry they've been connected to dj lemay hue supposedly they're super interested in him. They've been connected to Trevor Bauer, whom they met with or were said to be meeting with. What else? They were reportedly the runner-up in the Francisco Lindor sweepstakes. So supposedly they made a high-ceiling player offer deal, but it was players who were, on the whole, less major league ready than the players the Mets offered.

And so they didn't get Lindor. What else? They were interested in Hendricks, whom we talked about yesterday, signed with the White Sox. Hendricks is a former Blue Jay, and he lives near the team's training camp in Florida still. So just last week, it was reported that he he visited their complex Which seemed like it might be the Prelude to a deal but it wasn't As it turned out They made an offer to Sugano the great Japanese

Starter who decided to stay in Japan They also made an offer To Hason Kim before San Diego signed him and supposedly They made him a five year offer So they were really neck and neck in the running for both of those players with the Padres they also reportedly offered

Kevin Gossman a three-year $40 million-ish deal before he accepted San Francisco's qualifying offer so they've been in on everyone and if you're a Blue Jays fan you must have just been getting like alerts and push notifications just all offseason.

It's like, all right, it's happening. We're getting this guy. And then time after time after time, they've come in second or third or just missed out on those players. And so, you know, LeMahieu is still out there and Bauer and Springer are still out there. And I would guess that they would get at least one of those guys. But thus far, it's been sort of a Lucy Charlie Brown football situation for them. Yeah, it's shocking, if only because there hasn't been that much activity. Right. Yeah. And so for them to be, you know, so often left at the altar is terrible. I'm not

going to further that. But for them to so often lose out and seemingly by just a smidge is surprising because it doesn't seem like there's been that much to lose out on i think that ultimately a team that is motivated to improve through free agency is likely to get what it wants because you know it can spend it can just spend and they seem committed to doing that and there are still as you've noted a number of very um good free agents on the market who fit roster needs on their part. But yeah, it does have to be extremely frustrating for fans and for members of the Blue Jays front office who I'm sure are sitting there going, we're trying to do the thing that everyone says we should be doing.

We're trying to do it. Just let us. Right. Yeah. Like it has to be encouraging that they are trying to do this or at least that it's reported that are, because there have been previous winters when they weren't active and they weren't really maybe in the position to make that big push. And then last winter they got Hanjin Ryu, and it seemed like they would continue to do that. And they're trying. It really seems like they're trying, but it takes more than just the team being willing to sign a player,

being interested in a player. It also takes outbidding all the other teams that are trying to sign or trade for that player. It takes convincing that player to come to your team. So easier said than done, even if you are actually trying to do it. So I don't know, for the sake of Blue Jays fans, I hope that they get one of their targets at least just because that's an exciting young team and they've got a lot of players who are really fun to watch and obviously it's a competitive division and they need to keep pace or catch up with those other teams so yeah hopefully one of these days one of these dominoes that falls will be going to the blue jays well and i think it also takes free

agents being willing not only to come to your team, but to come to your team right now. And I think that when much of the market is still pretty tepid and frozen, it's unsurprising that things would take a little while even for the teams that are keen to be active. Because if you're a free agent and you're sitting there with your agent and agent, agent, and you're trying to sort out where you're going to sign, you want to have a complete sense of what your options are. And I imagine that that isn't sort of fully realized for a lot of guys right now because the market has been so slow. So I hope that their patience is rewarded because as you said, that is a good fun team. And I think that there are a lot of

pieces there that are really compelling. And we've said for a long time that, you know, what you need around that young core are some good role players and a couple more marquee stars. And it feels like they're pretty close to being in a position to, you know, really make a statement, even if they have to play in Buffalo again, which seems likely. Maybe that's the problem. I think that might be part of the problem. Yeah, there are various obstacles. I think all else being equal, it is probably a little bit harder for the Blue Jays to land a free agent. And some of it might be that Shapiro and Atkins are somewhat rigid in their valuations. They decide what they want to pay for a player and they won't budge beyond that. And sometimes to get the guy on the open market, you do have to pay a premium and

maybe more than your model suggests he's worth. That's the winner's curse, right? That's how free agency works. It's like Andrew Friedman has said, if you're always rational about every free agent, you'll finish third on every free agent. But there are other obstacles also. As you mentioned, yes, there's uncertainty about where they'll play in 2021 after being in Buffalo in 2020. There's just generally the hassle of playing in a different country from everyone else in MLB. It may be farther away from a lot of players' off-season homes than most other cities in the majors. There's a higher tax burden, I believe, generally in Canada.

There's the turf at the Rogers Center, although I know that they're getting new and improved turf for next season, but it's still not natural grass. So there are various reasons why they might have to sweeten their offer. And I think when they've landed players like Russell Martin or Hyunjin Ryu, I think they have offered like an extra year maybe, or at least it was reported that they did to land those guys so maybe they'll have to do that again and maybe I'm biased as a half Canadian and dual citizen but seems like a great place to live to me Toronto is beautiful you get your good health care and less gun violence and

less kovat and you can go see Sloan my favorite band in Toronto all the time at least when concerts come back. So I say free agents should be very interested in playing in Toronto. But yeah, it's tough. And maybe some of these players they missed out on, they'll be happy that they've missed out on. I mean, it's just the law of large numbers, I guess. Maybe one of these guys they almost signed will backfire for whoever did sign them and they'll feel like they dodged a bullet or something. Like maybe with Hendricks, like we talked yesterday about the Liam Hendricks signing and how he's been basically the best reliever in baseball over the last couple of years. And he's a former Blue Jay, too.

But also like it's relievers. But also, like, it's relievers and, you know, there's the B.J. Ryan precedent, which is probably still in the memory of some Blue Jays fans. And even Hendricks, like, as good as he's been recently, he was designated for assignment in 2018. And he pitched more in the minors than in the majors. So it's not like he's a sure thing. And that was one of the larger deals ever handed to a reliever. a sure thing and that was one of the larger deals ever handed to a reliever so you know maybe with some of these players you you feel almost relieved that you didn't get them but when you watch player after player after player go to other teams you got to feel like you're sitting on the sidelines and you must feel some envy so one of these days maybe it will be the blue jays with the press

conference at the end maybe they're apprehensive about the milk coming in, maybe it will be the Bouchers with the press conference at the end. Maybe they're apprehensive about the milk coming in bags. Oh, that could be it. Maybe they're like, I don't know what to do with the milk bag. I'm going to spill the milk bag. It's going to get all over me, all over the counters. It'll somehow still be in the fridge because it's where milk goes. Maybe they're afraid of the milk bags. Ben, what's up with the milk bags?

I don't know because despite being half Canadian, I've never actually lived in Canada. I've visited a bunch of times, but I cannot really explain the milk. So maybe the milk factor is underrated here. I hadn't considered that. I want to apologize to you for the emails we're going to get in response to this question. I'm really sorry. All right. Well, let's clear out our inbox to make room for those emails here. So Andrew says, I'm really sorry. perceive divisional or league pride in MLB and what could affect these types of feelings. In college sports, I think because the competitive environment is less structured, fans have incentive to prove that their conference is more legitimate or more competitive than its peers. As far as MLB, the format of the 2020 season may have helped with the potential for

regional pride and more frequent divisional matchups, but I imagine any change in fans' mindset was minor. So you probably know much more about college sports matchups, but I imagine any change in fans' mindset was minor. So you probably know much more about college sports than I do because I know next to nothing about college sports, but it doesn't seem to me that there's a whole lot of divisional pride, certainly, in baseball. I think we've talked about whether there's league pride before because there were those MLB ads where there would be a family that would have all of the teams from one league. They would be really into that league and we discussed the plausibility of that. But now that there are almost no differences between the Ivy League have a strong sense of league pride. pride in something that you're you're super stoked about going to an sec school it's really a

continuation of your own school pride more than it is you feeling like you want to get together with your your pals from you know other sec institutions and gang up on i don't know the acc i think that mostly like pac-12 fans we like to be mad at the officiating in the Pac-12, which is just universally sports but you know their their sense of sort of collegiality comes from the the academic prowess of their conference less so than the than the sporting prowess i often have have thought about this in the context of sec football because you know like the sec is its own it's its own special thing. And the quality of the teams there is pretty incredible. But I also think that what often happens when people from the SEC, we're going to get emails about this too, Ben.

We're going to get emails about this too. Just send them to Meg directly. Yeah, I'm so sorry. Maybe I'm wrong. Alabama knocked the snot out of Ohio State. It's okay, you guys. I'm not alabama knocked the snot out of ohio state it's okay you guys like i'm not saying that they're not good but sometimes when i see people getting excited about the sec they're like the sec rules and i'm like well you go to like oh i'm gonna have to say a thing that

i don't even know is true it's like you go to one of the less good football schools see how i avoided saying which one and what you really mean is that alabama is very good but you can be sassy about the sec because then it's inclusive of you and alabama so i think that part of it is um you know it's like a transfer of emotion to a broader thing that allows you to still feel pride and accomplishment and that's fine you know we should feel proud of stuff that's good and it's nice to have a sense of camaraderie with other people but i do love how quickly that dissolves as soon as you get back into sort of your own picky youn inter-school rivalries uh where it's like yeah yeah we're we're ganging up on the acc but i will you know throw a beer can at you in the parking lot if we're at a rivalry game so college athletics is

very fraught ben people have a lot of feelings about it. Yeah, I know. So I do not sense those feelings when it comes to baseball divisions. I don't know about you. I mean, there are cases like, I don't know, if you have a particularly weak or strong division in a certain year, like I don't know if there's like AL East pride or AL East superiority or something in one of those years when it's like Yankees and

Red Sox juggernauts and the Rays and the Blue Jays are good and like every team is good there are years when it's like clearly been the best or most competitive division and so if you're a fan of a team in that division maybe you think like wow our division is the cream of the crop or you pride yourself on having won that division because it's harder to do. But I don't know if you really feel any affiliation with the other teams in that division. If anything, you hate them. It's like the biggest rivalry. So I don't know that there's much to that. I could see like the opposite being the case. Like if it seems like a division is really weak one year, like a lot of the conversation about the Central divisions last

season, for instance, and say, you know, did Trevor Bauer deserve to win the Cy Young Award if you look at the quality of competition he faced or the AL Central too? And maybe that was easier last year because the divisions were more isolated. As the questioner mentioned here, it was sort of a unique case. more isolated as the questioner mentioned here it was sort of a unique case but other than that i can't really think of anything else because like i don't know it seems like regionally like is there a regional component to it like in college football conferences maybe are the teams actually clustered closer together just geographically than MLB teams in divisions tend to be where maybe there's at least some loose correlation in like sides of the country but often there can be quite a gap

between those teams in those cities so you don't really feel like oh we're part of the same region even I think that there is definitely some of that and then like you have like the big 10 which for whatever weird ass reason still has rookers in it which doesn't make a ton of sense to to anyone but yeah i think there is a it is a proxy in a lot of ways for a regional sense of pride right like we are southerners we are midwesterners we are west coasters we are you know whatever what have you so i think some of it's probably that but yeah i don't i don't see it much in baseball, except as you said, like when you're, it's much more often our guys are more skilled

because your guys play each other and you're all bad at baseball. Right. But apart from that, I don't think you see a ton of it. Yeah. Structurally, there just don't seem to be a whole lot of reasons to have this sort of pride. So that explains the lack of it, I think.

All right. Jonathan says, this is going to sound like a football question, but I promise it's a baseball question. In 1966, Pete Golgolak signed with the NFL's New York Giants out of the AFL and became the league's first soccer-style kicker, in contrast with the straight-on

style kickers that populated the league at the soccer-style kicker, in contrast with the straight-on style kickers that populated the league at the time. In 1986, the league's last straight-on kicker, Mark Mosley, retired. In just 20 years, a fundamental technique of the game had gone from universal to extinct without any deliberate intervention from the league, such as when MLB banned spitballs. The new way was simply better. such as when MLB banned spitballs, the new way was simply better. Is there any analog to this in baseball history,

or is there a change of this type that is in the process of happening or could happen in the future? So this is an interesting one. Yeah. Does anything come to mind for you? I guess knuckleballers are like the most, the thing that comes most immediately to mind in terms of a play style, where we're just seeing fewer and fewer knuckleballers as the years go on. I mean, I guess at some point we might see teams move away from the shift

as a defensive strategy, not because necessarily of a rule ban, but just because I think however effective or not effective you see it, and no matter where you fall on the spectrum from like Russell to, you know, the teams that do it all the time, it doesn't seem like it is a perfectly optimized strategy at the very least. So we could see some of that. Yeah, I guess that's a team level strategy more so than an individual stylistic or mechanical change. or mechanical change. And I guess, I mean, you could say any new pitch that is phased in or an old pitch that is phased out and falls out of favor, as you said, with the knuckleball.

But, you know, like the slider comes along and suddenly everyone's throwing sliders or the splitter or whatever. Like, you know, going back to the beginning of baseball and the progressive introductions of new pitches, that's still not necessarily the dominant thing. Like, it's not like every single pitcher throws that type of pitch and throws it all the time. And it's not necessarily the majority pitch. You know, it's not like the fastball has gone away. Like, there are fewer fastballs thrown now, or at least certain types of fastball sinkers especially. So we are seemingly heading toward a game where maybe fastballs will be in the minority of pitches. We're getting there, it seems like. So that could be an example. But I think maybe something, you'd have to go back quite a ways and maybe it's just because baseball has been around for a really long time. So I would guess that if you looked at like every sport, you might find that there is a most common point in a sports history

at which these really major changes get introduced. You know, something like the Fosbury flop in the high jump or something where it just changes everything. And it's so clear that that's superior that everyone starts doing it. So in baseball, I'm trying to think like we talked about, I think Sam wrote about a player who was like the first shortstop to really throw in the way that modern players do. And that changed the way that the shortstop position was played. And he had like a really quick transfer and just got rid of the ball quickly. And that was so long ago. We're talking 19th century. So you'd hardly even remember that it was ever anything different. And then there are cases where a rule changes. And I guess Jonathan is asking for examples where it's not so much that there was deliberate intervention like banning

spitballs or you know allowing pitchers to throw overhand or that sort of thing but I guess what comes to mind for me is maybe a change in hitting mechanics and swing for the fences and not choking up as much pursuing the home run which came about in part because of babe ruth and other players who showed how effective that was also because the ball changed and i guess you could say that that was mlb intervention even if it wasn't always entirely deliberate or they didn't always exactly know what the effects would be but that was a big part of why that happened you went from the dead ball to the lively ball which is i think also a part of why we're seeing more of the dead ball to the lively ball which is i think also a part of why we're seeing more of an uppercut swing these days and people swinging for the fences well

it's going along with the ball being very lively and it being very advantageous to hit fly balls so i don't know like you could say on a smaller level like maybe throwing up in the zone more often like there's definitely changes in pitch selection and pitch locations and all of that and catching technique has changed a bit because of framing more catchers trying to really get low and set up on one knee not as low as like Tony Pena but maybe lower than the average catcher used to be and I guess the Carter Capps hop step isn't going to catch on and revolutionize pitching, but pitching mechanics look different. Some pitchers just pitch out of the stretch and the fence to hitting the ball over the fence. But at that point, we're talking a century ago.

So baseball has been around for a long time. A lot of stuff has been tried. Yeah, I think that when you're further away from the big sort of milestone developments in your sport than like throwing the passes downfield, then you're just you're operating on the margins more often than not, which isn't to say that there can't be big advances, but as we've talked about a lot on this show, they, they, you know, a lot of the big stuff has, has been tried and then gone out of style and then come back into style, right? Like I talked about the shift. It's not as if that was

invented recently, right? So I think that it's just harder to come up with something entirely new and so yeah we we see a lot of tinkering around the edges and adjustment and and then we see guys go back right like how many hitters did we see try to adopt high launch angle swings and then some of them tinkered a little bit and the angle came back down slightly and so you know, it just gets, we do all this tinkering. Tinkers. Yeah. If we could think of a truly just landscape altering change. We wouldn't tell you guys. Yeah.

Or, I don't know, we would probably be brilliant or geniuses or we would do something useful with that information. If we knew that every player was doing something wrong and there were some way better way to play baseball, I'd be impressed with us for knowing that after no one else knew that after the extremely long history of baseball. So we are getting all this new data and it's definitely teaching us things about mechanics and things that were not known or recognized because you couldn't analyze them. So there will continue to be changes, absolutely. But I don't know if they would be enough to qualify for this kind of question. So I think there have been examples of this in baseball, but they may be behind us at this point. But I don't know. Maybe people will prove us wrong, and there's something that we're not even suspecting that will change everything we wouldn't never tell you we would just tell other people first yes and then we would tell you and people would go oh that ben and meg the short stop i mentioned to change the the way that that position worked by the way

is bobby wallace who is a hall Famer, although he's not really a household name. I'm just reading from one of Sam's Mike Trout tracker editions where he tracked which Hall of Famers Mike Trout had passed in career war, and here's what he writes about Wallace. He wasn't a terrible hitter or anything. It's hard for us to know what to make of hitting stats from such a profoundly different era, but his OPS was better than league average, and he was often in the top 10 in doubles or triples and twice in slugging percentage. But his legacy is as a defender, not just a great one, but an innovative one. He's generally credited with inventing the now standard continuous motion of fielding

and throwing. We've talked about Bobby Wallace before. Yes, we have. Yeah, it's been a while. So just refreshing people's memories. And here's a quote about Wallace. As more speed was constantly demanded for big league ball, I noticed the many infield bounders which the runner beat to first

only by the thinnest fractions of a second. I also noticed that the old-time three-phase movement, fielding a ball, coming erect for a toss, and throwing to first wouldn't do uncertain hits with fast men. It was plain that the stop and toss had to be combined into a continuous movement which seems so plain as i'm sure we said last time that it doesn't seem like anyone would have had to think about that like it seems like it just should have been apparent right away yeah you want to field the ball and throw in a continuous motion why Why would you not do that? But it took someone to

think, oh, that's a good idea. I should do that. And then to throw the way that we're all taught to throw and we all expect players to throw now. So that's the sort of thing that you can do fairly early in a sports history. It's like the basic fundamental actions still are maybe not optimized. And yeah, I don't know that there are any major innovations to be made in, say, throwing the ball across the infield right now. I want to note two things, and I might have noted these the last time we talked about Bobby Wallace, so our listeners will have to forgive me if I did. But I would like to note two things. The first of which is that despite changing the way the position was played he was

not inducted into the hall of fame until 1953 by the veterans committee so i find that kind of funny because he changed the position there is no mention of the innovation in his wikipedia bio there is now he did break some records in terms of how long he played the position he was the oldest shortstop to play a regular season game at 44 years and 312 days for a very long time until omar vaskel broke the record in 2012 and then i think we did mention this the last time he both managed and umpired later in his life which is just a very strange and cool resume but yeah this this big thing that he did that changed the sport that altered who plays shortstop and what they have to look like and how they're scouted and what they do

no mention of it in his wikipedia bio i find that outrageous yeah it is in his saber bio and yes look it's possible like that quote i just read is a quote from wallace about himself that that he is saying that he figured out how to throw so it's possible like i don't know if sam uh verified this or looked for additional supporting evidence like maybe wallace is exaggerating that he revolutionized the throw like humans have been throwing for a long time not necessarily necessarily baseball, but I mean, going back to hunting and gathering and throwing spears and such, like, it seems like the sort of thing that maybe humans would have figured out before Bobby Wallace. Like, you know, were, I don't know, the Neanderthals, like, not throwing right because Bobby Wallace wasn't around. So they were doing the old time three phase movement and

they were missing out on all sorts of prehistoric creatures that could have been dinner for them i don't know maybe he is singing his own praises in a way that is not justified by the facts but i like the story i like the idea that bobby wallace had to come along and teach everyone to throw it's amazing it's an incredible thing yeah i'm to claim that I revolutionized something that basic. I have to think about what it is, but I'm going to come up with something. There will be a quote that I can say about myself someday that I did something different. No one else had ever done it before. And future generations will just accept that at face value.

They'll say, oh yeah, Ben Lindbergh, he's the one who figured out how to walk. He revolutionized walking. He sat better than anyone else had ever sat before. I don't know what it'll be. I'll give it some thought, but I'm going to, I don't know, I'll create a Wikipedia page for myself, put it on there and see if it catches on so that that will be in my Saber bio someday. One time I was sitting in my chair and I sat on my foot long enough that when I got up to go get coffee, I fell right over. I think I revolutionized that. I just fell over, Ben. I'd forgotten how to walk.

Yeah, that's not really a change that everyone else adopted and decided to do, though. Not yet. Not yet. No, not yet. All right, continuing on let's answer one from mike who says through some unexplained occurrence you've been transported back to 2000 as the gm for the seattle mariners oh boy since you still remember baseball history you were able to draft and trade for future all-stars and hall of famers how many moves can

you make before you alter history in such a way that changes player outcomes how many championships do you win in 20 years so this is kind of a close cousin of a genre of question we have discussed before which is like if you transport a modern gm or or player to the past, how much better are they than everyone else? You know, if you take a modern GM who has all of this sabermetric knowledge and you put them a century ago, how much better would they be? And we've talked about all the ins and outs of that because you know a lot of things that others wouldn't have known, your new contemporaries would not know. that others wouldn't have known, your new contemporaries would not know. On the other hand, you wouldn't have access to all the data that you are used to today, at least not yet. But it seems like there'd be a big advantage there. This question, I guess, involves that question, but I think it's less about that. I think it's less about knowing the things that

GMs didn't know in 2000 in terms of sabermetrics, although that's probably part of it, but just knowing which guys are going to be good, which players are going to pan out. That alone set aside all the other advances and insights that we've gleaned in the past two decades just from knowing which players will be good or at least which players were good in your original timeline. How big an advantage does that give you? I think it gives you a pretty sizable one. Yeah, I think it's huge. I think it's pretty sizable.

I mean, I think that there are going to be some limitations to you being able to do whatever you want. Yes. Because, you know, like you still have to operate within the – it's like you're not going to tell anyone. Right. You're not going to tell anyone. I'm from the future because then they're going to say, how are you doing today, friend? And you probably don't get to run a baseball team. But so you can't disclose that you have that knowledge because people are going to think you're a little bit cracked. that you have that knowledge because people are going to think you're a little bit cracked. And if you make improvements to your team in the immediate term, some of the things that you might want to do, like say, take advantage of a guy who is still a first rounder, but is drafted too low, who you say, oh, I got to go get that guy. You might not be in a position to draft him because you might be better than your record would have been in the alternate timeline where like you're letting jack zarenzic run things for a really long time so you are going to be limited in some of the moves that you can make but you could do things

like like you could trade for fernando tatis jr yeah right for not very much in big league return right it's such a mean thing to say about you but i'm not wrong so you could do stuff like that right where you could look and say this guy is gonna be a superstar but he's tremendously he's underscouted or undervalued right now or if you know things about you know how to optimize spin and make pitches more spin efficient and you know what it means to have pitches that you know a it means to have pitches that you know a good four seamer at the top of the zone with high spin you can go back in time and like trade for garrett cole and then fix his fastball right so you could do stuff like that where

there is just a gap between what the industry knows not even necessarily you know sort of early sabermetric concepts but more modern advances that you know are coming and know are effective. And then you can go and get guys who aren't being sort of properly valued or whose development is perceived as stalled when it isn't really. They just need a different thing to unlock it. Or if you're just the Mariners, you just draft Mike Trout. Yes, right. So part of it is just drafting Mike Trout. And that makes up for a lot of this other stuff, right?

Yeah, that alone is huge. I think there's no excuse in this scenario for not building the best team ever and probably the best dynasty ever. I'm not going to say that you would win the World Series every single season. Right. Because even if you do build the best team ever there's still a lot of randomness and luck and health and all these things that goes into it and you might get upset at some point but there's really no excuse for not being basically the best team in baseball every year i don't think because there's it's just such a crapshoot. The draft is just normally such a crapshoot. And you're happy if you get just like a pretty limited haul from your average draft. And in this case, you know, where there just aren't a ton of really great players but like basically every one of your draft picks

should be a good big league player because you can find those guys if you know how it's going to turn out so at no point should you ever like have to have a lack of depth or call up a replacement player something like your triple a team should be stacked with like big leaguers because you could just hog them all. And I think it would just be such an enormous advantage. Now, as Mike said, like, yes, you would change history. And he said, how many moves can you make before you alter history in such a way that it changes player outcomes? Well, one, I mean, you would change player outcomes almost immediately, I think, because players go to different places and maybe they get hurt in a way that they wouldn't have gotten hurt otherwise,

or they do or don't work with a coach, and that changes things, or they are stuck behind someone that they wouldn't have been stuck behind. So it changes things immediately. But you know who has the potential to pan out and turn into a superstar. And really, even given the constraints and the limitations and the fact that you can't just acquire anyone at will at any time, like pretty much every move you make should be good. And you would probably be burned as a witch

before you would not be able to build a great team. Because really, I mean, just think of the percentage of players who are not top prospects is pretty high. This was something Jeff used to write about sometimes at Fangrafts. He looked at all the players who were worth three wins or better. And on average, it was like a third of them had not been on a top 100 list, and that included a lot of stars who were worth way more than three wins. As good as scouts are and prospect evaluators are, a lot of players miss, and a lot of players they missed out on pan out, and you should almost never miss. You might have some guys who you know in your timeline were great who get hurt and don't

turn out great or just whatever some circumstance in their life that you introduced would cause them to be not great. And how guilty would you feel if that were the case, right? Because if you know that so-and-so has the potential to be a Hall of Famer and then whatever you change in this timeline makes that player not a Hall of Famer and then whatever you change in this timeline makes that player not a hall of famer you probably feel pretty bad about that because you're the only person in the world who knows what that player could have been so there definitely be some guilt in this scenario but yeah um it should just be an absolute juggernaut every year and all the players would be cost controlled too so that like if you did want to

go out and splurge and spend on free agents which i guess you could do because you'd be yeah well that too right you can bid on the right free agents and you'd have the budget because you'd be winning the world series every year and unless that would just get boring because you're the perennial super team like probably you could uh afford you'd be drawing a lot of fans and selling a lot of tickets so but like you could acquire so many players just so cheaply because you'd be going after guys who weren't even prospects or were far away from the majors and just stockpiling them that you could probably build a great team and have like one of the lowest payrolls and so then you could just use that extra money to sign all the other

test players so really it would just be a total cheat code now there would be some downsides like for example there would be some babies that aren't born as a result of this because people would be in different places and they might not meet their spouses and while many major league players seem to be married to people who they've known since they were children not all of them are so you would alter the the course of several people's lives. There would be human beings who just don't exist, at least not in their current form as a result of this. The Mariners would not have spent the third overall pick

in the 2005 Major League Draft on Jeff Clement, for instance. I don't know if this was a nice question. I take it back. this was a nice question. I take it back. It's an intriguing question. But yeah, you could run. I mean, like, now I'm just looking at all of them. Yeah, don't do that to yourself. You don't.

You don't. There would not be a Mariners playoff drought. Let's put it that way. TJ Peterson. I mean, that didn't work out. Mike D'Anino didn't't either but we're not talking about that because we have affection for him it wasn't his fault you wouldn't have messed up Mike

Zanino. That's true yeah you know you wouldn't have done that you wouldn't have been like we have to hurry to get this guy to the majors because you just be a good team so you wouldn't have to rush him along who knows what Mike Zanino could be in this alternate timeline where you have perfect information about every player who is good. Yeah, and there would be a bit of a butterfly effect.

So you would change certain things, and the more time went on, probably the less accurate your predictions would be. Within a span of 20 years, maybe not that much. Most of the people who would have been born probably would still be born. I don't know. Sam and I talked before, I think, about our differing beliefs about the butterfly effect. And he believed that it would change everything more quickly than I thought. But, you know, if you start bringing people to cities where they would not have been and they become superstars in certain places and

not other places and maybe they inspire the next generation of players to get good and if they're not in a certain place at a certain time then they don't do that so there would be kind of a cascade of changes and so you would be i think a little less able to predict these things after a decade or two because you would have totally changed the course of baseball history. But I think within that time frame, you would still be pretty good because if we're talking about 2000, like the great players of today had already been born then. So, you know, it wouldn't be such a dramatic change in that span of time. But you might also just break baseball. You might just ruin the sport because you would build just such a titan that it would ruin the sport. Like you might have to intentionally tank in a sense. Like you might have to tie one hand behind your back in some way because if you took full advantage of this knowledge, A, people would suspect that you were doing something supernatural which you would be frankly i guess at least according to our current understanding of physics or how to manipulate

physics so you might have to just you know take your foot off the pedal just to remain in this job and not be imprisoned for being a wizard or whatever. But also, you might just ruin the sport because if you can get all the best players with this foreknowledge, then there just won't be a lot of suspense even given the inherent randomness of baseball. So you might have to make it look good and not really take full advantage of this information. I think that you would be under investigation as a cheater all the time.

Yes. I think that you would be under investigation as a cheater all the time. Yes. of, you know, spin efficiency. I'll go back to that as an example, that you are imparting to members of your organization earlier than other people, eventually, they're going to go get jobs, and they're going to go to other front offices and sort of history will proceed along the path that it would have anyway. But if some of the stuff you know, is just this guy is good, and the source of your knowledge is not the result of tweaking a delivery or a batting stance, but just that you know he's good, that doesn't come from anywhere but your weird time travel brain. So I think that people would assume that you were poaching information in some illegal, nefarious way, or that you are a wizard.

Because we famously assume people are wizards in 2020. We're like, that guy wizard yeah do we put people in jail for being wizards but i don't think that we've made that a crime i hope not i hope that's not i hope wizarding is not a crime here yeah or or witching that's not how you say that but you know what i mean i'm i'm gonna observe that when i stack the chat and the pod back to back i'm a little punchy yeah i mean you get questions like this it's hard not to be but yeah this is not quite like the the back to the future scenario which is when sam and i talked about the butterfly effect before where biff gets rich because he has the sports almanac and he knows

which teams are going to win and we talked talked about, well, how accurate would that actually be? Because he'll start changing things and maybe the scores and the outcomes will change. This, I think, is a little bit harder to change because, again, it's just like, who has the athletic talent and when will they be born and where? And I don't know how much you could actually sway that stuff in the span of 15, 20 years. So, yeah. And the other insights and knowledge that you had, as you were just saying, that stuff would disseminate the knowledge about how baseball

works. But if you don't tell anyone about what you know and the fact that you're from the future and that you know which players are going to be good, that at least would not travel. That would remain proprietary information. So no way for anyone else to exploit that really. How many of those moves do you think you would have to do before your staff and your ownership group is just like, yeah, let Meg do it. She's got a good sense for these things because some of the moves would be obvious or at least within the realm of something that is feasible right like we'll take the trout example you know even if we don't believe every team in baseball that isn't the angels that they were they were gonna draft him next really he was at the top of their board

but people had a general sense that mike trout was talented their reservations about how talented clearly precluded them from drafting him earlier but he he wasn't like, you know, he wasn't taken in the seventh round. He was still a first round pick. But there would be guys who you would say, right, Fernando Tatis Jr., right? I saw him on the backfields. Like, we got to go get that guy. a savant you fall is probably going to determine how able you are to actually act on that knowledge because you might be proposing some really radical stuff that people are just not used to and don't believe. And so I wonder how long you'd have to be right either with guys who you bring into your

own organization or who your organization sees sort of thrive elsewhere before they'd be like, we should start listening to that guy. Yeah. Well, after a certain point, you wouldn't even need a staff. I don't think you'd need one. You might want to employ people or you might want to keep up appearances and make it look like you're not just doing it off the top of your head, but you don't actually need scouts.

I don't know that you need like statistical analysts like you know everything you know more than everyone else you are the best possible scout in all multiverses so i you could just uh it would be a one-person show if you wanted it to be and then you wouldn't even have to listen to any dissenting opinions yeah if you didn't want to but yeah it would be hard to prove. How would you demonstrate that you had this information? If you were not just automatically the GM, if you had to get the GM job, how would you prove to an owner, yes, you should hire me because I know everything that's going to

happen? Because as you just said, you can't say that. You can't get that job if you say yes i just came from the future and so i happen to know which players are going to be good you would have to convince them that you do have great predictive powers but without disclosing the reason why so i don't know what the best way to do that would be like would you just uh publish publicly like be the the bill james and publish your own abstract and just make a whole lot of predictions about the coming season that you know will turn out to be true and then at the end of that season you'll say look i was right

about everything hire me and maybe that single season would be enough to convince someone to give you a job or do you try to get an entry-level position and then start sending memos? Hey, we should send this guy. I bet that he will have a great year this year. And then he does, and then you quickly get promoted. So that's a little bit of a hurdle. How do you apply this information, even if you have it? Yeah, it would not be a frictionless reality that you are faced with,

but I think that you are right to say that the upper hand you have would be so, so significant that it would be almost embarrassing if you didn't manage to win a couple of World Series along the way. Oh, yeah. You better win more than that, I think. Although no one would know that but you. Yeah. So it would be fine. And would it be satisfying in any way for you? Not really, right? I mean, would it be fun?

Because you know everything already, and therefore you know that you're working with just a stacked deck in your favor. So your fans might not know that, but for you, what sense of accomplishment would you actually feel? I don't think I would feel very much. On the one hand, you raise an excellent point. But on the other hand, literally Jeff Clement, Ben, I would not feel as if I had done anything particularly savvy or smart, apart from applauding my own good memory, I suppose.

Although, as you said, you still have to implement implement some stuff so it's not like there's nothing that you have to do but you know if i could bring joy to friends and family that's its own accomplishment even if it's sort of ill-gotten but is it like is there a victim in this isn't isn't it a victimless crime because just think of all the rule five draft overflow you would have people would be like wow the rule five has really changed all these guys are excellent that's true you know i guess the overall talent level in the league would be higher because unless you purposefully don't go after more players than you can employ like if you do just stockpile all the good players that you possibly can't acquire there will be more of them than you can put on your roster. And so they'll just all be stuck in your minor league system.

And eventually, yeah, they'll get rule fived and everyone will draft players from your system because they know that you have a perfect or near perfect record when it comes to projecting players. And so eventually, I don't know how many years it would take, but maybe after 20 years, like the entire league would basically be populated by the players you picked. And I guess at that point, you know, the advantages or the effect is diluted because like even today, we don't necessarily have perfect information about the present players and and so you couldn't maybe make the league as a whole a lot better because you only know which

players did pan out and they were major leaguers it's not like you're taking non-major leaguers and making them major leaguers but i don't know i wonder whether there would be some ripple effects there where the league as a whole would just get more competitive by poaching players from your system or copying you as quickly as they could and then that would change things too but not so much that you wouldn't still win every year so yeah you'd be the savior of seattle except that seattle wouldn't know that you spared them years and years of heartbreak and not making the playoffs. And meanwhile, you'd be depriving all the other teams and fan bases that in our timeline made the playoffs instead of the Mariners.

Well, here's the thing about that though, Ben, which is that the Mariners were really bad before like the late 90s and early 2000s. So they wouldn't know the run of futility, the recent run of futility that I had saved them from, but they would be like, wow, don't have to go back. Don't have to go back to those kingdom days. We can enjoy the heady highs of Safeco. I wonder if T-Mobile still ends up being the new sponsor if they're forever winners. I don't know.

You don't need a ballpark sponsor i don't think you're you're making as much money as you want in this scenario i'm pretty sure i just wonder though you know what is my identity not only as a baseball fan but as a human being if baseball is perpetually fun yeah who am i ben if it is fun maybe it would be like a monkey's paw sort of scenario where you want the opposite of what the Mariners have gone through and instead you make the playoffs and you win so many games every year that it's just not fun for you anymore.

And you wish that there were some frailty to the team so that you could appreciate it when they get good. And you've just never experienced that. So it might be too far on the other end of the spectrum. We've just never experienced that. So it might be too far on the other end of the spectrum. Yeah, I think it's fine to just plod along with other teens doing well. And then hopefully we have a new day that is the result of less supernatural planning and machinations. I think I'm comfortable going with that.

Okay. Can I give you a stat blast? Yes, please. And analyze it for us in amazing ways Here's today's stat blast Alright, so this stat blast won't be that stat-filled But here we go I saw this article on Wednesday that was published by NPR. It's an excerpt from the Planet Money newsletter, and it's titled, What 1919 Teaches Us About

Pent-Up Demand. And the premise, basically, is that there was a lot of pent-up demand during the prior pandemic that then expressed itself in an outpouring of spending and enthusiasm after that pandemic. And so that augurs well for the present or the short-term future because people who've been cooped up for so long because of the coronavirus just might come out in droves and do all sorts of activities. It's like we were talking about on our previous episode. We want ballparks to be full again when it's safe. We want to get back to the park and see games in person.

And probably a lot of people, one would think, feel that way. So it's making the case that there was this demonstrable effect in baseball after 1918 and the influenza virus. So I'll just read here. Overall, the war and the pandemic slashed MLB game attendance by over half from what it was in the previous season. That's World War I, of course. By 1919, the war and the pandemic were over, and a tidal wave of baseball fans swelled into stadiums. Game attendance more than doubled from a little less than 3 million in 1918 to about 6.5 million in 1919. It's a classic example of what economists call pent-up demand

after being deprived of being able to do something when the constraints are lifted, whether because of the end of a recession, a war, or a pandemic, people ravenously consume what was previously out of reach. Now with light beginning to show at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, the words pent-up demand are echoing throughout The business world. The CEO of JetBlue Says pent-up demand for travel will Help his company soar back to profitability

Executives at Marriott claim people Will come rushing back to the company's hotel Rooms. According to a recent Analysis by AlphaSense A company that uses artificial intelligence Technology to sift through securities And exchange commission filings, event transcripts, and other business documents. Use of the term pent-up demand is at an all-time high.

Executives in industries devastated by COVID-19 clearly want investors to believe that they're on the verge of a roaring comeback. And some evidence suggests they may be right. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the national savings rate has jumped during the pandemic. So people may have extra cash to burn on big trips, fancy cocktails and Broadway shows. And man, do people miss going out. And then it cites some polls that say that Americans miss doing all these things that they don't get to do anymore. And there's also some evidence from other countries that have gotten the pandemic under control and their industries have bounced back. But I'm curious about this in a baseball context, because if, as this article posits, there was this big pent-up demand for baseball and it came roaring back in 1919 and there was a huge attendance boost, then that would be relevant now for baseball's future because we've been talking about the economics of baseball and fewer games and fewer fans in the stands and how that's affecting the free agent market and everything else. And so if this were true, if there's been a big pent-up demand for

baseball, then we could expect that maybe attendance will get a big boost whenever that happens, whenever we actually are post-pandemic and people feel safe coming out again, which may not be this year. Maybe it'll be the year after, but eventually. So I wanted to sort of investigate whether this claim holds water. And on a surface level, it's true. Like the stats cited in the article are accurate according to baseball reference. So in 1918, there were 3031 fans per game people came flooding back into ballparks. So great news for MLB in 2021 or 22 or whenever. However, I'm not sure that I really buy this for a few reasons. One, this was not really an unprecedented level of interest.

So it's not as if attendance went up to levels that had really never been even rivaled before because of this pent-up demand it's really just that it went back to what it was prior to world war one more or less like yeah technically it was a record number of fans per game but by like 11 fans per game that was the record so like in 1909 there were 5,831 fans per game. That was the record. So like in 1909, there were 5,831 fans per game. In 1919, there were 5,842. So, you know, essentially indistinguishable. In 1908, it was 5726. So there had been previous years where there was just as much interest and just as much attendance. And in those seasons, there were even more games played than there were in 1919. So it wasn't a scarcity effect that was causing that. So it's not as if this was really unprecedented by any dramatic degree.

So that's part of it. And then also, post-1919, attendance kept going up. It went up to 7,391 in 1920, and it stayed in the 7,000s or 8,000s throughout all of the 1920s. So it's hard to pin that on pent-up demand. Like did the pent-up demand linger for decades? You know, people were still getting this out of their system. Or was it just that there were other factors that were leading to increased attendance and that continued to sustain that increased attendance long after this dip in 1918. So I emailed a couple people.

I checked with John Thorne, the official historian of Major League Baseball, and he responded. He says, I don't buy the pent-up demand theory either. First, the influenza epidemic barely affected baseball attendance in 1918, as the scheduled games managed to dance between the raindrops miraculously. Second, as you note, per-game levels were merely restored in 1919 to prior levels. The 1918 attendance was diminished by concerns about the war, some measure of consumer privation, and perhaps the reluctance of able-bodied men to show up at the ballpark when they should have been engaged in war work. A general psychological malaise in 1918 may have played

into lowered attendance too, as it could for 2021 before nearly universal vaccination takes hold, but now you have me speculating about the future, not my strong suit. I also checked with Jacob Pomeranke of Sabre, who has been on the show before. We talked to him about the 1919 mask game that was played, and he's been on to talk about the Black Sox. He's an expert on that scandal, so he knows a lot about this period. And I asked him if he bought this pent-up demand theory, and he said, sort of, but not because of pandemic and or economic reasons, since there were no restrictions on fan attendance in 1918. The biggest reason attendance soared in 1919 is because all the star players who had left their team for military service, such as Ty Cobb and Eddie Collins, or defense industry jobs, Shoeless Joe, etc., came back to play. Which, now that I think about it, is a pretty obvious point.

Doesn't really apply to 2020 and 2021 Like there were a few players who opted out But not so much that that would Suppress attendance if there had even been Attendance and he continues That's the same reason MLB attendance soared In 1946 too

When Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller and Ted Williams And Hank Greenberg all came back from World War II. And he continues that the Babe Ruth saved baseball myth is pernicious and not remotely true. That's not why the attendance continued to increase after 1919. He says the reality is baseball was doing just fine before and after that pesky war business got in the way. Ruth certainly helped drive more fan interest, but he isn't the reason why so many non-Yankees teams enjoyed record-breaking attendance between 1919 and 1924, too. a good time economically. And, you know, prior to the depression, you had a good economy. You had,

I mean, for the most part, you had population increasing, more people who could go to the game. And Jacob says the roaring 20s roared for baseball in all the same ways as it did for everything else in American society. And yes, a carefree post-war attitude, the pent-up demand part was a factor in that environment too. But I'd say it was the end of the war, not the pandemic that really was the driver there. You can't separate the 1918 slash 1919 pandemic from the war for better or worse, just as we won't ever be able to separate the 2020 to 21 pandemic from the right-wing US global political insurgency. So I think when you put it all together, it's encouraging in the sense that things did bounce back more or less right away, like you got back to previous levels. And so that suggests that perhaps when it is safe to go back to ballparks, people will go back to

ballparks and there won't be a big hangover effect. However, I don't necessarily think that it will mean that we will reach stratospheric heights of attendance or that some of the recent downturns in attendance, which remember when we were all fretting about that? What does it mean that there were a million fewer fans or whatever back in those days when there were any fans at all. Those were nice problems to have in retrospect, but I don't know that just the pent-up demand will necessarily restore attendance to a previous peak or a new record. So some reasons to be encouraged, but also I think some reasons to be skeptical about this being an enormous post-pandemic attendance boost, because there are just a lot of factors that

contribute to attendance and the economy is a big one and it remains to be seen what the economy will look like later this year or next year if people are still out of work they're not going to have the disposable income to go to games yeah i i i think that your skepticism is warranted i do think that people will feel very good to be back at the ballpark when they're able to be there safely. But I think that we have a sort of understanding of what the natural limit of that sort of surge in pent-up demand. As an aside, pent-up demand stopped having any meaning in what you were saying about a third of the way through because you had to say it so many times. And that is not a criticism of you, but simply what happens when a certain word is repeated over and over again and you're like is this a word what is english don't understand i think we have a sort of understanding of what the sort of outer bound of attendance might be

now i don't have trouble believing that there will be a small percentage of people who are like wow i really enjoyed watching baseball at home while the pandemic was going on. And it's been a while since I've been to the park, so I'm going to get out there because boy, won't it feel good. But I would be more receptive to the idea of there being a meaningful and sort of sustained surge that resets our baseline expectation of what attendance looks like if we had any kind of evidence that in the course of

the pandemic as folks were home we created a bunch more new baseball fans and i don't think that we really have any sense that that's true if anything the ratings don't seem to bear that out so i think your skepticism is warranted and we don't mean that to say that it won't feel great to be back at the park but oh yeah i don't think that it's going to represent anything other than at least in the long term sort of a return to the the levels that we have seen before and i i would be interested and i guess the comp for this is less the return for more than folks coming back from the the strike seasons although i don't think that the sort of acrimony over the summer is is the same as it was in any of the strike shortened years but you know there also are

going to be people who are like that all seemed very unsavory last year maybe i'm gonna take a little break from the sport so yeah right hannah kaiser wrote recently she talked to a bunch of fans who just sort of stopped paying attention to baseball in 2020 and there are a lot of reasons to do that many of which had nothing to do with baseball so maybe that won't stick beyond this year for some of them but for others it might because you go without something for a year and you realize you don't need it yeah although i will say i don't mean to sound fancy or braggadocious when i say this but i did you know i did have one press box experience in 2020 and it was weird and it was definitely different and i don't say this like i thought there should have been fans there but ben gonna swear felt fucking great

felt fucking great to be there so for the folks who return, when we're able to do it in a way that is safe, it's going to feel so good. You're going to feel so good. And I am delighted for each and every one of our listeners to get to experience that because I didn't think that the feeling of it being good would be able to overcome the weirdness or my sort of trepidation about being there and whether it was the right thing to be there. But it sure did.

Felt awesome. So I cannot wait for everyone to get to experience that safely because it's going to really it. I think it'll move you in a way that you're kind of surprised by. Yeah, I'm looking forward to feeling that feeling myself. Well, I'll just be reduced to like raving about the crack of the bat and the green of the grass. And that first glimpse you get of the field, all the cliches about baseball and going to baseball games, we'll all actually feel them again.

Yeah, the pros will be deep purple for a while there. And I hope that you will all just bear with us when that happens because it won't be an affect. It'll be very sincere, which might make it worse. But yeah, it's going to be a rough couple weeks there while people kind of recalibrate to normal again. But yeah, it's going to be great. Anyone who's felt like the discourse about baseball has been

too negative over the past year hopefully not mind if it becomes too positive yeah there you go hopefully it'll equalize it yeah it'll result in some some much needed balance in the way that we talk about the sport so all right maybe we can cram in one quick one here this is from thaddeus say major league baseball holds off on adding the DH To the National League for at least one more season But in an attempt to dissuade potential Dissent, they agree to give NL pitchers an advantage to compensate

NL starting pitchers And only NL starting pitchers would be allowed To use metal bats when hitting Would this be enough Of an advantage to raise the pitcher hitting floor Would it be worth it to then potentially start a better hitter as your pitcher in the hopes of eking out more offense obviously an otani or mckay would be immensely valuable but with the likes of lorenzen or bum

garner become notably more valuable probably not he answered his own question he just says probably not it didn't even there's no period at the end of that just probably not i appreciate that just asked and answered but we will answer it anyway do you agree with that yes i think that probably not is the right answer i don't think that how do i want to say this i think that the issue lies more in um pitch recognition than it does in sort of contact quality, although contact quality is also largely an issue. So no, I don't think that it would make a huge difference for the average hitter and even the guys who we think of

as good major league hitters who are pitchers. They wouldn't crack the lineup as as just a hitter necessarily but um no and there's no way it would be worth making a hitter pitch so that they could use a metal bat i mean it would be a big advantage for a real hitter to use a metal bat yeah but it would be a huge disadvantage for them to have to pitch, except for a very exclusive, limited number of players. So, yeah, I don't think it would equalize things or come close to it. It would help. I mean, there would be some difference.

Pitchers would be a little less impotent at the plate. But as you said, a big part of the problem is that they just can't hit the ball. And I don't know that a metal bat would help them do that. Like pitchers struck out in 43.5% of plate appearances in 2019 compared to 23pitcher hitters did and that was in 2019 and so after a year of not hitting and just uh general increases in strikeout rate it would be even more extreme so if you restored pitcher hitting in 2021 like pitchers are going to be striking out close to half the time and i don't know that a metal bat would really help like I I guess in the sense that maybe the bats are lighter like maybe you could have a more contact oriented I guess it depends like what the rules are if they have to be a certain weight so that that's comparable

at least and you're not getting a huge advantage when it comes to getting the bat on the ball and the big advantage comes from what happens after you hit the ball. But yeah, it's just a problem if you're starting out from whiffing or striking out in half of your plate appearances. That's just like half of your plate appearances where the bat basically doesn't matter. You could be holding just about anything and it wouldn't really make a difference. And then a lot of the other balls in play are bunts or weekly hit balls that yeah like you'd probably get more balls through the infields but i just don't think it would be a really meaningful difference like they would not rival

real legitimate hitters like it would still be very clear that they were a cut below even the defense first positions. Right, right. Oh, gosh. It would be – I would enjoy the visual though. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I would enjoy the visual of Madison Bumgarner with a metal bat. Yeah.

Talking about that feels right. I don't know why. The auditory component of it too, like the metal bat ping can maybe be a bit annoying if it's every hitter, but like that would be kind of a cool thing to separate the pitcher plate appearances from all the others. Like usually when the pitcher's at the plate, you sort of tune out, you know, it's like, oh, probably nothing's going to happen here. And the opposing pitcher's not even trying as hard generally. And this is just boring. and the opposing pitchers not even trying as hard generally, and this is just boring. But if you had that, like, middle bat, that's at least kind of intriguing,

because, like, every now and then a pitcher would get a hold of one and would hit a ball just an extraordinary distance, right? Like, there are some pitchers who have power, but, like, you know, pitchers hit home runs occasionally, and you would at least see them hit like probably the longest home runs. Like I assume that probably, do you think a pitcher would hit the longest home run hit in MLB in a given season? Like even farther than, you know, the longest John Carlos Stanton or Aaron Judge, Homer, whoever hits the longest? I don't know. I don't know. I guess I'd have to look up the difference that a metal bat makes to how far the ball carries because, you know, pitchers occasionally hit a ball a long way. Sure.

And if they were using a metal bat, it would go a good deal farther. I just, I don't know. I'll have to look up what the sort of booster or the exchange rate is there. I like this as a new entry point for you watching more college baseball, Ben. Yeah. Get excited about those metal bats. You know where they have a lot of those. Yeah, you could watch them anytime you want. They're out there. All right. Let's see. I just looked up the longest home runs hit by pitchers in the StatCast era, so since 2015. And the longest one was hit by John Gray in July 2017, 467 feet. That's Coors Field, of course, but he really crushed it. It's odd because that's the only home run he's ever hit in the major leagues. He's a terrible hitter.

He's hit 087, 136, 123 in 231 plate appearances. That's a negative 49 WRC+. But that one plate appearance was pretty impressive. And the longest home run hit by any hitter that year was Aaron Judge, 496. So only 29 feet farther than Graze. It wouldn't take that much. The longest homer hit by a pitcher not in Coors is 455 Taiwan Walker, also in July 2017. It occurs to me now though, because you brought up college baseball, they really deadened the bats there so that they are more durable than wooden bats, but they don't behave all that differently. So I think it really depends on the specifications of the bats and the

coefficient of restitution and all of those other qualities. With some kinds of metal bats, the ball might not go farther at all, but with others, it would go a good deal farther. Although I guess with that kind, you would also hit the ball harder, and then that could be a safety issue. But you'd really need to know the specs to answer this question. I always forget, by the way, the term, the name for the term that you were referring to earlier when you said that pent-up demand stopped sounding like a word. Yeah, what is that?

It's semantic satiation. Oh, that's delightful, but very hard to say. Yeah, I always forget it, and I have to look it up every time. I'm going to remember it this time. Semantic satiation. Oh, that's delightful, but very hard to say. Yeah. I always forget it and I have to look it up every time. I'm going to remember it this time. Semantic satiation. Satiation is a hard word to say. We both struggled. It's like, why didn't we come up with an easier way to say that? Right. It's, you know, language in the brain is such a funny thing because it's like those words stop to have meaning when you say them out loud too many times, but then your brain is able to like figure out what a word is based on context clues and proximity of letters together when something is misspelled, which is like a very cool brain thing. Although real bummer for you as an editor, just for me as an editor, I guess is what I should say.

remember that term either maybe because i have said it out loud exactly once when i said it out loud just now because it's hard to say say satiation satiation i sound like i'm affecting an accent and i'm not i just don't know how to say that word no that doesn't sound like that's a real word so yeah all right well i had a lot of good emails that we didn't get to today so maybe we can do another email episode sometime soon because it's been a bit. So we should get to some other good ones. Thanks to everyone for continuing to send them in. Agreed. Okay, that'll do it for today. Quick follow-up to our discussion the other day about the renaming of Miller Park to American Family Field. We were saying that even though the corporate sponsor changed, we don't necessarily have to change how we refer to the park. And listener Emil wrote in to alert us to a story about the village of West

Milwaukee, which will also be sticking with the Miller Park name on Miller Park Way, which is a highway just east of what will now be American Family Field. The West Milwaukee village president said the naming rights for the stadium could change back, could change into something entirely different, and that's one reason we weren't going to play the game of trying to rename the road every time they rename the stadium. He also said, when you look at the fact that it's been Miller Park Way for 20 years now and that's how people know it, that's how people recognize it regardless. Evidently, the Brewers requested that they change the name to Brewers Boulevard, which seems like a pretty good compromise, and the city of Milwaukee agreed, but the village of Milwaukee did not. At least for now, they are sticking with Miller Park Way.

By the way, for anyone who wants more information about the Canadian milk bags Meg alluded to earlier, I've done some research. I have that info for you now, courtesy of a piece published by Eater in 2019. Roughly half of Canadian milk consumers consume milk via the milk bladder, Roughly half of Canadian milk consumers consume milk via the milk bladder, including 75-85% of Ontario residents. I'm quoting now Canadians aren't the only dairy drinkers repping sack milk. People in India, China, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina, Hungary, South Africa, and even some parts of the U.S. drink milk in bags, which some argue is a more economical and environmentally friendly packaging style. So it sounds as if the U.S. is the outlier when it comes to milk consumption, if anything. You may be wondering why that is.

Well, Eater has answers. In the early half of the 20th century, when refrigeration became mainstream, towns in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and elsewhere were supplied by milkmen who delivered glass bottles of fresh milk to customers' doorsteps. The bottles were functional and reusable, but also heavy, breakable, and costly to clean. Rudimentary versions of lightweight milk cartons began to emerge around 1915 and became more commonplace with the emergence of Swedish company Tetra Pak in the mid-1960s. Lightweight plastic milk jugs also entered the market in the mid-60s, promising to increase milk's shelf life. However,

the plastic innovations didn't stop there. Around 1967, American chemical company DuPont introduced the thin polyethylene milk bag, known as a pillow pouch, to the Canadian market as an alternative to glass bottles. The company, in collaboration with Guaranteed Pure Milk Company, tested pouches in Montreal and Vancouver. Canada's rush to transition from the imperial measurement system to the metric system in the 1970s forced packaging companies to scramble to change their container sizes from pounds to liters. Plastic milk bladders adapted more easily to the new metric standards and thus gained an edge in some parts of the Canadian market. So Americans have resisted the milk pouch just as they have resisted the metric system. And as it turns out, those things may be related.

So now you know. And if you're a free agent considering signing with a team in Toronto, don't fear the milk pouch. It can be a bit unwieldy, but there are ways around that. I will link to this piece for anyone who wants more information about milk pouches. What other baseball podcast helps you learn more about milk pouches to ensure that you continue to receive this kind of quality baseball adjacent information? 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 ryan mclaughlin jason bowers jonathan doster mick reinhardt and brett thanks to all of. 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. You can keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com

or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Depending on developments in the next couple of days, maybe we'll do back-to-back email episodes. So send us some questions. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back to talk to you a little later this week. When you were mine Back baby Back in time

Wanna go back When you were mine