Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1672: Untitled Goose Gamesmanship

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Isiah Kiner-Falefa being mad at Meg (sort of), a billboard in Boston about Mookie Betts, MLB’s renewed attempts to crack down on foreign-substance use, and what an NHL referee oopsie says about umpire makeup calls and automated strike zones, then answer listener emails about whether the season preview […]

I make a tone now, who am I? A magician, a maker, who am I? Who am I? Hello. Meg, you've been busy all week with positional power rankings, and I'm sure most people are really enjoying your work and the work of your staff, but Ranger Shortstop Isaiah Kiner-Falefa is not one of those people. He's very upset with us. He was ranked, and he was ranked poorly. Yeah, so for those of you whose lives are not bound up in the fate of the positional power rankings like mine are like

we we rank every position 1 to 30 every team gets a ranking and there are a lot of ways to do season previews but we like this one because it lets us go really deep in each position and kind of puts each position in its league-wide context and tells you all sorts of good stuff and and the rangers are ranked uh they're ranked dead last uh in last in the shortstop rankings. And, you know, part of that is that shortstop is just a really deep position. There are a lot of stars. And some of that is that they are not projected to be particularly good at the position, headlined by what Jason has determined is 623 plate appearances by Karnar Falefa.

And his fielding projection is quite poor. I would note that he is not expected to hit particularly well either. But his fielding projection is quite poor. And he took umbrage. He took offense at this and tweeted that, This is going on my locker. I wonder who led the AL in defensive war last year. And I would just say to Isaiah

and to any of the Rangers fans listening, we're aware of some of the limitations that projection systems have, which is why Ben Clemens opened his write-up of the Rangers with. Connor Falefa came up as a catcher, and he's only played 138 innings of shortstop, which explains his miserable defensive projections.

He's been dazzling in a small sample, though, so there's plenty of room to the upside here. What the heck are projection systems supposed to do about a catcher trying to play shortstop other than shrug their shoulders? Then he goes on to talk about his bat, which you're going to know very good, and then how the Rangers' best

chance of average production at this spot might be a parent trap, a Freaky Friday type swap between Dan Spieswanson and Charlie Culberson. So there are a number of things in this blurb that if he wants to have billboard material, I think make for a better bit of business than that. But I also have never had to play 162 games of Major League Baseball. And I imagine that you appreciate and find your motivation where you can. Yeah. Yeah. Not surprised that he's not thrilled about this. And I would maybe feel the same way. I don't know if I would tweet about it, but at least he wasn't like, you nerds, you know nothing about baseball. Get your head in the game. Get your head out of the spreadsheet.

Watch a game sometime. So, you know, he pointed out something that was true that he led the AL in defensive war last year. And he said that he's going to use it as motivation, essentially, which is fine, I think. And probably something that a lot of players would do. And, yeah, it's just a tough case. And I'm rooting for him. As I've said multiple times, I've very much enjoyed his positional progression and how odd it is that he is playing catcher and third base good shortstop defensively so we'll see over a larger sample obviously but yeah that's the sort of thing that when you have a unique career which is something that has made me appreciate him then it's something

that probably projection systems are not going to handle all that well and then you'll end up with a quirk of the projections every now and then perhaps. And so, yeah, that's the sort of thing where we've talked about this. Your team gets a poor projection and players use that as motivation. That's to be really bad at this and say, well, screw off then. Screw you. Yeah, we read our iTunes reviews when someone doesn't like us. We don't love it. We don't love it. It's not our favorite thing. It makes us sad.

So I totally understand this. I think that it is always useful to the the value of 58 games of defense uh because we know how long that stuff takes to stabilize and also useful to remember that our projections this year are weighted more heavily toward past seasons than they would be under normal circumstances given the brevity of the 2020 season but yeah like we we want him to do well because weird positional shifts are awesome like this is why i want dalton varsho to have a long career because the idea of a guy being able to catch and play center field he was sent down by the deep acts but like the idea of a guy being able to do that is super rad and so i i like it when players bust the

projections and prove where some of the limitations are because it's cool for them. And I think it tells us something about projections. It kind of helps us figure out the places where we have blind spots in them or where we know they're going to handle a particular bit of oddity poorly. And so I understand all of that. But I would just say, Isaiah, you've got to read the blurb. I spend so much time editing the blurb and Ben spends so much time writing the blurb. Don't read the final two paragraphs of the blurb, but the first one, it's like, we're rooting for you, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, good luck to Isaiah proving ranking wrong and good luck to you all getting through the rest of the week without any players publicly taking objection to their ranking. Yeah. I mean, like, Fernando Tatis Jr. should read his. We think he's going to, Ben, we think he's going to be pretty good.

We're like, you know, we're pretty keen, so. Yeah. So we are answering some emails today, and I've got a little bit more banter before we get to that. I guess first, have you seen the billboard about Mookie that has been making the rounds that is outside of Fenway Park? Yes, I have. So I've thought about the billboard and it is my considered opinion that this billboard blows.

I don't like the billboard. I like the idea behind the billboard. I like taunting and trash talking and trolling. I'm okay with that to a certain extent, you know, if it's all good natured more or less and in good fun. But this to me is sort of mean spirited. Maybe I'm making too much of this, but for those who haven't seen it, and I will link to it, of course, but there have been many articles about this. So the Dodgers fan group Pantone 294, which is the official designation of Dodger blue. That is what that color is, Pantone 294, which is the official designation of Dodger blue.

That is what that color is, Pantone 294. So this Dodgers fan group has erected a billboard that is at 60 to 62 Brookline Avenue in Boston, just right across the street from Fenway Park, I think. And it says, Dear Boston, thank you for Mookie Betts, in all caps, sincerely, Dodger fans and Pantone 294. So I like the idea again, which is taunting between fan bases. Hey, we got this great player who used to be on your team, yeah, yeah, yeah. But who is exactly the target of this billboard is what I'm wondering. If you could put this billboard outside of John Henry's window so that he could see it every day when he wakes up, then I would get it because then you're actually taunting the person who traded away Mookie Betts.

But if it's addressed to Boston as a whole, if you're talking to all the Red Sox fans, then it seems like you're just dunking on people who have already lost Mookie Pets through no fault of their own. And they're just as upset about it for the most part as you would expect them to be. And you are just sort of dancing on their fan graves. It's not like Mookie was run out of town by Boston fans or something. They booed him and they were happy to get rid of him and he was bad there and then suddenly he bounced back and was great for the Dodgers or something. Red Sox fans love Mookie Betts and for the most part were seemingly very upset that he was traded and that was not their call. So to me, taunting Red Sox fans for trading Mookie Betts is kind of picking the wrong target or punching down or maybe I'm making too much of this. But it seems to me that it's just sort of picking at a wound that has not yet scabbed over and where the targets are not really to blame for the thing that you are mocking them for well and it's not just the fans but like i'm sure that there are a fair number of members

of the red sox front office who are like i wish we hadn't traded yeah and it's not like uh it's not like that was their top choice either i'm sure heblum didn't come in and say, yes, I want my first task to be trading this franchise icon and superstar Mookie Betts. And obviously everyone else in the front office who had already been there was also a new addition. It's not like, yeah, let's make it a top priority to get rid of Mookie Betts. That was clearly something they were instructed to do because they had a cost-cutting mandate. So again, you're talking about owner, maybe a couple other top people in that organization who really

made that decision. And if you could micro-target this billboard to them, fine. But otherwise, it seems like most people who are seeing it are just going to be regular Bostonians who are sorry that they don't have Mookie Betts anymore. Yeah, it does seem to be a little mean. And I think we can put it in its proper perspective that it does not, in the grand scheme of things, probably matter all that much. But it's not their fault that this has happened, and they're probably sad about it and it seems like um especially since you didn't have fans at the ballpark last year it's probably still fresh and now it's like they're gonna have to be reminded of it again and they're using they're

using fenway as a vaccine site so every every poor person in boston who's like trying to go get vaxxed for covid it's like gosh so you know yeah i don for COVID. It's like, gosh. I don't know that it's my favorite either. I think in the grand scheme, it's probably not a huge deal, but it's not a nice deal either. I think we can say that with confidence. Yeah. It went up on Monday and I think it's going to be there for 30 days. So I guess it'll still be there when the Red Sox are actually playing and people are coming to see them. And from what I understand and just a little reading that I've done, this Dodgers fan group

is unpopular with a lot of Dodgers fans just because of some past actions that they have taken. And also just sort of speaking for Dodgers fans on the billboard, like, thank you for Mookie Betts, sincerely, Dodger fans and the billboard Like thank you for Mookie Betts Sincerely Dodger fans and Pantone294 I mean it's from this group really They are Dodgers fans But they're not all Dodgers fans

You know they don't have the official capacity To speak for all Dodgers fans And just going through various Twitter replies To a tweet about this I saw many Dodgers fans who were not pleased About this billboard And thought. I saw many Dodgers fans who were not pleased about this billboard and thought it reflected poorly on Dodgers fans to the extent that it is a reflection on them. So yeah, I'm against it. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that.

It does suggest sort of a Dodgers fandom as a monolithic sort of thing, and people engage with it in a lot of different ways. And I'm sure that while every single Dodgers fan is like, Mookie Betts, that guy's keen. We're happy to have him. I think we now have proof that not every single one of them is interested in expressing their pleasure in this particular way. Yeah. I saw a lot of people seem to be upset about just like how much time and effort and expense

went into this. It is not the most utilitarian way to spend that money or whatever. And that's true that there are certainly better causes out there. Of course, you could apply that to much of all of our discretionary spending probably in that we could all probably direct our dollars to worthier causes. in that we could all probably direct our dollars to worthier causes. And many of us waste money on many things that are a little less visible than a billboard about Mookie Pats. But I guess the difference is that this actually seems to be sort of a mean-spirited thing that, if anything, is hurting people.

It's not just helping the people who put up the billboard. So that's another complaint that you could make, but it's just the sentiment to me. Otherwise, I'm all for pettiness and trolling and going way out of your way. If you were just taunting a fan base over something else, then the more effort you went to, the greater the lengths that you went to. Almost the more I would applaud the effort to do something so petty. But in this case, it misses the mark for me and apparently for a lot of other people. But it's not a permanent fixture, fortunately. Maybe it's supposed to be payback for the 2018 World Series, but that championship did not get traded along with Mookie. So that result still stands. It's really not a big deal.

I just keep seeing it in so many places. And I grew up in New York resenting Red Sox fans, but we've gotten so many emails from listeners and I've seen so many threads in our Facebook group from Red Sox fans who are just so bummed out about the breakup of that core and the departure of Mookie in particular. So I sort of feel for them. In other news, there was an announcement

and a memo about cracking down on sticky stuff, foreign substances. So this is something that we have talked about multiple times. And we did an episode with David Ardsma and Eno Saris, where we talked about the potential to crack down on foreign substances. And now MLB is starting to take it seriously. I don't know how how seriously Because this is actually the second consecutive spring That MLB has sent a memo around Saying hey we're really going to be watching

For this now So no foreign substances Everyone remember rule 6.02 Nothing really seemed to come of that last year Which was probably a product of the pandemic I think they just sort of Backed off and said okay We've got bigger

problems right now. But now they have sent another memo with more details, and it seems like they are actually going to make an effort to enforce this. It's just a question of how enforceable it is. So I guess I will summarize what the actual measures that are being taken here are. officers. There are going to be compliance officers in the park on game days, like looking through the clubhouse or the dugout and the bullpen and keeping an eye on things and filing reports about the foreign substance use that they have seen. There are going to be inspections of baseballs that are taken out of play, and they'll send them to a third-party lab, and then they'll check for substances on those balls and be able to trace them back to who was pitching at the time

that the balls were taken out of play. So they're going to look not just for substances, but the type of substances that are being used. And then the StatCast data will be used as sort of a basis for comparison to see whether players are deviating from career norms. So we'll see. This is a new development from the last time we talked about it in November, I think episode 1616 was when we had David and Eno to talk about this. And I did a whole long article about it last year. And I think it's a good idea to try to enforce it, but it is easier said than done, and we'll see how seriously they actually commit to this. grandfathering in an entire generation of pitcher who has been using substances for their

entire careers and maybe won't show a discernible change in terms of spin rate over that time obviously if they're checking baseballs and they're analyzing them and they're you know trying to figure out if sticky substances are being used actively. That's, I suppose, supposed to counteract the possibility that a guy will have just had consistently superlative spin rates as a result of sticky stuff. This is like catching them in the moment, but it is going to be interesting to see how they deal with guys who have been doing this their whole careers,

which, you know, as we have learned in your reporting and our conversation and all kinds of reporting around this seems to be a pretty significant portion of the population that there are, that it's pretty pervasive throughout baseball that pitchers are doctoring the ball to some extent most of the time. So I will be very curious to see, you know, what effect this has. It seems like there's enough sort of heft behind what they're trying to do here to suggest that they're taking it seriously, which I think was one of the things that we were sort of interested in discussing in that podcast episode, because

there had been memos and like they were kind of looking at stuff, but it also kind of seemed like they didn't really care. And this suggests that they do, that there's going to be a real effort, but it'll be interesting to see kind of what this means for the existing population of players and for players who are coming into the league. If you watch college baseball, it's not like some of those guys aren't using sticky stuff now. Yeah, I know. That's an interesting angle that I was thinking about is that, yes, this could create an environment where this is discouraged and you feel like people are watching you and you're a little less likely to do it. But I wonder if the opposite could happen where it's like the priority will be on getting pitchers started on using this stuff immediately just so that you establish your baseline at that higher level, right?

Like, so, I mean, even maybe before they pitch in the minor leagues, because you may have spin rate tracking systems there as well. You know, it could be, hey, you're drafted. Okay. If you're not already using this stuff, which many of them are as amateur pitchers, then we'll get you started, you know. In your first spring training as a professional pitcher, make sure that you start using this stuff now so that the first data that they have on you is the enhanced data. And then you can decide what you want to do later, but you'll at least

have the option to keep using this stuff. So I don't know that it will be a panacea, but it is, I think, a useful tool. And I mentioned that in my piece last year that StatCast is something they could use. And so if you do have a case like Trevor Bowers, where the spin rate spiked so dramatically and so suddenly, just from one start to the next in September 2019 and then continuing last year. If that happens now with another pitcher, then presumably that would get flagged and that player would receive a stern talking to or a fine or a warning or something. And I don't know really why that didn't happen with Bauer himself, since that was such a visible example. But maybe it was just that they didn't want to open that can of worms yet, and now they have decided to open it. And so, yeah, as you said, what do you do with Bauer now, since he is such a prominent example, because his use of stuff or his strongly suspected use of stuff predated this most recent memo and even the memo last spring, but you do have a record. I mean,

they've got spin rate data going back several years now. So is that admissible evidence? Can you use the spin rate data from 2018 and say, well, his spin rate spiked in 2019. And now after the fact, after you won a Cy Young award and became the highest paid player in the sport, we're going to crack down? Or do you just get to keep doing that because, well, he did it last year and we didn't say anything then. So grandfathered in. So, yeah, I don't know. But I think it's helpful to at least establish that if you do that now, you're probably going to get in trouble. And there are other ways that it could potentially be useful where you can look at declines in spin rate within an inning, let's say. And if you're just applying stuff at

the start of an inning or between innings, then you might see a decline in your spin rate over the course of that inning that might be apparent, or maybe you will see spikes on certain individual pitches or something where you really lathered up. So there are some tools there and those could point you to a physical inspection of either the ball or the pitcher. It sounds like they are not going to instruct umpires to be more aggressive about trying to inspect players in games. It sounds like they're mostly going to be doing this after the fact investigation, which will then perhaps lead to warnings or future investigations.

So again, I think it's important. I applaud them for trying to do something because I do think this is pervasive. I do think it matters a lot. And yes, this has been a staple throughout baseball history, but I think players are A, probably getting better at finding the right mixtures of substances to enhance themselves further. And B, we have the data now and it's pretty apparent that spin matters, all else being equal, and that if you can enhance that, it can really help you and we can quantify that effect now. And so I think people recognize, okay, this is important. We should probably do something about this.

okay, this is important. We should probably do something about this. And so if they could come up with a ball that would be tacky where they could just ban substances and really crack down, that's something they've thought of doing in the past. Or even if they could legalize it and standardize it, which is another proposal, and just say, okay, you can all use this specific substance and we'll put it on the mound and you can go to it and maybe it won't be one of the really transformative substances. There are various things you could do. It's a tough thing to really police, but it's also an important thing to police. So like you, I will be curious to see what comes of this, if anything. Is there... I'm about to ask a really... I think this is a dumb question that I'm about to ask a really...

I think this is a dumb question that I'm about to ask you. And if it's so dumb that you think that it undermines my credibility as an analyst, we're going to cut it. Okay. Okay? That's what we're going to do. And if not, we're going to leave all of this, and we're going to allow people to know that we do edit the podcast which i'm sure they know based on us thanking dylan for his wonderful editing

assistance but just in case they've forgotten so is it possible that that a substance could be created that would be useful to a pitcher in this way, but would be difficult to detect on the ball. Oh, yeah. In the post-game analysis, when the batch of balls gets sent off and the ball has been scuffed up, it's got dirt on it and maybe it's got sunscreen on it

from the sunscreen you were wearing. I'm sure that they're going to account for that in some way, but is it possible that they could? What I'm wondering is, are we going to end up with a PED arms race for veteran pitchers with existing high spin rates who still want to use tacky stuff but don't want to get caught i think this is too dumb a question to leave in is it i don't know the answer to the

question i don't know we'll leave it in we'll leave it in i mean i've been a legitimate question i've been thought dumb for you know better and worse reasons i suppose so we'll leave it in but what i'm wondering is, because you create an incentive in the space between, you know, the rule as it is written and the existing set of pitchers who fall into that category of being like high spin guys

who have several years of tracking data associated with them who, you know, probably based on what we know are using some amount of of something on the ball and you know perhaps would not um have a super discernible change in their spin rate year to year that would pique the interest of the league but then are are looking for like really good sticky stuff that's hard to detect? Designer sticky stuff. What would that even be though?

Like that's impossible, right? That's not a thing? Maybe you could have it be like a biodegradable foreign substance. It just like, it self-destructs. It evaporates after a certain amount of time. An emission impossible ball. Yeah, right. It works on the pitch and then by the time you get it to the lab, it's squeaky clean.

I don't know what the chemistry of that would be. Yeah, what is the half-life of sticky stuff? Yeah, and I wonder if you've got the catcher maybe surreptitiously wiping off the ball or something before it's out of play. I mean, I guess you can't always do that. Sometimes. Right, yeah. You could sometimes. Right, because ump could sometimes, you know, the ball... Right, because umpires ask for the ball from the catcher or something,

and, well, before you hand it over, maybe you just give it a little wipe down or something. Yeah. Or, like, before it goes out into the... You know, it goes out and, like, maybe it's a base hit and the first baseman has to... Right. You know, you don't know.

Or the pitcher could argue that he was framed, right? I mean, the balls get changed very quickly. So it's not like the same pitcher from the previous inning would still have some residue on there probably. But fielders, you know, fielders have stuff, right? Just to help them throw and maybe also to help the pitcher. And so if a fielder's got some sticky fingers and then the pitcher throws a pitch, maybe the pitcher is innocent and there's something that is detectable on the ball that was actually the third baseman or someone who tossed the ball back to the pitcher. So I could see some loopholes existing there yeah i think that there's the potential for an escalation of chicanery but i think it probably requires some really good science i don't know i think that it'll be uh it's gonna be interesting i think the decision to

not make umpires part of this enforcement mechanism is also you know i think that that's for for the best because it's already a contentious relationship right and you don't you don't need to escalate the on-field dynamic um beyond where it already sits uh you should leave you know you can they're they're already tasked with enforcing all kinds of things that they can see and sort of verify with a good deal more precision than most cases of sticky stuff, although there are obviously times when it is made very clear to them that there is gunk on the ball, but not always. And so I think that that seems like a good, that's like a good understanding of workplace dynamics.

Yeah. Yeah, probably. I mean, that's a big part of why umpires really do not police this is that it would just be confrontational and uncomfortable. And being a compliance officer does not sound like a fun job. Just like snooping around the dugout and the tunnel and the bullpens and the batting cages and saying, hey, what you got in your bag there? That sounds like a very unpleasant post. And I guess there have been compliance officers recently in the video room and trying to prevent sign stealing. So there's some precedent for that.

But if you're going to be the bad guy, if you're going to be the narc, like have an official person whose job that is so that you can't really blame them for doing their job. And then the umpires don't get blamed for that as well. So it sounds like there'll be a random sampling of balls that they will take out of play. So we will see how it all works, but I do think that spin rates enhance movement and raise strikeout rates. And goodness knows those rates are high as it is. And so this does seem like a measure maybe to ensure more fairness in a level playing field, but also just to do anything that MLB can to make more balls in play. So I am on board with the spirit of it at least,

and we'll see about the implementation. And just on that topic of umpires and refereeing, did you see the news about the NHL firing a referee who semi-explicitly stated that he wanted to make a make-up call? So he was caught on a hot mic essentially saying that he was looking to call a penalty against Nashville. No. Yeah. So the implication was that he was trying to do a makeup call because Nashville had scored a power play goal in the first period after a Detroit penalty. And so this ref was saying seemingly that he wanted to call a penalty on Nashville to sort of even things out. The ref was fired. Tim Peel was his name. And an NHL

executive said, nothing is more important than ensuring the integrity of our game. And so he was very quickly dismissed. And I was thinking of this in a baseball context because makeup calls certainly a thing or perceived to be a thing in baseball as well. And there is good evidence that they are a thing in the NHL. There was a 538 article showing that you're much more likely to have a penalty called against you, basically, if the other team has had a penalty called against it. And it seems like refs try to sort of balance the scales. And I think this happens to an extent in baseball.

I don't know that it has been as well quantified, but I was thinking about this because I saw Nate Silver tweet about it and he tweeted that FiveThirtyEight article and then he said, not to get too takey here, and then he got pretty takey. He said, what feels somewhat perverse is that makeup calls are in the economic best interest of the league. They keep the games closer. So you have an employee taking the fall for admitting to a common practice that benefits management. And that made me think of the fact that umpires, you know, there's been some studies that have shown that like if you throw a borderline pitch, you know, in roughly the same location, like the

call is less likely to go your way as a pitcher if you got the call the last time, that sort of thing, which seems like it could potentially be evidence of make-up calls on pitch calls. But one thing that I think is sort of underrated when it comes to the robot umps discussion is how much the zone fluctuates from pitch to pitch based on the count. And we've talked about this before, but not for a while. There's really a demonstrable difference in the shape and size of the strike zone based on the count. And it's like the 0-2 zone is like two-thirds as large as the 3-0 zone.

And it fluctuates just as the count gets more in the favor of the pitcher, the strike zone gets more in the favor of the batter and vice versa. And this is an argument in favor of robot umps. I guess some people would see it that way, just like, hey, the strike zone is the strike zone. It should not be fluctuating based on the count. on the count. But to me, that is something that makes me wary of robot umps because you could argue that this is a feature, that this is not a bad thing, that A, players understand that this is going to happen because they're used to it. It's always happened. And so you know if you're standing at the plate on 3-0 that your strike zone is going to be a little bit different from 0-2. So it's not totally capricious or surprising.

Players know what to expect. But also it does, in theory, keep games closer or at least keep plate appearances closer because you are sort of balancing things out. You know, if the pitcher gets too far ahead, then, well, you're saying, OK, now I'm going to give the batter a helping hand here. And there's been a lot of research and arguments about why and how this happens and is the umpire doing it consciously. But that is the effect that it has in theory, that if you fall behind in the count, the umpire is essentially giving you a boost to get back in that plate appearance.

Whereas if the zone is the same on every pitch and now it's 0-2, then you cannot expect a little extra real estate there, right? And so if you're a pitcher throwing on 3-0, you don't get the gimme strike, the get me over strike. You actually have to throw the same sort of strike that you would on any other count when the batter has the ability to be selective. And so it does sort of balance things out. I don't know what the data show about the Atlantic League or the minors places where the robot umps have been tested, and I'd love to get my hands on that and have them enabled to, but I would think that plate appearances would be a little less even in the sense that once you fall

behind or get ahead, you would be more likely to stay behind or ahead. And maybe that would be a little less spectator friendly, even if it's fair. Some power pitchers these days, once you're down in the count and you've got two strikes, you're screwed. Because with two strikes, you've got to expand your zone a little bit to protect the plate, but you don't have to expand as much as you would if the strike zone were the same size it always is. Like on O2 last year or after O2 counts, batters hit 165, 202, 261. That's a 463 OPS, a 22 WRC plus, and that's with the strike zone contracting. So imagine how bad it would be if it didn't. You might as well just end the plate appearance there well it's interesting because it's like what are we trying to what is our understanding of consistency you know what version of consistency do we think is the most important to having a dynamic game is it as you

would with a robo zone having a completely consistent strike zone pitch to pitch in the count or is it that there is a consistency in sort of the I'm not sure quite how to articulate this like the the as you were saying you have a balanced likelihood of being able to sort of keep the the at-bat competitive depending on whether you've fallen ahead or behind like what I think that there is a question for us to ask about like what it is that we're really trying to incentivize in the rules. I understand a governing body looking at an official articulating a strategy of makeup and being like, look, we get that this is sort of a thing that happens, but we can't have you admitting to putting your finger on the scale that you know dramatically although the idea that you're looking for an opportunity for a makeup suggests that there are circumstances in which you would

not make a call that was in one side's favor just for the sake of it that you you know you need a circumstance where the call could theoretically go either way or where it's more borderline that you wouldn't intervene such that you are like you would make sports center is like what was this i'm thinking right but yeah i i think that like question around the zone and sort of what we want the strike zone to be and how we want it to function and how we think it needs to balance the scales or not it just makes me wish that that sam's quote about us needing philosophers were a thing. Because it's like, we need to understand what is the strike zone from an existential level,

epistemologically. What does that mean to us? And I don't know that we have a really concrete answer. And I think the idea that it should just be consistent pitch to pitch is like a perfectly defensible way to view the zone and the game. And I don't know that I know exactly what my answer is of what I want it to look like. But I think that there's the possibility that we want more from it than just perfect consistency. And that's probably a question we should have in advance of changing the way we engage with it.

So that we don't look around and go, oh, no. Right. Yeah. And the question of how do you balance fairness and entertainment value? Hopefully those things go together, but not always necessarily. And there's a certain level of unfairness that would hamper your enjoyment of the sport. level of unfairness that would hamper your enjoyment of the sport. But maybe there is some moderate level of occasional unfairness that actually enhances your enjoyment of the sport. The human element can be frustrating, but it can also be a fun thing to debate and analyze and argue about. And so maybe if you make it perfectly consistent, it's fairer, but maybe it's not quite as entertaining. Maybe you're losing a little bit of that fallible, flawed humans affecting the outcome in ways that are unpredictable. And it's better if those humans are the players,

I think, than the umpires. But still, something would be lost there, I think. So it's something to think about. And it would, of course, be frustrating if you felt like a make-up call went against you. And there's a quote from the umpire hunter Wendelstadt who says, if you miss something, the worst thing to do, you can never make up a call. People are like, that's a make-up call. Well, no, it's not. Because if you try and make up a call, now you've missed two. And that's something that we would never ever want to do. And it's probably not necessarily even a conscious thing in a lot of cases where umpires are saying, okay, I'm going to be out to get this person or this team the way that this NHL ref seemingly was. It might be kind of an unconscious thing. The thing that players most seem upset about when it comes to calling pitches is that you're inconsistent and you establish a certain zone early in the game and then you're all over the place and they don't know where they stand because the ground is constantly shifting under them. With the 0-2-3-0 thing, it varies by umpire, but it's pretty consistent that within your own personal baseline, there is going to be that fluctuation and everyone expects that and plays accordingly.

Right. I think that the place where we really see batters kind of blow up is like when especially late in games when the zone changes and, you know, the game is close and they're like, well, what am I supposed to what am I supposed to do with that then? And I think it's also that there's also a component of like fair for whom. And I don't mean this to say that we have to keep the game consistent every year because there's always going to be some portion, often a very significant portion of the player pool that is consistent year to year. But it's like if you've grown up with the zone a particular way, right, meaning called by people with all its eccentricities, but like called by people and often very different from the rulebook strike zone. And then all of a sudden we change it for a robo zone. Well, that might feel very unfair to you because you've played your whole career with a particular understanding of what the strike zone is. And maybe you don't like that all the time. understanding of what the strike zone is. And maybe you don't like that all the time. Like maybe you're, you know, you're very small or very tall and you're like, I get, I get messed with

here because my body is confusing. But I know what I'm, like you said, I know what I'm dealing with in any given at bat. And I have some sense of how this is going to go for me on, you know, in an average plate appearance. But, you know, the flip side of that is that if we need an entirely new player population in order to make any rule changes, change is going to be really, really slow. Yes. Even when you're testing things in the minor. So, you know, you have to counterbalance,

you have to balance those things and sort of arrive at something that feels like it's in the best interest of the players and the best interest of the sport and the best interest of the fans and hopefully the Venn diagram of all those things is a circle. And we know it isn't. So hopefully it overlaps as much as possible. But there is a bit of trickiness there. So yeah, we're going to get to like one email. I know. Yeah, let's do that. This is something that hopefully they'll work out when they're

testing it in the minor. So, you know, before it gets to the major league level. So we will answer at least a few emails here. So this one, I'm kind of curious about what your answer here will be. episodes of the year, but last year I realized they had a tremendous effect on how I view a given team. At first, I hypothesized that guests who are positive about their team instill more confidence. Then after listening to Will Leach, I was more optimistic about the Cardinals, so that can't be it. I'll continue to float theories about my own psyche to see what I can find, but I was wondering if you two have similar feelings. Do you also feel pulled towards certain teams after some guests? And if so, do you know why? Or are you both too in tune with the projections that anecdotes and updates don't shake you?

Oh, gosh, no. I would not say that I am so unfeeling as that. Or so stoic is probably not the right word, Yeah. well tends to be about the people in the ecosystem around a team rather than the guys on the field or like wanting to see a particular player do well for whatever reason. So like, you know, I know people who work for teams, some of whom are my pals, and like, I want their teams to do well because they're my friends and I want them to be happy. Or like, you know, we all we both know a lot of other people in the industry and it's a lot more fun to cover a good team that's like dynamic and and one that other people want to read about than

like i don't know the last place team in the league so sometimes i i'm rooting for like my friends who cover a particular beat to like have a good beat to cover that year and so i think maybe that's a place where it can kind of sneak in because we do tend to, you know, have at least a handful of people who we know sort of more personally who come on the preview series every year. But I don't know. I think apart from that, like it's always good to hear from the beats. I think maybe especially in a year like this where we had just such a strange year last year and we're still trying to figure out what of it we believe is like lasting and indicative of the talent of a player and what of it was sort of mirage. And so I think having insight from

folks who see the team in person every day and kind of have a sense of where these guys are physically is really valuable like i want to know how the pitchers are doing after such a strange 2020 if there are promising young prospects who we think we might see in big league action this year but who were at the alternate site all of last year like it's really great to talk to the beats because it's like we haven't seen this guy like we don't and we don't have any game stats to look at so all of the markers that we would traditionally rely on to to say oh yeah it's time for that guy to come up we don't necessarily have that so i think that there are definitely places where we get insight that at least helps to like train my eye to what i should look for once the season gets underway

to see if what they are noticing from spring is something that's going to be more lasting. But otherwise, I just want my pals to have a good time. Yeah, I think with me, as we've talked about preparing for the previews, I think brings us up to speed on certain things. And maybe as we're reading about off seasons and looking at the depth charts and everything, there are certain realizations that we come to where we might slightly change our opinion about a team. And there are certainly cases I can't think of any off the top of my head, but cases where maybe my opinion on an individual player has shifted in some appreciable way just because of some insight that one of our

guests had just about what that player was going through off the field or what their mental state was, or maybe they changed something that I wasn't aware that they changed and that might make me buy into something a little more or less. But I don't really end those segments usually thinking, oh, wow, that team is a lot better than I thought it was going into that segment or a lot worse or hearing the guests win total prediction doesn't really change my mind and suddenly I'm reordering my division projections or something. So I don't think it changes things in that obvious a way, but partly I think that's just because of how I cover the game and interact with the game as well in that I'm not a tout, like I'm not

making picks or something. I predict things as rarely as I'm able to when I'm doing this job. So it's not really something I pride myself, like being able to say how many games this team will win or who will win this division. It's something that I probably care a little less about than I did certainly when I had a real rooting interest in a team. I'm rooting for certain players and certain stories and everything and maybe certain fan bases to an extent, but I don't have really anything riding on a particular team winning or not winning. I'm not a gambling man. And so I just don't really have really strong priors when it comes to these things generally. I think that I have some insight and generally have a good awareness of the sport, but I don't think I can beat the house or beat the projection

systems on any kind of consistent basis. So I don't really pride myself on that. And so I don't really sit down and project as some people do, you know, how many games will this team win and what will be its runs scored and runs allowed. Like it just is not something that I think I have a special skill at. And so I don't really devote a lot of attention to that. And my articles are not like, here's what you need to know to win your fantasy league this year or something, the way

that some people's are, which is a valuable thing that many people want to read, but it's just not really the way that I approach covering these things. So it's almost like my opinions are somewhat nebulous when it comes to these things anyway. And I will just kind of default to projections to a certain extent. Like there are certain cases where I look at a projection and say, that seems too high or that seems too low, but it's not a core focus of mine really. So I guess in that sense, I just don't really have strongly formulated opinions on how exactly a team will do that the preview guests could affect one way or another. So I think it's probably slight in my case.

rest of the league, which is the case for a lot of baseball fans, maybe less so our listeners, but probably baseball fans as a whole, you know, follow the sport sort of locally and regionally. And so if they do tune into the preview series and they are suddenly exposed to a lot of information about other teams that they're maybe not following so closely, then I would expect that to change their opinions. And I would hope it would. Well well and i think part of it there's like a like a selection bias at play here too because the people we have on to preview teams tend to be you know they like they think about baseball sort of similarly to the way we do and so far as they use analytics as a way of understanding the game and they're going to look at stats and the stats they look at are they look at are going to be you you know, advanced stats. They're going to look at WRC plus instead of average. I mean, they'll look at average too, but you know what I'm saying. So

I think that part of it is that we aren't tending to have folks on who are going to be like, war is bunk. And then we're like, oh, maybe it is bunk. You know, like we've sort of decided in advance that we think the war is bunk argument is bunk itself. And so the folks who we're having on are not necessarily going to deviate too much from, you know, like they're probably going to look at the projections too. I would bet $10 that every single person we have had on for a preview pod so far and everyone we will have on for the remainder looked at a projection system when they were thinking about like, oh, I know Ben's going to ask me how many wins. And they use that to help them sort of calibrate what the, you know, what the projection systems

and expectations around a team are. So I do think that that plays a role here too. Yeah. And I would definitely want them to differ from that and express their opinion if it differs from that. So if Levi comes on and says, you know, Isaiah Kiner-Falefa passes my eye test, and I think he's going to be a pretty good shortstop, then I certainly would want him to say that and not defer to those projections. But

yes, you're right. And I think early on in the season preview series, sometimes we used to get like a beat writer guest and then also sort of a stat head guest or at least a internet baseball guest, someone who maybe wrote the chapter for the annual or something. And those would be distinct groups, distinct populations. And now they're not. Now they're sort of the same mindset mostly in that I think there's no great disparity between the people who cover a team via blogs or whatever, or via a newspaper or The Athletic. I mean, a lot of the same ideas have seeped into both. And the annual now is not like internet people versus people on the beat. Often people on the beat are writing the annual essays. So I think that has been good for baseball coverage on the whole, but it's definitely true that there's less of a starkly defined difference in mindset in those

camps. So you could call that groupthink, I guess. I would rather call it, I don't know, enlightenment. Maybe that's too pretentious, but I think that has improved baseball coverage. And as you said, made it a little less likely that we're going to talk to someone who has a wildly different way of thinking about the sport. Yeah, I think that that's right. All right. This is a question from Paul. So we got a couple of questions about what if baseball weren't different? Because last time we did an email episode, I mentioned that many of our questions are about what if baseball were different? Because if it weren't different, well, there wouldn't be that much to talk about. But a couple of listeners have questioned that assertion here. So Paul says,

how would baseball be different if baseball were different by remaining the same, at least by rules and regulations indefinitely, whether for a short period of time, such as the five years of a typical CBA, or for much longer, such as the length of a Hall of Fame career, the rules governing baseball would not change once they are set into play, whenever this is set into play. Obviously, let's set this rule to keep pace of pay reasonably proportional to revenue, but mostly for gameplay and equipment rules. Discuss any issues, but nothing changes for a long time anyway. So the rules are set in stone, which is sometimes what it feels like is actually the case

in MLB. There's definitely less change from year to year, I think, in MLB than there is in some other sports, but there's some change. So if the rules never changed, I mean, I guess we're sort of seeing the consequences of that now, right? With the ever escalating strikeout rate that MLB is sort of belatedly taking action to correct if left unchecked. I think the whole history of baseball shows that on the whole, like home run rates have risen over time, strikeout rates have risen over time, and you do have to periodically intervene to say, nope, pitchers, you're not going to get away with this, or we're going to do something to minimize home runs. Otherwise, these trends just run out of control. I think that would be one of the real risks. guess it would really put to the test our theory that stuff like the shift is going to sort itself out um with you know either getting scaled back as a strategy or as as hitters adapting to it i mean i think that i would be very nervous about sort of the the continued incentivizing of of a

particular defensive approach and pitching approach because i think that it just it would as you said like over time we would just end up with like so little offense yeah so that would make me nervous and I think that you you want to you want to give players time to adjust and sort of drive the way that the game changes on the field but I think you also want the ability to have sort of quick intervention when something gets out of hand this is a bad example because the the thing going wrong was actually the result of a rule change but like humor me for a moment like imagine if do you remember like the transfer rule stuff in 2015 and how there was all this nonsense about guys suddenly like there there weren't outs where there should have been and the the transfer stuff was really wonky. And I think that it had been a rule change. And then

we immediately reversed the rule change because they were like, well, this was written badly. Right. Yeah. One fielders would move the ball from their glove, right, and make a throw. And it's like, did they make the catch? Was this in the transfer or not? Right. And so that announced itself as sort of a bad rule very quickly and very obviously if that rule had been in existence forever and we're like this is a bad rule and then we didn't have the means of correcting it we would be like well the whole sport is pretend i mean it's it is happening in front of us it is not like a collective delusion but it's not gravity right we make up the rules because it's a game. So it seems strange to, you know, sort of arbitrarily fixate on some aspects of it rather than others. And people listening are going to say, well, you know, we don't let them change how many bases there are unless it's baseball, which I still don't understand.

sort of look at as intrinsically linked to the sport but we we tend to let people uh kind of play around with the stuff on the periphery because we know that like you know the way that players are developed is going to change and the technology we have is going to change and like i know that everyone hates replay but i swear that if we had hd tv and slow-mo and no replay like we would i don't know that there could be baseball because we have to be able to intervene and correct stuff that is obviously wrong to the vast majority of people who are watching the sport, which is mostly at home. Yes, we say as we grumble about robo-ums, both of us. It's different.

It's different. Trust me, it's different. I have a considered opinion about what balance means so it's different yes right sure so i think that the answer to how different would baseball be if it wasn't different at all is like you know obviously worse in some important ways and that's not to say that every rule change good. Again, see the transfer rule stuff, but that the ability to adapt when it becomes necessary is really important. And those moments tend to announce themselves.

And that kind of like intervention is really important. And then you need to be able to do like regular maintenance on the sport. And that's what Rob Manfred says he's doing. So we need that part too. Maybe not all of it, but some of it. We probably need some of it. Yeah. And safety stuff too, because that's often another example of a place where you will act based on a single play that exposes some risk or some danger, which may have been obvious before, but until something actually happens, there's less incentive to do anything about it. And so some of the recent

changes, the measures that are colloquially called the Buster Posey rule or the Chase Utley rule, things like that, where something happens and then you realize, uh-oh, someone got hurt. This is bad. We don't want to expose players to this danger. Therefore, we will change this rule and we will make this thing less likely to happen again in the future. And if you couldn't do that and it was just like, oh, well, we just have to be content with players hurting themselves in the same way over and over again forever, that would be bad. So yes, I agree. Totally static baseball in terms of rules and regulations would be a worse baseball. And this is a related question from Carter. He said, if baseball stayed exactly the same forever, how long would it take people to notice? I don't mean

that every outcome would be exactly the same, but all of the underlying factors that go into a game would stay the same. The strikeout rate would stop going up. The ball would be the same every year, no rule changes, et cetera. I kind of think it would take a while to notice, but maybe I underestimate how closely people are paying attention as a follow-up. If baseball stayed the same forever, how different would it be? So two parts to this question, how quickly would people notice and then would that be bad? Let's take the rules out of it. Let's just say the rates stay the same. I think, A, people would notice almost immediately. Very quickly. Very, very fast. Right away. We pay a lot of attention to these things, maybe more attention than they deserve.

It's our job. It's our job. Yeah, it is. It's our job. everything is the same, but it would not be a lot. It would be like a week or a month or something into the season. And certainly that first season when all the rates ended exactly the same for the first time ever in baseball history, everyone would notice that and be perplexed by that. So no, this would not elude our notice for very long. But the question is, would that be bad? Because one thing I've sort of lamented in the past Is that it seems like when MLB Is making rules or considering rules

They don't necessarily Have a strong Conception of what their ideal version Of baseball is like if you're going to Make rules like you have to decide what you want Baseball to look like so You have to decide is the strikeout rate Too high right this be too low Where do we actually want it what would you want baseball to look like. So you have to decide, is the strikeout rate too high?

Right. Would this be too low? Where do we actually want it? What would fans want? And it's hard for us to say what the consensus of what all baseball fans want is. And hopefully MLB has done enough surveying and polling that they have a better sense, and we have some anecdotal sense, certainly. But let's say that you could establish the platonic ideal form of baseball the form of baseball that the most people would like or accept and then you could just freeze things forever at that rate so you know if everyone decides that we like baseball more like it was in the 80s when there was more speed and balls and play and action and it was more dynamic okay well we can just lock that in forever and it will always be that brand of

baseball would that be bad or good i think it would be bad it'd be bad for us for sure what would you write about oh yeah what would we write about i think that the dynamism is important to us understanding it. I mean, in terms of how long it would take for us to notice, like we would notice before any of that stuff reached its like stabilization point. But certainly once we had gotten far enough in where we could say like, oh, this is like this is very strange. And then we'd have the first season, like you said, where everything was the same.

And we'd be like, that's really, really strange. And then the next year when we reach the stabilization point and it was still the same, we would be like, there is witch strange and then the next year when we reach the stabilization point it was still the same we would be like there is witchcraft here clearly this is the result of witchcraft but i think the dynamism of the game or its potential for dynamism is really important and even when you don't have big year-to-year swings the idea that we would know exactly what it would look like going in sounds terrible, not just for, you know, us with our like professional interests. But you know, I was I think about this a lot when we're doing positional power rankings, for example, because we start that exercise with me doing a post that is like meant to introduce the exercise, but is mostly like a plea to our

readers to like not yell at us about stuff, because we've anticipated the stuff they might yell at us about. And I always make the point in in that post or at least i have the last couple of years when i've been writing it that it would be like a perfectly calibrated crystal ball would be terrible we don't want that because we want the potential to be surprised and even if we end up with like you know a pretty consistent offensive environment or a pretty consistent strikeout rate or a pretty like i mean i i can't remember what a pretty consistent baseball looks like but a pretty consistent baseball we feel the potential of seeing something we haven't seen before and the idea that the game breathes and changes is like part of why we like it so i think that would your average fan notice

i don't know if they would like i don't say that to to denigrate the average fan but like the difference on this stuff is like a couple of balls in play a game right and so it can be a small it can be small and you don't notice when you're sitting down to watch a given game on a given night but like for close observers i think it would be a bummer because we would notice and like after a while i think you'd you'd have'd have a sense that the game is kind of stagnating, right? I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

To me, I mean, if you could maybe keep things within a certain range, like if you could avoid the extremes one way or another, maybe that would be beneficial. There's an aspect of even the year of the pitcher, 1968 or 1930, the rabbit ball. There are certain touchstones of baseball fandom and history that add some character and richness to my appreciation of the sport, I think. When I'm looking back at baseball history and I'm sort of framing things within these eras and what was going on at the time. I do like that there was some fluctuation that said I would not want to return to the year of the pitcher. I would not want a 1968 level of offense to happen again. And I don't think that would be good for baseball. So I agree. Having it completely static would be boring. Even if we could find the perfect version of baseball. The perfect version of baseball is changing. It is dynamic. And so I would want there to be some variation. And maybe if you could apply some constraints so that things didn't go completely out of hand in one direction or another, that would be good. But yes, you want some variety.

Right. And I think part of this too is that we don't want to assume that our version of baseball is the version that everybody likes. I don't claim some sort of aesthetic supremacy to the way that I enjoy the game. And not just because I look for and enjoy weird shit in baseball all the time where I'm like, why is that happening?

And then I have to write about, well, now I have to write about somebody pooping themselves. So it's just like, I guess I keep your shit all the time. But anyway, I don't assume that what I like is necessarily what everyone likes. And I just think that,

I think that it's good to have variations so that everyone can get some of what they like in it. And there has to be some constraints and there's stuff that we all agree is bad from a rules perspective or a safety perspective. And we can think about the right balance of hitting versus pitching, but there being room for everybody to look around

and be like, that's the thing I like, I think is good. That's a good thing. Yep. All right. Maybe I can squeeze in one or two more here. So this one's from Andrew. He says, I was doing some research

and I found a New York Times game day write-up from a July 14th, 1885 game between the New York Giants and the Providence Grays in which the former won three to nothing thanks to a complete game shutout from pitcher Mickey Welch, who went on to win 44 games that season with an ERA of 1.66. Speaking of baseball being different, the article begins with this quote, The members of the New York club were in high glee last evening. They not only defeated their old Providence rivals yesterday afternoon, but in doing so,

they administered that which is obnoxious to all ball players, a Chicago. Chicago in quotes. And Andrew continues, I assume a Chicago is a shutout, but any records or notable shutouts attributed to Chicago, such as Ed Royal Bach's two shutouts in one day, occur after 1885. I'm curious if either of you is familiar with the etymology of the term, 1885. I'm curious if either of you is familiar with the etymology of the term or if my interpretation of Chicago is way off base. And no, it is not way off base. This is a way that people would refer to shutouts at that point in baseball history. And here is the explanation, which I found in a piece at Sabre and I will link to. I'm quoting from that piece here. The 1876 schedule called for 70 games with each team meeting its seven opponents 10 times a

piece. The White Stockings played their season opener at Louisville April 25th with Albert Spalding scattering seven hits to blank the Southerners four to nothing. It was the first shutout game pitched in the new league, with the result that shutouts were known as Chicago games for the next 30 years. When a team was shut out, it was Chicago'd. So that is the explanation if you're ever digging through any 19th century newspaper archives and you're wondering why it's called a Chicago. But this got me thinking about whether something similar could happen today or whether you can think of anything comparable today. Like, is there anything that happens in a game where we refer to it as, you know, something associated with a city or a team?

Like, it's hard to think of something. Someone will write in and tell us something. But like, I guess the reason why it worked then was it was the first season of the National League. And it was the first shutout. And it's like, okay, well, now it's associated with the White Stockings. And there were fewer games then. And there were many fewer teams then. And it was probably easier for something like a shutout just to be associated with one team. Whereas now, I mean, whenever any team does something, it's almost always something that has happened many times before,

because it's not the first season, it's 150 seasons. And so it's hard to do something so different that it stands out in a way that everyone would associate it with that team. I don't know. Does anything occur to you? Well, I'm going to be quite a Mariners fan when I say this, but like I have long associated, and by that I mean like since I was in high school, like the idea of giving up one run and losing as a Felix. Oh, yeah.

Which is not relevant anymore for any number of reasons, but, you know, I've kind of thought of it that way. Oh, yeah. You know, it is a broader category of activities than a shutout would be. And I'm sure that every fan of a bad baseball team has their version of, you know, somebody getting Felixed, right? Like if you have one good pitcher in a bad team, like you're getting Felixed, guys. And that's probably not specific to the Mariners experience, although it does feel particularly painful. Yeah. Given, you know given what came later. So I'm trying to think of something else. It's a copycat league. So there are attributes that you might associate with a particular kind of team building or a particular style of play,

but they diffuse so quickly. I guess we guess we think of like high spin fastball guys at the top of the zone as being like an astrosy type of thing but they're not the only team that does that anymore right and like yeah tanking and rebuilding has has swept the league and so it's not a thing that is necessarily something i associate with any particular organization anymore. Although when we think about its origins, I guess I have strong associations to, again, to the Astros. So there are definitely team building attributes that seem to be a bit more consistent, but it's hard to think of other stuff. I don't know. of other stuff. I don't know. Right. Yeah. There are players who are the archetypical players of a certain kind of player type, right? Right. The Zobrist, for instance, that just became a shorthand to refer to someone who could play a

bunch of positions and was pretty competent at all of them. If you asked people in 40 years, will people still be calling it a Zobrist? Probably not. I mean, maybe you never know what's going to catch on, but probably not. But certainly for a decade or so there, that was a type of player. Otani, obviously, is someone who breaks the mold in a way that if he succeeds and there are other two-way players who follow in his footsteps then that'll be the otani type player or you know there are things like that but with a certain team i you know like a certain outcome it's harder to think of but if you're listening and you're saying oh why are they not saying this uh just email us and let us know what that thing is and maybe we will mention it in a future episode. Oh, gosh, I'm trying to think of other stuff now. There are teams that you just associate

with being bad or like, you know, we thought about Baltimore for such a long time being just unable to develop pitching. But again, in terms of on-field stuff, I don't know. It doesn't persist the same way, I think, for the reasons we've said. But I look forward to the many emails we will get being like, you don't sweat anything of this thing. Yeah, it'd be hard for something to last 30 years like the Chicago apparently did, just because there's so much history, there's so many teams, there is so much copycat behavior that I just don't know that it would really stay top of mind that this one

team is associated with that thing for as long as it could in 1876. But if we're wrong, write in. All right. Last question here. This is from Aaron, Patreon supporter. He says, regarding the goose on the field. Do you remember the goose on the field He says, regarding the goose on the field. Do you remember the goose on the field? Did you see the goose on the field? I think it was the first week of March, maybe. There was a goose in center. So I'll link to the video.

Yeah, RJ wrote a really fun little piece for us at Fangraphs about it. So yes. I will link to that too. It resulted in me having many, many, many screenshots of geese on my desktop. Yeah. So Aaron continues, there was a goose in center during the Cubs-D-backs game, and you could tell the center fielder was nervous. I'm sure you know this. What I was particularly interested in was how uncomfortable the center fielder looked. He almost certainly wouldn't be as good a defender as usual in that situation.

Anyway, I was wondering if a team had a flock of geese that they trained. How frequently do you think they could purposely have them land on the field and distract from the defense before the team got caught doing this? Do you think they could use more than one goose? Do you think MLB or umpires would crack down on this if it happened more than once? Also, are there any animals you can think of that would be better than a goose to make opposing defenses uncomfortable i think geese might be the best because of their size stubbornness and ubiquity it's at least a semi-believable story that geese just so happened to land on the field and distract the opposing players i wonder what your take on this strange event is right you couldn't have like an alligator out right? If there was an alligator on the field, even in Florida, people would say, hold on a minute, there's something odd going on here. The other one that occurred to me, I will admit that the first time I read this email,

I thought that the question was training the geese to play baseball. And then I was like, I think they'd notice that immediately. I think that that would probably pique some some interest uh right away um the other one that occurred to me was like a raccoon yeah that's happened right i've seen raccoons on the field i think yeah like you know there's probably i don't know it sort of depends where you live i have lived places where raccoons have been um very aggressive just out in broad daylight as if they are citizens of the world who can vote and own property. So where you live, that might be true. In some places, they're more nocturnal.

But I think that because they have those little human burglar hands, and they're wearing a little burglar mask, and they are often disease-ridden. So I think that people would, and they root through the trash. So you'd be standing in the outfield, you'd be eating your seeds, and they're like, roots are the trash. So they'd be, you'd be standing in the outfield, you'd be eating your seeds, and then you'd throw the seeds on the ground, and then there would be a raccoon and you'd go, ah, because it would come where you had left seeds on the ground or whatever else ballplayers are snacking on out there. So I think that maybe a raccoon, but a goose is good because a goose you know geese can fly in so you do have more plausible deniability there but you'd only be able to use it like very rarely because

if you had a persistent goose problem you know baseball would expect you to do something about it they'd be like you gotta you gotta take care of these geese and right and then you'd say how and then they'd say you should kill the geese and then there would be a protest care of these geese. Right. And then you'd say, how? And then they'd say, you should kill the geese. And then there would be a protest of killing the geese because it's not the goose's fault that you built a ballpark in the middle of their world. They're just inhabitants of the urban landscape like anyone else. So PETA would get involved. It would be very messy.

But I think that a goose or a raccoon, I don't where the cats come from you know there are often cats on the field not like often often but often enough and it's like where do those come from yeah the cats come in from i don't see a lot of loose cats around and then there's you know in seattle they're having a problem with like coyotes in the the northern part of the city especially you know sometimes they're walking around in broad daylight as there's been encroachment i guess on on wooded areas i don't know and so like that would be very concerning to someone because you know again you'd worry about disease and also they look like a small wolf but you might think it's a dog so maybe you'd be like a dog and then you get up on it you'd be like oh no, dog, and then you'd get up on it and you'd be like, oh, no, mangy. I think that I have sounded like a normal person through most of this episode,

and this last little bit is where you're like, hey, Meg's been editing like 14,000 words twice for the last couple of days. Yeah. Yeah. Geese are good ones. Geese are jerks in my experience. I've played Untitled goose game. I've been a goose, a virtual goose. There's probably a reason why a goose was chosen as the protagonist of that game. I just Googled, I started typing in can a goose and the Google

auto completes for that are, can a goose kill you? Can a goose hurt you? Can a goose break your arm? Can a goose kill a human, et cetera, et cetera. Can a goose break your leg? Can a goose hurt you? Can a goose break your arm? Can a goose kill a human? Et cetera, et cetera. Can a goose break your leg? Can a goose kill other types of animals? So the consensus seems to be that a goose probably can't kill you, although I'm sure someone will send an example. But I know swans have killed. Yeah.

But geese are bullies. They're mean. Well, when I Google it, I also get can a goose and a duck mate? Guys, don't try to cross-pollinate. Don't try to cross-breed those. Can a goose kill a fox? Can a goose be a pet? Can a goose swim?

Can a goose egg be permanent? What? Guys, folks, friends. permanent what guys folks friends so yeah geese are a good one but i i think that they are they're a good one but they're also a terrible one because they are they are little jerks so i imagine that they would be like i will not be trained yeah i reject i reject your attempt to train me i think that they would say get away from me i am goose. I will stab would be a whole scandal because it would be discovered that you were sprinkling the field with goose food or something to do this. So I don't know. I think goose is about as good as it gets for the candidate just because a goose

is like big enough and loud enough and aggressive enough that you're going to be a little bit nervous about the goose there in a way that you're not with like a chipmunk or something cute and cuddly and small. And yet it's not like so big and so dangerous that they just stop the game. Like the game kept going while the goose was out there. And so it could be distracting without being so distracting that it stopped play. So it's really perfect for this assignment. I don't know if I can improve on it because any more threatening and dangerous than a goose and you're probably just going to get the umpire to call a halt to the game and then you're not going to get the distraction there. maybe a skunk not the skunk in the outfield play that sam has written and talked about but a physical skunk that would make you worry about being sprayed but they'd probably stop the game to take the skunk off the field so i'm sticking with the goose i think that might actually be better i'm not sure i can improve on the goose what about crows because crows can remember faces

so you could train them to attack your division rivals. Yes. And they are associated with death and people are wary of crows. Yeah. But I think that, as you said, the perception of danger with an actual generally lack of danger is important. And if you're getting dive bombed by a crow, you're going to be like, excuse me, I cannot proceed. There is a crow dive bombing me. surely we must have animal control here the best part of rj's piece was that they

reminded me of the the goose that flew into the like the the sort of upper ring scoreboard in detroit like there was a there was a goose on the field in detroit and it whacked into a scoreboard and fell down in a way that was very alarming. And I think that they did a literal like, is there a vet in the house kind of a thing? And there was, and it came and helped the goose. And it's like being on a plane when they ask if there's a doctor on the plane, except, you know, with a goose and much lower stakes. All right.

Well, we have settled that. No one trained geese to bother defenders. But if you do want to trade some sort of wildlife to do that, then a goose would be your best bet, I think. Yeah, but I still think they'd be training resistant because they're little jerks. Yes. All right. We will end there. We're going to get emails from goose lovers. Oh, we sure are. Are they out there? I'm sure they must. I don't know. Someone for the goose out there. There's someone who loves everyone

and everything, so must be goose fans. That will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening and apologies to any goose fans we offended. You can support the podcast 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. Klaus Hermans, Kyle Rechtenwald, Brian Greica, Nicholas Ziegler, and Robert Beretta. 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 podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of this week. It will be our anti-penultimate team preview podcast. It will feature the Padres and the Rockies. So we will talk to you soon. Good angry greasy goose, pink footed sing. Good and greasy goose, go on then pink footed sing.