Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1693: Dodger Dog Delivery

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Mariners calling up pitching prospect Logan Gilbert, the late-inning dominance of Aroldis Chapman and (more unexpectedly) Kendall Graveman, Shohei Ohtani���s best start of the season, and the Astros providing housing for their minor leaguers, then answer listener emails about their favorite baseball seasons, how long it will […]

I am one of two, one of everything I've got to hold true. And there's always room for another point of view. We are one, all together. We are two, me and you. Me and you. Me and you Hello. So for the second day in a row, our recording was immediately preceded by an announcement about another top prospect call-up by the Mariners. Not just Jared Kelnick. It will be Logan Gilbert.

I guess this is just something we can do every day now. What a time to be a Mariners fan. Logan Gilbert. Logan Gilbert. I mean, yes, it is good. It is good that Logan Gilbert will be up. Don't monkey with service time. It makes all of these feel more complicated than they have to. No, this is really exciting. Like Logan Gilbert, he was a 2018 first rounder for of back end of his college career, probably because he was overtaxed a little bit at Stetson. So he was, you know, sitting kind of like 92 to 96 as a rising

sophomore on the Cape and then was lower than that. And sometimes down into the high 80s, low 90s in his sort of draft spring. And then last year was up to 96, but sat 91-94. And so it's one of those things where you're excited that he has been able to see a velocity rebound because you just don't know how that's going to go. And his fastball is really good, and this is a Mariner's rotation that has had some pleasant surprises but could certainly use reinforcements. And here we are with Logan Gilbert. We'll have more to come on Fangrass.com.

But yeah, it's a bit surprising. This one was kind of expected in some ways because you got the sense from the matter of it all that Gilbert was also being kind of fussed with and messed with, although I don't think that people were quite as indignant on his behalf as they were on Jared Kellnick's. And now they will both be up at the same time. And I think, you know, the odds that Seattle learned something meaningful from the, what, five innings he's thrown in AAA are pretty low. Yeah, I guess that one week of AAA was just the right amount of seasoning. They're ready now. They weren't ready then, but now they're ready at exactly the same time. But hey, we're happy to see them whenever they arrive. this year who have not allowed a run yet, or at least an earned run in more than 12 and a third

innings, which is a cutoff I'm choosing just so I don't have to talk about like Michael King and Caleb Barriger, who have also not allowed a run. But I wanted to talk mainly about Graveman and also Aroldis Chapman has not allowed an earned run this year. So they've both pitched 14 or 14 and a third innings as we record here on Wednesday afternoon. And part of the strikeout spike these days is that you constantly get introduced to new flamethrowers who just showed up like the Shane McClanahan's or whomever.

And you have to familiarize yourself with the latest guy who throws really hard and strikes everyone out. But another part of it is that people you don't actually expect to be throwing as hard as they are and pitching as well as they are suddenly show up transformed because that's also something that happens now. So Aroldis Chapman, of course, we're used to being good at pitching and throwing hard and he's throwing as hard as he was a couple of years ago. And now he throws a splitter and he's not just a four seam slider guy anymore with the occasional sinker mixed in. So it turns out that when you throw 102

and also you have a good splitter and no one knows what's coming and you still throw the slider, no one can hit you at all. So he has struck out almost 60% of the hitters he's faced this year. But there's also Kendall Graveman who hasn't been quite as much of a strikeout artist,

but he has been equally unscored upon and has also been pretty impressive. And he's just been reincarnated as a closer now. People probably remember him as a starter primarily for the A's. And now he's back and he throws harder than he did in the rotation. He's pitching in the bullpen now where he moved, I guess, mostly last year. And he's one of these guys who just gets a velocity spike from pitching in short bursts. And he came back from Tommy John surgery. And now he's just like unhittable late inning reliever.

And I also enjoy that like his appearance has changed too. So now he has like long, shaggy hair and he's just like unhittable late inning reliever. And I also enjoy that like his appearance has changed too. So now he has like long shaggy hair and he's got the beard. It's like a chicken and the egg thing. It's like, did the closer beard make him into a dominant closer or did he become a dominant closer and then he had to have the closer beard? It's probably the latter, but I enjoy that the appearance matches the performance thus far. So he is just like completely transformed and now he throws 97 or faster. So that's something.

Kendall Graveman, who knew? Yeah, we started to see this velocity uptick from him last year. I think that his, you know, if you look at what his four seamer averaged last year, it wasn't 97. But we did start to see kind of hints of this last year where you'd watch a Mariners game. And by you, I mean like the 10 of us who did that. And be like, did Kendall Graveman just start at 99? Is he doing that? Is he doing that a lot lately? Are we engaged with this in the way that we ought to be?

And so it has been kind of interesting this year to see people discover the new Kendall Graveman because he also had some injury stuff last year. You know, he missed some time and also it was 2020 and it was very strange. And, you know, again, it should be said the Mariners were not very good at baseball at times. So I understand why people were not, you know, really all that engaged with their bullpen, which apart from Graveman was actually worse than the Phillies, if you can believe it. So any number of things conspired to make people kind of not pay attention to Kendall Graveman in 2020. And now we're kind of forced to engage with Kendall Graveman in 2021, because not only is he throwing harder, but he's been deployed really smartly.

The team has done a good job of just actually using him when the leverage is highest and the hitters are best, like modern teams do. And so he has been confronted with challenges and has largely risen to them. But yes, there have been a number of times this year where I've had to tell the Fangraph Slack, no, no, no, Kendall Graveman is throwing that hard now. That's what he does now.

That's Kendall Graveman for you. Famous hard throwing Kendall Graveman is throwing that hard now. That's what he does now. That's Kendall Graveman for you. Famous hard throwing Kendall Graveman. But here we are. I guess that's not the only change. He's also made some other changes to his repertoire now. So he throws a slider instead of the curve that he used to throw. And he doesn't really throw his cutter anymore. It's just like nonstop 90 something

sinkers that just have these nasty movement too. So yeah, that's something that I've had to learn about baseball now. Not the Kendall Graveman I thought I knew. Yeah. I mean, we will kind of see how this Mariners team paces over the next little while here. I imagine that unless they are like really in it, unless they're really, really in it, that Kendall Graveman is pitching well enough to be on another team come August. But for now, what fun it is. After last year, I imagine a rather unique experience for Mariners fans to turn on the late innings and be like, well, this isn't certainly a loss. It has been less. It has been less sure of late. Their early season returns were really, really strong.

And they've been, you know, OK over the last month. I think not even like two weeks. When is it? It's May. It's May 12th. Today is the 12th of May. But you know what I'm trying to say. It's been a little less sure of late.

And that's the thing that happens with bullpens. But it has been very far away from the tire fire that it was last year and again has to be just what a lovely thing to turn it on and be like yeah they might they might still win although not when you say kikuchi throws a gem against the dodgers those you still manage to flub somehow don't know about that mariners you should you should work on should work on winning games when the starter strikes out 11 guys and they're Dodgers. That's impressive. That's hard to do. They were winning that one right up until they weren't.

Yeah. Well, you know, Seegers have to match RBI or something. Tears in space time. So here we are. Yeah. So just my daily dose of Otani because we recorded our last episode before his start on Tuesday. And man, that was a fun one. That was the best that he has looked as a pitcher this year. So he pitched against the Astros and he also batted second. And then to my delight,

he reappeared as a right fielder, which was wonderful. I was happy with the amount of Otani that I had gotten in that game. He went seven innings. He gave up one run, four hits, one walk, 10 strikeouts. He had command and control really consistently for the first time this year. And then just when I thought his day was done, there he is in right field all of a sudden, which was just great. And I felt for Taylor Ward, who started that game in right field, and he hit a game-tying solo homer. And then his reward for that blow was to be replaced at his position by that day's starting pitcher, which was interesting. And if it were a different team and a different starting pitcher, maybe that would have been harder to stomach. But it's Shohei Otani. And I was, of course, hoping that he would get an opportunity to make some miraculous play out there.

And he didn't really. But just to see him standing there brought a smile to my face. You just never know when he's going to pop up and when his day is done. And it was really encouraging to see him pitch as well as he did. And to strike out 10 Astros, because the Astros have been a pretty good hitting team and a team he did and to strike out 10 Astros because the Astros have been a pretty good hitting team and a team that's tough to strike out. And he was doing it. He was throwing first pitch strikes. He had great command. He was just painting with his four seamer. And then he had these nasty sliders that like started way inside and broke back over the plate and knees

were buckling. And then he has these new cutters and he's got the splitter of course which is almost unhittable i guess jordan alvarez did technically get the first hit of the season on otani's splitter but it was like a forfeit ground ball that he beat out so yeah that was a pretty dominant performance and i hope that we will see more of that going forward i just love the people who are like emergency pod and i want to be like we're gonna we already we're gonna record again tomorrow it's okay we need to we need to keep our standards for emergency pod strong because if we have slippage then we're gonna do like 10 shows a week and i don't think we have

enough to talk about for 10 a week so we set a precedent by doing an emergency pod the first time that Otani pitched and hit in the same game. Yeah, but that was a special occasion. And we were going to do an episode anyway, so it wasn't really. It was just a strategically timed pod more than an emergency pod. strategically timed pod more than an emergency pod. But we do hear you all, but we have to sometimes pause to sleep and take showers. So we can't start flubbing the emergency pod line. Otherwise, madness ensues.

So Sarah Langs had the stat courtesy of Elias that Otani is the third player in the modern era since 1900 to strike out 10 or more batters and play a non-pitcher position in the same game. Joining Sam McDowell on July 6, 1970, who struck out 15 and played second base. And, of course, Harvey Haddix, September 28, 1952, who struck out 11 and played right field. So the Otani fun facts come fast and furious really every time he pitches. And I'm here for all of them. I'm not tired of these things yet when it's always a short list of player to do whatever thing that we're slicing and dicing Shohei's stats to say that he did, and it's just him and one other guy from many decades ago. I'm always enthused about those stats i think that you know we there have been times in joe

madden's managerial career where he has been like too cute right he has been too clever by half but i think that his willingness to do this proved that there there is some utility to the madden of it all um and so in this moment i was grateful that he was the the manager of the angels to be like yeah you're gonna go out there and write. Yeah. I'm going to get back out there. So sometimes, you know, madness meets the moment in a way that's good. And then it's not too cute. It's just delightful.

Yeah. I like that he has just let Otani kind of do whatever he wants. It's like, I don't know how many teams would be willing to do that. But it aligns well with my interests, which are let Otani do what he wants so that we can see him do as many things as possible. And Madden's attitude just basically seems to be, yeah, go for it, which is maybe partly a product of the Angels' weakness in other parts of their roster. But also just it seems like he is operating under the assumption that if you just kind of let Otani monitor himself and self-report on his level of fatigue and his willingness and capability to do these things, that he's been doing this his whole life or his whole professional life.

And he knows what he's capable of and just sort of removing the limitations and these rules that are applied to his usage. I don't know. It certainly doesn't seem to have hurt him thus far. And maybe it has let him feel some freedom and some fun that have helped him. So it's been great. And I applaud the angels for that. So I wonder if he had signed somewhere else. And it seems like no one knows still why exactly he signed with the Angels. I've talked to people who were with the Angels at the time, and they don't even really seem to know why Otani picked them, whether it was that they expressed willingness to let him do the two-way thing. I'm sure they weren't the only team that did that, but for whatever reason, he picked the Angels. And I think from a standpoint of just wanting to see Otani strut his stuff and give this a real go, I think it's kind of a bummer that he's on a team that

can't seem to win even when he is doing these heroic things. They lost again, even though he gave them a great start on Tuesday. And I couldn't help but notice that it was a shift against a right-handed hitter that helped the Astros break it open and turned what could have been a double play into a hit. But from the standpoint of just wanting to see what he's capable of, I think it's actually worked out quite well. I do wonder if part of why... I don't mean to... When I say what I'm about to, it's going to kind of sound like

I'm implying that the angels are being irresponsible or that Otani is being dishonest with the level of discomfort he experiences on any given day. And I don't mean to imply either of those things. of discomfort he experiences on any given day. And I don't mean to imply either of those things, but I do wonder if they were closer in any given season if the reins would be tighter when it comes to his usage. I do wonder how much of their willingness to kind of experiment is that they're kind of hoping that something will stick. You know, you're going to throw very talented pasta at the wall and see what sticks of it.

I don't know that that metaphor necessarily works with pitching, but I do wonder if they're just enough below being good. Because they're like, yeah, we'll give that a shot and see how it works out. And I'm sure that there is a limit to that. They would never want to put his health in sort of permanent jeopardy because he needs to be on the field and be productive for them to have a shot at stuff. And we've seen how potent they can be, especially lately in their offense when he is doing well

and that he is capable of pitching performances like this will make it forever tantalizing and sort of appealing as an option. But I wonder if they're kind of in like a sweet spot of not being good like as a team he is quite he is quite excellent but like if they are kind of in an in an interesting in between spot in terms of their record and sort of how they're stacking up against the rest of the west that they're willing to let this kind of continue to play out and see if it, at least for this season, continues to yield dividends in a way that makes them competitive. Because, you know, you wouldn't want that pitcher not in the Angels rotation because my only hope for the fun facts is that we will start to see more Negro Leaguers mentioned in the same breath as these other two-way players, as I've talked about on the show before. But exciting developments that Sean Foreman was tweeting on Wednesday, some samples, it looks like a demo of StatHead using Negro League data. And that's something that Stathead has not been capable of.

Stathead being the tool formerly known as the Play Index. And so it looks like they're about ready to roll this out. And I haven't talked to Sean about it. I don't know if they're using the Negro League's data that they have or the more complete Seamhead's data or what.

But that is exciting. I hope that that will lead to more of those names and seasons being mentioned along with these other guys. So that's something to look forward to and possible fodder for future stat blasts. So we have some emails to get to. You want to talk briefly about the Astros minor league housing situation? Yeah. I don't have anything particularly revelatory to say about this, except that so today, Rick Early reported that the Astros are basically providing housing to their minor leaguers this season. Part of this is in response

to the COVID protocols have made it so that host families are not really a safe thing for teams to utilize. And there's been this sort of start and stop delayed nature to the season. And there have been guys at the alt site who are then going to get deployed to a different level. And it has put a lot of minor leaguers in kind of an odd position where their housing, which is already unpredictable in the best of years, is even more unpredictable than it would typically be. And so the Astros are going to take care of that. And I think that there's a lot that can be said about this being an objectively good thing, while we can still point out that it is not necessarily sufficient to alleviate all of the weird financial constraints that being a minor leaguer puts on minor leaguers, right? One way to ensure that people have access to good housing is to just pay them more and they can afford to pay for housing themselves. But this does have a very important and sort of real impact on people's lives. So I don't want to discount it. And I think that one thing I was struck by, and I'm struck by this every time I read Russell Carlton, is how obvious a competitive advantage this seems to be and how strange it is that it doesn't get utilized more. And that's a kind of cold way to think about a thing

that should just not be a problem, right? People should just make a living wage when they're working full-time such that it doesn't take incentives and the possibility of competing to to make sort of come to fruition but that is kind of the incentive structure that we find ourselves in in major league baseball and so i always find it so odd because it can be done so cheaply like it's such a it's such an inexpensive investment that makes such a tremendous difference in people's lives and really does put them in a better position to do their jobs well, whether it's, you know, having adequate nutrition or secure housing or better travel accommodations so that you're not sleeping on a bus all the time.

And it's just a very, it's disappointing and so odd. It's both things at once. And if it were just disappointing, we'd talk about it one way, but the oddity of it is still a thing that strikes me every single time. And I'm sure that the answer is that if all 30 teams don't do it, then it doesn't matter. You don't have to innovate in this innovate, you know, that innovative thing of paying people a living wage. You don't have to innovate in that way because nobody else is doing it. But I do wonder as we start to see sort of cracks in the dam where there are organizations that want to press the point and make this something that they use to try to recruit as they sign free agents. You know, we're seeing the Astros actually sign minor league free agents, which is a thing that they just historically didn't really do very often. And so I just wonder if this will start a new trend or if they will be sort of able

to corner the market on that particular advantage. But it is seemingly a relatively inexpensive way to treat people well. And if the next market inefficiency in baseball is just treating your employees well, that'd be great. Yeah. I'd be in favor of that. Let them sleep and buy healthy food and see what it gets you. Yeah. I don't have a problem with talking about it in that way.

I mean, just to be pragmatic about it. I saw people pointing that out. Like, yeah, we don't have to couch it in the language of inefficiencies and competitive advantages. We could just talk about human dignity and taking care of people and all of that. And sure, that would be wonderful. But we're talking about MLB teams here. So I think the competitive advantage argument is probably more likely to sway them and actually change these conditions, which is maybe the important thing ultimately. So yeah, I hope this starts something and I hope it's not

just temporary because of the COVID restrictions on host families and roommates and all of that. That's kind of maybe the rationale here, but hopefully that means it'll just be the start of something and they'll recognize that, oh, we should just keep doing this because it makes sense. And I guess maybe it would be even better if they just paid them enough that they could afford to live wherever they want and not necessarily have to live in the team housing. But I mean, I think it's pretty good to have the team housing as opposed to having to find your own place that might not be so good and you might be crammed in with several other teammates and all of that. So, yeah, it sounds like from Britt's article that this is something that, you know, other teams minor leaguers are like, hey, why do they have that?

We don't. So maybe they will put pressure on their organizations in some way or it'll just come to be seen as a desirable thing or an obvious thing. And they have gotten raises from a very the rhetoric, at least, that the contraction of the minor leagues, you know, fewer teams would enable better conditions. And it has coincided with that, that there are fewer teams, fewer players, and the players who are there are getting paid better, not well necessarily, but, you know, sizable percentage bumps, at least at a lot of minor league levels. So that's good. And yeah, hopefully this starts a trend. Yeah. I hope that it becomes the sort of thing that is just an obvious boon to potential production from guys who you're hoping will contribute to

your eventual major league club, or at least will be productive players who you know serve as skilled competition to help sharpen the guys who do end up contributing to your major league club you know organizations need org guys too so i think that it's it's a positive development and while i agree like i wish that the inherent dignity of human beings were enough. And it's disappointing that it's not. But I think that you're right to say that you want to frame these in sort of the terms that people understand while you hopefully wait for Major League Baseball as a governing body to take this out of the realm of incentive entirely and just mandate a particular treatment of its employees, right?

We've talked about that a lot. I'm skeptical of incentives as an effective way of legislating. It's like, if you want a thing to be a rule, just make it a rule because people are much more likely to follow it than they are if it's just an incentive where they might, you know, find ways to be squirrely or raccoons or rats, potentially. Who knows what kind of small furry mammal they will prove to be. But I think in the meantime, understanding that players play better when they're well rested and when they aren't dealing with the stress of housing insecurity is just a really obvious kind of no brainer. Oh, yeah, if I had known I'd had sleep apnea earlier, I might have been a better player. If I had realized before I was at AA that I needed LASIK, maybe I would have been a better hitter earlier in the minors. And, you know, these things are in the grand scheme of better, there's just opportunity to kind of treat your people like people and try to understand that how they behave away from the field impacts their performance on it. And that if you want to care about their performance on the field, you probably want to make sure that they're doing okay away from work. So, yeah, good on the Astros. As we so often say on this podcast those good old astros

hey you know you gotta you gotta pick your wins where you find them you got you can't be you can't be choosy about that you just gotta you just gotta roll with it they're so few and far between when it comes to the treatment of minor leaguers that we will take them wherever we find them yeah even if it's just a PR reputation restoration, a feel good story about the Astros, whatever the motivation is, ultimately the upshot is that minor leaguers have houses. So that's good. Yeah. I think that it's important to not let people off the hook, right? We don't want to be seduced by good PR. We don't want to fall for stuff. But I do think that sometimes we kind of lose the thread a little bit. And like the reality of

this is that it has a very real and meaningful impact on real people and their lives are going to be better now. So that's a good thing. And we can continue to ask for sort of demand better conditions beyond that. But we should also acknowledge the reality that like people who are stressed about something that we all understand the stress of, right? You don't have to be a baseball player to understand the stress of housing insecurity. Now they don't have to worry about as much, and that's really great. So that's good. You're probably giving the Astros PR department too much credit by implying that they could successfully produce a positive story on purpose. Oh, gazinga. You're not right.

Let's answer some emails. Okay, this one is short and sweet at least the question is. This is from Dylan who says, what was your favorite baseball season that you can remember? Do you have a favorite baseball season? Let's see.

I have three answers to this question. Okay. My first favorite baseball season is 95 because that was like, it's very hard to replicate the magic kid season. So 95 will always be, as a kid who grew up a Mariners fan, will always be as as a kid who grew up a mariners fan will always be magical in a way that i don't think any other baseball season will be able to be because

in addition to the team i liked best having this sort of cinderella end and incredible you know start to the postseason i again don't remember what happened like i don't remember any of those games against cleveland i just don't remember them but you know i also fell in love with baseball as a sport in a way that was really important and profound so so i would say 95 and then i would say the 2014 season and people are going to be like not 20 2001, Megan? I'd say yeah, because 2014 was the year that I really, like, I had moved to Wisconsin. It was the summer after my first year of grad school. And I really was able to just sit and watch baseball on a daily basis in a way that I hadn't been for a really long time because of the work I was doing previously. And so it was the year that I kind of fell back in love in a very earnest way with

the sport because my daily exposure to it was just so much higher than it had been in the previous decade of working in finance and then being in college before there was really MLB TV, you know, so I was kind of at the mercy of national broadcast, like in the common room. So I just didn't watch as much baseball as I would have liked to. So I would say 2014 for that reason, and then probably 2018, because that was the first season where I was a full time baseball media person. And so that was the year that I got to experience baseball for my job full-time ever. And that was very stressful in a lot of ways, but really special in a lot of other ways. So I would say 95, 2014, and then 2018. 2020 is very low on the list.

Yeah. Just as an aside. It's understandable. Yeah. It doesn't rate. I guess mine would probably be 98. At least that's my kid season, my golden season, just because, well, I was 11 that season, kind of a good age to be obsessed with baseball. And I didn't get into baseball at an extremely early age because my immediate family wasn't really hardcore baseball fans. So I kind of came to it indirectly or found my way to it myself. So that was an early season for me of really following everything closely. And what a season, right? Because you had the Yankees. I was a Yankees fan at the time.

So that was one of the best teams ever. And I got to go to the World Series and see them win that year. So that was pretty great. And then you had the home run chase and no one was worried about PDs at the time, particularly. I certainly wasn't. So I was following that chase every single day. And I just remember like going from place to place, traveling a little bit that summer. And every day it was like, what did McGuire do today? What did Sosa do today? And so that was extremely exciting. So I don't know that that can be topped. I almost wish I had been a little bit older for it maybe, or if I could go back and see it through, I don't know, maybe not my current eyes, but just a little older, just because growing up as a Yankees fan, I didn't really appreciate how good I had it. It was hard to really recognize you're watching an all-time great team and season when it's one of the first teams and seasons that you've really paid close attention to and you've never known what it is to watch a bad baseball team, it's a little bit different. So I kind of wish I

had more context for how great that season was. But on the other hand, it certainly helped hook me that that team was so good and just had so many great players who were easy to root for. So yeah, probably 98. And I don't know, recent seasons kind of blend together for me. Like when occasionally we've answered emails or we've gotten questions about like what makes a good season, like what is a good season? And it's hard for me to answer that question because it's just like, it's such a big amorphous mass of season. It just stretches on forever. And it's like every season is going to give you some standout individual player seasons and some exciting stuff that you're watching. follow something as someone who covers baseball professionally as it was Otani's rookie year, at least for as long as his pitching lasted. And this year is almost on that same level and hopefully will last longer. So that sort of thing, I guess when you see something like that, where it's just like there isn't a recent precedent for that, then that makes a season stand out

from all the others. Whereas usually, unless there is a really notable race like the 98 home run race, and we've talked about how there aren't really all that many exciting record chases these days anymore for various reasons. And so there hasn't been one like that lately that has really enhanced the season as a whole for me. And I guess when you think about the end of the 2011 season and that last day and how exciting that was, but does that move the needle as far as like, oh, that was a great season or was that just a great ending or a great day? I don't know. The season is just, it's such a constant. It's there day in and day out. It's just the background to your spring and summer and fall or parts of those seasons. And so it's almost hard for me to differentiate. And I guess my professional life has not seasons of mine, but lately none really stand out.

They're just all kind of good and enjoyable in similar ways. I guess you get good pennant races some years and not others, but I don't know. For me, it's just like the constant of having it there every day. And that's something you get with every season except for 2020 which would also be quite low on my list garbage individual moments that were great but as a whole garbage not a season i would repeat no hopefully not not a year not yeah this really wants to no yeah well we got a question about that from luke who says i was watching or enduring the MLB flashback during a game today and even mentally from the 2020 season. I started to wonder something. How many years will it be before they show a 2020 highlight and you have to stop and think for a second before you realize why the stands are empty? Obviously, it won't be in the very near future, but say we get back to full capacity by the start of next year for all 30 teams.

Will you be watching a game in 2025 and see a flashback from 2020 and have to stop for a second to remember why no one is there that's a really great question and i i have a potentially controversial answer to this which is that i don't think we will see non what round did they start doing the the postseason in texas with limited fans that was for the after the first round at least yeah it was for maybe for the- It was after the first round at least. Yeah, it was maybe for the league championship series even. I don't think that we will see flashbacks from earlier than that in 2020 very much at all because I don't think they like that those highlights don't have fans in them. They have the cardboard cutouts. I think that it'll be very, very limited.

And the reason I say that is because they have already started cycling 2021 highlights with fans in the stands into those montages. And I feel like typically they wait a lot longer to cycle in same season highlights than they are this year. So I wonder if they're trying to move away from highlights that don't have fans in view. Maybe it's just not a strict rule per se, but as a matter of aesthetic preference that they like you to see fans reacting to the play on the field and feel that that brings something to the highlight and is allowing us to not have to remember 2020 as frequently. It seems like that home run that Miggy hit in the snow was in the highlight

package like a week after yeah a week after it happened it was so fast so i suspect two things one that we will see very few highlights without fans from the 2020 season and that as a result of that they will be jarring enough that you immediately recognize them as being from 2020 because they will be so few and far between i don't think that we will remember a lot of individual moments from 2020 like i think that the and and the way that this manifested was different for everybody and its severity was different for everybody but like i i don't think that trauma lends itself to to very well to memory like it it tends to make things kind of squishy and blurry and and other

things like very potent so i think that we will not remember a lot from the 2020 season but the strangeness of not seeing fans there will immediately register in the in the flashbacks i hope to god the music is different by then like five years from now if they're doing that same guitar riff i think that we have to file suit like i think that we should bring legal action against the league and the the original designer of that commercial like i think that that person should be held personally liable yeah at least switch it up to a sound sample of you doing your impression of that riff i would enjoy that much more. Yeah, I think it's going to take a while for anyone who

lived through that year and that season to forget why that happened. If you come to it later and you weren't watching baseball that season or you were too young to remember it or whatever, then you would certainly have that moment of, wait, where are the fans?

But otherwise, I think it'll be a while. I mean, maybe decades hence. I guess there could be a second of like, oh, that looks weird. Oh, right. What was that about? Oh, right. Yeah.

Yeah, but I think it'll take a while for that to happen because it's still pretty prominent in our minds, unfortunately. I look forward to the day when we all forget that and have to search our memories to remember why that happened and what was going on there. Yeah. Because like I said, we won't have all of the little moments, but the general vibe, I think, is going to persist for a long time in a way that will sometimes knock us on our butts and i'd prefer that mlb flashbacks not be flashback is such a such an odd word to use in relation to that but yeah it's a it's a weird bit of it's a weird bit of business all right chuck says the minors for pandemic related reasons have opted to do six game a week schedules with every Monday off.

And it seems likely that for the economic advantages it confers, they might continue to do that in the future. But what do you think are the chances that the major leagues will also adopt a six day work week? Japan and Korea do the six game a week thing right now. So it's not unprecedented at the professional level. do the six game a week thing right now. So it's not unprecedented at the professional level. Japan even layers on additional off days on top of that. And a lot of current major leaguers who have played there have experience with it.

And I would bet they speak positively to their teammates about guaranteed Mondays off. One way baseball could schedule 162 games within a six game a week format is by proactively scheduling seven inning double headers, perhaps on most Sundays, since it looks as though both the owners and players love seven inning games. Players definitely like working two fewer innings when they play in owners, probably like getting fans the hell out of their building two innings early since fans are basically done spending their money on concessions by then. Anyway, I would guess more off days for players is already going to come up in CBA

discussions. So a six-day work week with a guaranteed day off for rest and recovery for players, also resulting in reduced travel expenses for owners, would seem to be a pretty good business solution. Of course, I as a fan would not like my team playing only six games a week every week throughout the season, but really who cares what I think? But fans of your podcast like me definitely care what you think. So what do you think? What do I think? Does travel make this hard? Does the distance the teams have to travel to play one another? I mean, not always, but sometimes make this difficult to implement.

Like is the sheer landmass of the United States a barrier to this? Yeah, it might be. Well, the predictability, you if you could just put this into your schedule i guess then monday is just your travel travel day do you remember how the schedule used to be handmade by like two people yes for many years yeah yeah that was kind of cute it was nice it was like hey here's a giant puzzle. You have a couple months. Good luck to you. Bespoke artisanal schedule. I don't know if the league would be crazy about the idea of there being a designated day of the week where there is just no baseball. I think that baseball likes to be present almost every day of the summer, spring, summer, fall, where it is in season. I don't want to give any credence to the idea that people will like the seven inning double header rule unless that

we should schedule around it. I think that we are anti seven inning double header. We have stated that here, though not as strongly as being anti ghost runner. So I think that the idea of kind of giving up a day of the week to other ventures is something that would make baseball less inclined to do this, and that they probably don't like days with double headers as much, right? Don't you think that they would prefer to not have a double header? Because I haven't seen a study of this, but I would imagine that your second game, my instinct is to say that your second game attendance is lower on a double header on a day with a traditional double header, by which I mean when two games are played in the same day. Because we've had to distinguish that because people think it means like a nine inning double header and that's not what what we mean right so i would imagine that my instinct is to say that attendance

is less good in that second game and so and you would have a harder sell saying that this is a guaranteed shorter game we've talked about that before too so i feel like that set of potential economic factors might make it less appealing because we want to be on TV every day and we want to maximize attendance as much as possible. But I don't know if the data would bear that out on double headers. My instinct there might be wrong. Yeah, I could see it making sense from like a load management perspective just to play fewer games a week and maybe just to play fewer games per season, like if that's something that they do, which there would be support for,

at least in some quarters, if they could figure out a way to offset the potential revenue loss there. Then if you had fewer games per season, then I could see it making some sense. And I could see why players would like to have that predictability built into their schedules. I mean, we all like having weekends and days when we know we don't have to work. And that would be nice for them, even if they can't like plane trips around it necessarily.

But just to know I will be available this day. And so I could see some perks as a fan, as a spectator. I would almost like it if there were a staggered schedule somehow where each team had a designated day of the week off, but not every team's off day was the same, which sounds like a nightmare scheduling wise. So that just might not be feasible. But like, you know, if every team played six days a week, but like some teams were on like a Monday's our off day schedule and other teams were on the like Tuesday's our off day schedule and on and on, you probably couldn't do that. But if you could do that, then you wouldn't have a day without baseball, which I think would be bad. It's a bummer when there's

zero games on. That very rarely happens during the baseball season. It's jarring when you get the all-star break and you get a couple days with no baseball at all. Maybe it's okay to get a little bit of a breather, but every week to have no baseball, that's not ideal, I don't think, from a spectator perspective. So not really against the six games a week thing, but kind of against the one day a week when baseball just goes completely dark. That doesn't seem ideal. Right. I think the people who would appreciate this the most are like the people you least want to cater to. It's like us it's like it's like writers and editors and beats who would appreciate having sort of a designated day where where they

know they're gonna be off i mean i will admit that when there is baseball on, I feel a sense and an obligation that I should be watching it, even if I have been working for many, many days in a row. And that's like a, you know, that's like my own personal problem. And I don't think that that should dictate what the schedule of the game is. Although, because I kind of, I love the all-star break, Ben. The all-star break, that's magical. It's so great. We get a little breather. And then that first game back after the all-star break,

you're so excited to see baseball again. You're like, hey, what did you do? What did you do with your weekend? Baseball, what did you get up to? And you can look at all the players go on day trips because they can't go very far. So the Mariners all go to Wenatchee. They're like, I'm going to Lake Chelan

because I can drive there and I'm going to experience the lake. And it's nice. And then you get a little day off. But I don't think that that should dictate the course of the schedule. I like your idea of having staggered days off. I don't know. If we can measure fastball spin, I think we could probably figure out a way to engineer a schedule like that.

Yeah. Sure. We have to get the like mom and pop schedule makers back to work that out for us. Man, it would be very exciting. It would be a fun challenge. What if they emerged and they were like, we can't do it. Question from Andrew was talking to a friend about the robo zone. And we made the observation that flopping in basketball is a pretty close analog to catcher framing in baseball both are attempts to deceive a referee regarding what ideally should be an objective decision but because of the human element they're influenced by the way players react to the play in question while catcher framing is viewed as an important skill in baseball and fans are generally happy when their catcher is a good framer, flopping is frowned upon in basketball with the best usually receiving some amount of shame despite clearly adding value to their team.

Why do you think the two skills are viewed so differently? My best guess is it's because flopping looks pretty ridiculous in slow motion and generally gets way more attention than catcher framing. But I feel like at the end of the day, there's similar skill sets. The second question is better suited for effectively traveled a basketball podcast presented by Real GM. The actual equivalent podcast is probably Dunked On, who I sent a similar question to for the basketball viewpoint. But I wonder if their equivalent statistics held in basketball to get a value over replacement flopper. And I was not aware of any such statistics. And I sent this question to my friend and colleague, Zach Cram, who covers both baseball and basketball for The Ringer. And he said, the NBA releases last two minute reports

reviewing calls at the end of close games. So one could conceivably do some sort of analysis on flops from those reports, but any results would come with the large caveat that the data comes from a small subset of all plays throughout the season. So no, I don't think that there are any flop metrics, although they have those cameras pointing down at the court and tracking everyone's body movements. So maybe you could quantify flopping, but I haven't seen that. And Zach continued, the key difference between framing and flopping is ease of definition and measurement. Framing involves an easily defined binary ball or called strike with an easy frame

of reference for comparison. We know from strike zone tech, whether the pitch should have been a ball or called strike. On the other hand, it's hard to define a flop versus a regular basketball play and just as hard, if not harder, to determine what a call should have been as fouls or judgment calls. So I'm afraid that flopping stats with currently available data would prove, I'm sorry, a flop. I think the other difference, tell me if you think this is persuasive. I think the other difference is that you have to receive the ball, right? Receiving the ball is part of catching and framing is an extension of that required act, right? True. you catch it, you catch the ball. And so I think that that's an important difference also, whereas flopping is seen as sort of extra. It's extra, right? And it's performance in a moment that is unnecessary relative to the amount of actual impact you've received from another player on

the court. And so I think that that's a really important difference also, whereas this is an extension of existing and required skill. Flopping is, I like part of this being that there's like a goofiness penalty, right? The part of why we dislike it is because it looks so silly on replay. It looks so obviously exaggerated. And I'm sure that for, you know, sort of smaller flops, for like baby flops in real time to the referee, it probably looks much more convincing as sort of the body actually reacting to getting nudged or elbowed or bumped or whatever kind of foul is actually committed. But it does look so dramatic and silly and sort of overwrought. It's like the two-minute highlight reel on the Oscars where I'm like, did you not yell in your performance even one time? And so I think

that that's an important differentiator also. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's getting at something that I was going to try to articulate, which is that, well, for one thing, you're not supposed to notice framing, really. Like that's almost the point of it. Exactly. Whereas flopping is extremely ostentatious. So if you occasionally you do see like the silly example of framing where it's like, you know, someone in Little league or college or something where they just like yank a pitch you know halfway across the zone or something and sometimes they get the call at those levels but like that's not what framing or good receiving

is supposed to look like so it's the opposite it's disguised whereas flopping just sort of derails the game and you know suddenly we suddenly we're pausing to watch this person writhe and pretend to be in great pain, whereas framing, it's just very subtle and that's the whole point of it really. So I think that's part of it. And then as you were saying, it's a baseball skill in a way that flopping, I mean, I guess it is a basketball skill and a soccer skill, but it's separate. It's like divorced from the normal run of play same skill that you are performing more skillfully, I guess. So there's an element of deceit to it, definitely. But it's alsoest in a sense, but it's less like in your face, you're just lying to me about what actually happened here or how much pain you're in. It's manipulative in a way that's playing on emotions, I guess also. It's like, I'm suffering as a human.

I'm feeling physical pain here. And so you feel almost manipulated by that in a way that, yeah, you might be manipulated into calling a strike instead of a ball or vice versa, but it's not like, oh, my hand is in great pain or something, so you should call a strike here. So somehow it's like playing less on the umpire's feelings than it is like on their perceptions. It's the no makeup makeup look of baseball, right? My skin just is dewy. What are you talking about?

This is a strike. What do you mean? I have presented it to you so perfectly. It's like that, you know? You know all about that, Ben. You worry so much about your makeup look. Yes. All right. Interesting question. Interesting. All right. all about that ben you worry so much about your makeup look yes all right interesting question interesting all right there might be flopping stats in in soccer i don't know at least there

you get penalty stats but i don't know that you get flopping exactly quantified but i would enjoy that if someone were able to break that down the biomechanics of of flopping use the the player tracking technology to give us that that would be good all right question from philip patreon supporter who says it seems like no one is arguing past each other incessantly about the dh in the national league recently so here's some dh content i'm working from two assumptions here. One, that players and managers in general want the DH in the NL. And two, that ownership will use implementing it as a bargaining chip in the upcoming CBA negotiations. Those seem like safe assumptions. Yep.

What if NL pitchers agreed to a collective action in which they intentionally swung and missed at three straight pitches to strike out during every plate appearance and made it publicly known that they were doing so? I was just about to bring this up. change mid-season to stop the madness and i wonder whether this is what taiwan walker was doing for anyone who hasn't seen i will link to this video but the mets were playing the orioles and matt harvey was pitching to his counterpart taiwan walker and he did not swing and miss three times on purpose in fact he did not swing at. And not only did he not lift the bat from his shoulder, but he didn't even do the bare minimum of pretending that he might lift the bat from his shoulder. He was like, all right, I have to stand here. You're making me do this. So I will just stand here and you can pour fastballs right down the middle and I will take them and then I will sit down. And that is exactly what happened. Like on the first pitch, Harvey threw one that was like not quite centered in

the strike zone. It was like a little toward the outside corner and he got the call and it was clear that Walker was just watching it. And then on the next two pitches, Harvey was like, all right then. And he just laid in like 93, 94 mile per hour fastballs just like dead red right down the middle and walker was just like all right well i'm obligated to be here until three strikes are called on me and then he turned around and he went back and you know he did his job on the day he pitched well and outdueled harvey and the mets won And ultimately, it didn't matter that he just accepted that strikeout willingly, which was interesting because Walker has NL pitching and hitting experience in the past. And he actually had a pretty good offensive season his first year

with the Diamondbacks. He actually hit quite well. So he has some ability to do it. And I don't know if this is how he has acted in every plate appearance this year that i just haven't watched or whether he was under special instructions not to swing this day or or what the story was exactly there but he batted 231 in uh 54 plate appearances in 2017 so he had 12 hits that year he can't do it but he was not having it here yeah gosh what how would it um i mean the messaging around it would be so fascinating because they are you know by standing in the box they are fulfilling their obligation um and i mean we talked not long ago about how people would react to you know sort of someone taking like the

probably the Scribner approach to plate appearance right but I think I do wonder what would be what would be done and what possible recourse the league would have to counter act something like this because it's not as if they're refusing to step in right it's not as if they're refusing to step in, right? It's not as if they're trying to monkey with the lineup and force a DH in where no DH should go. They're doing the things that they need to. And if they're swinging, especially if they're swinging, they are exerting effort in an attempt to get through their plate appearance. Some of them might accidentally put the ball in play. That would be hilarious. But I do wonder what recourse the league would have like this would make them so embarrassed but they can't say that they're violating the rules or walking out on the job

it's not a strike you know i mean a lot of the pitches would eventually become strikes i would imagine but yeah i wonder if they would just say midway through that they're issuing sort of an emergency ruling to say, no, this is temporary and this will have no impact on the DH negotiations later, but heretofore there shall be a DH. I don't know. I don't know what they would do. I want them to do it now because I want to see how Manfred would respond to something like that. Yeah. It'd be hard to get everyone to go along with it, I guess. Just looking bad on purpose. And there are some NL pitchers who like hitting. I mean, not everyone hates hitting, even if they're bad at it.

So there are some who would just reluctant to do that. And they're super competitive and they don't want to tank on purpose, even if everyone else was doing it. So I don't think you could get perfect collective action here, but it would be entertaining for me, at least, as someone who wants the universal DH to be hastened. And it would be hard to even tell the difference sometimes because pitchers, even when they are trying, swing and miss so often

and strike out almost half the time as it is. So I wonder how long it would take even to notice. Like if you sold it, if you made it more convincing than Tywon Walker here and you looked like you were actually trying to hit the ball, like how long would it take for us to actually even notice that this was happening if they tried to play it off and took the Mets raccoon rat approach of trying to just pretend that nothing notable is happening here. It might take a few days for me to actually notice, oh, the pitchers aren't just terrible

because they're bad at this. They're terrible because they're trying to be bad at this. Well, and presumably, ownership. they're trying to be bad at this so well and presumably you know ownership so i i think that the premise of this question that front offices and teams want the universal dhs and is correct but i do think that there would be resistance from teams to this approach sort of in game because there are times when like the manager wants the pitcher to try to lay a bunt down right like there are times when swinging is like very much what they don't want the pitcher to do, because what if the pitcher puts it in play and then he hits into a double play and then all of your hopes and dreams in that inning are shattered. And so I wonder if

the first place that we would start to get the sense that something was organized and sort of acting in defiance of what the dugout might want in any given moment would be because we'd start to hear grumblings of it from the manager. I don't know how inclined they would be to telegraph that that's what's going on because I doubt strongly that they would want to say, so my pitcher doesn't listen to me. You know, I'm sure that they wouldn't be keen to disclose that. But I do wonder if you'd start to see exasperated managers being like, I wanted you to, you know, so it would be, oh, I want this to happen so badly. I want it, Ben, because then I want to watch and see if I would notice. Because I think you're right.

We would be struck by how many more swings there are. Because I do think there are guys who are perhaps not as extreme as taiwan walker was but there are dudes who kind of leave the bat on their shoulder right and sometimes told to leave the bat on their shoulder or told to lay a bunt down as opposed to to really swing away and so i think that we'd start to notice something kind of shifty perhaps sooner than you expect, just because the way that pitchers are approaching their plate appearances would be different. They would still be bad, but the makeup of how they are bad, I think, would start to shift fairly rapidly if you were able to get everyone on board. But yeah, what would they do? What would they do? What do you think they

would do? Do you think that they would issue an emergency rule? They can't say don't swing. No, I don't think this would be well received by the public at large. I don't know if the union needs to care about public opinion, but I don't think this would help it be on their side if players were sort of making a mockery of the game more than pitcher hitting already does, you know, just as a negotiating tactic, essentially. I think if you were watching the game and your pitcher came up in a big spot and it was clear that he was intentionally striking out, I don't think most fans would be like, solidarity. No, I think they would probably be pretty pissed about that. And so it wouldn't be the greatest just in terms of sort of public perception. But, you know, it might be effective in other ways. I just think, yeah, you'd have management would be upset about it, not just the league, but managers and front office people, like you'd probably have threats of fines and suspensions and who knows what. Although really, like, would you suspend your pitchers who are already terrible at hitting even when they're trying?

Would you want to take them out of games or, you know, because then you don't have their pitching, which actually is valuable because they're pretty good at that. So would you want to play shorthanded? Probably not. Probably not. Probably not. It might actually expose just like how inessential the offensive component of pitcher performance is. Because like, are you really going to discipline them over this if it means that they will not be pitching, which is what you really have them out there for as it is. So you would be putting MLB in a bind here. Maybe this is the baseball equivalent of flopping. Yeah. Because you'd have to, it's a judgment call.

How would you prove that the guy isn't just a terrible hitter? No. How? Couldn't. Couldn't do it. You couldn't do it. So maybe this is baseball flopping. I thought it was deeply funny.

This also might be another example of how baseball shouldn't cater exactly to our whims because our tastes are unusual. Yeah. All right. Here is a question from Sean. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the Dodgers new restaurant, which is called Dodgers Home Plates. And he says, why would someone pay for overpriced stadium food, not at a game? Maybe just nostalgia. Have you ever had ballpark food you would eat not at a ball game? I will send you a link to the menu for this thing, and I will also link it from the show page.

But I'm reading here. Fans can now get a taste of the ballpark experience delivered on demand by ordering from Home Plates, which will bring Dodger Dogs and stadium favorites directly to Los Angeles area fans' doorsteps, launching exclusively on Postmates. Home Plates will serve Dodger Stadium fan favorites like Dodger Dogs, micheladas, and garlic fries to go along with snacks, salads, bar and dessert options. and garlic fries to go along with snacks, salads, bar and dessert options. In addition to premium Dodger dogs, items specially produced for home plates include individual thin crust Brooklyn style pizza, carne asada, helmet nachos and Dodgers blue gelato. So essentially you can order Dodgers stadium ballpark food from home if you care to do such a thing.

Why? That is the question. Okay. So I will say two things about this. The first is that there are ballparks that have like in-park restaurants that are very good, right? So at T-Mobile, the Mariners have the Hit It Here Cafe and the food there is good. I think it's, you know, you go and you sit and I think you can buy tickets to like watch the game from there. But that's stressful to me because then you have like,

how long does the food that you're done with sit there? Anyway, that's not the story. So that food is good. And I think it's also important for us to take into account the general quality of any takeout. Any takeout is slightly less good than it is when you get it at the restaurant. And it's not the restaurant's fault. It's just that no matter how speedy the delivery person, and it's not the delivery person's fault either, no matter how speedy the delivery person or how secure your insulated bag, it's never quite as warm as it is when you get it at the place and this seems like the kind of food where it is very important for it to be exactly as warm or in the case of the blue gelato exactly as cold as it is meant to be like imagine getting lukewarm helmet nachos

i'd rather that seems bad imagine that i mean they might be lukewarm pretty quickly anyway Because you're eating them out of a plastic helmet And that doesn't hold heat very well But I don't know When did this start? I guess it's new Because it says that it's going to initially launch In the Hollywood and West Hollywood neighborhoods

With ongoing plans to add additional neighborhoods throughout LA Want to have the tastes of Dodger Stadium delivered to your doorstep. Yeah, I don't know if I do. I do not know if I do. So Dodger Stadium is one of the ballparks I haven't been to. So I am not well versed in how good their food is. And it could be that what I am thinking of when I think of the carne asada nachos or the jalapeno helmet nachos is wrong. Maybe it's a lot better than I'm expecting it to be. Maybe the Camelback Ranch crispy chicken cob salad, which is in the spring training section, what is that supposed to mean?

I don't understand that. What? I know that they play their spring training games at Camelback, but why is it the salad? Are you supposed to be healthier in the spring as opposed to? So anyway, that's not the point either. But I'm confused by the way that they're assembling parts of this menu, like having the desserts be closers. That makes sense because it comes at the end of the meal. But anyway, that seems very confusing to me to call that spring

training. Why not just have it be a normal starting lineup entree? You don't have to. Anyway, so it's possible that like this food is just a lot better than I'm expecting. But it seems like they've missed the opportunity for this because I would imagine that the time when people were most keen to like replicate the ballpark experience was last year when they couldn't go. Right right so shouldn't you have been like you're stuck at home you can't come to dodgers stadium but as you sit down to watch the dodgers game tonight don't you want to kick back with a brooklyn dodgers pepperoni pizza and then you're like i do want to do that and the fact that it's a little bit cold and not as quite

as good it doesn't bother you because you're trying to recreate the feeling you get when you're able to go do a thing you can't do because you're in the middle of a pandemic. But how people can go places and sometimes eat inside and importantly, go to Dodger Stadium. I mean, I know that not everyone can. There's still reduced capacity and it's quite expensive. I wonder if these are the exact same prices as they are at Dodger Stadium. Yeah, it's probably, I mean, with the delivery, it's maybe even more. Maybe even more. I would think, like, I could imagine, you know, if I were having like a watch party of some sort and I was having friends over to watch the game or something, now that we

can kind of do that again. Sure. And you're like, oh, I want to replicate the ballpark experience by having ballpark food. Fine. I could see that. But otherwise, what you're usually hoping for with a ballpark serving is that it will replicate in quality what you can get outside of a ballpark. Generally, it's not like, oh, this is fine cuisine. I mean, I know that ballpark cuisine has improved by a lot over the last many years here. But still, it's usually

not the finest dining. It's like, hey, I want this to be good because I'm a captive audience here. I can't get anything else. So I hope it's palatable. Whereas when you're just ordering from home, you have a wealth of options available to you. And so it's a little strange to say, give me the ballpark food. And I don't tend to have very strong opinions about food. And as we often say on the podcast, you like what you like and that's fine. Whatever your palate is, whatever floats your boat, okay. And I've been to Dodger Stadium once in my life, so I certainly can't speak from great experience when I talk about the food there. And even just in general, like even when I went to games more often as a fan, I tried not to buy ballpark food if I could get away with it, you know, whether I could bring food when they still

like allowed you to do that. Or I would just try to like eat before I went just because, you know, there are only so many options available to you. It's always overpriced. If I'm going to the game, I don't really want to spend half an inning going to the concession and standing in line and not really being able to see the game. So I try like not to buy ballpark food, like even if there is good ballpark food, I'm not really in the market for it so much. So I guess this is just not my thing. But even so, it's strange. And I know people like Dodger dogs, you know, and I believe they just recently changed the supplier. Yeah, it's a different company now that makes the Dodger dog. So even if you like had some, you know, childhood attachment to the idea of the Dodger dog,

it's not the same dog. So I don't know. Friend of the show, Jesse Thorne tweeted the other day, Farmer John's will no longer be making Dodger dogs. A difficult day for Dodgers fans who will be forced to recognize that Dodger dogs are exactly the same as all other hot dogs. And it is weird that people in LA talk about them like they are made of beluga caviar or something. I mean, to be fair, they are slightly longer than the other hot dogs they sell at Dodger Stadium. And Jesse is a Giants fan, so maybe he's trolling a little bit. But I think there is some truth to that. Maybe you're grading on a curve with ballpark food. It's like, this is all I can get. So if it's the bare minimum, then that's all right. If this tastes like something I could get outside of a ballpark, we're doing well here. So I cannot personally imagine using this service if I were in a big city like LA and could order from any number of places. I don't know if you were imprinted on Dodgers game cuisine somehow. And this is up your alley. Then more power to you, I guess.

It's really nice that T-Mobile has a Din Tai Fung in T-Mobile. Because you're like, wow, like you said, I'm stuck here. And now you have to buy food from the ballpark. They're not letting you bring food in anymore for safety reasons. That's a different conversation. But you find yourself in this situation where you're like wow i'm really craving ballpark food what am i craving din tai fung i'll just order from din tai fung because i live in the world i don't live at the ballpark

it's a very i i think that there probably is like a nostalgia market for this thing but like i said i feel like the moment for this was last year not this year you can't get better as an aside you can't get better nachos somewhere else in la i beg your pardon right i think you probably can i would think so too all right let's see maybe one more here so this uh this is related to our discussion of hit by pitches which we've had recently. Jonathan says, I want to preface this by saying that I am not a fan of pitchers intentionally hitting batters. I am not an especially, quote unquote, macho guy. And watching the players plunk each other is off-putting to me.

That said, being a baseball player is a really weird microculture that exists in a bubble. And as much as I don't like hit-by-pitches, it's an aspect of their internal professional culture that just isn't about me or any of the fans. Intentional hit-by-pitches are not for us. It's something that would probably feel like it made a lot of sense if we played professional baseball. I'm not saying that Effectively Wild or baseball journalists should

just shut up about it. None of us has to like it, and it's fine to express disapproval. Maybe MLB should work harder to discourage it. But I do wish that when folks talked about it, there was a little more acknowledgement that intentional hit-by-pitches exist in a context we can't fully access because we have never been professional baseball players. Lastly, I'm not sure how this could be quantified, but I wonder how many players have been seriously injured on hit-by-pitch pitches and what subset of those were intentional. I know one could argue that any risk of injury is too much, but if such injuries are sufficiently

rare, I could see why players would see plunking as essentially zero risk. Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts. So what do you think of the idea that hit by pitches are for players more so for us and that we should be more understanding of the practice because of that. I think that he is right that there is a lot of culture. There's a lot about baseball culture that isn't meant to be necessarily like litigated by fans. Like they don't do it for fans. The conflicts that they are resolving are interpersonal and they exist within a very strange workplace. And I think that we talked about this on the last episode. There are plenty of instances where you just want to be able to sort things out with your coworker and you wish that there wasn't a reporter there to notice because you are in

an entertainment industry, but you still have to deal with interpersonal work stuff because every workplace has that regardless of how public facing it is. And so I do have some sympathy for that idea and that there are, you know, kind of understandings that or contexts where it might not strike the individuals involved as particularly serious. But I think a couple of things differentiate hit by pitch, But I think a couple of things differentiate hit by pitch and especially intentional hit by pitch from, you know, guys going at each other and yelling in the clubhouse. The first of which is that it happens in front of us. Yeah. Right. We're observers of intentional hit by pitch.

behavior moves onto the field where it is part of the product that is being produced for the consumption of fans, our sort of ability to have our right to have an opinion on it and to sort of ask that it be different, that dynamic shifts really dramatically when it happens between the lines versus when it doesn't. And that isn't to say that like bad behavior that happens outside of the public view can't ever rise to the occasion of meriting commentary or discipline or intervention. But I think that especially when it happens on the field and we're fans who are in theory helping to make possible that as a profession at all, right? That it is meant to be about winning baseball games so that fans can enjoy them. The idea that you would exact revenge for some grievance, particularly in a way that puts your team at a disadvantage, right? Because you're giving a guy the ability

to go on base. Let's assume for a moment that the intentional hit by pitches never results in serious injury. Let's just pretend for a moment that that's true because I actually don't, I think it's a fair question to ask. I don't know what the rate of injury or aisle stints or lengthy absence on the back end of an intentional hit by pitches. I don't know the answer to that. So let's assume for a moment that it never results in that and that every plunking happens, you know, in the meatiest part of a player's butt and they get mad because that still hurts, but they're fine and they don't miss any time. I think that it's appropriate for a fan to say, I am here watching you pitch and I want you to win and you are intentionally disadvantaging yourself to prove

a point. And that's a bummer for me. So set aside for a moment that we don't think that that's a particularly healthy way to engage in conflict resolution and that it tends to escalate and so it gets worse rather than making it better and that these guys seem to not put this stuff aside but decide to do it more you're disadvantaging yourself so don't do that because i paid my 30 to see you pitch and to see you win and i'd like you to do that and prioritize that over grievance is that a compelling argument i think that's kind of compelling i think so and also like the idea that well this is just for the select few within this insular profession like that can be a way to maybe perpetuate things that are bad and dangerous like you know not necessarily in every case like

sometimes they're just harmless traditions but there are also times when it's like oh well you don't understand because you haven't walked in these shoes exactly. Well, sometimes you need the people who are not in that world who can take a look at this sort of independently or impartially and say, this is what you're doing. What are we doing here? Sometimes I think having that outside perspective is actually good and helpful when it comes to curbing some destructive impulses. But, you know, I think this is a case like, yeah, like there are times when we make fun of like baseball players for not being funny or whatever. And, you know, we're copying each other's jokes and doing the same pranks over and over. And those things are not for us. And they entertain each other.

And that is fine. But yeah, when it becomes a safety issue, which I think this is, I don't know exactly what the rate is either, but obviously guys get hurt. And even if it's not in a really serious long-term way, it costs them time. And that affects the spectator experience

because then we don't get to see those people play baseball games. So I think that this does rise to the level of like, sure, like we can have this context to understand why it happens and why you can't necessarily just snap your fingers and undo this tradition, which goes back to the beginning of baseball and arises for these real reasons, you can bring that up to explain why it happens or why it might be tough to root out. But I don't think that necessarily means that we should just defer and say, well, this is not for us. So boys will be boys or whatever. So I think there is truth to what Jonathan's saying, that it's good to understand that this is sort of a subculture that is different from ours. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we just have to say it's fine, which is not what Jonathan is saying we should do. But I do think that there are times when it can be helpful to have that outside view. And sometimes you need some reform that is affected by people who are outside of that world. So they're not totally in the sway of that tradition that's always been that way. And so therefore, it's kind of accepted that it always has to be that way.

Yeah, I think that sometimes you don't question traditions, and it's really easy to get entrenched, and some of them will be kind of given away with great reluctance, and I think that the intentional hit-by-pitch is one of those, even if I think that the thinking on it has evolved and is closer. I think the average player's thinking on an intentional hit-by-pitch is probably closer. I'm not saying it's where we are, but closer to where we are than it would have been like 50 years ago, right? But you're right. Sometimes you need an outside perspective to say that this isn't the best way to do this. Like you can resolve differences differently than this.

Like you could, for instance, strike the guy out because that makes the point a lot better than whatever you're mad about you know that he that you think he showboated when he hit a home run or whatever whatever the thing is that day and also i think that there are places where the sport should sort of speak to its fans in places where it's okay for baseball folks to be like well this is really for us and i think that the like i said that dynamic changes pretty dramatically and tilts more firmly one way or the other when it is the play on the field and it's you know putting your team at a disadvantage go try try to win a baseball game, in my opinion. Yep. All right. Well, I've got some other good questions we can get to next time

or next week or whenever, but thanks as always for sending them in. We can end there. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. John Marsh, Luis T, Matthew Bensley, Simon Pincus, and Jeremiah Malarik. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another episode before the end of this week. Talk to you soon.