Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1694: Twin Killing

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the same-day debuts of Jarred Kelenic and Logan Gilbert, the future of the Mariners, and whether Mariners fans have actually had it so bad, another distinction between framing and flopping, the retirement of Tyler Flowers and the impact he had on catching technique, the resurgence of Rich Hill, […]

And you make them long, and you make them tough But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off I know we've come a long way, we're changing day to day But tell me, where do the children play? Hello and welcome to episode 1694 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm bad. How are you?

I'm pretty okay. Cool. We started our previous two episodes this week by talking about the impending Mariners prospect call-up. So I guess we might as well finish off the week by talking about the actual rivals. So we saw the debuts of Jared Kelnick and Logan Gilbert on Thursday. What were your one-game snap takes? Oh, they're terrible. Send them back to the minors. This seems like a normal pair of major league debuts. I talked about this earlier in the week that we have this expectation now after

seeing a bunch of like super prospects come up that you're going to homer on your very first at bat. And I mean, I will say, who knows what would have happened in Jared Kelnick's first major league at bat if Josh Naylor hadn't made an incredible catch in the stands. But, you know, I thought that it was fine. It was exciting to see them. I'm glad that their debuts were not eclipsed by another Mariners,

well, not a Mariners no-hitter, another Mariners being no-hit experience as Plesak carried a no-no into the eighth. But I thought that, you know, like when you look at Gilbert in particular, it showed some of the things that I think are going to make him a good major league starter and some of the things that show that he's still a young guy who has stuff to work out. So, you know, his early fastball was quite hard, you know, in the high 90s, and he induced fly outs and then went to his secondary stuff. And I think in the second and third inning, that worked a little less well for him than he would have liked. And then we saw what happens when the

fastball velo dips a little bit. You know, he had this early sequence to Jose Ramirez and Ramirez's first at bat where he was like, he got him with 96 at the top of the zone. And then later when the fastball was no longer 96 and not quite as perfectly placed in the top of the zone, it got hammered a little bit. Some of his secondary stuff didn't work as well, but we also saw a couple of really nice sequences. Like his first career major league strikeout was this really nice sequence to Cesar Hernandez, where he went forcing fastball high in the zone. And then he had that lovely curve ball that, you know, just went beautiful 12, six, and then he, he got him with a slider. And so I think that there's a

lot there that is very promising. And, uh, and I am excited to see what he does the next time when he, you know, doesn't have first major league start nerves and also is getting a sense of like what continues to play. And they start to think about how they want to sequence him because he was very fastball heavy in the beginning and then tried to mix in the secondary stuff. And like I said, in those middle two innings of his that went, you know, mixed results. And then I think in his final inning, we saw kind of what that slider can do when it's working the way that it should and you know how that curveball can look really nice so i don't know it was it was cool

like we have talked on this show before about how i don't know how i'm going to feel or how much i'm going to feel when the mariners are good again because my life as a baseball person is different now than it was when i when it was defined by being a fan like I'm a you know I'm a professional writer and editor now and that's the way that I experienced the game and so it's not it doesn't grab me from a fan perspective at least tied to one team the way that it used to but like this has been a long time coming and if this club is competitive like people I know in my life are gonna be happy yeah and the And the idea of sort of ushering in a new era of Mariners baseball, even though we had to wait, you know, 20 years

and then a little bit more than we maybe wanted to or needed to for service time considerations to see these guys, it's nice to be moving on. And I thought for the Mariners fans who watched them, were like, ah, this didn't quite go the way that I wanted it to. Like, there was a very cool juxtaposition where you had, you know, you had Gilbert pitching and you had Kelnick in the outfield. And then in the corner,

they were giving updates on the other sort of promising prospects in the system and what was going on for them. And like Julio had a crazy good night and Cal Raleigh was doing well and Marte is starting to really pick up. And so it just, I think that there's a lot here that is going to be very exciting very soon. And I hope that things go well for these guys. Not all prospects pan out, even very promising ones.

And I hope that the thing that drives when the next round of exciting prospects comes up is their readiness and not, you know, the organization's ability to manipulate their service time and, you know, game an extra year of control because this club has been so bad so long. And if any club in baseball should be motivated to win at exactly the moment that their players are ready to, it should be the Mariners. And so I hope that that is the sort of driving consideration for the organization going forward,

and I'm excited to see Logan Gilbert's next start. Also, I don't know that there are many players where there is a sharper contrast between their on-mound demeanor and their roster photo. So he threw four innings, and then when it came time for Strzok and Ryder to come in in the fifth, the broadcast did the thing that broadcasts do when you're recapping the starter's performance, and they showed the good stuff, and then they showed the home runs, and Fran Milreis remains just very strong just like deeply strong and Logan Gilbert has a very dour serious look when he is on mount he is a very

serious young man he kind of looks like he should be like a background player in an okay corral shootout but that's maybe a meg reference and so they you know they show him coming off the mound and I'm sure you know he talked afterward about how exciting it was to be there, but I'm sure in that moment he was like, I wish my debut had been a little more sparkling than this one was because he did give up runs, and that's not what you want. And then they flip to the sort of summary of his performance, and they're noting the runs but also the strikeouts,

and it goes from very dour man walking off mound to like smiling logan kilbert where he just has his megawatt smile and so that contrast was funny but he's so serious he's just a very serious guy on the mound and i i i'm a fan of the the very intense pitcher affect and it is it is made even uh more enjoyable when contrasted with a very uh sunny and smiley poster photo he looks kind of goofy in the headshot and yeah looks he reminds me of someone in that photo but i can't quite place who some other player i think but yeah mound demeanor doesn't always map perfectly onto off the field personality. It's always interesting.

Yeah, when you see someone who's super intense in game and then just kind of jokey and laid back off the mound and then other guys are sort of the same all the time. Yeah, there are a lot of differences there. But I enjoyed watching them. It felt like an event to have them both come up at the same time. And we've talked about the circumstances surrounding that and why the call-ups coincided that way and why it took so long. But putting that aside for a second, it did feel exciting to see them both come up at the same time.

And as you said, just it feels like this is a wave that is just starting to crest. You know, it's not like one day and it's done. The saviors are here. It's like this is just the beginning there are a whole lot of guys behind them and that's pretty cool because we've seen other teams like the white socks and the padres have kind of gone through that transition in recent years of going from bad or mediocre to suddenly the prospects are here and the young guys have arrived and they're more on the way and And that's what it feels like for the Mariners right now. And that division is there for the taking. Maybe not this season, but in future seasons, it certainly seems as if the Mariners are set up to have some sort of super team. I don't want to get ahead of myself here.

Please don't. I'll try not to. Please don't. Yeah, there's a long way between where they are now in super team, but just saying they're set up to contend for a long time in a way that a lot of other teams in that division are not necessarily. So one would have to think that the Mariners' time is approaching, but I know that Mariners fans are kind of cringing hearing that just because of the recent past and the not so recent past. I do think that it's hard to unremember, right? Like we're not going to lose the sort of reflexive reaction we have when we hear Dustin Ackley's name. And I don't even mean that as a knock on Dustin Ackley. Like this stuff just happens, right? But I think that two things can be true simultaneously.

I think that there is no guarantee that prospects will pan out. And by that, I mean, like, there's no guarantee that prospects will pan out. And by that, I mean, like, there's no guarantee that they'll even be average big leaguers, let alone superstars, right? Like, I think that Jared Kelnick is going to have a very long, very productive major league career. And when they showed the outfield defensive alignment of Kelnick, Lewis, and Hanager, I was like, that'd play. Like that'd be fun to watch for a long time. And that's not even taking Julio into account yet. So I think that that's very exciting,

but prospects aren't guaranteed to pan out. But I also think that like in much the same way that we've talked about, and this is perhaps even too dire of a comparison, but when we talked about the Pirates trades and how the sort of reflexive reaction of Pirates fans when pitchers get dealt away is to seem like, oh, here we go again, right? Like these guys are going to turn into the next Garrett Cole and it's going to, you know, we're going to sit there and have

to hear about it on broadcast. I think that it is useful to remember that like this is a different player development, you know, team in Seattle and it is a different regime and again that doesn't guarantee that you're going to have success but i do think that we're seeing a group that really does have acumen when it comes to developing pitching and we're starting to see the first sort of wave of that and you know pitchers get hurt and people fail prospects Prospects don't pan out. But I think that like as optimistic as anyone can be about unproven talent, like it is OK to be optimistic and let that in, because I think that this really is a different circumstance than the last round of sort of prospects that we had coming up in the Seattle organization.

And if that gets paired with spending, this could be a really fun ball club. And that would be really cool because we just haven't had that in Seattle for so long. And my poor brother-in-law is just so tired of watching a losing team. And my dad would like to see winning baseball. And I'd like to, you know, take my nieces to these games and like get them excited. I just will never forget my younger brother when he was just a little tiny guy and he would hate that i'm telling this story like he would yell ichiro about who he would get to see when we went to the ballpark and like i want the girls to say stuff like that and i don't know whose chant will will adopt we'll let them pick whoever they like and

you know knowing kids they'll pick someone who's bad and that's fine too as long as as they're surrounded by actual good players, then it's like, you get to get people excited about the game. And that's always, that's always exciting when you get to get a new generation of fans engaged, not just with their local team, but with the sport more broadly, like that's a really cool thing. So we get to let that in, even if the circumstances around the timing of these dudes call-ups was not what we would like to see. And even if we don't know for sure that they'll be good in the long term, we get to like this part. And so let's let that in. Yeah. Sarah Langs at MLB.com did a piece about precedence for two top prospects making their debuts for the same team in the same game. And

she went back into the recent history. she wrote this will be just the third time since mlb pipeline began ranking prospects in 2004 that two pre-season top 100 prospects will debut for the same team in the same game the year of those rankings september 21st 2016 who could forget manuel margot and hunter renfro debuted for the Padres. So that was the most recent instance that was perhaps not quite as exciting. And then July 23rd, 2013, Christian Jelic and Jake Marisnyk debuted for the Marlins in the same game. And that was momentous in the sense that Jelic went on to be good. Maybe you had forgotten that Jake Marisnyk was actually a top prospect.

So, you know, it doesn't always pan out. I mostly had forgotten that he was ever Marlin. Yeah, that too. Yeah, that part I had forgotten. I remembered that he was well regarded when he was coming up, but I don't know what team I had in mind with that. But I know that it wasn't Miami. Yeah. I had in mind with that, but I know that it wasn't Miami. Yeah. Well, Kelnick and Gilbert,

I think if you put the two together, are more heralded than those other duos were. So in recent memory, this is sort of unprecedented, although there was a thread in our Facebook group about this where people were trying to think of other examples and they came up with some fun ones. And often this will happen on opening opening day you know when a team will call up two rookies that will just start the season with the team but not always and so there are cases like you know alan trammell and lou whittaker debuted in the same tigers game and then went on to play together forever so that's pretty cool i think that is a high bar to clear for jared kelnick and logan kilbert but to keep it with the Mariners, Ken Griffey Jr. and Omar Vizquel debuted in the same game for the Mariners in 1989. And I don't know if that's an encouraging or discouraging example because it took a while after that for the Mariners to get good.

They were still pretty lousy for several years after that. So I think it will come more quickly this time. Yeah. I think that the depth of the farm system, if nothing else, will help to sort of accelerate the timeline there. And yeah, I don't know. Like all this root money. You should spend your root money, Mariners. Go ahead and spend it.

You'll feel so happy. You'll be like, oh, look at all these good Mariners. I'm so excited. Everybody thinks we're so good at baseball. What a weird thing we'll have to adapt to. It's going to take Mariners fans a while. I think that they will be fatalistic past the point of it making sense. And I don't level that as a criticism. I think that it takes a while for our emotional states to shift and for our hearts to catch up to our heads sometime. So I imagine that there will be a very strange period where the Mariners fans of Twitter are like, you're going to be terrible. And they'll be like 10 games over 500 or something.

And everyone will be like, I think you could. It's OK. I think you can be OK now. I think you can let it in. I wonder if we're heading for another period of frenetic trade activity from Jerry DiPoto. There's been a bit of a lull since the days when we would count the number of trades he made and stack them up to every other team. And, you know, he kind of traded away everyone. Right. There wasn't really anyone left to trade. And then he has sort of been stockpiling and rebuilding. But maybe we are approaching the point at which he will be able to start

making deals again, and this time bringing in good players instead of dealing them away. I wanted to ask you this, and I know that you just got through saying that you're not that much of a Mariners fan anymore, but of course you have been in the past. And Joe Sheehan wrote in his newsletter about the Kelnick and Gilbert call-ups, and he started this newsletter by making a controversial case that actually it hasn't been that bad to be a Mariners fan. about would you take the team that finishes 500 every year but never makes the playoffs if you get trike mount the generational player you get to enjoy not that the mariners have finished 500 even every year but it's sort of a similar case that joe makes here and i don't say it's controversial to set it up as something you should smack down or disagree with maybe you will agree with at least aspects of it but i was curious about your thoughts about this as a Mariners fan and certainly a former Mariners fan.

So here's his case. It's a fact that 29 teams have been to the playoffs since the last time the Mariners made it back in 2001. Mariners, in fact, are on an island. Every team in the four leading U.S.-based leagues has made the playoffs since those 116-win Mariners were ousted by the Yankees in the ALCS, even the Sacramento Kings, even the Detroit Lions, even, my heavens, the New York Jets. I'm sure you never tire of hearing about this. What separates the Mariners is that they haven't been a joke for most of that time. Their fans got to watch Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most exciting players of his generation, for a decade. The Mariners developed Felix Hernandez and watched him become a dominant ace with four top five Cy Young finishes, 2,500 career strikeouts, and one of the most memorable ballpark fan groups, the Kings Court, in the game. The Mariners have produced Kyle Seeger and James Paxton,

spent money on Robinson Cano and Adrian Beltre and Nelson Cruz, embraced new ideas, and pretty much never tanked. That last point matters. The Mariners have had losing stretches of three and four seasons at times, but they have lost 100 games just twice, non-consecutively. They never lost 90 games in more than two straight seasons. They contended into September in a number of years, even into the final week in some. Since their last playoff berth, they have more 90-win seasons than the Marlins do. Their overall winning percentage since their last playoff game, 476, is 22nd in baseball.

Yes, two of the teams behind them have won championships, including the one with the worst record in baseball in this span, the Royals. Rooting for the Mariners may have been frustrating, but I think if you rate the fan experience of the last 20 years, you'd find Mariners fans have been in the middle of the pack. Were it not for the modern heavy emphasis on playoff success, you'd say it had been a pretty good ride. So I don't think that this is like a totally wild assertion to make. I mean, I think that one of the that Joe is right, that one of the strange things I mean, I know he didn't say exactly this, but like one of the strange things about this franchise is that despite their complete irrelevance when it comes to postseason baseball, they have produced players not just recently, but over the franchise's history that are important to baseball, like baseball beyond Seattle in a way that is pretty outsized to their success as a franchise. And I think that, you know, with a couple of exceptions,

they've done a good job of, it's like a, you know, a kid on the monkey bars. There's very rarely been a period where there hasn't been anything to grab onto ahead of you. And so I don't think that it's always a miserable experience. I think that the things that being a fan of a team that is not very good allows you to do is develop an appreciation for the stuff around baseball that isn't winning. And I think that that's very valuable because you appreciate the game in a, not in a deeper way, because I don't want to knock Dodger fans like they don't know what baseball is, right?

There's always this strange thing when you're like assessing the collective psychic state of a fan base where you can't help but compare to other fan bases and then it sounds like you're knocking them and I don't mean it that way at all but I do think that you you appreciate different kinds of things when you're rooting for a franchise that isn't relevant to the postseason and that a lot of those things are really great to appreciate and so I think that part of it is good. And I will say, I don't know if I buy the idea that like being bad on accident is necessarily better than being bad on purpose. If you're bad on purpose for a shorter stretch of time, I think that that's still very much

an open question and is probably just a matter of personal preference in terms of the aesthetic that you prefer, because you also sometimes are bad on purpose and then it doesn't work out. Like sometimes you're the Phillies and then it's like, oh, what have we been doing all that time? We could have been like a 500 club and that might've been more fun for people.

So I don't think that that's an outlandish thing. I do think though that at a certain point, if only because you're just really tired of hearing about it, it starts to be a bummer you know when like when when people think of you and not the browns like something's gone wrong yeah right something has something has is amiss in the way that your franchise is conducting itself but joe's right that you know in very, in the very recent past, there have been years where it felt like Seattle was really in it and it came down to the final weekend and

they played relevant baseball deep into the season. And so I think that a lot of it just comes down to like what you, what you watch the game for. And I tend to be someone who thinks that the regular season matters a lot and, and that October can be a little overblown in terms of how we think of its relevance. Not because I don't want teams to try to win. I want teams to try to win, but like I don't want to discount all the baseball that leads up to them getting to October. And I think that that's a, you know, kind of a recurring theme for, for Joe too. And I think that that's a, you know, kind of a recurring theme for Joe too.

And I think that that's good. And also, like, I just really, I want to see it because I want to, I think that a lot of baseball memories and a lot of people's understanding of like, who is good and who matters from a player perspective, you know, for better or worse, a lot of those memories get made in October. And it really is sad to me that no one has that memory of Felix. That bums me out because he brought us so much joy in Seattle

at a time when joy was pretty thin on the ground. And so I'm sad that people don't have a, there's no MLB highlight with the terrible guitar riff of peak Felix change up in October getting a guy. We should have that. And it sucks that we don't. So I don't think that it's a take. I think that there's a lot to recommend that perspective. And I don't just say that as someone who's like, please let me grasp at something to keep liking baseball. You know, I think there's a lot to recommend that perspective on the game.

And also, I, you know, I'm sad that there's not, that people don't have that memory of Felix in particular. So I think that it's time to try a new experience. Let's try new stuff. Let's have a new thing. Because there are a lot of, like there are little kids in Seattle who they have no memory of, you know,

they're not geriatric millennials. Have you been introduced to this term, Ben? Geriatric millennial? I'm technically not one, but I'm offended on behalf of those who are. Yes, I was introduced to that earlier. Geriatric millennial. It's like how they call every pregnancy after the age of 35 a geriatric pregnancy. It just feels like someone should get in trouble for that, and someone needs to be in timeout for both of those terms.

But anyway, so there are a lot of young people in Seattle who just don't have any memory of that. And I root for the Seahawks. They're grown adults. Yeah, they're grown adults who don't. They're teens. They're, you know, so and like I root for the Seahawks. And I know a lot of people like the Sounders and the Storm are just like so kick ass. So it's not like Seattle doesn't have good sports.

Like one could argue that for the size of the city, kind of an embarrassment of riches, but I'd like baseball to be in that conversation a little more than it is. And I think that for better or worse, one of the easiest places to hook people is in October. So let's get on with it. Why don't we? Yeah, I think he makes some good points as do you. And if you throw in the nice ballpark, good place to go a game. Man, such a beautiful player. Some of the good Mariners-centric writing and broadcasting and such. You know, it's made the losing more tolerable than it would be elsewhere. And it's true that they haven't bottomed out and stayed bottomed out for as long as other teams have.

So yeah, you know, you can kind of cushion the blow a little bit there, but still, it would be nice to make the playoffs. I think they're getting there. Yeah, I mean, who knows? Who knows how many Seattle-based baseball writers you would have if this team had been good? Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, I'm not saying that you can't grow up

rooting for a winning team and then become a good baseball writer, but it is weird. I think we should shut things down until we can get to the bottom of it because seattle punches above its weight yeah when it comes when you when you compare the relevance of the franchise to the relevance of writers coming out of there and you know i don't say that like you know we're all so famous or anything like that but it is a weird it's there's something in the water or in what writing about a losing team inspires that yeah it's very strange yeah the mariners and the royals have sort of disproportionately produced at least internet writers of some renown so yeah i think there's

been some speculation about like well is that because if you have a particularly unsuccessful or even intellectually backward organization, then that inflames the fan base in a way that kind of pushes people to be proselytizers for sabermetrics or to look at things in that way just to figure out what is going wrong here and how can they be better and to come up with ways to critique the front office's approach or whatever.iznanski's and the Jeff Sullivan's and the Rob Nyer's and all the rest and the Patrick Dubuque's and the Meg Raleigh's and many others have come from. I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with it. Yeah, something. I don't know. That or there's more fluoride in the water. Yeah. So wanted to just read an email we got from Aaron in response to our conversation on our last episode about the difference between catcher framing and flopping in basketball or diving in think you talked about around the edges but didn't explicitly say, is that the act of framing is not only turning pitches outside the strike zone into strikes, but also making sure that pitches in the zone aren't called balls. Flopping, on the other hand, is definitionally something that should not have been called a charge. No one ever sees

legitimate contact initiated by the ball handler and still calls it a flop. Everyone always frames framing negatively as stealing strikes and rarely as preserving them. A flop can only be the act of stealing a foul. So I think that's a good point. We do focus on framing when it comes to making likely balls into strikes that is maybe the the sexiest manifestation of framing and the one that makes people mad or makes people appreciate the skill the most but yeah a lot of it is about not losing strikes because you received a pitch so poorly and that may even be the bigger part of it or the more common manifestation of framing. And that is a difference from flopping, which is kind of always attempting to get something undeserved, I suppose.

Yeah, I think it's a really excellent point. And I know that for the folks who are kind of iffy on pitch framing as a concept, it might not be a persuasive one. But I do think that that makes a relevant difference. one but i i do think that that makes a relevant difference it kind of you know is a an extension of the point i made last time that you have to receive the ball in order to catch like it's part of it's part and parcel with the um with the play that the catcher has to make and so sometimes it's about making sure that you're sort of presenting something on the edge the best way you can in the hopes of having it called a strike and sometimes it's making sure that something that was legitimately a strike is

is perceived correctly as such so very good point what us we have the smartest listeners but they just make the best points they do yeah and speaking of framing i saw this news on friday tyler flowers is retiring noted framer famous framer and mark bowman the braves beat writer for mlb.com tweeted tyler flowers has decided to retire he played the past few seasons with two degenerative discs in his back and developed another while preparing to resume his career with the braves in a few weeks. He'll always be remembered for revolutionizing the art of pitch framing. And I thought that was funny because I don't know that that is actually true. No, I don't think that last part is true. Maybe among a select few of us, we will always remember Tyler Flowers. But yeah,

broadly speaking, I don't know that he will be widely remembered for that. But it is true. He is a famed framer for good reason. He's kind of one of the faces of framing in the formative years of catcher framing metrics and wider public appreciation for how important framing is. And he's someone who's always been pretty good at framing, but he kind of flipped a switch at a certain point. I think it was 2015. He really focused on being better at framing and studied framing and studied the best framers and what he could borrow from them. And it came from, I've talked to him about this, interviewed him and written about this. He saw some catcher framing ranking on TV and noticed that his name was not on it. And he thought, I need to be better at this.

I thought I was better at this. And then he really dedicated himself to it. And it became a real point of pride for him where he really prepared pretty strenuously for framing. And he had all of these different setups. And he used to check out the baseball prospectus catcher framing leaderboard and go to it throughout the season and was quite proud that he was on top of that leaderboard at least once or twice and just looking at fangraphs framing rating from 2015 to 2019 so the first five seasons after he really

decided to make this an emphasis he ranked second in the majors in framing runs with 77.4 trailing only yasmani grandal and flowers was often not a starter during this year so he had 3605 innings and grandal had 4971 innings so almost 1400 more innings and he was at the top of the list with 99.5, but then it was Flowers, and then no one was within 20 runs. I guess Buster Posey was 20 runs below Flowers, and Buster Posey caught like 800 more innings than Flowers during those years. So he really was quite good at it and became quite influential and was known for dropping down to one knee, and that was not necessarily something he invented, but I think helped popularize. So he sort of studied what worked for other framers,

and then he incorporated it into his technique. And then he became a model for the next generation of framers who studied what Tyler Flowers did and mimicked him. And so I think if you look around the league and you see guys getting down on one knee and various other techniques that are meant to make them better at framing, I think some of that came from Flowers. And he's still working for Atlanta. He's doing game preparation and incorporating data into game prep. And maybe part of that is preparing for framing and studying framing and grading framing and looking at umpire tendencies and all of that. So I remember talking to him a few years ago and we were sort of joking about like writing a book about framing together when he retired. So I guess call me Tyler. But I'm

sort of glad for him that he never had to experience the RoboZone transition because I think framing was so important to him that I think he would have been quite sad about that. So it is really something that has made a difference in the game. And even if he will not always be remembered for that in actuality, I guess I will remember him for that. And just like looking over the course of his career. So his first season was 2009, which was right after Pitch FX came in. And if you look at the difference in, as we were just saying, it's not just about stealing strikes, but it's about preserving the strikes you deserve. In 2008, the first season of the pitch tracking era, according to Baseball Savant, 74.6% of pitches taken inside the rulebook strike zone were actually called strikes.

So like three quarters of takes in the zone were called strikes. Now, for the past few years, it's 89%. That is a big difference. And it's not all framing. I think a lot of it is umpiring improvements and umpires who are using data and getting graded on data and conforming more closely to the rulebook zone. So it's hard to untangle those things, but I think a lot of that is framing. And again, that is contributing to the expansion of the strike zone effectively and more strikeouts and all of that. So it's hard to divorce those things too.

But, you know, it has made a difference. And he sort of witnessed and experienced and helped drive that evolution during his career. And if you look at his war, he's like a 20 plus war guy, according to Fangraph's war, which accounts for his framing. And at Baseball Reference, which doesn't, he is an eight war guy according to fangraphs war which accounts for his framing and at baseball reference which doesn't he is an eight war guy so more than twice as valuable over the course of his career if you count the framing and also one more way in which i think he was kind of influential is that he was not great at the other aspects of catcher defense. Right. You know, like below average arm, didn't do a great job of throwing out runners, allowed a lot of passed balls,

led the league in passed balls a couple of seasons ago. And he was like kind of okay with that. I mean, he wasn't doing it on purpose, but he was clearly prioritizing framing. And if you look at the numbers, it made sense. So I think that helped with the evolution of catcher defense from catch and throw to really receiving being the top priority well and we we talk so much about how like no one should pitch it's really bad for you but catching man it's

amazing anyone catches for any length of time it's so hard on your body it's just like really devastating to your body. But yeah, I don't know that there's anyone who better exemplifies not only the value, but how concentrated the value of framing is relative to other defensive skills, as you noted. I would imagine that it is one of the places where there's the biggest disconnect

between what we know of the value that a player can bring to the field and how fans experience that value because I think that he was undoubtedly incredibly valuable to the teams that he played for on the defensive side of the ball because of his framing, but pass balls really frustrate fans. Not being able to throw guys out frustrates fans. Those things do matter in particular moments. And sometimes those are those pass balls or, you know, stolen bases happen at very high leverage moments in a game. And so they can stand out. But it is a place where I would imagine there's still some work to be done to sort of bridge the understanding, you know, bridge the gap between someone's understanding, even if they are

really into framing metrics and kind of get the value that can be accrued there and how, you know, you just get so many chances, right? It compounds so fast because you just get so many chances to frame the ball. But even someone who understands that, I imagine there's probably still work to be done to bridge the gap between what you know and what you feel in any given moment because those pass balls are so frustrating to people so he's just a really fascinating case and I hope that you know it'll be interesting to to see how coaching goes for him because I always wonder how intuitive framing is for guys and I think that the answer kind of varies depending on the catcher. I think that there are guys for whom it is part sort of an extension of an intellectual

exercise and other guys where that's just the way that they receive the ball, right? They have naturally sort of quiet hands. And so I'm always fascinated when players move into sort of coaching or strategic roles to see how well they are able to describe their own talent to other people, right? Like, it doesn't sound like Barry Bonds was a particularly good hitting coach. And who can blame him? Because I'm sure he was like, well, just do it. Like, this is so natural to me, because I'm the best at it. And so it's always fascinating to see kind of how that transition goes and how it evolves. And we don't end up hearing about a lot of it. And so it's always fascinating to see kind of how that transition goes and how it evolves. And we don't end up hearing about a lot of it. But I hope that you have an opportunity to

interview him again, because I'd be fascinated to hear like how he is able to translate that and talk about it and how it goes for him. Because he did show himself to be sort of curious and adept at translating data into action on the field. And I hope he's able to help other guys do that. And that's satisfying to him. It's always a bummer when injury is the reason that a guy has to walk away from playing. So I'm glad he gets to stay in the game. And I hope that this is fulfilling.

It seems like a good natural fit given his inherent seeming curiosity about it. Right. Yeah, that's the thing. I think what he is maybe best known for when it comes to framing is showing that it is learnable and potentially teachable because there is someone like, I think, Jose Molina as the best early example of the value of framing and the easiest way to persuade people that it mattered maybe just because his technique was so great and because the numbers were so extreme and compared to catchers in 2008 or 2009 or whenever when framing was still sort of a secret thing he was just lapping the field in a way that you can't really now because the secret is out. So that and just the fact that he was such a bad hitter, whereas Flowers was a pretty decent hitter with Molina,

it was just like, oh, this guy stinks. And then you factor in the framing and it's like, oh, no, actually he's like quite good. And then you could see like even late in his career, suddenly for the first time he's getting multi-year contracts and like a starting job with the R first time he's getting multi-year contracts and like a starting job with the Rays when he's you know in his late 30s and this has been a career backup to that point it's like oh okay well he's been a beneficiary of this too so he was a great

example of framing done well and how important it could be but he was already great whereas Flowers was fine decent but then really applied himself and showed that you could catapult yourself up to that level so it wasn't like the Molina or the Lucroi or you know someone who was like the early avatar of framing but was just already graded it when we could start to measure it so it's uh you know this is a conversation that we'll be having more often probably as guys like Yadira Molina, maybe less so Molina just because he's so widely regarded as a future Hall of Famer, but guys like Brian McCann and Russell Martin, who people don't generally think of as Hall of Famers, but have the war of

Hall of Fame catchers if you factor in their framing, and that'll be a divisive debate. And I've written about that before, has Jay Jaffe and who knows by the time they're eligible will we even have framing anymore or will we have robo-umps and then people still value the framing value that they accrued during their career even though framing is worthless at that point I think you should but anyway that's a future conversation that we can have let's get flowers now that he's retired from playing and maybe has a beat more. Let's get him on the case of Chris Iannetta's year-to-year freeing fluctuation. I will never sleep. I mean, I will sleep, but I will never be satisfied until

I have a good explanation. It makes no sense. I don't think it's a data error issue. I really don't. I think that he just had inconsistent performance. But for listeners who don't think it's a data error issue. I really don't. I think that he just had inconsistent performance. But for listeners who don't know what I'm talking about, the swings, the wild swings that Chris Iannetta's framing metrics went through on a year-to-year basis were, they were wild. They were wild swings. And I don't understand it, and I think about it often in a way that would probably make him and his family concerned.

So get flowers on the case, in my opinion. Yeah, he went from like almost Ryan Domet bad in some seasons to like good and even above average. He's like negative 23.5, negative 11.5, 9.2, negative 15.1, 1.4. Make up your mind yeah that was weird because it seems to be a very consistent and stable skill generally it is yeah it's like were you setting up were you setting up further back or closer like i know that you know in talking to to team folks about framing stuff when the one thing that they will sometimes do is to they'll reposition the guy behind home and get him closer because you don't want them too close or you end up interfering but

sometimes you know you want to be a little closer so anyway i don't know if it's a positioning thing or what but it is a mystery that i am still not satisfied by our answers so flowers get on it please pretty please so we were just talking about flopping in basketball and i wanted to Flowers, get on it, please. Pretty please. It is new this season. Playoffs are starting soon and everyone is either excited or upset or both about this brand new play-in tournament, which was put in place for the pandemic shortened season. And it is striking how similar the conversation about this seems to be to the conversation in baseball about the play-in game, about the wildcard, you know, single elimination games. I'm just seeing the same sort of points and concerns raised, which is always entertaining to me because there's not a lot of like cross-disciplinary conversation across sports. Like there aren't most people, you know, who cover a sport professionally only cover that sport. There aren't that many people who cover multiple sports at the highest level. And so people don't talk to each other that much and kind of compare notes and say, oh, well, this happened in this other sport. And maybe that tells us what's going to happen here. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do our little multi-sport sabermetrics exchange

series on the podcast a couple of years ago, where it's like, hey, let's all talk to each other and see what we can learn and where we're similar, where we're different. Where it's like, hey, let's all talk to each other and see what we can learn and where we're similar, where we're different. So with this play-in tournament, I won't get into all of the ins and outs because I'm barely qualified to. I would recommend the conversation that our sort of sister podcast, our multi-sport friends at Slate's Hang Up and Listen had this week. But the interesting thing is that a lot of players hate this. And LeBron said that whoever came up with this idea needs to be fired. And I was struck by this comment by the Mavericks, Luka Doncic, who said, I don't understand the idea of the play-in tournament. You play 72 games to get in the playoffs. Then maybe you lose two in a row and you're out of the playoffs. I don't see the point of that.

Oh, Luca, my sweet summer child, we've been dealing with this in MLB for years now. And it's even more pronounced because you play 162 games and then you're out in one game. Baseball in any given game is more random and subject to chance than basketball is. So, geez, I mean, this is compared to the MLB play-in game. This is nothing, but people are up in arms for the same sort of reason. I guess one difference is that technically, as I understand it, the play-in tournament in the NBA, you're not in the playoffs when you make the play-in tournament. You have to advance through the play-in tournament to qualify for the playoffs. So that's just a definitional difference. Maybe that's mostly terminology. But in MLB, if you make it to the wildcard game, that is at least technically considered a playoff appearance by the league, although it may not always feel that way to fans.

But it seems very similar in that you have a pandemic-shortened season, and they're trying to essentially expand the playoffs, not technically, but more or less. And they're trying to arrange for these more exciting, sudden elimination games. And so people are saying, well, this devalues the regular season. It's like, yep, we've been having this conversation for years here. And it's a little different, I know, in the NBA because the regular season is already pretty devalued. And because the NBA season, it's shorter, obviously, in terms of games than the MLB season is, but it takes a lot fewer games in basketball than it does in baseball to sort of establish true talent. So it's longer in that sense in that it's longer than you need to actually determine which teams are best. So

there's a lot of tanking and a lot of load management. And so in that sense, it may make more sense for the NBA to do this because it does actually make these regular season games count and matter in certain ways. And, you know, people are starting in games who might have been shut down otherwise. So, again, that's a larger conversation about the merits of this for the NBA, but I just wanted to point out that we've been talking about this and going over the pluses and minuses in baseball for quite some time. And I don't know that that debate is settled. It still rages on and it still can be quite frustrating if a great team gets eliminated right away. And we've been spared some of the nightmare scenarios in some of these seasons with the wildcard game, but history repeating itself in another major sport. Yeah, it's funny to watch some of the, you know, like the NFL is having or people who watch the

NFL and sort of analyze the NFL are having their own sort of statistical revolution makes it sound less subtle than it is like, I think that they're pretty far along in it but it is funny to watch other sports go through conversations whether they're about playoff format or the role that analytics should play in the sport that are far from settled but are at least longer standing in baseball than they are in some other places and i always want to be like can we give you some tips of the trade? Like, be nicer to each other. You're going to feel weird about it later. Like, you're very confident and sassy and humility is a good approach here. Yeah, it sports perspective because it's like, oh, yeah, you're going to have this same panel in five years. Yeah, exactly. I'm sure people who work for these leagues look at other leagues and the examples are instructive and help them set their policies. But yes, among fans and among media members, I don't know that there is as much cross-pollination. So I'm still kind of conflicted about the wildcard setup in baseball. I like some

aspects of it, and I don't know if it is inconsistent with my firm stance against the zombie runner rule that I'm kind of okay with the single elimination wildcard game because it's kind of similar in a sense in that it's like, hey, let's artificially make things more exciting and let's devalue what came before and wrap this up really quickly and make the stakes higher in a way that I hate with the zombie runner rule and with the wildcard play-in game i'm like kind of okay with because it really is a lot of fun and and i do enjoy those games quite a bit whereas i i just don't really enjoy the zombie runner rule setup so much and i think it's different i think i can

hold both of those positions at least i'm trying to in my head, but I am firmly against expanding the playoff field any further, though I know that that is a losing battle, but playoff scarcity is important. You want, you know, there's already such decoupling from profit and winning within baseball. And I really just think that any move that we make that sort of makes it easier to reach the postseason and by extension disincentivizes regular season winning. Like we just really need to push back hard against. And there's a lot that goes into each team's assessment of where they are in the competitive landscape and sort of how much they're going to do in any given year to try to win their division. So it's not simply a matter of the playoff format,

but that is certainly part of it, right? That's in the conversation. So, you know, yeah, I think that you're, you know, what you're what you're trying to do is prioritize both winning and excitement. And, and I think that your stance is ideologically consistent. So Okay, thank you for validating it. Yeah, you're welcome. All right. I've got a couple more things on my list. Oh, banter here. Wanted to shout out podcast legend Rich Hill, whom we have not discussed on the show this season, I think. And I was disconcerted when he started the season by allowing four earned runs in each of his first four starts. And he did not go deep into most of those games. And it was looking kind of concerning. He had an ERA near nine after his fourth start. However, since then, he has turned things around.

And in his last four starts against good teams, the A's twice, the Astros once, the COVID-depleted Yankees, he has allowed two run runs in total. And they all came in the least recent one. So he has actually had three scoreless starts in a row and has pitched six or more innings in each of the last couple and three of the last four. It looks like all Rich has something left. I was worried that this would be the end of Dick Mountain, but he is still a viable major league pitcher and perhaps even a pretty good one. So this has been heartening. And, you know, if Albert Pujols remains inactive, Rich Hill is now the oldest player in the major leagues.

So this is something to provide an example to all the 40-somethings out there. Rich Hill at 41, still sort of dealing very slowly, but pretty effectively. And his ERA is now down to 4.26, and his expected ERA, as found at Fangraphs, is 3.34. And he's still missing some bats, and there's still something left in the tank here. So I am very happy to see him succeeding. Yeah. Succeeding to the point that he was a Twitter trending topic with the lovely headline Dick Mountain when he threw a 69-mile-an-hour curveball. As a friend of the show, Lindsay Adler, noted on Twitter, thinking about the people who are not baseball fans

but saw Dick Mountain on their trending topics. Yeah, those curves are beautiful. And the juxtaposition of the Dick Mountain and the 69 miles per hour, that is just total Twitter bait. Yeah, there's no resisting that. Anyway, it's a good fit for him with the Rays, I think, whether they can keep him healthy or not, I don't know. But if he doesn't go deep into games, that's okay, because no one does. It's the race so as long as he's effective on a pruning basis then they will keep trotting him out there and i will be happy every time i see him yeah i

mean i just uh yeah i want him to pitch forever and you know is he i guess he's not technically a geriatric millennial because he's 40 but yeah he's standing up for the Gen Xers, a forgotten generation, as they so often like to remind us. So Rich Hill, he's doing important work. Yes. Next note, AL Central, is it time to declare the twins dead? Is it premature? It seems premature, and yet, if you look at the standings. Wow, 10 games.

Jeez. I know. I didn't realize how bad this had gotten. Yeah, if you look at the playoff odds now in the AL Central, 10 games? Jeez. I know. I didn't realize how bad this had gotten. Yeah. If you look at the playoff odds now in the AL Central, the White Sox actually have higher odds to win that division than anyone in the AL East has to win that division. Anyone in the AL West, anyone in the NL Central, anyone in the NL West, even the Dodgers now after their recent slump, according to the Fangrass playoff odds, do not have odds as high as the White Sox to win their respective divisions. In fact, only the Mets, who had a high playoff odds coming into the year,

surprisingly high maybe, and they only have a four- game lead over Atlanta now. So some may say that the playoff odds are unreasonably confident about the Mets chances there, but they're the only ones, according to the numbers, who have a better chance to hold on to their current division lead. And the White Sox, they just swept the Twins. And as you said, they've opened up a double digit lead now yeah geez the twins and the tigers are both 10 games back the royals of course an april surprise team enter friday having lost 11 games in a row yikes the white socks have the best record in the majors i believe and also the best run differential and the best base runs record so you know whatever complaints there may be about Tony La Russa making a suboptimal managerial decision every now and then, they have more than made up for that with their talent and performance. So it's getting late early, as they say.

And, you know, it's mid-May now, and I hate to write a team off, especially a team as good as the Twins, who were my pick to win this division coming into this year was like yeah a toss-up for me twins or white socks and it looks like i may have picked the wrong outcome here so i don't know like i still believe the twins are good and i believe they've been snake bit and like yeah i think we've talked about their record in manfred ball games and extra inning games and seven inning games and how much worse it is than nine inning games. And also just like their sequencing has been unlucky. So if you look at base runs records, they have underperformed their expected record by five games, which is more than any other team. I think they actually have a better base runs record than the Oakland A's, who are sitting pretty in first place. They basically have the same run differential as

the Twins. So, you know, things have gone against them, and I still believe in the talent, but 10 games is a lot to make up against a good team. Yeah, it's so bizarre, because they definitely can hit. This is a good offense. The Twins' offense is a good offense the twins offense is a good offense but as you said like they've just been so snake bit and their relievers have underperformed in really high leverage moments we talked about the extra innings record like it's the sort of thing where you could definitely see it turning around but now you know the ceiling for this team seems like it's definitely a wild card team now. It's not the division. And it is not, I don't think that it signals anything sort of fundamentally broken with the twins.

Sometimes this stuff just happens. Like, you know, they're not, you just talked about the ways in which they're sort of outperforming their record. But it's just very bizarre that it's so bad. bad it's so bad 10 games like that's a lot of games it is so man yeah i don't have anything i don't have anything else to say about it than that it's like you you know you start going through their stats the team stats and leaderboards and you're like oh like the the twins have the fifth best offense in baseball right like they right but at least by our version of war they have the fifth best version uh they have the fifth best offense in baseball and then you go over to the pitching

and you're like wow they're 29th yeah they're worse than the rockies yeah that's not good they're worse than the tigers that's not good they're worse than the Tigers that's not good they're worse than the Mariners oh but but you know like you're then then you think oh well maybe the there's a dramatic split between the starters and the relievers and there's a little bit of one but it's just bad the pitching is just bad like you can't be 29th and have one side be really good and the other really bad that's really not how that manifests so i know and you mentioned how good their offense is i mean that's looking at like context neutral sequencing neutral correct they're 12th and run scored which matters too and uh that comes down to you know poor sequencing and performance with runners in scoring position

largely so again bad, bad luck. Bad luck. Bad luck can kill you if there's enough of it. Yeah, geez. Well, I will say this. If they turn things around, because I do think this is at its core a pretty good baseball team, maybe they'll be one of those sneaky teams

that they get into the wild card round and then everyone realizes, oh, we don't want to face the Tw um you know they're far enough back that you wonder like what what is the approach of the twins going to be at the deadline a lot can happen between now and july so who knows the answer to that question but at a certain point you you make a decision as an organization like oh we're just too far out of this so yeah i don't think they're there right now but um you don't want to be the same number of games back from first place as the Tigers.

No. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want to face the Twins in the playoffs. That's what everyone always says. Twins just October juggernauts. Okay, but wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't it be great if this were the year

where they snuck into the wild card, win the wild card, and then they go on a tear and no one will expect it. Maybe this is a strategy, Ben. This is all a long con. I don't think that that's true. The people who are Twins fans are like,

Meg, please be quiet. Sorry, guys. All right. Well, we want to end by meeting a major leaguer or two. Just one more thing I will say, just a quick PSA. As we approach the All-Star Game, which will be taking place not in Georgia, but in Denver, beware of fabricated numbers about the economic impact of the All-Star Game, which is something that you should all have been beware. Wait. Which is something that you should all have been beware. Wait. This should be a skepticism you were already carrying in your heart.

Thank you. But especially. Yes. Yeah, right. People have been bandying about these numbers as a way of being mad at Major League Baseball for moving the game. moving the game. If people are not criticizing the league for excessive wokeness or whatever, they are saying that they're depriving the local community of $100 million. That's kind of the figure that has been thrown out there about the economic impact of the All-Star Game in Georgia. Now, that figure seems to be rising. That fictitious figure is getting even bigger. And Craig Calcaterra pointed out that there's an article here or a claim that the economic impact of the All-Star Game in Denver

is going to be about $190 million in revenue. Who knew? So this is a claim that comes from the Office of Economic Development, International, and Trade. And according to this body, the All-Star Game and the festivities around it would add about $190 million in revenue locally. And ironically, as Craig pointed out, the story in which this figure appeared is one about how there are more than 2,000 volunteers needed to help with All-Star Week. So...

Hold on. Which is wonderful because it's not even people who are getting paid to do this. It's just, hey, come out and volunteer, it sounds like. So that's kind of... Oh, here we go. Do volunteers receive anything? They get a hat, a t-shirt, and a cinch bag as a volunteer with all the cool all-star game logos. However, they do not receive any of that cool $19 a story that is asking for people to work for free rather than be paid. But that just points to the larger issue, which is that these numbers really

just seem to be conjured out of thin air. And they are even flimsier than public ballpark funding numbers. I mean, they're sort of in the same genre of you should fund our ballpark funding numbers. I mean, they're sort of in the same genre of, you know, you should fund our ballpark municipality because it will lead to millions and billions for the local community, even though study after study after study by economists shows that that's not true. And that is also the case with the All-Star Game. And there is one study that's a little old, with the all-star game and there is one study that's a little old but was done over a period of more than 20 years and showed that in fact the economic impact of the all-star game seems to be net neutral it seems to be basically nothing and it makes sense that it would not be that great because again it's a concentrated event you know it's it's just like a weekend basically it's a few days

and you know are people really coming in from out of state to see the all-star game yes some people are but also you have people who are not doing things because of the all-star game or they're doing the all-star game instead of other things that they were doing in that community, that the money is just going to one thing instead of the other thing. It's not money that would not be flowing in otherwise. So all of these claims are just bogus, really, and they're always trotted out as like, oh, this is why we should want the All-Star Game. I guess you see this in the Olympics too, maybe. I mean, any big event like this where someone stands to make money and someone is trying to promote this event.

But all of the experts say, no, there's nothing to this. And these figures either just come from MLB directly or they are just sort of summoned out of the ether. I will link to a few articles that just make it clear just how little basis for these claims there is. And yet they get repeated over and over, sometimes with no one questioning them at all. Sometimes there'll be a sentence or a paragraph that says, you know, experts dispute this claim or something, but make it sound as if it's like a matter of debate or you know it's just like a matter of opinion or both sides in it sort of where there really don't appear to be multiple sides to this and and so you know just be wary as the all-star game approaches and maybe you start to hear these figures cited more and more there just does not seem to be any empirical basis to them no very little it's shocking how few of the um like the

stories that will cite those have any linking at all if there's not linking in a in a piece you see online for a claim like that that should kind of that should raise your the alarm you should be like wait a minute if there were if there were something to this number they'd be able to link to something that demonstrated the economic impact. And of course, the question is relevant, I think, generally and especially relevant in this case, because when the decision was made to relocate the All-Star Game, part of that conversation was around activists, voting rights activists in Georgia not wanting to see a sort of boycott, economic boycott more generally initiated against the state, right? And we want to listen to activists working in the community, right? Because you don't want to inadvertently hurt the very people that you're trying to help and make a point in defense of. So it is an important question, but I think you're right that like the all-star game is a good, as sort of symbolic moves go, is a good one because it's a discrete event. It doesn't happen over a long period of time. And the economic impact that these things have is sort of dubious. And so, yeah, everyone just be on your guard. You don't need to read those numbers totally credulously.

members with uh you know totally credulously and you know some of it is that you try to go to denver to see the futures game and you're like wow the hotels are very expensive so you know some of it is just them reacting to that but yeah i'm reading from an article here from last week in the georgia recorder by john mccosh who says why do so many seemingly reasonable people repeat the can't be true claim that major league baseballball costs Georgia businesses $100 million by moving its 2021 All-Star Game out of Cobb County. On April 3rd, Cobb travel and tourism president and CEO Holly Quinn, not Harley Quinn, Holly Quinn, fired that big number into the heated public debate a day after baseball pulled its summer showcase from Truist Park to protest Georgia's controversial new election law. It's not the first time a Cobb official has wielded big numbers with little discernible weight.

You might recall Cobb officials made big promises when they committed more than $300 million in taxpayer money to build then-SunTrust Park. Those overly optimistic economic impact claims have not come to fruition since the park's opening day in 2017, according to a recent report by Kennesaw State University economist J.C. Bradbury. I wondered where the Cobb Tourism Bureau's $100 million estimate came from, since Quinn is the only source citing that figure in news reports. I asked for the data and finally heard back from Quinn's office after reminding her that the nonprofit marketing organization

gets substantial funding from taxpayer money, so shouldn't the public have a right to see the Bureau's data? An email response from the Bureau stated, Cobb Travel and Tourism uses the industry-wide standard Destinations International Event Impact Calculator to estimate economic impact for events throughout Cobb County. The estimated more than $100 million economic impact comprises the entire MLB All-Star Week events. My follow-up question is asking for the specific data that the Bureau plugged into the calculator, which KSU's Bradbury described as designed to advocate for more tourism funding by tourism boosters and not used by any economists, was not answered by the time this column published. So, you know, these people obviously have a vested interest in making these sorts of things happen. If your job is to get tourists to come to a place

and it's an event that might draw some tourists, then yeah, you're going to claim that it's actually beneficial, but it's probably not. There are places that link to the website Baseball Almanac, which just has these numbers about the economic impact of every All-Star game going back to 1996 with like no source yeah whatsoever i i don't know if it maybe comes from mlb or something it just is research by baseball almanac so it's like this uh snake eating its own tail thing where like someone sort of invents these figures and then other people link to those invented figures and not many people do the due diligence that John McCosh

of the Georgia Reporter did in saying, where does this come from? What is the basis of this? Because most people don't have the initiative to do that, or maybe they don't cover this regularly. And so they don't know that there is reason to be skeptical about this. And so they sort of swallow it whole. So there's a lot of very credulous reporting about this when there should be more incredulous reporting. Yeah, it's just it's always good to be skeptical of this sort of stuff. And when you are in the habit of trying to verify data and the entity you're asking for sort of underlying information from is reticent to share that, that should be another should raise another alarm because you know typically people are willing to share data on data that checks out yeah when it doesn't they're like no that's not the only reason

that people hold data back i understand but it tends to it it's not an uncommon one. So everyone just be skeptical of that stuff. Clearly, there is an economic impact. It is not as if it doesn't matter at all. Part of the idea is that it hurts a little. You want it to hurt a little or the symbology of it isn't quite the same. But the claim that it is $100 million is quite a lot. That's quite a lot. And we should be able to verify it pretty

exactingly. I think that just generally when baseball revenue numbers get thrown around, it is just good practice to be skeptical of them because we so rarely have access to the underlying data that supports them. And absent that, I think that the only reasonable stance is a skeptical one, which doesn't mean that everyone's trying to get one over on you, but some people are. Yeah. It's easy to take advantage of people's ignorance when it comes to these things. And I'm including myself in economic ignorance. It's not like I just know offhand what the economic impact of something is, but there are people who studied these things and write books and papers about it. So talk to the experts. Yeah. All right. Let's meet major leaguers. So we met

Jared Kelnick. We met Logan Gilbert. But of course, people were anticipating those prospects and people knew their names. And the conceit of our meet a major leaguer segment is that we are typically focusing on players who might sort of slide under the radar. There are so many major leaguers. There are so many debuts. Not all of them are as notable as Kellnicks and Gilberts. So we want to shine a spotlight on lesser known names. So here's our jingle. our jingle meet a major leaguer i am very eager to meet this nascent major leaguer it's the thrilling debut of somebody new let's meet this mysterious major leaguer All right, who's going first? Do you want to go first? You should go first. I think I went first last time.

Okay. Well, my major leaguer to meet is Patrick Mazica. And Patrick Mazica, not a well-known name and prospect, but briefly became better known, at least, name and prospect, but briefly became better known, at least, not for being a highly touted player because he had a notable first week in the majors. So Patrick Mazzica debuted for the Mets on May 5th, and he fairly quickly made a name for himself. So the basic biographical details, he is 27 years old. He'll turn 28 later this year. He is a catcher, first baseman. He played in AA in the Arizona Fall League in 2019 and was at the alternate site last season. He is a Mets draftee. He was drafted in the eighth round in 2015, and he is not listed among the Mets top prospects at FanCrafts on Eric's recent top 30 list or at MLB Pipeline's top 30 list for the Mets.

So here he is, not a highly rated prospect or a rated prospect at all, but he is a major leaguer. He's 6'3", 208 pounds, always like a listed weight that isn't an increment of five. That's fun. eight pounds, always like a listed weight that isn't an increment of five. That's fun. Now, he was actually called up for one day last August, but didn't get into a game. And I guess we could have a conversation about whether he already was a major leaguer because he was called up and was on an active roster or not because he did not actually appear in a game. It wasn't even like a Moonlight Graham situation. He just didn't even get into the game.

Baseball Reference counts him as a new debut, a 2021 debut. So in a sense, he made it to the majors last year, but in a real sense, he made it this year, and he now has a Baseball Reference page with stats on it and everything. So as I mentioned from Stetson University, which is the alma mater of Corey Kluber and Jacob deGrom and Logan Gilbert. So we had multiple Stetson U grads making it to the majors over the past week or so. And he did not garner nearly as much attention prior to the promotion as Gilbert did.

However, he soon did because so he's pinch hit five times as we speak on Friday here. He's gotten into five games. He is pinch hit in each one of them, and he doesn't have a hit yet. So in that sense, he has failed to do his job, a pinch hitter who has no hits. However, he has already produced two walk-off wins for the New York Mets and has in the process made himself something of a folk hero. So he has had walk-off fielder's choices on Friday and on Tuesday. He had sort of a swinging bunt last week that was a walk-off. And then on tuesday he pulled a grounder and that was also

a walk-off and he had a bases loaded walk in between those two walk-offs and so he has made a number of fun facts here so he became the first mlb player in the last hundred years to record multiple walk-off rbi before his first career hit. He also became the first player since at least 1920 to have multiple walk-off RBI in his first four career games, and the first since Joe Brovia in 1955 to record three RBI before notching his first career hit. So he's had a lot of success while not succeeding at his stated job, which is a great juxtaposition here. And our listeners must be slipping. I'm kind of disappointed. I can't believe that nobody has sent us a hypothetical about a player who never gets hits, but automatically produces walk-offsoff fielder's choices or whatever. If you could have a player who never got a hit, but if you put him up in a walk-off situation where all he had to do was make contact or hit a grounder or whatever, would that player

be worth rostering? We've gotten so many questions of that type type and none of them has to do with Patrick Mazzica. And I have not fully considered the answer to that question, but my suspicion is probably not. I don't know that you get enough walk-off situations where it's a walk-off without a hit for it to be worthwhile to carry someone on your roster who will produce a batting average of zero over a full season. Not really sure the math works out there. I just, I don't know how many walk-off situations you have where that's the case, where it's a walk-off even without a hit. And obviously like a lot of players are going to drive that run in some percentage of the time.

So even if it's a lock, a total guarantee that he's going to put the ball in play in whatever way he needs to, I don't know if there's enough value there, but if someone really wants to dig into the numbers and crunch them and let us know, I'd be interested. But my suspicion is probably not. But it's been fun so far. And because he's been the subject of a couple of walk-offs, and of course, he's gotten mobbed in both of these cases, even though he failed to get a hit.

He got the run in. And in baseball, if you are the person who originates the walk-off, you are the one who gets mobbed mostly. Even if you didn't score the winning run, even if you did not get on base or start the rally or anything, you ended it however you did it. So he has gotten mobbed and he has gotten stripped. And as you often observe, what is your observation about how often players seem eager to get each other naked? They just really like to get each other naked when they're excited yeah so that has certainly been the case with patrick mazica and that got him more attention because uh you know he has a notable appearance like he's got these sports goggles and he has like a buzz cut and beard combo and he has a pale complexion which is an understatement he is

white as a sheet really and he has a little discernible muscle definition which was very apparent when he was walking around the field and standing in the clubhouse shirtless and he did not seem at all shy about not having an Adonis-like professional athlete physique. In fact, he has owned it in quite an entertaining way. And his Twitter gif game seems to be pretty strong. And his Twitter avatar right now is a picture of him shirtless and with a little bit of a paunch of sorts. So he is putting that front and center. It's his header photo also. He's owning it. He's just putting it out there. And someone tweeted at him, proof again that baseball players are the highest paid non-athletic people in sports.

And he quote tweeted that with a video of himself dunking with a beach ball, which I guess he had on hand. So he's not having it. And it's true. Maybe the appearance of not being built does not necessarily correlate to one's athleticism perfectly. So it is a stretch to say that he is not athletic. He is certainly athletic to have made it to the majors. But he tweeted, new profile pic, I heard I need a tan, and tweeted the photo of himself very clearly needing a tan, although just looking at his skin tone and being a pale person myself, I'm not sure that a tan is attainable for Patrick Masika, but I wish him well if he attempts it. So anyway, nickname is Maz, according to Baseball Reference, that we have a new Maz in the majors following the footsteps of Bill Mazroski and former Met Lee Mazzilli and no longer just known as the offseason catcher of Jacob deGrom, his former Stetson teammate or fellow Stetson alum, and they still live nearby in Florida.

So he catches deGrom sometimes in the offseason, and maybe he will catch him sometimes in the majors for as long as this lasts. So now we know Patrick Mazica. We have met Maz. I think it's because you can't. They haven't come up with Vroom Vroom Guy. That's why we haven't gotten the question. And we need a snappy moniker for it.

That's the issue here. Yeah. Okay. We'll work on that. I'm going to cheat a tiny bit just because I want to. I'm going to do the actual. I'm going to introduce a major leaguer. I'm going to help everyone meet a major leaguer. But before I do that, I wanted to highlight a funny tweet from paul seawald who is

not new to the majors paul seawald is 30 he made his debut a while ago the folks listening might know him from his time with the mets he signed with the mariners this past offseason and uh he was in triple a and he got called up with logan g Jared Kelnick. It was in the same round of call-ups and he tweeted on May 13th, looks like the Mariners are calling up their young and spry prospects from AAA. Can't wait to see you all at T-Mobile Park tonight.

Hashtag CSRise. I have said this before and I will say it again. There are a few things I find more charming than someone who is able to laugh at themselves love self-deprecation hat tip to Paul Seewald for a very funny tweet I hope that your time

in Seattle goes better than your 2020 did with the Mets where your six innings of work netted a 1350 ERA and a 719 FIP anyway, that's not who we're meeting. We're going to meet someone who was featured in today's Daily Prospect Notes at Fangraphs.

We're going to meet Cody Poteet, who is a pitcher for the Miami Marlins. He made his major league debut on Wednesday. He was drafted out of UCLA in 2015. He was a fourth round pick by the Mets and or with the Marlins rather not the Mets you know I'm going to talk about what he did in his debut in a second because it's kind of interesting but part of why I wanted to highlight him is because he played in in 2019 he played with the now defunct organization the New Orleans Baby Cakes oh yeah and we should just always remember that there was a triple-ct organization, the New Orleans Baby Cakes. Oh, yeah. And we should just always remember

that there was a AAA team called the New Orleans Baby Cakes. And now the Marlins AAA affiliate is in Jacksonville, is my... I am come to understand it is in Jacksonville. And I don't think they're called the Baby Cakes at all. I think they're named after shrimp of some kind. And that's good too.

But the Baby Cakes is delightful. But anyway, Cody Poteet is 26. And what has made him sort of interesting after shrimp of some kind and that's good too but the baby cakes is delightful uh but anyway uh cody petite is 26 and what has made him sort of interesting is that he he gained he gained some velocity in his quarantine time off so you know he when he was at ucla he was sort of a high 80s low 90s guy and in 2019 he was sitting 89 to 93 and sort of topping out at 95 and now he's sitting 92 to 95 and topping out at 96 and he he pitched five innings uh and racked up six strikeouts for the marlins and a thing that i just found interesting about him that that eric noted in his blurb for the daily prospect notes today is that he was a pitcher at UCLA at a time

where they had sort of already adopted driveline principles. And so he didn't seem like a guy who was necessarily primed for a velocity bump, right? Like the assumption is that he had sort of gotten those principles instilled and done that dev work while he was in college, and that he might be maxed out. And now we're seeing this new version of him. And, you know, he doesn't have like terrific breaking stuff. And his fastball is more of the ground ball getting variety than the bat missing variety. And so that probably relegates him to back end starter for the foreseeable future. Or it does for Eric. And, you know, I'm not going to contradict him when it comes to prospects.

So, but I watched some of this start of his, and he was called up. They needed a starter. They have this unsettled rotation. They still have guys who are out for injury. The guy who was DFA'd to make room for him had pitched two days prior and made his own debut. So I think that it's just interesting when teams like the marlins are like trying to cycle through guys and find guys he's been in the system for the whole time but they probably uh didn't think that they were going to necessarily get this kind

of performance out of him and they did he said it's incredible to be here i have nothing but a thankful heart so that's cody potit like you know baby cakes thankful heart. So that's Cody Poteet. Like, you know, baby cakes, thankful heart. We're good to go. All right. We have met Cody Poteet. All right. Well, that'll do it for today and for this week. Well, after we recorded, the Twins lost again.

So make that a 10.5 game deficit in the AL Central. According to the Fangraphs playoff odds, their chances of winning the division have fallen to 5.3%, and their chances of making the playoffs at all have dipped to single digits as well, 9.5%. It ain't pretty. Also not pretty, Williams-Ostadillo struck out looking in that game for the first time in his Major League career. 394 MLB plate appearances, first strikeout looking. Aaron Gleeman tweeted that Astadio had six called

strikeouts in his whole minor league career. That's 2,563 plate appearances. This is a rare occurrence. And the pitch was not a strike. It was a little bit outside. It was framed by A's catcher Sean Murphy. So as I have always consistently said, down with framing, bring on robot umps. In all seriousness, Williams is still wonderful. He hasn't walked yet this year. He still has a batting average higher than his on-base percentage. And he has a 122 WRC+. That's not bad, though as much as I love Williams, it could be a problem if he is your starting first baseman,

as he has basically become for the Twins lately. In other news about favorite players of the podcast, Shohei Otani's next scheduled start has been pushed back one to three days from Tuesday due to general fatigue. Joe Maddon thought he looked a little tired at the plate the day after he pitched this week, and yet after that decision was made, Otani homered and doubled. So not too fatigued, I guess. And another hitter who's not fatigued, Jared Kelnick, who went three for four with two doubles in a home run in his second major league game. I saw a stats by stats tweet that noted that Kelnick is the youngest AL player with three plus extra base hits out of the leadoff spot since Ricky Henderson on September 7th, 1979.

Youngest AL player, three plus extra base hits out of the leadoff spot, three qualifiers, but I'll allow it, including Ricky, in a fun fact about a leadoff hitter goes a long way. 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. Ted Orbach, Anthony Clark, Kyle Wojcik, Dan Laidman, and Derek Bay. 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 at vangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins,ins as always for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back as always to talk to you early next week. To say goodbye, to say goodbye You look so defeated lying there in your new twin-size bed