Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1696: A No-Hitter a Day Keeps the Offense Away

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about scheduling their days around Shohei Ohtani and the latest examples of Ohtani excitement, Tony La Russa and unwritten rules vs. fun and the White Sox clubhouse, and Spencer Turnbull and no-hitter overload (before Corey Kluber’s no-no on Wednesday), then answer listener emails about whether Ohtani is the world’s […]

Hey everyone, just a quick note to say that we recorded this episode on Wednesday evening. I'm posting it early Thursday morning, and in the short interim between those times, there was another no-hitter. This time it was the Yankees' Corey Kluber no-hitting the Rangers, who had already been no-hit once this season by the Padres' Joe Musgrove. So just be aware that this was recorded prior to the sixth no-hitter of this season. Seven if you count Madison Bumgarner's seven-inning game. One of our topics on this episode is no-hitter overload,

prompted by Spencer Turnbull of the Tigers' no-hitter on Tuesday. So it's safe to say that we are suffering from slightly more no-hitter fatigue than we were when we spoke. And all of the trends that you'll hear us talk about are even more apparent now. All right, on with the episode, which I hope you will hear before we have yet another no-hitter. Could I have one more hit? I promise I'll quit.

This shit ain't good for me. I really need one more hit and I'll be good. You really shouldn't go cold turkey. Cold turkey. Cold turkey. Hello and welcome to episode 1696 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Winberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs.

Hello, Meg. Hello. Happy Otani start day. Oh, boy. I was just realizing I kind of order my days around Otani now, at least on the days that he pitches. Like, I look ahead and I think, okay, here's when Otani is pitching. Here's what I have to do before then. How will I rearrange my schedule so that I am available to plotop myself on the couch and watch Otani at the appointed time like I knew? All right, I've got to do a podcast today. I have this phone call. I've got to send some emails. I've got to go to the gym. Normally, I might go to the gym at that time when he's pitching, but I can't do that because he's pitching today. So I've got to switch things around. So he has literally become appointment viewing

for me. And it's not just for me. It is my close family. My wife is sort of the same way now, which I guess she's kind of picked it up from me. But a few weeks ago, she had to have surgery. It wasn't a super serious surgery. It was an outpatient procedure, but it was on a day when Otani was pitching. And so she was going to be unconscious at the time that he took the mound. And in the midst of everything else that was going on, she was like bummed out that it was happening on a day when Shohei Otani was pitching. And then when I picked her up afterward and she was like still, I guess, kind of groggy and coming out of the anesthesia, she was like, how did Shohei do?

That was like one of her first questions. I've never loved her more. So I guess it's just the hazards of close proximity. Yeah. But it's also just the appeal of Otani too. Once again, you really have me lapped when it comes to not only the players that are listeners and sort of your Twitter followers have come to associate with you, but the influence you're exerting over your loved ones. I feel like you're directing Jesse in a much more positive and fruitful direction than like, you know, like my mom is still like deeply invested in mike zanino's career in a way that he had a good day he did have a good day and guess what i haven't heard from my

mom about baseball in like months and i heard about that from her so that kind of proves my point yes he had a good day but in general like there are you know there are long stretches where um it's at least a quiet existence right to be a fan of mike zanino and yet you have done so much better it is so disappointing when you have you know those sort of predictable ways to have to feel solace and succor when you're going to be sick and then to have them just misaligned little tiny bit right because i'm sure that she would have enjoyed as she was recuperating to get to watch an Otani start.

But I also love that because of our listeners proclivity to tweet at you whenever anything dramatic happens, the odds of you being able to like save it and then watch it with her while she's recovering without knowing what was going on we're just absolutely zero yeah it was a negative number of such a thing were possible in a moment like this so yeah time shifted sports it just never quite as satisfying no no it just doesn't work as well but definitely not it's not just me i mean we talked yesterday about how people just kind of across the sports

world are talking about otani and his potential as face of baseball, face of sports, at least for now. And I just went to MLB.com and four of the top 10 stories are about Otani currently. So it's like little room for debate in Otani's MVP bid. Stroman on Otani. He's a mythical legend. Nine amazing Shohei Otani stats. Otani inspiring awe across sports landscape. Marcus Stroman's quote or his tweet was, Otani is a mythical legend in human form.

That might even be beyond where I would go with it. What he's doing is beyond incredible. Everyone in the big leagues is in awe of his talent, etc., etc. Yeah, he hit another home run after we recorded on Tuesday. And after we finish talking today, we will see what he has in store for us now. Yeah, I almost feel like we should start scheduling the podcast not only around Otani's start so that you might see them,

but it might just be in our best interest to wait to record at all until he's done. I mean, that's not going to work this time for a couple of reasons but you know i have every confidence that otani will manage to do at least one amazing thing today and that we will hear about it and then be asked to do an emergency pod yeah i'm sure i know that's the unfortunate thing is that because he's often playing in the west coast and i'm on the east coast and you don't want to record probably super late at night if we can avoid it so it's not ideal to record post Otani sites and there's always another Otani game coming up he's not pitching he's playing every day this season so it's hard to get ahead of it really but yeah so we will watch him soon and i wanted to sort of start there instead of leading with larusa yeah i guess we should probably talk a little bit

about larusa i did a brief update at the end of yesterday's episode just to provide some of the basic facts that hadn't happened when we spoke about it. And we spoke about it so briefly. And that I think is kind of telling because it just it wasn't a big deal to us. And it wasn't a big deal to the rest of the sport. Seemingly, it became a big deal when Tony La Russa opened his mouth and started talking about it. Like, I made a little joke on yesterday's episode about it being Bush League to swing on 3-0 or whatever, just kind of playing off the stereotype of someone who would say that. And we noted that the Twins broadcast was maybe a little miffed about it, but that was as far as it went. And it looked like it just might be a non-story and it might kind of blow over. And then Tony La Russa entered the

chat and it became the biggest story in baseball for a day. And part of me doesn't even want to go there because I don't want to give La Russa the power to set the agenda. It's such a silly discussion and I guess it has to be had because he is still a prominent figure in baseball and he's managing one of the most prominent teams. And it is noteworthy, if not surprising, that this is happening and potentially causing a sch of the most prominent teams. And it is noteworthy, if not surprising, that this is happening and potentially causing a schism in the clubhouse. But it's like, I felt like we had moved on from this sort of discussion. And I said as much and wrote as much after the Fernando Tatis brouhaha last season

with the 3-0 swing, because that like surfaced the night that it happened. But then immediately there was so much blowback and there was so much unified condemnation of the Unwritten Rules crankiness that I really thought that was a watershed and that we weren't going to keep having to have this discussion and that we had all kind of collectively moved on and decided that we were just going to let players hit home runs when they can. And I think we have mostly, and that's why dwelling on this, fixating on this might make it seem like a more pervasive problem or attitude. I do feel like Tony La Russa is a little bit on his own here with Smash Mouth, I guess, who tweeted in support of Tony La Russa, which was a difficult moment for me. But really, it's La Russissa and Smash Mouth. And I think most people, including... I'm sorry. Can we pause? I know you're in the middle of a sentence and I apologize for interrupting you, but can we pause to just appreciate the absurdity of what

you just said? And it's not absurd because you're wrong, but these are the facts on the ground. And what a ridiculous set of facts they appear to be. They really are. Yeah. No, and it's Smash Mouth and La Russa, as I've seen other people point out. These are people who were maybe best known for things that happened decades ago and yet are somehow still relevant. But that's the thing. I just feel like he has hijacked the collective consciousness of baseball by making this into a big deal. And I guess the twins weren't thrilled about it either. But really, I think it's a small minority of people who actually get upset about this sort of thing. And then when it's on the Arusa, we all end up talking about it and reacting to it for the next day. And that probably creates a perception that his opinion is more widespread than it is. And I can't imagine what that does to baseball, like becoming a big story because of something so silly that if you weren't a fan of baseball or you were a casual fan or you were thinking, should I get into baseball?

Is this a fun way to spend my time? And then this is the big story. And, you know, we don't have to give him the power to make it the thing that we lead our podcast with. But it is, I guess, still sort of interesting just to talk about the dynamic on this team and in this clubhouse when you have someone like Larissa in charge. You know, I think that it is an interesting example of it helps. really does help to clarify sort of the the various areas of responsibility that a manager has on a club because we tend to spend time thinking about like the way that a manager is going to act as a tactician and larus has had his own issues with that that we've talked about this season but as we've discussed before so much of what these guys jobs is to do is to people manage

right and to help to create a vibe and a culture and importantly, to stand up for their guys. And I think that there have been instances in the past where we've seen managers maybe stand up for their players in a way that we found to be distasteful given what they're standing up for them around. But this isn't that. This is your main Mercedes hitting a home run. This is baseball stuff. This is good. This is good't that. This is your main Mercedes hitting a home run. This is baseball stuff. This is good. This is good baseball stuff. This is the kind of thing that Mercedes is supposed to do. His job is literally to try to score runs in that moment. That is what he is. He is there on the field to do. That's the standard by which he's being evaluated when it

comes to arbitration. It's not like the arbitrator is going to sit there and be like, well, let's look at all of your home runs. I'm going to assess the level of competition that you had when you hit them. That's not how this works, right? They look at the number. Teams might, front offices might, but he won't be a free agent for quite a while. Right. And so when it comes to sort of what La Russa's responsibilities are in that moment, I think first and foremost, whatever he might think, and we think it's quite misguided, but whatever he might think about the way that Jermaine behaved on the field, his first obligation is to like kind of stand up for his guy. And so for him to, you know, have that conversation at all is silly. And then for him to elect to have it in public is is to

really i think misread one of the core sort of tenets of his job description and so it's it's very frustrating the degree to which he kept digging and continues to dig i'm sure by the time we finish recording this podcast part of it will be out of date because the man cannot seem to help himself and i i guess that it's unsurprising that that's his posture when you consider how he was hired and i can't imagine what he would have to do in order to be fired yeah right and so totally unsurprising he's had this exact same reaction right before i mean this is how he reacted to the Tatis incident. He commented on it at the time. And he also said in his introductory press conference as White Sox manager that he believes in sportsmanship as he defines it, which is like not running up the score. So yeah, he totally told us that if the situation arose, this is the way he would respond. So

if anything, it's sort of surprising that this didn't really surface until mid-May. But absolutely nothing about what happened here was really shocking to me. It's still surprising that Larissa got the job the way that he got it and with this team and everything. But you put these ingredients together and it was always going to end up this way at some point, I think. Yeah, and it just continues to spiral. I thought, you know, Lance Lynn had a really good take on this last night. He was asked about, you know, he was yesterday's starter. He was asked about it and he said, if a position player is on the mound, there are no rules.

Let's get the damn game over with. And if you have a problem with whatever happened then put a pitcher out there right and that's yep i think the twins had five actual pitchers left and chose not to use any of them so all bets are off at that point although they were also shifting so they were sort of trying to get him out you know maybe that's a a more modern perspective on baseball than larusa would manage to muster but i think it's a good one and rather than do what what jace tingler did when this same sort of situation kind of was in play with tatis last year and be like oh i've misread this like i've misjudged right how this should go and i'm gonna backtrack because i clearly made a mistake instead larissa said that lancelin has a locker and he has an office so he

doesn't really you know he doesn't really care what he has to say on that score. And it's just like, you have to work with these people every day. And talking to the press is a big part of your job and talking about them in a way that makes the guys in the dugout understand that you have their back is an important part of it. And, you know, I think that, like I said, there are certainly limitations to that. And I don't think we want to give managers carte blanche to like excuse actually bad behavior, because I think that they are also an important force of accountability in their clubhouse or they should be. But this isn't bad behavior, you know. And so it's just it it's so dispiriting precisely because it was so easy to predict. precisely because it was so easy to predict. Yep.

You know, it was, and it's not about his age. Brendan wrote about this for us at Fangraphs today and, you know, pointed out that there's no limit on your ability to be sort of clear-eyed and apply a keen eye to the game, but he appears to have, you know, stepped so far out of step with modern baseball that these kinds of, you know, incidents so far out of step with modern baseball that these kinds of, you know, incidents are going to continue.

And I think that there are plenty of examples throughout baseball history of clubs that have ended up being really good, even when there is a pronounced friction between the manager and the team. But it's not what I want to talk about. And so I think that we will endeavor to like only talk about it when it is newsworthy, which it is right now. Someone out there saying, don't you hate useless discourse, Meg? And I'd say to you, yeah, but this one we kind of need to talk about a little bit because I think it's important for the response to it to be sort of uniform and resounding that like you're getting in the way of the wrong stuff. And you're not doing the tactical part of your job particularly well. And you're not doing the people part of your job particularly well. So like what part of your job were you doing particularly well?

Right. And you mentioned Jace Tingler's thinking on this changing. Chris Woodward of the Rangers was the other manager in that Tatis game. And he had a total turnaround too. And Levi Weaver just talked to him prompted by this La Russa incident, and Woodward said, I've been around this game for 25 years. There are things that were brought down, handed to me, that I was expected to push forward. I watched the Ken Burns baseball documentary recently, and it's a beautiful, beautiful game that has been handed down. Traditions have been handed

down for a long time, for over 100 years, and I felt like I had to do that for the game. I had to hand some of these things down. And some of them are silly. And maybe that's one of them. If you have a bat in your hand and you're standing in that batter's box, I've completely changed my opinion. Before I got into coaching, I never swung in a 3-0 pitch because it was never allowed. Now that I look back, I'm like, that was silly. It's the best pitch in baseball to hit. I preach that to our guys. I preach that in LA. I preached it in Seattle when I was coaching. And as a manager, every time you look over at me on a 3-0 pitch, I'm giving this sign and it's the swing away sign. And he said, listen, all I can say is it was a good swing and there was a position player pitching. At that point in the game, everyone was just trying to get the game over. Anything more, I can't really comment. I just

don't think it's that big of an issue. And it's great that his thinking has evolved on this. It just seems like La Russa is doubling and tripling and quadrupling down. And I don't think it's that big of an issue. And it's great that his thinking has evolved on this. It just seems like La Russa is doubling and tripling and quadrupling down. And I don't think he's changing many minds in that clubhouse. And that is the part of it that fascinates me. I think, again, like not at all surprised by how La Russa has handled this, but I am interested in how the team will respond to this and whether if there is discord between manager and clubhouse, whether that will actually affect the team's performance to this and whether if there is discord between manager and clubhouse, whether that will actually affect the team's performance, because I don't think that's a given.

So like La Russa said that he doesn't think that anyone minded or cared in the clubhouse. He said, I'd be willing to bet there isn't anybody in that clubhouse that's upset that I mentioned. That's not the way we compete. isn't anybody in that clubhouse that's upset that I mentioned that's not the way we compete and that that seems to fly in the face of you know Evan Marshall liking a lot of tweets that were critical of Marusa or Tim Anderson saying on Instagram the game wasn't over keep doing you big daddy or Lucas Gilito saying we all support your mean. We love home runs here. That's it. We're going to move on. Now, Gilito also said no negativity.

He was asked whether there was negativity in the clubhouse. And he said, no negativity. We all support your mean, et cetera. So they're trying to diffuse it, I guess. But it seems hard to believe that they don't mind the way that Larissa handled it. It seems hard to believe that they don't mind the way that Larissa handled it, not just the initial comments and throwing Mercedes under the bus after he's been one of the best stories in baseball and just one of the best White Sox players this season all year long. And not just the way that he called him clueless and disapproved of his actions there. And you mentioned Lance Lynn, who did make a great point.

And Lance Lynn is 34 years old. He's not like Mr. Let the Kids Play or anything. And he came up as a rookie under Tomio Russo in St. Louis. So if anyone was going to be on his side, do you think it would be him? You'd think it would be him. Or I guess Adam Eaton. I don't know. But it certainly seems as if there is a contingent that is supporting Mercedes. And it's hard to support Mercedes without kind of being anti-La Russa stance on this.

And not just what he said, but then like apologizing to the twins, which I guess if you tried to look at it really charitably, you might think, oh, he was trying to head off retaliation or something. And I doubt that that was it. And then during the game, when Tyler Duffy threw behind Mercedes, which was clearly intentional. And LaRusso, again, instead of standing up for his player in this environment, where as we've talked about a whole lot lately, guys are getting hit by pitches and getting hurt all the time. And it's very dangerous. and you can't control exactly where the pitch goes and pitchers miss their spot by seven to ten inches on average and that's not even when they're like trying to throw at somebody or throw near somebody so who knows what it is in that instance so it's dangerous even though it wasn't up near

his head or anything and Duffy was ejected and Baltelli was ejected. So clearly the umpires saw that for what it was. And Lewis is like, yeah, I have no problem with that. Right. Absurd. We're trying to mind read. Like, we don't know. Maybe he just lost control of that sinker or whatever.

Like, come on. Like, you have to protect your players. That's like the bedrock of a manager's job. So again, like, it's hard for me to imagine that White Sox players aren't pissed about that. And the question is like, will that actually impair their performance in any way? And maybe not. You know, they came out on Thursday and they beat the Twins again. And they won a one run game.

And like you can play while this sort of circus is going on. And, you know, 3-0 swings that lead to home runs in blowouts don't happen every day right so it's not like he was saying this about bat flips or about exuberance or something that might keep recurring like this situation might not arise again this season so maybe it won't keep poking at this particular wound but still like you know if there were already reports that people weren't thrilled about his actual managerial decisions and now this comes up, it's just like, does that tear the team apart? Does that unify the team? Is it like us against Tony and it actually bonds the team together?

So I think that's the thing where even though this of acrimonious and dysfunctional and all, it's baseball. And I don't know how it will actually impact the performance of the team, if at all. Like, it's totally possible that this is a good team and they'll just keep winning. And that's something we talked about over the winter too, after La Russa had been hired, I think we were saying like, you know, it'd be good if the White Sox could kind of La Russa proof this roster by continuing to upgrade so that if he does make some weird managerial moves or if there is some sort of discord, like maybe they can just play through it and win anyway. And maybe they can. So that might just be the upshot here. Like, you know, whatever is happening, it hasn't stopped stopped the white socks from being in first place and having a successful season so far despite significant injuries right but as you said it's just not the thing that we want to be talking about so yeah i just i don't want the the players to have to be in a position where like this is the balance they're trying to strike and the line they're trying to tow of both getting us to all move on from it while still supporting their player because you're right i don't think that it's

really easy to to sit there and say that you can be like pro you're mean but neutral toward larusa like this is a moment where you kind of just have to say this is the thing i'm doing so that shouldn't really be something that they have to do again in a moment where the incident, the inciting incident is something that is silly for us to really be all that fussed about to begin with. I mean, I understand the twins not liking it, even if I find that reaction to be kind of silly, but for you to have to navigate that in your own clubhouse is just ridiculous. So, yeah. And the whole like missing signs aspect of it, you know, if there was actually a take

sign, like generally I'm semi sympathetic to that. Like players should pay attention to the signs and, you know, we have to have a society here and there has to be some kind of order and hierarchy. But if you're putting on the take sign in that situation, you're putting on that sign because of the unwritten rules. So it's sort of silly in the first place. And then the whole reaction to it clearly made it apparent that it was not just about missing a sign. Like if, you know, a player misses a sign in a blowout, that's not something you have to publicly call him out for and apologize to the other team for. So like, clearly it goes well beyond that, you know, if a player misses a sign or ignores a sign or whatever, and it's a rookie, even if, you know, experienced rookie, maybe you pull them aside and sit them down and say, hey, you know, pay attention to the signs in the future, but you don't just like, you know, crap on him for the next day and essentially give the twins permission to retaliate by, you know, saying that you're going to be punishing him yourself in some way.

So, yeah, it's silly. And I think this was kind of one of the misgivings about hiring Larissa to manage this team is that we knew this was going to be a pretty fun team with fun players that we didn't even realize that Jermaine Mercedes would be one of them. So instead of appreciating his play, we are talking about Tony Russo and comments he made. So, you know, we keep saying that we don't want to talk about this. So I guess we should probably stop talking about this. You know, at least unless there are further flare ups. But, you know, it's probably a pipe dream to think that this is going to lead to some sort of mass revolt and uprising, and La Russa will be deposed at some point during the season.

That seems highly unlikely because all of this was very foreseeable, and he was hired anyway, and clearly he has Jerry Reinsdorf's support, and I doubt that has changed here. I'm sure Jerry Reinsdorf was probably on Larissa's side in this whole thing if he was on either side. And it's pretty rare, obviously, for a team to make a managerial change midseason when it's playing well and winning. I was hoping to get some data on that and didn't get it in time. I was hoping to get some data on that and didn't get it in time. But if I do, maybe I will update it at the end of the episode just to see if there is any precedent for a team like the White Sox winning at this level, making a managerial change.

Don't think that's going to happen unless something much more serious happens. And maybe this will die down or maybe it will continue to simmer and boil over in future episodes. And then I guess we can talk about it again. Do you think that Tony La Russa knows what Shrek is? His kids are probably too old to have watched Shrek. I'm just thinking as we approach the 20th anniversary of Shrek, he has a weird connection to Smash Mouth now. And now I need to

know if Tony La Russa has seen it. I need to know if he has an opinion on it. Is it one of his favorites? Does he like that song? What if he hates that song? Is Smash Mouth going to change their opinion that swinging was fine? These are the really important questions. Shrek was really about breaking unwritten rules on some level, so probably he paid it. But yeah, relevant to me because I just wrote about Shrek's soundtrack for the 20th anniversary of the movie and Smash Mouth shared the article. So I interviewed a member of Smash Mouth for the piece. So it's all kind of coming together here. Oh, boy. So there was another no hitter

that's it's like uh it's not our our lead item today and not even second or third really so i guess we should maybe mention that i feel bad because uh spencer turnbull who threw this one said it was like the best night of his life or something. And I'm like, Jan, another no hitter. And I don't mean to rain on his parade. I'm happy he's happy about this pretty impressive performance, but it's just kind of reached the point where it's like, yeah, the Mariners are batting 199 as a team here. This is the second time they've been no hit.

This is the fifth no hitter so far this season, even if you don't count the bump garner one so it's just hard to get as jazzed about it as we would have but you know if it leads to turnbull being happy and the tigers and tigers fans having a nice night and people appreciating turnbull more maybe like i've seen some people say oh look at the caliber of pitchers who were throwing these no hitters these days like It's Wade Miley and it's Spencer Turnbull. Anyone can throw a no-hitter now. I mean, Turnbull's pretty good, actually. Maybe this will lead to more people appreciating him for that. But really, it's just you have so many no-hitters in such a short period of time. The whole appeal of the no-hitter is its rarity. So you take that away and it loses its luster. I've been thinking about that because I understand that argument,

and I certainly understand why, regardless of your take on any individual no-hitter, why the seeming glut of them would be concerning because of what it says about, I mean, the Mariners in Cleveland in particular, but baseball's offensive environment more probably, right? It's, you know, it's easy to understand why that is concerning to folks. But I do find it sort of interesting because we like dominant pitching performances. And I think that we really like dominant pitching performances from guys who we find surprising right so when a when a back-end starter turns in a real gem like regardless of whether or not it's a no-hitter i think that we tend to find that really interesting and we want

to understand like what was working for him that day that hasn't been working previously and i think that that person that sort of reaction to those kinds of starts is almost universal. I'm sure that the fans of the team on the receiving end of them don't enjoy them all that much. But so I find to this recent phenomenon to be sort of interesting because it being more special in a normal year has somehow made it a little less engaging for folks because the novelty is not present in a way that they're hoping, even though, you know, these are all good pitching performances and ones that we would otherwise enjoy. So it is an interesting bit of business. Less interesting is the Mariners, are the Mariners. Evan White has a 28 WRC+, so that seems bad. Jose Marmoleos has a 69 WRC+, that also seems bad. Luis Torres has a 47 WRC+, Sam Haggerty has a 55 WRC+. Jared Kelnix is low, but he has played six games

in his 26 played appearances, so I'm not even going to mention that. Dylan Moore just went on the injured list list so that might be part of it taylor i'm just looking at the guys if you if you look at their hitters and you reduce the plate appearance minimum to 20 because not all of these guys are qualified hitters right now that's not a joke or a mean bit of wordplay but i realize how it reads that way and i apologize um they are not currently on track to qualify for the batting title at the end of the season um for any number of reasons but taylor schmell has already been demoted he was he was demoted to tacoma in part to make way for kelnyk um tom murphy who had that one really good season

has a 47 wrc plus although he has not played a full complement of games so the back end of this the bottom part of this lineup not good you know mitch hanegar having a nice little campaign uh kyle seager having a good little season uh ty france who was injured was doing fine good not great uh for a dh but uh kyle lewis you know like fine so it is not great i agree with you that like turnbull is is better than people are giving him credit for i tweeted last night a graphic from the Mariners broadcast that showed, you know, the five no-hitters and who threw them. And there were a lot of people who reacted like,

all of these guys are bad. And I'm like, well, hold on one moment. That's not quite true or fair. But it is delightful that Wade Miley looks so surprised in this picture. It's almost as if he knows that he shouldn't quite be on this graphic. But, like, you know, Musgrogrove we've talked about good uh carlos rodon is enjoying quite a nice little resurgence john means good uh turnbull uh good and having a nice little season after walking a lot of guys last year i'm walking for a fewer of them this year and uh you know i know

he's a ground ball guy but he's a good ground ball guy so i don't know i think that we can continue to enjoy these maybe we should just stop getting the no hitter alert on the app i think that that would help because then if you if you don't get the no hitter alert you're not watching the tigers play the mariners in all likelihood like if you're a tigers fan yes if you're a mariners fan yes but in all likelihood unless it's the last game on of the night uh you're probably not tuning into that and so maybe then the next day you open up mlb.com and you're cruising through the box box scores to see how the prior day's games went and you might go oh my gosh right like spencer turnbull what a nice night he

had and you would feel happy for him and excited and be kind of intrigued and wonder, you know, can I click over to fan graphs or baseball prospectus and and find something about him? Or can I go look at bless you boys? Because they're they're Tigers folks. So they probably have been on this for a while and have some insight, you know. And so's just a i wonder if we should continue to appreciate these but if we struggle to do that if we should just be told about them after the fact and then we can appreciate them in their totality we don't have to sit there and try to feel suspense because i think that's part of it for people it's like even though any one game becoming a no-hitter is still you know there have only been five that's lot, but it's still only five, right? Most of the games, they're not no hitters. A lot of them are no hitters for longer. So that's a fair thing to point out, but it's still a really hard thing to do.

And most guys aren't doing it. And yet we have this sense that we should not have suspense. We should not feel suspense. and so i wonder if we took that component out if we would just be able to be like oh wait miley as i live and breathe you know and just enjoy it and then go back and be like oh man john means look at that those pitches so beautiful i don't know yeah maybe this is the argument for time shifted sports viewing. Right. I have disabled the notifications on the MLB app. I feel like, you know, if someone I like does something I need to know about immediately, someone will tweet at me about it probably several times. So that's my

notification system. So not really bombarded by the, you know, no hitter through six or whatever notifications that people get that sort of sour them on the whole experience. But yeah, you're right. It seems less legitimate or deserved somehow when it's not like the flamethrower who misses a ton of bats. It seems less overpowering and in a way that detracts from the no-hitter experience because it's like, well, he just kind of got lucky in a lot of balls in play, but they were right at people or there were great defensive plays. And so it wasn't really that impressive. And so in a way, it's more impressive if it is just dominant and the pitcher actually looked unhittable. But as you were saying, if the

pitcher doesn't look unhittable, in a way that makes it more enjoyable because it seems more improbable and there's more suspense up until the last second like when i was watching musgrove it it just almost seemed like impossible that anyone would get a hit off of him i know it was not impossible but some days guys will look like that like they're just not going to allow hit some days they look like they're very hittable and somehow they don't allow hit anyway. And then it really ratchets up the suspense. So I could see a case for either one being more entertaining. I do think that the more it happens, the less I care probably, but you're right that it remains relatively rare. It's still a cool accomplishment for the individual players. And

really, I said this on the Ringer podcast last week, and I might be writing this too, but I'm rooting for many more no-hitters. Like, give me a no-hitter a week. Just, you know, we're on pace for 19 or something, and we're not going to get there because offense will pick up as the weather warms up. And also, like, these are dictated by the offensive environment, but they're also sort of random and fluky. And so we might get a bunch clustered in a short period of time and then not get any for a while. But I want more just because if they do become a common occurrence, then I think that brings attention to the fact that we are really in dire straits for offense right now. And it really will cement the perception that this is the new year of the pitcher. And I think that might actually lead to action. It might make it more likely that we do

get the mound moved back or whatever, that the political will for that among the players and the league exists and among the public too. If we just see so many no-hitters and blow by the record of seven in a season or eight in a season, if you count 1884, and, you know, we end up with double digits or something, that will just hammer home, I think, like how extreme and out of of the season that no one is even bothering to change the channel to watch them because I think that might ultimately help produce some change, which I think is needed at this point. So you got to get over the hump and convince people that there's a problem and not everyone is looking at leaderboards the way that we are. And so a no hitter that really brings it to the public's attention, I think, in a different way and reaches a different audience. And if suddenly they realize, oh, didn't we just have one of these like yesterday? Oh, there's another one now? What is going on in baseball?

Is it that there are no hits? Is that why there are so many no-hitters? Oh, well, that seems like a problem. Maybe we should fix that. So that's my rooting interest here. Of course, I worry that the change they'll choose is banning the shift or one of the other methods that might not be unfortunate. But yeah, I think that you're right. This is like a very extreme version of the pitchers all conspiring not to swing at all in the National League or just swing every time but to always miss.

Do you think that Wade Miley knows about Shrek? Yeah, he's probably about the right age to have grown up and watched Shrek, right? Yeah, I bet he's like, Shrek is cool. I bet John Means maybe hasn't seen Shrek because he's so young. I don't know if people, do people still watch Shrek? Is Shrek a beloved animated classic? I think so. It's certainly still a meme.

Our age group loves it. Oh, no. Wade Miley is our age. I guess that makes him maybe a little old for Shrek but I don't know we are aware of Shrek we watch Shrek so we are aware of Shrek wow yeah so then

you're like wow I'm 34 and Wade Miley is 34 and Wade Miley is a younger 34 than I am cool alright let's answer a few emails here and unsurprisingly, we've gotten a bunch of

Shohei Otani emails and I don't know whether that is because we talk about Shohei Otani incessantly or whether it's because everyone is talking about Otani these days, but I'm fine with either possibility. So Anthony, Patreon supporter, says, in the interest of promoting Shohei Otani further,

if it were announced tomorrow that a new team sport had been invented from whole cloth and you had to draft a team of players to play the new sport before learning any information about it or how it's played, Otani is definitely the number one overall pick, right? At his athletic prime, I would have maybe taken LeBron James, but right now, I genuinely think Otani is the best overall athlete on the planet. His combination of size, speed, strength, recognition, reactions, muscle memory, and fine motor skills is unparalleled. It feels like he could be a top player in almost any sport if he had focused on it as a kid, other than a few niche ones where his height would be a disadvantage like horseback riding.

kid other than a few niche ones where his height would be a disadvantage like horseback riding. And this is interesting to me because I used to listen to Max Kellerman on the radio in New York. I thought he was really good on radio and also I had a boring job and I needed to be entertained and podcasts weren't a thing yet. So I listened to him a lot and he used to talk about like, who's the athlete we would pick if the aliens invade right like right if they say who's the champion of the human race like you have to pit your champion against ours for the survival of the species and you just have to pick the perfect specimen like the most imposing the most coordinated the most capable human being on the planet, physically speaking, who is that person right now. And generally, it's not a baseball player, I don't think. But you can make a pretty decent case for

Shohei Otani right now. I don't know if he has the best case, but I'm listening to Anthony's case here, and I'm sort of persuaded, and I am already in the tank for Otani, but I think he has a far stronger case than really any other baseball player. Generally, I'd be inclined to pick a basketball player, pick a football player, but Otani, maybe I could kind of see it. It's a really good point because it's like, you know, there are other guys who are sculpted maybe a bit more, although, as we discussed, not a lot more. He is surprisingly built.

Yeah, I mean, he's not DK Metcalf, but he's pretty big. Yeah, I mean, DK Metcalf is the answer, actually, to this question. It's definitely DK, and I'm not just saying that as a Seahawks fan, although I am also saying that as a Seahawks fan. It is definitely DK Metcalf. Now I want to watch DK Metcalf play baseball. Yeah, well, that's the thing, though, because like there is a different kind of coordination. Like in this scenario, Anthony is raising here, we don't know how this sport works. So if it's about pure power or speed or some combination of both. Then you want DK. Yeah. Like Otani is pretty big and pretty fast and pretty powerful, but, you know, probably not going to compare to the biggest and strongest and fastest football players or basketball players even. But, you know, sometimes you see players from those

sports like swing a bat and they can't make contact and it's like of course they haven't trained for that their whole lives but like there is a level of hand-eye coordination and precision that enters into it and right otani like he's got as good an arm as anyone. We know that. And so if the sport involves throwing things or hitting things, like who is as good at both of those things and is proven the way that Otani is. So, you know, the combination of size and speed and power with the incredible coordination

and being able to throw and hit as hard as anyone, like that's a pretty compelling case because can DK Metcalf throw really well? I don't know. He can catch really well, clearly. I don't know how great an arm he has. I don't know. Obviously, he's pretty coordinated,

but is he coordinated in the way that allows you to hit major league pitching? I don't know. I don't know. There's a level of finesse there and a different kind of coordination where I feel like Otani could be competitive in a number of ways. Like he's good at everything.

He's the two-way player who could be like, you know, more than he's doing currently, probably if he were allowed to. So yeah, like if you're starting from scratch and you just say, I need someone and we don't know exactly what he'll have to do, but he has to have all of these baseline skills. Like it's pretty tough to beat Otani. an invasion so yeah i think that you're right that having more variability in the athletic skill set or at least demonstrated skill set because you're right we don't we just don't know with metcalf and i'm inclined to think that he could do anything but um that might be my bias as a seahawks fan

showing so having the demonstrated ability and as we said like still very physically imposing although not quite the like demigod that that metcalf is but yeah i i i quite like i quite like otani as the answer to this i would feel i feel good about him you know and he's he is persevered through through hardship and so that seems like a good that seems like a thing you want in the like champion of humanity you want someone who can persevere and has stick-to-itiveness and yeah yeah i like this there are some athletic endeavors where being as big as possible is a benefit i mean if we're talking about like weightlifting or world's strongest man or something then you know size is an asset or Or if you're

talking about basketball, then you want to be tall, all else being equal, better to be bigger. But there are some athletic endeavors where that might backfire, where that might hurt your coordination, or maybe there are some other constraints. So I feel like 6'4", which is the Otani Metcalfe zone, I feel like that's probably ideal, like not knowing any of the details going in, where it's like, yeah, probably being bigger is better, but not necessarily being like the biggest. That might hurt you in some way.

So I think he kind of has the ideal athletic build, not knowing exactly what you need him to do. So yeah, I might pick otani as my champion everyone panned that draft pick and guess who's laughing now well not me deep into the postseason because the sea hacks have other problems but dk mcaf really good at football people are like shut up mac no one cares track either apparently not that a track very cool didn't qualify for the olympics but like people said that he performed respectively and i think if you're performing respectively at an olympic trial that you deserve like a cookie or a treat or something yeah

with not really that long a training period so yeah it remains i'm sorry i will stop talking about football immediately after this but him chasing down an interception to prevent a touchdown return remains the best just the very best part of the football season and i will not i will not accept any alternatives it's it's my co-podcast and you don't care about it. So I think that I feel comfortable speaking for both of us. Yeah. I brought up Metcalf here. I opened up this Pandora's box. Should have known.

All right. Jesse, not my wife, Jesse, although she actually asked me a variation of this same question, but this is Jesse with an E at the end, not with an IE. After watching Otani hit his league-leading home run last night, I started thinking about the possibility of him in the home run derby. This led me to the possibility of Otani winning the home run derby and then being the starting pitcher in the All-Star game. Could this happen?

Would the Angels let him pitch in the game? Would Kevin Cash actually do this? Would Kevin Cash also forfeit the DH to let him hit? Oh, I think that that would be the gating factor although it's the all-star game so couldn't they just say that you get to dh2 reinventing how lineups work here um i think that they wouldn't want to relinquish the dh because you already have enough trouble getting all those guys in, right? You already have a hard time getting at-bats for all of the non-starters. It's going to be played in NL Park.

Is there a DH? I don't even remember how the All-Star Game works. I think there's still a DH. I think there's a DH. I think they do a DH, right? Yeah, I think that's true, but we could quickly confirm that, I guess. I think that there's a DH because you vote on the position. Like there is a...

So I think there has to be a DH. And then they... Because, you know, you have way more hitters than you have spots in the lineup. And so they just pick like the best guy who's not going to be in the field and stick him at DH, I think. Here we go thanks Wikipedia. In 1989 a designated hitter was allowed in the all-star game for the first time. Between 1989 and

2010 the designated hitter rule was applied based on the league in which the host team plays. It was used for games played in the American League ballparks. In each such instance both teams used a designated hitter while in National League ballparks managers have scheduled the pitcher to hit, etc., etc. We know how baseball works.

This allows a deserving non-starter to make a plate appearance. In 2010, Major League Baseball announced the designated hitter rule would apply for every All-Star game. Aha. So while the 2010 game was already to have the DH, the 2011 game was the first played in a National League park with a DH. So, yeah, there will be a dh and uh and i don't think that they would have him hit because yeah you want it's uh you want more people to participate in that game yeah but i i would imagine i wouldn't be surprised if they just kind of do a little bit a little whoopsie do a little bendy of the rules. I wouldn't be surprised if he is the starting DH, right?

I guess it would be him or Cruz, and he hits, and then they're like, he's going to go onto the mound. Yeah, I think it would be cool if he did both in that game at some point in some sequence. Yeah, if he came in later in the game, and then I bet they would say, you still get to have your DH. I bet that they would do that because they don't, doesn't matter it's not a real game you want to see you want to showcase the the best guys doing their best stuff like that's the whole purpose

of the exercise so you know if they're gonna let nelson cruz take a selfie with joe west like they're gonna they're gonna let people play kind of fast and loose with the lineup rules because who cares? Like, just let them have fun out there. God, Ohtani hit so far. It'll go so far. It'll go all the way to the moon in course. All the way to the moon. I don't think he's going to be a candidate to start the game as a pitcher.

No, it'll be Garrett Cole. Yeah, he's not going to get the nod over Cole or Means or Bieber or whoever if guys bow out of that game. But I do wonder about the home run derby because, of course, he is going to get invited. That's a very good point. And it would be a lot of fun for him to be on that stage and I would watch. But there's so much concern about his workload and fatigue that I wonder whether he would want to do it, whether the Angels would want him to do it. It seems like

when he's trying to do this thing that no one else even attempts, just to have that break there would be pretty vital for him just to get a few days entirely off. And home run derby, like, yeah, it's not serious, but it can be pretty tiring. Yeah, it's taxing. You're taking all of these max effort swings and swinging for the fences. And so, yeah, I kind of wonder, like, given the workload concerns and given the injury concerns and all of that, whether he might just say thanks but no thanks

or the Angels might say, yeah, why not sit this one out? I mean, part of me hopes that he does it. And part of me hopes that he doesn't because my priority is for him to stay healthy and active during the second half of the season. Although really like what we're talking about with him being a crossover star and face of baseball and all of that like you know the all-star game is not that big a deal anymore but it can be pretty big when someone totally puts on a show in the home run derby so right if he were to do that it would help maybe with with that effort so i'm kind of torn yeah i think i would prefer him in the derby to the actual all-star game because i think that people you know people have really embraced the derby to the actual all-star game because i think that people you know people have really embraced the derby in recent years and they're you know they make time for that and

the format is fun and like i not last year because there was no all-star game but the year before that when the all-star game was in cleveland you know we went to to cleveland to do a reader event and to go to the futures game primarily we did not stay for the derby or the the all-star game uh as a site and so i actually uh like a real dummy just booked my flight home uh to correspond with the with the derby and i like was bummed i had done that i was like oh this seems like it's really fun like i was able to see some of it on the plane because whatever airline I was flying that thankfully was not Spirit on the way home,

although it was on the way there, which was one of the worst days of my life. But that's not the point of this story. And, you know, it was one of the ones that has like the live satellite TV or whatever. And so I got to see a lot of it, but not all of it. And I was like, oh, I missed out on some cool stuff and i don't think i can't remember the last time someone felt that way about the all-star game itself like i just

don't think that it has the same quite the same resonance like the most memorable all-star game moment of sort of recent vintage was finding out that like josh hater was in trouble it was it was not fun but it was was the most newsworthy thing to emerge out of an All-Star game in a little while. I think the Derby would be a better publicity move on his part and on the league's part. But as you said, it really takes it out of guys. Now that Trout is injured in a month's's long way they might be more reticent to

sort of put him in that jeopardy I don't know it'll be interesting to see kind of how that gets played but he's so fun what a great thing we get to do I'm glad we circled back around to this so we stopped talking about Tony La Russa though we could talk more about Shrek we shouldn't do that I've got one more Otani related question This is from Michael Who says I was thinking about this As I saw someone lament online For the seemingly millionth time About how it doesn't seem right or fair

That the Angels have not been good enough for Mike Trout And now Shohei Otani too To be annual participants in the playoffs While pointing this out is an objective fact Trout has only made one appearance While also essentially being a hybrid of Melot, Mickey Mantle, and Ernie Banks' primes. It also seems to undermine a very common theme in all of pro sports. Not all icons and Hall of Famers win a championship or even get multiple chances in the playoffs.

Would it have been awesome if Ernie Banks was on a World Series winning team? Of course. Banks was on a World Series winning team, of course, but he wasn't. And while it didn't detract from anyone thinking he wasn't capital G great, his narrative was largely defined by something he had no real control over. It got me thinking we should use Trout and Otani as totems for a better appreciation of the sport writ large. And if we keep falling into the narrative of wouldn't it be awesome if these guys played on a juggernaut team or wouldn't it be awesome if they were in the playoffs almost all of the time? Curious as to what you think about it. Something about ascribing failure to elite players' abilities to get into the playoffs, especially in any sport except for basketball,

where one truly great player can usually get you a number four seed on a regular basis, even if his surrounding cast is no better than Pepperdine's roster. Aren't we keeping the dumb narrative of rings equals true success alive when we should be trying to mercifully kill it? Well, I think the beginning part of the question probably points to the thing that we're actually aggravated about, which is I view this as an angel's failure, not as a player failure, right? Like you really truly can't do more than Mike Trout has done to try to single-handedly propel your baseball team to the postseason. I think that as we've discussed, there is something to the idea that we are missing

a lot of the really excellent parts of the game if we are overly fixated on the postseason generally and winning a World Series specifically. And players can be generational players without ever winning a ring, right? That's just the fluky bit of business that you have sometimes. And I don't, I don't fault, and I don't think that the listener is faulting, but I don't fault Trout for that. And I do think that when casual fans are sort of interfacing with the sport for the first time or you know perhaps for their most extended run in a season that often takes place in October and so those memories whether we like it or not tend to be ones that are a little more indelible and and universal for fans than other moments in

the season and I think particularly for someone like Trout, where he is in so many ways so far ahead of other players, you know, with some variability season to season, and there are definitely years where the war gap is less pronounced than in others. But it just seems like the sport is missing something really crucial for him to have not had more October opportunities at this point. Although, to argue against myself, I think that part of it, Trout's appeal is best appreciated over a longer view, right? Because he does so many things well, but sometimes the things he does do take a little more, you know, a longer look. Like, you know, I think once you start to appreciate like his plate discipline, every at bat of his is exciting

and watching how he adjusts mid at bat is like incredible. And the takes that he takes are amazing. And you just start, you're able to really kind of drink it all in. But I think that there are players who, you know, hit longer home runs. And there are players who are flashier defenders, right? And you know, when he's not robbing a home run, like he's not the flashiest defender, because it's not the strongest part of his game, there are better base runners. But when you take it all together over the course of the season, you're just like, wow, this is the best guy. So in that respect, October is an extension of the sample, but is in theory no more important than any other, you know,

sort of stretch of games that you might enjoy with him in it. But I think that it's just one of those things where you want the best player in the sport to be a part of the sport's most high profile moments. And it doesn't have to be every year, but it would be nice if it were more years than this. And I lay the blame for that at the Angels' feet, not at Mike Trout's. And I will also say, I'm sure Mike Trout wants a World Series ring. It really matters to these guys. Breaking breaking news baseball players want to win the world series i am i'm striking out into uncharted territory with my takes but if for no other reason than like i really enjoy watching mike trout play and he's brought a great amount of joy and enjoyment to

my life even though i don't know him like i'd like him to get his ring because it seems like it's important to him so So, yeah. Yeah. I think if we were not talking about them because they were languishing on this mediocre Angels roster. We can't stop talking about them. Yeah. That would be bad if we were neglecting to pay attention to their feats. But we talk about them every day. So, I think we are not overlooking them because of this.

And we are certainly not faulting them for the rest of the team doesn't make the playoffs or whatever, that still exists. That opinion is out there in the wild. And people will think, well, how great could he be if he can't even carry his team to the playoffs, not really realizing that baseball just doesn't work that way. So I think that does contribute to the perception of him a little bit. And it leads to both of them getting overlooked at least a little more than they deserve based on their talent and performance which is just unmatched so i think the fact that yeah maybe because they play on the west coast or whatever they're not in the biggest market even though their name says they are just maybe leads to them not getting the kind of publicity that other

players will but like it's just inevitable that if you make the playoffs every year and you're on that stage that you're gonna get more attention for that and that's okay I think as long as no one's blaming you if you're not making the playoffs but you performed really well but like you know you look at Derek Jeter or someone like that and of course he's playing in New York and he's on the Yankees and all the rest of it. But also a lot of it had to do with the fact that he's in the playoffs every year and he's having these signature October moments. And with Trout, it's hard to think of a signature Trout moment, which is partly just because his brilliance manifests itself in just kind of like a steady everyday greatness,

more so than particular plays, but also because he hasn't had postseason moments. He hasn't had the opportunities to succeed on that stage. So imagine if Otani had one of his games where he pitches well and bats second and hits well, and it's like in the World Series or something. We'll never write about anything else. Yeah, that would be a huge, huge story. It's a big story now doing it in mid-May for an Angels team that's probably not going anywhere.

But if you were to do that in October when fewer teams are playing and everyone's paying attention, then that would be an enormous story and we would remember that forever. So I think that would burnish both of their legends. And there's no way around that. Like, I don't think that's a bad thing. Like, I am definitely someone who appreciates the regular season, but the playoffs can be

fun too. And you're going to get big moments and career defining moments then. So that's why we simultaneously celebrate everything they're accomplishing while also hoping that they get the opportunity to have many of those moments on the postseason stage too. Yeah. Because like, you know, I don't know, like Mike Trout should get to wallop someone other than the Mariners. Put him up against the Dodgers. I know that they play the Dodgers during their regular season sometime, but do it with stakes, bigger stakes, not literal stakes. Put Trout in against Clayton Kershaw in the postseason.

Cause all of us to have an existential crisis. Do it. Make me nervous. Everyone should try to make me more nervous than they do. That's not true. That's a terrible idea. But I would feel so conflicted. And wouldn't that be fun? Yeah. Make Meg anxious more so than she already is. Yeah, geez. We just got this question as we were recording this episode by Richard, who says, I work as a union organizer.

And if I ever heard a boss was telling my workers to sabotage their performance in a way that would impact their pay, I would file a grievance. Even if there are unwritten rules, it sounds like the White Sox are trying to drive down arbitration salaries by telling their employees to phone it in when they're winning big, thus hurting their earnings potential. Does either of you see the union possibly pursuing this? Well, that's an interesting question. That's an interesting question. I don't know. I don't know if they would. I don't know because that's a good point.

It's a pretty good point. Yeah, I was asked a question kind of similar to that in my chat today, which for anyone who tuned into that, I was asked a question kind of similar to that in my chat today, which for anyone who tuned into that, I was having weird technical issues with our chat platform. So sorry that that chat was like an hour long and I answered like four questions. But I don't think that it's generally as explicit as that.

Like, I don't know that the, I think that there are yucky motivations behind the unwritten rules, to be clear. I don't know that these are the particular yucky motivations as they were like, you know, forming into their non-existent stone tablets that got passed down to all of us. But it is a very strange thing to ask your employee

to do their job worse in a way that they are measured by and that has a direct impact on their eventual compensation and i think a lot of things about tony larusa i think that he was probably sincere in why he told uh your mean mercedes not to do that even if i think that rationale was really silly um so i i'm sure that it did strike him as like you know uncouth or whatever again even though that's very silly but it is a weird thing because it it doesn't take a lot of these over the course of a season for it to like kind of make a difference you know um and especially for a guy like your mean who came into the league late and hasn't had big league opportunities prior to now and like we didn't necessarily anticipate him having this long of a big league

run when players reported to spring training even it's just a very he's the kind of guy where if i were the manager well i would say a lot of things differently than tony larusa does but i would be like go do all of it get all your stats do all the stuff i mean he's not arb eligible for a while anyhow but like go go do it because you got to make up for the sort of ideal of civility or whatever nonsense versus I'm intentionally trying to suppress this guy's salary a couple of years from now. But I also think that sometimes it would behoove the union to just like fight the fights and see what they can win, you know? So I wonder. Yeah, it's kind of strange in this case because baseball is a zero-sum game. And whenever you're doing something good, then some other player is suffering. So when one player's stats go up, another player's stats go down.

And so you could say, well, the union is representing the pitcher too. Now, in this case, the pitcher is William Testadio. So he's not going to be paid based on his performance on the mound, whereas your mean Mercedes is paid based on his performance at the plate. So in terms of earnings potential, it actually would have some bearing on that here. In some cases, there is an actual pitcher on the mound who might suffer accordingly. I think it's a rare enough case like there aren't this doesn't come up that often you know like there aren't so many blowouts and 3-0 counts where someone's told not to swing like it's not an everyday occurrence so you could say it's rare enough that it just wouldn't be worth their time

or just the fact that they're representing both players the players on both sides it wouldn't be worth it but it is it's an interesting idea because, yeah, I mean, when you're telling someone not to run up the score, you are telling them to depress their own stats, essentially. So there is an economic impact to that, even though I agree with you that that probably wasn't part of Tony Russo's rationale in this specific case. Yeah, I think he was sincerely out of touch more than he was.

He had specific malicious designs on your means of eventual arbitration case. Which isn't great either, as we spent 20 minutes saying. But we'll just say it again because, you know, it's good to be clear about stuff, I suppose. All right. I've got a stat blast to end on and I've got maybe, well, let's see. This is this is quick. Mitchell says former MLB player and current baseball podcaster Trevor Plouffe is often very self-deprecating when it comes to his MLB career. when it comes to his MLB career. I was surprised to discover that he had over 3,000 MLB plate appearances, 3,234 to be exact, which got me thinking,

of all MLB position players, is this above or below the median? What is the median number of plate appearances for all MLB hitters? And I just did a quick search of this in an export on the Fangraphs leaderboards and Trevor Plouffe and his 3,200 plus plate appearances way way above the median number of plate appearances for all MLB hitters so one search I did was the modern era so 1901

to 2000 which is just completed careers Albert Pujols started in 2001 in the majors so everyone from 2000 that career is completed, their plate appearance total is cemented. And the median over that period is 426. That's if you lined up all of the hitters and their plate appearance totals, that would be the middle one. I did look 1901 to 2021 to the present. So that includes rookies who are just starting in their career,

but the median is actually higher over that period, presumably because of more games, longer seasons and such. So the median over the whole modern era is 463.5 plate appearances. And that's less than a full season's worth of plate appearances. So that's something to keep in mind. Even if you make the majors, you are not likely to stay there for that long. So Trevor Plouffe did quite well for himself staying as long as he did. 2,135 out of the 9,234 non-pitchers

in the modern era. So, you know, he ranks certainly closer to the top of the list than the bottom, and that's kind of why we do our Meet a Major Leaguer segment because even if you make it to the majors, you might not just have a huge footprint.

You might not have too many plate appearances to your name when it's all said and done. Think of how many Moonlight Graham type careers there are. Think of how many cup of coffees where the person never comes up again. Think of the injuries that derail careers. So yeah, just lasting for a long time. Even if you didn't make the all-star game every season. It's still pretty impressive. Yeah, very impressive. All right. And then I will just read one more question slash response to our ongoing, never-ending

framing slash flopping debate. Keep talking about what is the difference, if any, between framing in baseball and flopping in other sports. So Shiam says, it seems like flopping in basketball or simulation, as soccer officially calls it, are more like true legal terms defined by those sports and speak specifically to a legal activity that's over the line, unlike pitch framing, which is a term that exists outside the rulebook. But this brings up a different question to mind for me. The root of those actions being illegal for soccer slash basketball seems to come from the overreaction being unsporting, unethical, or deceitful.

And that's what warrants the fines or suspensions or yellow cards or whatever. I'm not at all advocating for this, but does MLB have similar grounds within the rules to eject and or fine catchers for framing pitches on the basis that they're unethically misleading the umpire. And this put me in line of an article that Cheryl Ring wrote for FameGraphs a few years ago, which was all about is pitch framing cheating and parsing the rulebook to see if there was anything in there that suggested that it's actually illegal to do this. And the article concluded that no, there is nothing that says that you can't do this or that it's actually against the rules. It's on the umpires if they make an incorrect call. But it's interesting to think about a rule being added to the books there, framing someone for trying to get a pitch that

they know is not a strike and they're trying to persuade the umpires that it was one. into the game right because as we've discussed in relation to this question you know there's been there are just so many chances because you have to receive the ball right this is part of why framing value accrues so quickly and why it can make such a big difference in the ultimate value that a player brings to his team is because you just have so many framing opportunities over the course of a season because you have to receive baseball and so yeah there are there are instances of of guys being really dramatic framers and we tend to find those attempts silly right they don't they they're not accomplishing what is meant to be accomplished which is that the umpire doesn't even realize that you're positioning the ball differently to try to you know get a marginal call called in your favor and so in order to in order to do this you would have to you'd have to see more of those and i

don't think those get called strikes nearly as often as guys who are actually skilled framers right where they're quiet they have quiet hands and they're doing it in a subtle way so that the umpire doesn't even necessarily realize that the call is going the way that it shouldn't. So I don't know that this would really catch very many cases of good framers who are the ones who presumably would be the targets of this. And even if it did, it's like, how often are you going to stop the game for that? I just don't think it's a really practicable rule at some point you have to keep things moving so that that's my main reaction to it there you know there are guys who you watch them and you're like oh you're not very good at this and sometimes they get calls in their favor

because you know umpires are fallible as we as we've also discussed but i think generally you'd have a lot of borderline strikes getting reviewed and we would hate it so much, even if you limited how many. It's just like so much. Yeah. It's also not really a premeditated act. Like it all happens so quickly and it's just in one smooth motion. You receive the pitch and present it. And often you're like catching the pitch in the same way.

Yeah. And often you're like catching the pitch in the same way, even if it's like inside the strike zone, because again, you're just trying to make it look as good as possible, even if you think it legitimately is a strike. And so it would be hard to distinguish between, oh, this catcher knowingly tried to deceive the umpire in this case. No, it's like, it's just a technique. You try to catch pitches a certain way and yeah there are certainly times where i'm sure they're aware that they got away with one or or as they're doing it maybe they have time to think like yeah i'm probably not going to get this one or maybe i shouldn't get this one but it's just it's like something they do on every pitch almost instinctively and through long practice so i i don't know that you could actually pin this on them. Although I like this email from Shane who wrote in to say, following the ongoing discussion of framing versus flopping, you folks talked about the difference between flopping on no contact versus flopping to draw attention to real illegal contact. So this is, yeah, this is a new wrinkle. This is interesting. In which case a penalty is assigned both to the player committing the initial infraction as well as to the player who maybe was a little too dramatic in trying to sell the call to the refs. It's absolutely one of those rules in hockey that seems to go out of their way to show how tough the sport is, much like how high sticking will turn from a two minute minor to a five minute major if blood is drawn but that is interesting where they could acknowledge that there was a penalty committed and yet also acknowledge that the player was exaggerating in it and went a little bit too

far in trying to sell it so i guess maybe there could be like a framing embellishment penalty or something but again i I think it would be tough to do that in practice and to actually know when catchers were knowingly trying to deceive as opposed to just presenting the pitch in the best possible way as they always do. And the last thing I will read about this is from Ben, one of our philosopher guests on our Hall of Fame philosophy episode who wrote in to say, I disagree with the point you, especially Ben, one of our philosopher guests on our Hall of Fame philosophy episode who wrote in to say, I disagree with the point you, especially Ben, made about the framing flapping discussion from episode 1694, that it's a matter of definition or of language.

Issues of language didn't seem important to your original point or to that of the emailer. What is important is if the kind of activity or skill involved in framing slash receiving is one that is primarily about fooling the umpire or presenting pitches in such a way to allow the umpire to make calls favorable to you, including when you deserve them. Likewise for flapping, is that activity or skill primarily a matter of fooling the ref or making clear the level of contact that allows the ref to make calls favorable to you, again including in cases when you deserve them. I suspect whatever is true in one case is so in the other. But even if not, I don't think the issue is one of language or definition, but of the sort of activity or skill involved, which is a fair point, I think. Although,

I don't know, I have a hard time sort of separating these things and determining how often the flop in basketball is like related to a legitimate penalty or foul or offense. Whereas in framing, again, as we were saying, we focus on the balls that are called strikes. But really, it's just a consistent thing that you're doing not to lose strikes. And maybe more of the framing impact comes from that than it does from, quote unquote, stealing strikes. So I do believe it. It's like a legitimate endeavor in most cases. Like it's not inherently deceitful necessarily on some pitches, perhaps it is, but in a lot of cases it isn't. So I don't know that it's exactly the

same. Although as a lot of people pointed out, like there are instances of flopping where maybe there was some sort of contact made and you're just trying to play it up. But I don't know. They're obviously on the same spectrum here, which is why we've gotten so much feedback about this and so many comments about it. Like they're clearly related. They're not exactly the same. I think there are some subtle distinctions here, but you could put them somewhere on the same continuum, I suppose. you could put them somewhere on the same continuum, I suppose.

Yeah, I don't know enough about flopping and basketball and the prevalence and sort of how players go about that to know if there are guys who, I just don't know enough about that. But I feel like, you know, the way that I think about the strike zone is sort of probabilistically, right? So it's like, you know, I think that there's, you know, there are calls that are like borderline and there are calls that are way outside. And I think that there's, rather than viewing it as like having strict bright lines, it's more useful to think of it in terms of like

sort of a scale of strikiness. And so it makes some sense that things that are, you know, really close to the line of the rulebook zone or the zone as it's sort of more commonly called are going to often result in strikes, but not always. And that the further out you go, the less likely you are to get a strike call because you're further and further away from the zone. And so I just like that being the way that it operates in practice is intuitive to me. And so I don't know. I don't know if I necessarily think that there's like an equivalent to that construction in flopping,

right? Like he kind of fouled a guy or he didn't. I know that there are degrees of foul, right? We have the concept of flagrance. So it's not as if every foul counts exactly the same way. And you do have the kind of idea of incidental contact, I suppose. But I just, this is where we talked a lot about it and I still don't know if I know enough about flopping to be like, and it is this thing.

Which is not necessarily an invitation for people to send us many more emails filling us in about flopping because we might end up in an endless cycle. An endless flopping loop. We don't want to be in an endless La Russa loop. We don't want to be in an endless flopping loop. We are enjoying our endless Otani loop, though. That we will say, we're fine with that loop. We're good with the trout loop. We don't want to be in an endless flopping loop. We are enjoying our endless Otani loop though.

That we will say. We're fine with that loop. We're good with the trout loop even though we'd like it to involve more trout at this point. We'd like more trout in our trout loop. Well, let me return to the no-hitter loop for this stat blast. Alright. All right. Here's to days still past So I saw a tweet by Christopher Kamka after the latest no-hitter.

He works for the White Sox broadcast on NBC Sports Chicago and comes up with a lot of great fun facts. And so he tweeted, Kyle Seeger has been involved in yet another no-hitter. And he pointed out that this is the ninth no-hitter in which Seeger has participated either for or against. So the for side, he was in Felix's 2012. There was a combined Mariners no-no in 2012, Iwakuma in 2015, Paxton in 2018. And then against the Mariners, there was Philip Umber in 2012.

There was an Angels combined no-no against the Mariners in 2019 and an Astros combined one also that season. John Means this year and Spencer Turnbull this year. So that's a lot of no-hitters to play in. And that prompted a lot of people, includingters to play in. And that prompted a lot of people, including me, to wonder, how many is that? Is that a lot? Is that a record? What is the record? So I sent that question to our new StatBlast consultant, Ryan Nelson, listener slash Patreon supporter, and now StatBlast consultant. And he dug into the numbers here and came up with the answer. And I will just

read his response here because it kind of answered all of my questions. So he says, just to clarify, I'm only counting players who appeared in official no-hit games. Simply being on the roster does not count. And I guess that's kind of necessary, A, because it's hard to establish who was on a roster on any given day when you're looking at previous seasons. But, you know, I guess you could go by was that person on the team that had a no-hitter or was no-hit, but maybe they weren't on the roster that day. And anyway, maybe it's not the same if you're just watching from the sidelines. It's probably a little bit different if you are involved in the no-hitter and either feel some sense of accomplishment

or some sense of shame or frustration or whatever. So this is just no-hitters that players actually played in. Continuing here, since 1900, 3,546 players have participated in a no-hitter. 1,347 players have participated in multiple no-hitters. Kyle Seeger's nine has him tied for second place with Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, who just had a birthday, who had seven with Oakland and two with the Angels. The leader all-time actually has 11, and that is Burt Campanaris. Burt had eight with Oakland, the same

seven as Reggie Jackson, plus one more, as well as two with the Rangers and one with the Yankees. There are eight players tied with eight no-hit participations. Johnny Collison, Sal Bando, Burt Schotten, Pete Runnels, Chase Utley, Billy Williams, Harry Hooper, Pee Wee Reese. 15 players have seven and 25 have six. There are a bunch of all-timers near the top of this list beyond previous listed names. Ricky Henderson, Pete Rose, Nolan Ryan all have seven ryan of course through seven himself hank aaron willie mays jackie robinson eddie matthews brooks robinson among other great names all had six it makes sense that so many of the

top names are hall of famers since longevity plays a big part in this speaking of nolan ryan he leads all players in no hit appearances in which the players team won All seven of Nolan Ryan's no-hit appearances were no-hitters pitched by him So he has a 7-0 record in these games Most no-hit appearances where the players teams lost is a three-way tie with six Previously mentioned Burt Campanaris, Johnny Callison, and poor Tony Taylor And they were 5-6, 2 and six, and one and six, respectively. And the data, he says, is 1900 to 2020,

but he did a quick look and no one near the top besides Seeger has had one this year, and no one near the top had had one before 1900 besides George Davis. So I will link, as always, to the data and the spreadsheet, which Ryan passed along, but there you have it. There's the answer.

So Seager tied for second with Reggie Jackson and trailing Burt Campanaris. So he needs two more no hitters. Can the Mariners do it? Do they have it in them? I guess we don't know if he'll be a Mariner beyond this season, but who knows? Maybe they can do it this season. They're certainly more than on pace to do it this season they're going they're certainly more than on pace to do it not that i wish that on maybe maybe kikuchi will throw a no hitter maybe

maybe so maybe marco gonzalez will come back from being hurt and he'll throw a no hitter maybe logan gilbert will throw a no hitter wouldn't that be so exciting we would go cuckoo for cocoa puffs if that happened we would be so amped and and kyle could be there after and he'd go i've seen a lot of these man but this was the best one and we'd be like he has seen a lot of them and everyone who listens to this podcast would know exactly how many yep i wonder if it's like still strange and special to seeker at this point like he's probably sick of you being no hit i imagine yeah like as we were talking about you know whether the rarity plays into how much we appreciate the performance like if you played in nine no hitters like you must just be thinking like all right this isn't so special like this is happening all the time i bet though when it's one

of your guys you know it hits you different i'm sure you're you're like especially sick to death of being no hit yes like i know that i i saw some quotes from the the mariners this morning that they are they're not super pleased you know it's not their favorite time but i bet if it's one of your guys, you're probably, it feels different and you probably get really excited about it. So, you know, like I remember when Iwakuma threw his no-hitter in that just garbage season that the Mariners had that year. It was a garbo season. It was so terrible.

And they were so happy. And part of it was that like Iwakuma is a kind of beloved guy in that organization, unless you're Kevin Mather. And part of it was that Iwakuma is a kind of beloved guy in that organization, unless you're Kevin Mather. And part of it was that the year was terrible, and so this was this really lovely reprieve from all of the nonsense and bad play and losing that they'd have. But part of it is that's just your guy, and you're excited for him. They were so pumped for James Paxton.

Man, they should try. They should have a little no-hitter of their own like as a treat. I think that's what should happen. Yeah, I was actually watching the Turnbull one and it was weird because like in the top of the ninth, I guess it was, the Tigers had a few like really fluky hits just like, you know, bloopers, bleeders, and seeing eye singles. And it was just like, oh, look how easy it is to get hits, which maybe made the Mariners feel even worse.

It's like you don't even have to hit the ball hard. It can be a total fluke. You just have to place it in the right place. And then they could not do it in the bottom of the ninth. But anyway, yeah, it must be sort of sad to be Seeker and to see it happening again. I wonder if he, like, when the no-hitter attempt is happening, the Mariners, he's probably just like the Grand Theft Auto meme.

It's just like, here we go again. Like, it's happening. Like, I see all the signs. Like, oh, no, I've been in this situation several times before, and I know how this ends, and it doesn't end well. But, yeah, hopefully he doesn't have to endure that any more times. Hopefully not. All right.

Well, it's Otani time, so I guess we better end here. Well, we saw a little bit of everything from Otani this time. It was not his finest game, but it was an interesting outing at least. He went four and two-thirds innings, struck out five, gave up a couple runs. And then when he was done pitching, he moved to right field for a while. He hit the hardest hit ball in the game, a 110-mile-per-hour lineout. He also bunted for a base hit against the shift. He was caught stealing.

So he was involved in almost every way. Not nearly as dominant on the mound as he was his last time out. And it was kind of concerning that his velocity was down significantly. Each of his pitches was four to six miles per hour off of his season average. Twitter was terrified and not without reason because it can be a big red flag when a pitcher suddenly loses a lot of velocity. As we saw when Otani lost a lot of velocity before he was hurt in 2018 and eventually had to have his UCL replaced. Now that was a case where his velocity dipped mid-game, whereas in this case it was sort of slow from the start. His four-seamer topped out at 95 and was sitting 91, which was worrisome, but he didn't appear to be in any pain and the Angels obviously weren't worried. They were

leaving him out there, which seemed like a good sign. And after the game, Joe Maddon didn't have an explanation. He said it wasn't injury-related, it was just one of those days he didn't have his normal stuff. Otani himself said he wasn't worried about any injuries, that his body was just feeling really heavy and sluggish, which is not good, but better than the alternative. And also sort of amazing that when he's feeling really heavy and sluggish, he can pitch pretty well, play right field, beat out a bunt base hit, cream a line drive, attempt to steal a base, and so on. Not the way most of us perform when we're feeling really heavy and sluggish.

Yu Darvish also tweeted that he experienced the same sporadic drops in velocity in the few years following his Tommy John surgery. So it's really tough to tell normally when you see a velocity dip like that. You want to get the guy out of the game, and that's why all of Twitter was saying, take him out, but nothing about Otani is normal. So if he has velocity dip, is it because there's an injury, or is it because he's pacing himself? As someone who's trying not to get too fatigued in two-way play, could it be because he's coming back from injury, and he hasn't pitched in a while, and hasn't had a high workload?

You never really know. Hopefully it's just a blip. So it's always entertaining, but I do look forward to a time when I won't be stressing from pitch to pitch about disappearing speed or command. Anyway, not a no-hitter. Corey Kluber took care of that on Wednesday, and at least Kyle Seeger was not involved in this one. And someone tweeted at me after the Kluber no-hitter and said, I just joined Team Move the Mound Pack. Welcome. We're happy to have you. Give us many more no-hitters and more converts to moving the mound. I think that article about no-hitters I mentioned maybe moved up a bit, so you can look for that from me as soon as Thursday.

Also, on our last episode, Meg and I talked about Waskar Yanoa and pitchers who have punched things and hurt their hands. We whiffed on an obvious reference there, which a number of people have pointed out since. You may recall this exchange in Bull Durham between Crash Davis and New Clalouch. Thanks to everyone who reminded us about that scene, which just goes to show how pervasive the punching problem is. Gotta get that padding, people. Lastly, I alluded to some data I was waiting for on mid-season managerial changes. I got that from Kenny Jacklin at Baseball Reference. Unsurprisingly, teams that have had a midseason managerial change in the AL or NL typically weren't playing well at the time that change was made.

The collective winning percentages of the first managers on those teams was 443, and after those managers left, those teams improved slightly over the rest of the season, producing a cumulative 462 winning percentage. So that's a gain of 19 points of winning percentage after midseason managerial changes. Of course, that could just be regression, but perusing the list, which I will put online, made it seem more likely that La Russa could conceivably be gone before the end of the season for one reason or another. Of course, this list is not just firings. There are also managers who left for health-related reasons.

There are managers who simply resigned for one reason or another. There are managers who were managing winning teams but not first-place teams like the White Sox are right now. But there are quite a few examples here of managers of winning teams who did not last out the season and some of those changes did come down to controversial comments or spats with players so it has happened there are precedents if any White Sox fans are holding out hope that LaRusso won't last and one very recent precedent is Mike Hargrove of the Mariners who resigned on July 1st 2007 the Mariners were 45 and 33 at the time, and Hargrove said that his passion had begun to fade and that it would not be fair to himself or to the team to continue.

He actually resigned while the Mariners were on a winning streak of eight games. He was the first big league manager since at least 1900 to leave while on a winning streak of more than seven games. So that was weird, especially because he soon resurfaced as the manager of a semi-pro summer team. It was later reported that it might have had something to do with Ichiro, that Ichiro didn't want to play for him, and so Hargrove was forced out and then Ichiro signed an extension. I don't know if that was the case, but there had been times where a winning manager wasn't getting along with his team and found himself on the outs or wasn't getting along with his owner, which seems a lot less likely to be the case with LaRussa. So maybe this will blow over and everyone will decide this isn't that big a deal, and hey, we're winning,

we'll let it slide. Or maybe the White Sox will slump and tensions will rise and players will make clear that they aren't happy and LaRussa will think to himself, hey, I don't need this, I'm a Hall of Famer baseball person, and ride off into the sunset once more, which it's time for me to do today. 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. Tiffany, JT Lindsay, Josh Shaines, Brian Goldgeier, and AJ Lionberger. Thanks to all all of you you can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group

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other podcast platforms keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast

at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance

and we will be back with one more episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. And it seems so real I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't

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