Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1700: Dirty Secrets and Naked Truths

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Javier Báez and Will Craig combining on a baffling blooper, a naked streaker seizing the moment during a rain delay at Nationals Park, Cardinals manager Mike Shildt’s objection to a foreign-substance inspection (and how MLB should respond), an update from New Era about its short-lived “Local Market” caps, […]

I love to feel loved but I can't stand the rejection I hide behind my job as a form of protection I thought I was close but under further inspection It seems I've been running in the wrong direction There's fish in the sea for me to make a selection I'd jump in if it wasn't for my ear infection Cause all I wanna do is try to make a connection It seems I've been running in the wrong direction

Hello and welcome to episode 1700 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. 1700. Hello. 1700. Every time we get to a big round number like that, I just reflect for a moment and think, this thing is still going.

1700. That's a lot of episodes. Yeah. I remember sort of very early in you and Sam doing the pod, like you both sounded very sleepy for a lot of those early episodes. Like you had taken a Benadryl right before you recorded or something like that. And, you know, Sam was like recording in his car. Yes. And so, yeah, it's, you know, the big round numbers make you reflect on that. And it's kind of wild that here we are. times so I've learned to kind of combat it when I have to do a podcast so the natural sleepiness is still there even if the sleeplessness is also still there in fact those things may be related now that I think about it perhaps perhaps so we are recording on Thursday afternoon and I'm still

trying to process this Pirates Cubs play that has taken Twitter by storm. I'm sure everyone has seen it by now. I will link to it if by chance you have missed it somehow, but this was presented by MLB's Twitter account. The little caption for the video is, El Mago Magic, have you ever seen anything like this? And no, to the question, I don't think I have seen anything quite like this, although I would say it's a generous reading to call it El Mago magic. The question is, is this a Javier Baez highlight or is this a Pirates low light? And I guess it could be both, but I lean towards the latter. Yeah, I don't want to ruin anyone's good time, man. Like like i'm not here to harsh anyone's vibe this is funny and delightful regardless of how you sort of apportion the credit or blame i suppose for what

happened but i think that um the popular interpretation of the text does not seem supported to me. And look, that is not to say that having been presented with just a brain freeze and fart, a simultaneous freeze and fart of galactic proportions, that Javi Baez managing to sort of deke and move and let us not I think we are underselling the perhaps real hero of this which is the fantastic base running by Wilson Contreras like let us not let us not forget the only reason that the back half of it is relevant is because Contreras managed to to come, right? And do it without getting tagged. And his coming down the third baseline, I think, inspired the throw that then put Baez in a position to advance back up the first baseline to reach the bag. Because like, lest we forget, Javi has to reach first base in order for that run to count. Like if he is tagged

out subsequent to that, regardless of the sequencing of the scoring like he then the run doesn't score and and it's all for not so there are several components to this i don't mean to say that like his ability to sort of deke and confused didn't play a role here but this starts with just a i'm gonna do a swear a colossal fuck up on cole craig's part just like yeah the kind of thing that i hope he immediately has something sort of fantastic happen i hope that he is involved in several walk-offs and he is the he is the protagonist of those moments because this has the potential to dog him for a long time. Yeah. Just to recap here. So it's the third inning of this game between the Cubs and the Pirates. Two outs, crucially. Runner on second, Javier Baez up. And here's how the play log reads on MLB Game Day. Javier Baez reaches on a fielder's choice. It certainly was a choice by a fielder.

Fielded by third baseman Eric Gonzalez. Wilson Contreras scores. Javier Baez to second. Javier Baez advances to second on a throwing error by catcher Michael Perez. That really doesn't do justice to the play here. And the fact that Michael Perez is the one who had the error charged on him, I mean, he should have. He threw the ball away and allowed Baez to advance. I mean, he should have. He threw the ball away and allowed Baez to advance. But really, that was created by a mental error of epic proportions, which you will not find in the box score. So Will Craig had a number of options here when he received this ball as Baez was running to put his little footsie on the bag and then

and then the inning is done and we all move on with our lives right and he kind of he came off the bag a little bit to catch the throw i don't know if he had to or whether he did that because the runner was going for third or whether it was just that Baez had stopped or what exactly was happening there. But he kind of came off the bag and went after Baez when at any point he could have just retreated and stepped on the bag and that would have forced Baez out and it would have ended the play. He also had the option of tagging Baez and instead of doing that, he kind of jogged at

him and was just a few feet away and it looked like he could have applied the tag but didn't yes he could also have chased him all the way back to the plate in which case I think Baez would have been out as well yes and I saw some people were confused about like can Baez run backward and yes he can as long as he hasn't passed first base as long as he hasn't crossed that base, as long as he hasn't crossed that base, he can go back. You can't cross a base and then go back. But if you haven't yet reached the base, you can go back as long as you don't go back all the way to the base that you have already passed or started at in this case. So in any of those cases, Baez would have been out and the run would not have scored, even if the runner had crossed home plate in this case with two outs where it's a forced play. The runner still has to make it to first for that run scored to count. So there were any number of options here, none of which Pirates rookie Will Craig availed himself of. And I feel bad focusing on that. I guess it's more fun to focus on Baez magic than Will Craig incompetence,

but that is basically what it was. If we want to credit Baez for some magic here, I guess we could say he was just so enticing that he managed to make Will Craig temporarily forget how to play baseball. And he was just so mesmerized by the sight of paez dancing back toward home plate that he forgot about how force plays work and how playing first base works so we could give paez that credit and certainly we've seen him have some extraordinary slides and apply some extraordinary tags and and there is such a thing as paez magic but i don't know that that was what was going on in this case it was like very much an analog of like that 2012 Astros play that is always set to yakety sacks where they're just like throwing the ball over the infield and running into each other and I did see yakety sacks applied

to this play as well although it doesn't work quite as well because they weren't throwing the ball away as many times this was more of a mental mistake than an error of execution. So things went horribly wrong here. It really reminded me of certain stress dreams that I've had about work where I find myself suddenly unable to perform some basic task. I'm trying to get somewhere and I can't quite find it. I just never really reach it or I'm trying to do something and I just can't quite accomplish it, even if it's some routine task. And in the moment, it doesn't seem that strange. It's frustrating and maybe anxiety-inducing, but reality is sort of skewed. And then you wake up and you realize it was a dream and it's a great relief. And you go over the events of that dream and you realize, well, there's no way that this could have happened. Why didn't I do this or that?

Now the solution seems so simple. Well, because it was a dream and dreams don't make sense. Just step on the base. And that was what seemed to happen with Will Craig here, except it wasn't a dream and he never woke up. Yeah. I like the idea and this is not what happened. I want to preface what I'm about to say by acknowledging that I don't think this is what occurred, but I like the idea that we all, acknowledging that i don't think this is what occurred but i like the idea that we all you know kind of saw this and our our instinct our basis instinct was to say if we make this about javier baez it's nice to will craig i like very much that reading of human nature again i do not think it is supported by the text but i do like the idea that we were like oh if we linger on that too long

this guy might like become a salesman like he might just stop playing baseball yeah he'll have other good plays in all likelihood it's so it's gonna be okay but this is a bad bad one like this is a this is a real goof yeah i like the idea that we were all just like oh i can't dwell on that that'll be too unkind so we're gonna we're gonna marvel at javi because javi so often gives us stuff to marvel on i thought the most impressive part of this entire play when it comes to bias was that he managed to signal that contraris was safe yes and then still had time in part because of an error but still had time then to get down the line so like that part of it's fun like if you want to fix it on a fun bit we should we should uh focus on that but oh pirates

yeah you know they were kind of due right like maybe not this colossal of a of a goof but they were sort of due because i think that one of one of my impressions of this season has been you know the pirates are not a good team but they are not I thought they would be so much worse than they have been and so maybe they were just kind of maybe they were just kind of due for like a an epic

screw up to make us go oh Pirates they don't even have the worst record in baseball do they no they don't I mean I think Will Craig probably escaped some notice, just probably because people hadn't heard of Will Craig. Although, now they have.

At least more had than before. Hopefully this is not what he'll be known for forever, but this will be a staple of the blooper reels, if we even still have blooper reels at this point. And I know that he's played a lot of third base in the past and a little outfield, but he's played enough first base in his day

that probably should have had a better understanding. That was one of the forces. Yeah, I think he probably does. I think it's like I said earlier. It was a simultaneous brain freeze and fart, and those are bad to put in conjunction with one another. And it led to, oh, I'm watching it again. And there are just so many opportunities for him to course correct, right?

There's so many chances in the midst of this highlight for him to just be like, oh, I have come to myself. for him to just be like, oh, I have come to myself. I will just go back to first base, my home that I have abandoned and put my little footsie on the bag and call it good. There are so many chances for him to do that. And then what would have happened is he would have gone back and he would have gotten the out and he would have looked sheepish and he would have been so adorable. And we have been like oh that will craig what a good sport he is about

himself he's just he made a goof and he knows it and he's making that face that you make when you make a goof and we would have been like oh will we trust you to babysit our kids but instead yeah so basically stole first base and then took second and also baez came around to score so two runs scored in that inning as a result of this play and the cubs won that game by two runs as it happened so those were pretty costly oh well disaster i feel so badly for him. He'll learn from it. He won't make this same mistake again, I imagine. But it's just, the good news is that it is, in the grand scheme of things, this is not a consequential moment to make that bad of a blunder. The Pirates season isn't going anywhere.

Sure, it definitely cost them this game. I wonder, what is what is will craig's win probability number for this can i navigate my own website quickly enough to do this man sometimes a win probability graph just doesn't do justice to what happened in the moment because the bias fielder's choice is like you know this looks like a normal ass play yeah one of the things that i want people sometimes ask us like what stat do you want to see and we have so many stats out there that there aren't that many on my wish list there are some like yeah i'd like to see i don't know pitch selection and game calling quantified and that

sort of thing but really i'd like a better, more comprehensive win expectancy model just so that, you know, because as it is, it's like defense doesn't really work so well with that. The pitcher gets credit for the defensive plays. And I remember Sam wrote an article once where he just tried to break down like who exactly would get the credits and debits on every stage of a play. And there's so many elements to each play and we do have StatCast now and everything is tracked. So in theory, you could come up with a unified model of like who contributed what to that play exactly and just apportion out that credit and blame precisely over the course of a season. And that would be great.

We're a long way from being able to do that, but the current WPA, win probability added, it's a long way away from actually getting it right. So if you could break this down and debit Will Craig appropriately, I mean, I'm glad that he gets to slide under the radar as far as win probability is concerned, but really, you could debit him quite a few percentage points for this one well the funny thing is that because craig himself reached on that i also just as a person who's like friends with recent guest craig goldstein enjoy that everyone's just saying ah craig really botched it today it's funny we love him it's a joke amongst friends the funny thing is that craig himself reached on an error by javier Baez later in this game.

And it was quite consequential because it was in the bottom of the ninth inning with them down two runs. So he actually does not have a negative win probability added for this game as a result of Javier Baez's error. So Javier felt bad too. All right. He wanted to hand it back to him. He was like, you're going to get pilloried on Twitter for at least another like this is going to be on SportsCenter a lot it's going to

be on every edition of SportsCenter yep oh well Baez by the way is still making the slash line work like he's 13% above the average hitter for the season with a 63 to 6 strikeout to walk ratio which I think is less lopsided

than it was the last time we talked about it. So his numbers have kind of come back to reality almost. His strikeout rate is only 35.4% and his walk rate is 3.4%, which really isn't that out of line with his past numbers and his power has been there. So it's kind of working almost for him. He had an OBP above 300 before Thursday's game. Yeah. Geez. His free agency is going to be so weird. I wonder how that's going to go, but man, well, Craig, I hope that whoever, whoever's hugs mean the most to you. I hope you get one today. Me too. I also want to salute the streaker from Wednesday in the Nationals game. I assume you saw there was just a

torrential downpour in D.C. and the Nats game was stopped and a streaker, buck naked, took advantage of this moment to take center stage. He ran in and there's a full video which I will link to. He made it about a minute and a half before security managed to accost him and take him off the field.

But it was a really creative run. For one thing, I thought it was considerate of him to streak when the game was already suspended. Extremely. He wasn't taking up anyone's time. No action was happening. The few fans in the stands actually got more entertainment than they would have otherwise he was totally naked and it was

like the Shawshank scene and he was it was just you know coming down and he was drenched but not at all abashed about that just standing with his arms up raised right over the Skittles sign on the tarp and the text that said taste the rainbow and you really could taste it I wonder whether Skittles sign on the tarp and the text that said, taste the rainbow, and you really could taste it.

I wonder whether Skittles appreciated the publicity or whether that was not the type of exposure, so to speak, that they are looking for as a brand. The footage that I saw, it was very artful where you couldn't really see too much. You could tell that he was naked, but you couldn't really see the intimate details in most of the shots that I saw and some press box video that made the rounds where you couldn't really see the intimate details in most of the shots that I saw in some press box video that made the rounds where you couldn't really resolve just on the level to make anything family unfriendly. But it was really creative that he ran onto the tarp from the outfield and he slipped. And I think that was unintentional. But then he said, hey, that was fun.

And he did the full slip and slide and just kicked up awake. And it was, you know, the tarp was covered with water and he looked like he was having the time of his life. And then he hid inside the tarp roller thingy. And he was in there for like a full minute as security people were trying to flank him. And like one guy was peering into the tube from one end and the other guy was on the other end and he was just hanging out in the middle. I don't know why he came out. I don't know if they were just threatening him or managing to talk him out of there because the security people didn't go in to get him. So if he'd wanted to, he probably could have dragged it out longer and just hung out in there for a while. But I don't think I had ever seen anyone elude capture that effectively and creatively.

So he really took advantage of the tools available to him. He sees the moment. And I thought it was just a really good way to streak. If you're going to streak, which you probably shouldn't, but if you are, just go for it. Just bear it all and pick your spot so that you're doing it at a time when you're not delaying the game for anyone or endangering or threatening any players or anything. You are just delighting in nature. in that moment though, because yes, I agree with you that of the moments that a streaker could take the field, this was a considerate one because so often it is disruptive and you don't need to see the delay there. And very rarely do broadcasts show you streaking because they don't want to encourage people to do it. So they tend to be pretty reserved and not just because of the potential for, you know, the money shot. So it's always sort of an inconsiderate thing and sort of a strange thing

to do. Like I don't quite understand the satisfaction one derives from it. I imagine that for many streakers, they are in some sort of altered state, perhaps as a result of having too many beers while at the ballpark. But it's always weird to me. And in a moment like that, it's like, are you really so bored by a rain delay that you're like, I'm going to risk prosecution and not being able to come back? So that part of it remains strange. But those are problems that affect that person in the future and really only them in the future.

It does not inconvenience professional athletes trying to do their jobs. So I guess if you're going to inconvenience anyone, it's best to do it to yourself rather than other people. But yes, it is. It was a funny bit of business, but maybe they were just like the, the potential for slip and slide too strong, you know, it was too alluring a temptation. And I hope that it was worth the fines are not small when you do that like they

they really come at you when you streak they really don't want you to do it they really don't want you to if he wears clothes the next time he tries to go to the ballpark who would recognize him he could probably just slip in unrecognized how do they enforce facility bans this is the thing i don't know it can't be very very effective. I assume that they have pictures up or headshots or mugshots or something up there and, I don't know, descriptions, names, but it can't be very effective at stopping people, I wouldn't think. they do it because you know like we saw on on wednesday you know there were nba playoff fans who were terrible to russell westbrook and that guy got like hammer bands like they were they took it very seriously they they were appropriately they're like hey you can't come to this person's workplace and harass them like that's not cool and i was heartened to see that they were like you just you can't come back and you can't come back here at all to any other games or

concerts I would imagine or anything else that goes on at this arena. But I do always wonder how do they make sure? If someone else buys the tickets, we're going to get like seven emails in response to this. And I'm actually excited because I don't know the answer to that. It seems like the sort of thing that you wouldn't even have to

disguise yourself or put on a goofy fake mustache or anything like that. You could just like grow your hair. Right. Yeah. I mean, I guess there could be some sort of database, some no-fly list for fans where your name and information gets cross-referenced if you purchase tickets online or something. But if you're just a walk-up and you're buying a paper ticket, if people still do that, then I don't know how they could stop you. So, yeah, I just Googled it and i see an article from 2017 at cnn.com stadiums can ban a fan for life but they can't easily

enforce it and yeah it says uh how does such a ban work before ejecting a disorderly fan teams typically make them sign a document agreeing to a ban security experts say if the fan returns they can be arrested for trespassing, even if they behave themselves. Experts say this can sometimes act as a deterrent. A team can check ticket buyers' names against the database of banned fans, and security officers are shown photos of prohibited fans and told

to be on the lookout. But yeah, in practice, it's pretty tough. So some security expert says the venues take it very seriously. If someone is stupid enough to get kicked out of a stadium, they're stupid enough to try to get back in. Yeah. I guess that makes sense.

But the article goes on to say security experts say there is little teams can do to stop determined fans from returning to games. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, like if you have a face tattoo, then I think it's probably easier. But most people are pretty, you know, we're not necessarily great at picking out faces reliably. And you can't really do it by name because there sounds like, you know, Meg takes exactly one token, then says something. There's like a lot of names that are the same, man. And so you couldn't reliably do it based

on that. But yes, I imagine the threat of more serious prosecution probably plays some role plus the fines. But yeah, it seems like a tricky bit of business. Just stay in your seat. That's all. That's all you got to do. The article goes on to say that facial recognition software could solve this problem. But then we get into creepy Big Brother territory too. So pluses and minuses. No, thank you. I'd say no, thank you. So speaking of enforcement, I guess we should talk a little bit about the foreign substances controversy from Wednesday. So this happened after we recorded with Craig Goldstein,

and he was talking about how banning foreign substances effectively and really policing that might be one solution to the strikeout scourge, which we have talked about on the podcast before. And there was one isolated instance here of trying to police foreign substances, and it was not well received. So this happened in the Cardinals game. Cardinals reliever Giovanni Gallegos came into the game, and second base umpire Dan Bellino thought he spotted some sort of substance on Gallegos' cap and he alerted Joe West, new record holder for all-time games umpired. And West came out before

Gallegos pitched and he told him that he had to surrender his hat. He had to change hats and that the hat would be confiscated and sent to whatever facility where MLP is supposedly testing these things. And Cardinals manager Mike Schilt came out and he was upset about this and he got ejected. And after the game, he went on sort of an extended rant about why he objected to Gallegos being targeted here. And he made a lot of sense, although I was conflicted about some aspects of what he said. And for what it's worth, Gallegos went on to pitch quite well. And he pitched an inning in two thirds and was very effective. And his spin rate was barely down from what it usually was. I saw, you know, Sarah said he was like 30 RPM off of his typical average, which is not much,

you know, that could be nothing, or maybe it could be him not getting to use sunscreen and rosin or something, but there was no evidence that he was using some sort of designer substance that would up his spin rate by hundreds of RPM because it really wasn't far off his typical rate. So that's that. Now, Schilt, after the game, explained his rationale and why he was upset about this, and I will link to the full video. I think it's worth watching, but I will read some of the highlights of his comments here. He said, so why do I take exception to that? Because this is baseball's dirty little secret, and it's the wrong time and the wrong arena to expose that. Gio wears the same

hat all year. Hats accrue dirt. We pitched him in a day game. Did Gio have some sunscreen? Does he use rosin to help? Well, possibly. Are these things baseball really wants to crack down on? No, it's not. I know that completely firsthand from the commissioner's office.

That is not anything that is going to affect his ability to compete. And he wanted to say MLB has got a very, very tough position here because there are people that are effectively not even trying to hide, essentially flipping the bird at the league with how they're cheating and this game with concocted substances. There are players that have been monetized for it. There are players that are obviously doing it, going to their glove. There's clear video of it. You can tell what pitchers are doing because they don't want to go to their mouth, but that was one of the subtext to his comments here, although Bauer is far from the only one. But he went on to say, understandably, and I know this comfortably, that MLB is trying their best to police this in a manner that doesn't create any black eyes for the integrity of the game we love.

But speaking of integrity, how about the integrity of the guys that are doing it clean? How many guys that are pitching their tails off in MLB that are doing it clean and have an unfair competitive advantage for the guys who are clearly loading up concoctions that they actually advertise don't do anything to hide in plain view? That's who I'm sticking up for. So, you know, he says he's sticking up for the victims of foreign substances and pitchers who are pitching clean and not using this. He's also obviously just sticking up for his player, for Gallegos. And his case here is essentially that, well, why aren't they checking everyone? Especially why aren't they checking the players who it seems more obvious that they are doing something, that there is more evidence. And that is true. You know, why are they singling out Gallegos here? You could make that case.

Like, you know, if you're not doing it to Bauer, if you're not doing it to many others, or you did it to Bauer once and we haven't heard anything about the ball that was confiscated from him, then why Gallegos all of a sudden? I guess you could also say, well, you have to start somewhere. All of a sudden, I guess you could also say, well, you have to start somewhere. And the fact that this caused as big of an uproar as it did helps to explain why this isn't policed more closely, where, you know, if an umpire actually does come out and try to do something about this, there's immediate blowback and the umpire is going on a tirade about it and getting ejected, but he has a point and every manager is going to stick up for his team and his players. And that is something that makes this sort of inspection and enforcement difficult, I think. So Schilt is right. Why start here with this one guy on this one day in particular? On the other hand, you could say, well, you got to start somewhere. And if we're going to object to every inspection, then how are we ever going to root out this problem? I think that there is something to the idea of not only wanting to begin the enforcement with the worst offenders, right?

The pitchers who seem very content to sort of jump up and down and say, look at me, look at me. So I think there's something to that, not only becausein and the kinds of substances that we discussed with Eno when we had our podcast a couple of months ago. And I don't think that, you know, seeing a spot on someone's hat is necessarily the most reliable indicator of this. What am I trying to say? The whole thing just seems and feels very haphazard. And we talked a while ago about when you say at the beginning of a season, we're going to start enforcing a ban on foreign substances, and there are going to be real consequences meted out for that. And we're going to look at verifiable data. We're going to test baseballs from games. We're going to bring some rigor to this analysis and then take a step back and say, well, what we're really trying to do is some amount of fact finding to see how pervasive the problem is and its exact nature, right? How much of it is rosin plus sunscreen?

How much of it is a designer substance that is sort of understood purpose is to increase spin on the ball, how much of it is a combination of those things? How often are you using it? How often have you used it historically? Can we sort of track when you started to deploy those? And I think that when you have a problem as broad as the foreign substance issue, which everyone says everyone is doing in some form you want to bring sort of a rigor and a consistency to it which is why i don't think that joe west did anything wrong here which is a weird sentence to say out loud it's not one that we're necessarily occasioned to say out loud like if you are confronted head on with what you think is a violation of the foreign substance rule like

it's not out of line to try to enforce it i do think that like the timing of it was a little bit funky here right like i kind of get what he's saying right that he hasn't thrown any pitches yet i don't know i'm not i'm not quite sure when the right moment would have been i don't know that there's anything nefarious like if you give the guy the opportunity to wear another hat, you're not taking him out of the game. So you're not denying him the ability to pitch. Wes said he did it at that time basically to give Kaigos an out so that he would not actually have thrown a pitch with whatever foreign substance he was supposed to have been using there. And so I think there's something to that, right, that you are kind of trying to maybe do the guy a solid. But I also just think that leaving this to the discretion of individual umpires when the broader message about what you're doing and how you're doing it still seems to be muddled, despite this being a stated priority of the league, leaves room for shenanigans.

And it leaves room for inconsistent enforcement. leaves room for shenanigans and it leaves room for inconsistent enforcement and i still don't know that i buy that they really care about this yeah and so i get why schilt would be mad and his job as a manager is to like stick up for his dude and to like get sassy with joe west and i wish that he had had the opportunity to give guy whoos his hat, which is what he said he wanted to do. But then he got sidetracked by swearing at Joe West, which, you know, who hasn't been there, right? But I still think that we need to have like a clearer understanding of what the what the league sees as the real issue here. What is the real, like sort of disallowed stuff. And I know that they've they've

been specific with clubs so i don't mean to say that they haven't done something around this but it just still seems like there's a a weird gap between what they say is like a really stern enforcement priority and then like how many guys have been ejected how many guys have had their hats removed like where have we seen that enforcement manifest itself on the field this year and why are we doing it against like a reliever when trevor bauer's jumping up and down being like please won't you right yeah so i don't know the whole thing seems very muddled and strange and with an issue this pervasive it's it's hard to say that it's being taken seriously if the approach isn't both broader and more obviously rigorous. And there are probably things going on here that we're not aware

of. And so maybe I'm being a little bit unfair that there is rigor that we're just not seeing. And I know that they are taking balls from games. So it's not as if like nothing is being done, but it does, it still strikes me as kind of haphazard. So yeah. Judging by Schilt's comments here and the comments in the recent athletic article by Ken Rosenthal and Brittany Giroli, it seems like there's just a lot of confusion and consternation about what, if anything is actually being done. And Schilt said, again, seemingly alluding to Bauer, although not necessarily Bauer alone, you can see based on spin rates, how guys careers are jumping off the charts, and then you can do cause and effect.

Is our house 100% clean? I certainly hope so. Am I creating more awareness to our group potentially? By that, I think he meant, you know, is he drawing more attention and more scrutiny to his pitchers? Then he said, but let's go check the guys that are sitting there going to their glove every day with filthy stuff coming out, not some guy before he has even stepped on the mound with a spot on his hat. That's how you want to start policing this. And for what it's worth, Bauer, in addition to the sudden and dramatic spin rate spike in September 2019, there was a YouTube video that just came out that I will link to that was compiled by Tony Adams, the Astros fan who created signstealingscandal.com and was on the podcast to talk about it. He's the one who listened to

all of the Astros plate appearances from 2017 and logged all of the bangs. And he has done a similar data gathering project here where he watched hundreds of Bauer pitches. It looks like maybe all of Bauer's pitches from this year to see how often he goes to his glove. And his conclusion is that Trevor Bauer goes to his glove about 62% of the time before catching a new ball put in play. He goes to his glove about 7% of the time when he gets the same ball back. What is he doing? So there seems to be a difference there. I have not verified those conclusions. It's a 14-minute video of hundreds and hundreds of pitches. But if he has logged that accurately, then perhaps that is semi-suspicious.

Or, you know, I don't know. It could just be your basic sunscreen and resin with a new ball that any pitcher would do. But we know that Bauer has certainly experimented with more effective and exotic substances. So Schilt also said, I'm not faulting Joe at all. They chose to enforce something that looked somewhat suspicious to them. That's part of their job to police the game. I want to make sure I'm clear. I'm not challenging that. I'm only challenging the fact that there's much more egregious things happening in real time that aren't being challenged. Having to police foreign substances candidly shouldn't have to be part of their job.

That's an interesting part of this. He also kind of walked back his initial comments maybe in an effort to avoid a suspension and said, I have a great working relationship with the umpires and Major League Baseball. They have a lot of challenges to doing their job and they do it well. Having to police foreign substances candidly shouldn't have to be part of their job. So that idea that it shouldn't be part of the umpire's job, I guess the question is whose job would it be? It has to be someone's job and the umpires are on the field. They're the one kind of tasked with upholding the laws in person. They're the one kind of tasked with upholding the laws in person. So you could have inspections in the dugout and the bullpen and everywhere, which supposedly is happening or is supposed to happen that they have a relationship with the players and coaches and managers and so it puts them in an awkward position to like have to get along with

everyone but then also be the ones who are saying hey empty your pockets and show me your glove and your hat and you know prove to me that you're not cheating all the time and how often are they going to do that is it going to be every half? Is it going to be how thorough is the inspection going to be? There are a lot of places where you can hide something and slather something. So really, unless we want everyone to get as naked as that streaker, then it would be hard to entirely eradicate this. thing because like the umpires traditionally have been charged with this duty but they haven't really been backed up by the league itself kind of giving them the explicit authority to do this or at least confirming yes they are acting under our orders this is what we want them to do you must comply with them and so every time they do it someone yells at them and then they have to eject someone and yeah that's pretty unpleasant so it seems like MLB really has to lay down the law and either have some sort of standard process here where it's like, yep, you have to have these inspections. We're not even giving the umpires a choice. It's not say, oh, it's Rob Manfred. He made me do it. So something like that goes on beyond it so that, you know, if a guy isn't being overly suspicious, there is another means by which his potential use of a foreign substance could maybe not be

officially proven, but would at least give future umpiring crews something to look for, right? Like if, you know, we'll just, we'll stick with Bauer just because, of course we will. But, you know, if he suddenly shows another spin rate spike and the umpires, while, you know, officiating that game, didn't see anything that struck them as worthy of inspection, well, maybe the next time he's going to start that crew gets a report on i don't know guys that they should be on the watch for or something i don't know like there's this weird balance to be struck because i do think that a lot of pitchers are using something how nefarious that substance is really varies we talked about the circumstances under which a foreign substance might end up on a baseball through no fault of the pitchers,

right? So there is margin for error here. I'm just sort of fundamentally uncomfortable with that much surveillance generally. Like it kind of skews me out. But I think that for a problem that's pervasive, it might be necessary. And so I think that if you, you know, as MLB seemed to be doing at the beginning of the season, a clear set of standards involved. Maybe you check the pitcher every three innings or something. You collect some percentage of baseballs, which I think they are doing, but you do it more systematically. It's just every start, every game, you got the balls. You go send them to the lab. They get tested and you go from there. I think that there is a way to do it where you both have

backup for the umpires if for some reason they're looking at a guy and they're like, he seems fine. But that you are going to end up having umpires who need to be sort of at the forefront of this, and that's where you want there to be sort of a consistent understanding of how often and how rigorous their checks of these guys should be. But if you watch a major league broadcast, their checks of these guys should be. But like if you watch a major league broadcast or even an amateur broadcast, you know, you're going to, if you're looking for it,

you're going to be unable to stop seeing it, right? You're going to notice who goes to their belts. You're going to notice who goes to their hat. You're going to notice who's spinning the, you know, the ball in the glove. Like you're going to start noticing that stuff. And if it's transparent enough on a broadcast that a ball is being doctored then you kind of have to have something

on the back end of that from an enforcement perspective or you just say here are the substances you can use and here are the ones that you can't and then you test baseballs for the stuff on the banned list and kind of go from there like that would be the probably that would be the set of circumstances under which you have the umpires needing to do the least because then you just have the guys sitting by the dugout and they throw out the balls that don't go over the fence and all of them get tested and if they're positive for whatever you know the banned list of substances in it merits further investigation which doesn't necessarily mean like that a guy's going to get automatically suspended. But, you know, if what the substance is therefore is to enhance spin rate, it's probably not going to just be sunscreen and rosin and

you know, like that's not the stuff that you're going to find. It's not the ancillary oops-a-daisy, you know, our catcher has something on his glove and our you know fielders have stuff on theirs like it's going to be stuff that is specifically designed for spin so right it seems like there's something that could be done that's more systematic and then you end up with the the secret undetectable stuff that i worried about when we first talked about this but that's a problem for another day we're not even at the point where we have to worry about this the super secret sauce yeah we just need to find the regular secret sauce. I agree with Shilt that it is baseball's dirty little secret or certainly one of them. And it's not really much of a secret

anymore. But I do think that they have to figure this out or this is going to keep coming up or it just won't come up because umpires will give up entirely and then we will continue to have rising spin rates and whiff rates and the like so i do think that something has to be addressed here and maybe schilt calling attention to it in this way will help so i wanted to just read a quick comment from nuera in response to capgate that we discussed with craig last time still so many questions about this whole saga, and this doesn't really lift the veil that much. But the Washington Post, Scott Allen wrote a little bit about the New Era caps that were pulled on the same day

that they were announced and got a comment from New Era explaining why the caps were pulled. And the New Era spokesman wrote, It recently came to our attention that a few caps omitted a relevant area code. In light of this, we removed the collection from our website so we could review the design accuracy of all the caps. We apologize for any unintentional design mistake with regard to this collection. So spokesman didn't say how it came to their attention, maybe through thousands of tweets. And I didn't also acknowledge the many other errors and strange decisions that came into play on these caps. But that is the official reason why the caps were pulled, that there were issues with relevant area codes. So they pulled those so they can fix that and maybe once they fix the area code issue they'll be back on sale and you can wrestle with whether you want to buy one or not so it's

about ethics and cap design yep ethics and area codes at least wow i mean i guess that if you're designing a cap i don't know factual accuracy would like not be high on my list but generally you aren't putting things on caps that that merit fact checking yeah it's either the logo or it's not right i guess in that way you're worried about like design fidelity but you're not sitting there going like is that really one of the area codes of the city of kansas city like you're not worried about that generally but then they had to go and see this is why no one should have ambition because if you're just not ambitious then you're not going to run into these problems you're going to stick the same old kc on there and be like this is fine and the last bit of banter i have is asking you whether you have reached the point yet whether you are at all concerned about

francisco and door have you gotten to that Matt? Because I've been putting off this conversation, figuring that he would right the ship soon, and perhaps he still will, but it is notable now that he has not, and he's, what, 186 plate appearances, I think, into his season, 185, and he is batting 185,

290, 268. That is a 66 WRC+. He has never had a stretch of this many Games where he has hit this poorly In his career As we speak there are 156 Hitters who have made at least 150 plate appearances

Lindor's WRC Plus Is 15th worst Among those so he has been Among the worst hitters in baseball. And the Mets swept a doubleheader, a Manfred special on Thursday, but Lindor didn't do much to contribute to that and really just hasn't done a whole lot to contribute, at least offensively, for a while now. And they really need him because as we have discussed, everyone else is hurt. So if there were a time when he was going to step up and carry the team to the extent that any baseball player can carry a baseball team, this would be it.

This would be a pretty good moment for him to have a hot streak. So not only have the Mets been down most of their actual lineup, but Lindor has not looked at all like he was supposed to and like he has in the past. he was supposed to and like he has in the past. So friend of the show and former Effectively Wild Mets preview guest Disha Thosar wrote on Thursday in a column for the Daily News, just how long are we supposed to wait on Francisco Lindor? And I guess the answer is that you'll wait until 2031 if that's what it takes because that's how long he's under contract with the Mets. But, you know, I keep expecting that he will pull himself out of this

because he's just too good to be this bad. It's a really strange statistical profile also. I mean, I will admit that I think perhaps out of self-preservation and not wanting to overreact, that's a better reason, have not been sort of obsessively clicking to lindor's player page because well one i follow enough mets fans on twitter to kind of get the gist of it without having to look but it's a really odd profile because so if you look at his expected stats versus his actual stats we might say that he is dramatically underperforming where we'd expect him

to be, right? So he has a 260 Woba, but he has a 310 X Woba. He has a 272 slugging, but a 347 X slugging. These expected stats do not include today's game action, so they might change ever so slightly, just in case people are wondering. And he has a 185 batting average and a 225 X batting average. So sometimes they expect its stats aren't telling a great story, but they are telling a marginally better story than the one that we're getting. And so then you think to yourself, okay, so why might he be underperforming that?

And you look to things like he only has a 203 BABIP. Well, that seems concerning. Is he slowing down? Perhaps he is nursing an injury that we haven't been made aware of because you also would look to, say, his ground ball rate and see that it is the highest it has been in quite some time. He has a 49.6% ground ball rate, and that's the highest it's been since 2016

when he had a 49.2% ground ball rate. But then in 2016, he had a.324 BABIP, and he hit.301 and he knocked 15 home runs and he was worth five and a half wins. He had a.340 WOBA and a.109 WRC+. So it was like, okay, this was a year where he wasn't amazing with the bat. He was really bolstered by his defensive efforts, but he wasn't what he is now. It wasn't anemic to the extent that it is at the moment and then you look at his stack at stuff and you're like no he's like 69 percentile

69th percentile for sprint speed so it's like okay so it's just very strange like what's going on with him his sprint speed is basically unchanged from what it was in the last couple seasons so doesn't seem like that's an issue his hard hit rate is the same unchanged from what it was in the last couple seasons, so it doesn't seem like that's an issue. His hard hit rate is the same or better than it was in previous years. That's like the percentage of balls hit at 95 miles per hour or above. His max exit velocity is right around where it's been before. So it's not like he's suddenly entirely stopped hitting the ball hard or even hitting it hard all that less often than he used to. So it is strange.

And you're right. Like his expected stats wouldn't make him the superstar that the Mets expected to get, but they would help him escape a lot of the scrutiny that he has received so far. And he'd be fine. Like no one would be really worrying about francisco lindor if he had played to his expected stats thus far and like his strikeout rate is not spiking or anything it's basically where it's always been he's walking more he's walking a little more if anything he's been more selective he has chased less often right he has in any previous season so it doesn't seem like his plate discipline has totally fallen apart.

So it's a tough one to diagnose. And I guess that is a good thing in a way in that it makes you think, well, maybe it's still kind of fluky, even though we're approaching 200 plate appearances here. But really, it could just be like bad luck and bad bounces and low BABIP and low home run per fly ball rate and everything. I mean, it's probably not just that. And he is coming off of last season, which was a down year for him, although still like average offensively. And, you know, maybe he's not going to be what he was in

2018 again. Maybe that raised expectations too high. Maybe that was a career year offensively, but it would really surprise me if he didn't get back to like 2017, 2019 level of being comfortably above average with that. So he's been durable and that is something that has been in short supply for the Mets. So that's good, but he has not done with those plate appearances what you would have thought although like he's still been above average as a base runner he's still been a good fielder and that was a big reason of why they wanted Francisco Lindor he's been an elite glove guy and the Mets have had a lot of lousy shortstops in the past several seasons and at least according to stat cast outs above average he is I, sixth among infielders and second among all shortstops.

So that's pretty impressive. The top two are Angleton Simmons and Matt Chapman. So nice to see that those guys' defensive skills still seem to be intact after their recent injuries. But that part of Lindor's game doesn't seem to have slumped. And he seems to be healthy as far as we can tell. So you kind of have to go with the long-term track record and say that he's going to pull himself out of this at some point. And maybe if you're a Mets fan, the positive spin on all of this is that everyone has been hurt. Noah Sindergaard now is hurt again.

And the initial reports about how seriously he was hurt turned out to maybe have understated the extent of the injury. Stop me if you've heard that about a Mets player before. But you're still in first place, you know, even with everyone dropping like flies, even with Lindor not hitting at all, still in first place. So if those guys get back and the team starts to hit like it's supposed to and you do eventually eventually get Carrasco and Cinderguard, etc., like, maybe it all comes together and your second half is even stronger than the first. But it has not been the beginning to his Mets career that anyone would have wanted. No. And, you know, like, his, like, ex-Wobbecon is low. I don't know, man.

It's a weird bit of business and so you do just wonder like you said if he's gonna at some point he'll come out of the skid but it is it is disconcerting he is at least on the field every day and i have seen a lot of people who are trying to link what's going on now sort of a continuation of what happened in 2020, where, you know, he had like a 102 WRC plus, and, you know, he had eight home runs, he only had 258. Like he's, you know, he had a down year for him offensively, even within the context of other years where he hasn't been quite so comfortably above average. And I just don't, I don't know what to make of that. It's not an unreasonable thing to worry that this is a continuation of trend, but I just am still sort of reticent to ascribe all that much weight to what happened in 2020.

And he looked great in the spring, so there's that at least. So yeah, it's really a conundrum. I mean, I think that in terms of being able to arrive at a conclusive and sort of satisfactory diagnosis of exactly what is wrong, it might end up being as unsatisfying as sometimes good players just have bad years. But it is, I think, a sufficiently large sample where we can say like, this isn't the best for 2021. It doesn't really alter my long-term expectation of him like considerably but in terms

of what i expect his like year-end war number to be for his first year with the mets like yeah you have to shade down after this like you'd be foolish not to even if i expect there to be some recovery in 2021 versus what we're seeing already man Man, Frankie, what a bummer. Yeah, I saw a quote from Mookie Betts the other day where it was a story about his slow start, and it really hasn't been a bad start. He has a 125 WRC plus. Francisco Lindor wishes that he had that. That's like double what Lindor's is, but it's not a characteristically great start for Mookie. And he said, sometimes you just don't play well, which is, you know, that's a pretty good explanation. I mean, I guess there's always a deeper explanation and we just have so many layers of information now that we can just

keep drilling down until we get to like the finest little slivers of performance and try to figure out what exactly is going wrong. But also sometimes you just don't play well. And I guess you could pin it to why aren't you playing well? You're playing well because you're playing through injury or you're playing poorly because your mechanics are out of whack or whatever. Like, you know, you're dealing with something off the field. Like ultimately, I guess there's always a cause unless it is just bad luck. And in that case, you might not even say that you're not playing well. You're playing well. You're just getting unlucky. But sometimes it just happens. It just hasn't happened to Lindor for this amount of time and to this degree. But I

still have faith. I'm not giving up on Francisco Lindor just yet. Oh, no. Oh, gosh, no. Oh, I think I called him Frankie. I shouldn't do that. He said that he doesn't like it when people call him Frankie he wants to be Francisco my apologies Francisco we got one question from Benjamin who says this is a question about a different kind of parody so what if instead of draft order your record determined how much sticky stuff your pitchers can use the following year the Pirates can use anything the Dodgers can use nothing

with a gradient in between I fully admit that in reality this would be very difficult to enforce about as difficult as say it already is to police stickyy stuff so let's just assume the rule is followed as intended would it create more or less parity than draft order does right now how would you ever do trades at the deadline if this were a rule i guess you just get to trade your pelican grip or whatever with you yeah like how would you have confidence

that a guy you were trading for like if you you know you're the how would you have confidence that a guy you were trading for like if you you know you're the pirates and you have one good starter and that guy is able to use whatever he wants in terms of sticky stuff and the dodgers are like we sure could use another one of those good starters because we love depth and then do they trade for that guy does he get to keep using sticky stuff for the whole year? No, I don't think so. Is there a no trade clause for the sticky stuff? I mean, I think that incentivizing teams to try to win is a good thing to do. And increasing parity across baseball is good because fans should get to watch teams play that are trying to win and are potentially good at baseball. But I'm a little bit nervous about, apart from all the other things about this

that seem like they would make it impossible to do, I'm a little nervous about giving teams that have been cheap, for instance, for a long time, sort of a trap door to suddenly being good in a year when they haven't really done other things necessarily to bolster their roster. And here, you know, this is kind of a weird time to pin this on the Pirates, because I do think that this current front office at least has a plan and is trying to build a competitive roster, even if they are still required to do that very much on the cheap because of ownership. So I don't mean to pick on the Pirates here. But since you know, we were just gonna talk, we were talking about the Pirates, I will pick on them a little bit more. So I'm a bit

nervous about giving sort of an out to teams to like be able to count on a potential bump from foreign substances. Now, I guess we could ask, ask like how much difference do you think this ends up making in the eventual record of a club that is able to use sticky stuff where other teams aren't because sure your pitchers like maybe now your pitchers can really spin it and that's great but like you still have to score runs so i wonder how now run suppression is good right runs suppressed are almost as valuable as runs scored not quite but because you got to score at least one that's a requirement

of baseball Ben did you know that you have to score at least the one run in order to win a baseball game that is true yeah there is a threshold there I think I've seen some analyses that say like all else being equal you might rather prevent a run than score a run but you do need to make sure that you score at least one. That's pretty important.

At least one. So like that's the caveat to that analysis, which is that you got to get at least the one. And, you know, like sticky stuff doesn't necessarily inspire you to say put your little footsie on first base. Sorry, pirates. We could keep harping on this for a second. So I wonder how big an effect it would have but it would probably be worth a couple of runs over the course of a season because if you suddenly have really effective starters and you can you know cobble together a couple of runs

a game or even just the one run a game you're going to win more games than you would have without them being effective and spin isn't the only thing that makes a pitcher effective, we should say. That isn't sufficient to make everyone good, which we can probably feel confident in saying if for no other reason than all of these guys seem to be using something and not everyone is like Jacob deGrom. I don't know what Jacob deGrom is using or not using.

I don't mean to point a finger. I'm not casting aspersions here. But not everybody ends up being like a cy young candidate so spin is not enough you need good works too in order to be good but it probably is worth a couple wins a year this is like a terrible idea but i like thinking about it so it's a very good question even though I don't think it's a very good idea I think it would be effective to

some extent more effective in that first season than draft order which doesn't do anything for you in the short term really in the long term it might help more but maybe not I think one of the reasons why I think it is a dirty little secret, as Schilt said, or why MLPs should crack down on this is that, especially the

way that pitchers are brewing up these substances now, I think it really can enhance your performance. When people say it matters more than PEDs, I think there's potentially some truth to that. I guess you could quantify all else being equal, how much better is a pitch that adds X RPM in spin rate and thus this amount of movement. And you could probably put some run value on that. And then I guess you could extrapolate that over a full staff pitching for a full season and you could come up with some estimate. But I imagine it would be worth at least a few wins to you, if not more. And yes, your pitching staff might still suck because if you're a terrible team and you have bad pitchers,

even if they're spinning it more than anyone else, they might still be bad at pitching. There's more to pitching than spin, as you said. So it wouldn't be a panacea or anything, but if your only priority was just to make sure that you had more parity by taking the terrible teams and giving them a bit of a boost in the next season, yeah, I think it would work pretty well. And I was joking the other day about, well, maybe the Rockies hitters should just get the signs because they have to deal with the Coors Field hangover effect. So this would be sort of similar. But like you, yeah, you're kind of bailing out the ownership that is not investing in its roster. Yeah, you're kind of bailing out the ownership that is not investing in its roster.

You're penalizing players on competitive teams whose stats are going to suffer because their team tried to win and won successfully. So that sort of sucks. So I agree that it is bad for any number of reasons. But I do think it would be kind of effective. I do think it would be kind of effective. It would be, I guess, if you could actually police this to the extent that you could say, yes, you are allowed to use this and this other team is not allowed to use this, and then you could actually enforce that. I think it would work pretty well.

Oh, it would just be, what would the cutoff be? Like, what would the cutoff be? Is it just for sticky stuff or is it, is it for other forms of, you know, is it for signs too? Like how much do you want to, how much do you want to put your thumb on the scale would be another important question that we would have to answer. Yeah.

Allowing certain teams to cheat is probably not the best way out of this problem. I guess technically it's not cheating if you are allowing them to do it. But also like if we agree that too much spin is bad because it means more strikeouts and all of that, then there's also the aesthetic issue. And if you want to crack down on this and prevent any pitchers from doing it, then you don't really want to make exceptions for bad teams because they can still strike guys out. so any number of reasons not to do this probably yeah and again not the least of which is that it does not you know make you remember how many outs there are right i just feel so bad for him i i want to apologize again to him

right now he's not listening i hope i hope he doesn't consume any media for 36 hours. That would probably be smarter to just like not do any media at all. Yeah. And then here's an umpiring question from Kevin, Patreon supporter. The talk about the perception of the quality of umpires on the last episode got me thinking that it's kind of odd that umpires rotate around the diamond. the diamond. While there is certainly overlap, there are unique requirements for each position, and perhaps someone who's good at calling balls and strikes doesn't have attuned ear-eye coordination, is that a thing, that would make them as good at accurately calling bang-bang plays at first. Perhaps they are good at seeing tag plays and would be more well-suited to second base,

or are good at fair foul calls and one of the corner spots would be good or they can actually tell if a batter swung on a check swing nfl refs don't rotate the back judge is a back judge all season i understand there may be a need for some rotation so the plate umpire can make it through the summer but maybe there shouldn't only be two umps on a crew that work the plate do you think umpiring would improve if umps were specialized in a position if so would the effects be noteworthy or just negligible work the plate, do you think umpiring would improve if umps were specialized in a position? If so, would the effects be noteworthy or just negligible? That's a really good question. It is. Is part of the thinking for rotating them that they don't want there to be a potential for bias?

Is that a concern? Is that part of the stated rationale for having them rotate? concern is that part of the stated rationale for having them rotate i guess that could be part of it or maybe it is just uh lightening the load on certain guys like it's certainly more grueling and demanding to be the play dump oh for sure any other position so maybe it is as simple as uh just giving guys not a day off but a lighter workload at least on some days like there might be burnout if you had someone behind the plate every day. So that could be one benefit to the current arrangement. Right. I think that there is probably some benefit there, but I don't think that the idea of having

more specialization is necessarily bad just because we, well, I'm about to say a thing that I actually don't think is supported by data, not because the data says something that contradicts what I'm about to assert, but because I don't know that we have data on it. But we know which home plate umpires are sort of generally better than others, right? We have a sense of who's getting strike calls correct and what have you. I don't think that we have any kind of data that sort of assesses the performance of umpires occupying other spots in the field, right? Like nobody's like, oh, the tag play. I mean, I guess you could look at replay review and have a sense of how often a guy's calls are overturned.

So it's not as if there's no data that could be put behind that, but it does seem like there are guys who we know to be better at one very important aspect of the job than others. And so prioritizing the good umpires over those who are less good but might have other skills is a way to, at the very least, address an issue that is kind of fraught within the umpires union, I would imagine. within the umpires union, I would imagine. So it doesn't require those guys to stop being umpires, but maybe puts them in a position where them being less good at calling balls and strikes doesn't have as significant an impact on the game. So I think in that respect, it's not a bad idea. Your poor knees, you know,

like there is the mental part of it that is grueling, right? Like having to be the home plate ump for, you know, a four game series is like you said, a is grueling, right? Like having to be the home play dump for, you know, a four game series is like you said, a lot more taxing, not just on their bodies, but like it is more intellectually taxing to have to do that. I would imagine then being, you know, the guy who's at third base, right? Like it's just like, it's just harder. So in that respect, having, you know, two that are designated as the home play dumps who can maybe trade off every other game would be good. I don't know. Yeah.

It seems to me like there would be a benefit to specializing at least at certain positions. I don't know if there's someone who's way better at bang-bang plays at first or something. Maybe some of this stuff is just generalizable and anyone who makes it to the major league level can make those calls. But especially for the play dump, I would think that just seeing pitches every day would really be beneficial. Like it certainly seems like we hear all the time, at least that for players, it's better to see pitches regularly and start regularly than to come off the bench sporadically. And part of that just has to be like plate discipline and picking up pitches and getting your mechanics and timing down and everything. And a lot of that applies to umpires too. Maybe it's not quite as demanding, but it is a hard job to do well and an impossible job to do perfectly. And you would

think that just getting more reps and having a solid sense of the strike zone, a mental map of that area where it's not like, okay, I'm behind the plate today, and then I'm rotating all over the field, and I'm not going to be behind the plate again for a while. And by then, I almost have to relearn, retrain myself how this works. It does sort of seem to me like you would think that just being behind the plate every day might give you some accuracy advantage. And to counteract the burnout problem, I guess you could just have more reserve umpires and maybe give guys days or weeks off here and there. And it might be a problem with travel and having crews go together everywhere. But if you could just have a dedicated pool of plate umps who only called balls and strikes and worked behind the plate, then maybe you could just have

a whole pool of them just sitting somewhere and you could give guys days off in the middle of the season and they could rotate in and out and not work every day. I guess that would negate some of the advantage I was talking about of the repetition. But it seems like there might be a bit of a happy medium between every day and the current system where there could be a benefit. So would it be significant or negligible? I don't know. Every little bit helps with that job, I think, because there are just so many pitches and so many borderline calls. So even if it's upping your rate by a percentage point or something, that's worthwhile possibly. So I think it might make a difference. And it is sort of strange. And I'd never really considered how strange it is when we see players specialize

at certain positions. And you do see more and more multi-position players, but you'd think that there could be some penalty associated with going back and forth between positions on the field. I think Russell Carlton studied that at some point, and I'll link to his research. But I would imagine that something might apply for umpires there, too. So I'm in favor of having plate umps at least the most important and demanding job, at least in this pre-Robo umUmps world, for them to get more regular looks and not be shifted all over the field all the time. Yeah. It seems like it would be beneficial. And if you can find a way to do the load management satisfactorily, that you would at least... And it could also be kind of a... You have crew chiefs. There is a system within the

existing sort of architecture of umpiring where you're acknowledging seniority or expertise, but it does seem like if there is something special about having that role that you also could attract, perhaps you can attract better umpires. Perhaps you give umpires a thing to aspire to. I don't mean to say they don't care about doing their jobs well now. I think they care very much, but it elevates them. It gets to be the all-stars, the all-stars of the umpiring world, where some of those positions might be a little bit more fungible. Though, as you said, maybe there are guys who are really good at bang-bang plays. Maybe there are guys who are

really good at getting in there and being like, oh, his foot came off the bag a tiny bit. Maybe we sent those people back to the minors so that we stop having to look at those plays quite so much but you know there's there have to be guys who are better at some aspects of it than others and we know that to be true for home plate stuff so it's probably true for other stuff on the field too yeah there are certain commonalities at every position you've got to know the rule book and you've got to be paying attention to things and you've got to be in the proper position. But there are also quirks of each umpire position. And I guess by the time you get to the big leagues, you've done all of the umpiring jobs enough times that you can handle all of them fairly competently. But still, there must be different skill sets. So at that level, it is sort of odd that there's not more specialization. At that level, it is sort of odd that there's not more specialization. I guess as you're coming up through amateur ball and the minors and all of the lower levels where you don't have as big umpiring crews, I guess you get more reps behind the plate as you're coming up, which is probably good because if it's at all analogous to hitters who have to see a certain number of pitches to understand the strike zone, then probably good that umpires, I guess a higher percentage of the games that they work would be behind the plate at lower levels where you have smaller crews. So that's probably good.

But still, once you get to the big leagues, yeah, you might have a really great first base ump and a really good plate ump. And maybe there would be some benefit to not forcing them all into the same box. So good question. Hadn't really thought about that before. Alright, so we can wrap up there. I've got other good emails that we can save for next time and

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