Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1707: Baseball-Reference Rewrites its Record Books

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s experience seeing Shohei Ohtani pitch, hit, and play right field in person, why balks can be so incomprehensible, the differing recent fortunes of the Angels and the Diamondbacks (and Albert Pujols), Jacob deGrom’s dominance and durability, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the big bats (and playoff fortunes) of […]

I'll be there same time, same place, baby I'm only good for one time, baby You know what really hits me You have to be the one Oh, you're too slow I know the price of the way I taught You shouldn't believe me I spent too long coming, I never got to see.

Hello and welcome to episode 1707 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing well, how are you? Doing alright. Melting, but all right. Yeah, well, I take it that you had a pretty exciting Friday night. It sounds like you were in the company of one Shohei Otani. I mean, not like in a weird close way, but in a ballpark proximal sort of way.

Yeah, I was reflecting as I was sitting there about how, you know, because I grew up in Seattle and I the bulk of my maybe not the bulk, but yeah, I guess the bulk, the bulk of my game viewing in person baseball viewing has been at what is now T-Mobile Park and what was Safeco Field and has frequently featured the Angels. Like I've just watched a lot of Angels baseball. And that has been not always fun, but it has meant that I have gotten to see a lot of Mike Trout in person. And I think I will look back on that over the course of my life and just be immensely grateful that I had the opportunity to see him live so often. And as a result of that, I had seen Otani in person before,

but had never seen him pitch and yeah it's really very superlative like it's just such a cool we're you know there's a lot about baseball right now that could be better and we talk about that a lot but we get to see some really spectacular players play and uh he is among them and it was just very neat although i don't know what box are man like i just don't know what those are about but i was looking at the stat cast game feed for this game and the top exit velocity show a tani the top pitch velocity show a tani most swings and misses show a tani and so it's just uh it's just a really very cool thing and i enjoyed it very much i recommend it if you have the opportunity

ben to see him pitch in person I think you should try because it's pretty cool like you might drive for that I mean you wouldn't but someone I wouldn't have to either but yes and I couldn't legally but yeah if I do get the opportunity I hope I will sometime soon my 10th anniversary of my first date with my wife now wife is coming up at the end of this month and will coincide with the Angels visiting the Yankees. And I'm hoping it's a four game series, still too early to tell, but I'm hopeful that Otani will be pitching and that would make a pretty nice date, I think for both of us, since we are both fans of Otani. So I'm hoping

that Joe Maddon can oblige there and that the schedule will line up for him to pitch so that we can see that in person. But yeah, I haven't had the pleasure yet. And I was wondering like whether it's more impressive, less impressive, equally impressive to see that just with the naked eye, just, you know, the same guy on the mound and then DHing and roping balls over the field

and then playing right field also. I don't know where you were sitting for this game and what vantage point you had, but just watching at home, I was envious of your experience. But at home, the camera is always focused on him, so it's not like you miss out on that experience. But I've never actually seen that in person, the same player doing all of those things. So I would think that that would be novel at least. Yeah. I think that there's something about, and we have seen him be just a DH, so it's not like him being in the on-deck circle is necessarily noteworthy, but there is something about the like starter of record being second in the lineup and just like

out there in the contact circle you also appreciate just how like big a guy he is right you know he is physically imposing in a way that I think that's this is true of of 99% of baseball players even the guys who are are sort of famously big, the famously strapping and sort of imposing guys like the Stantons and the Judges and the Joey Gallows, when you see them at field level, you're just like, wow, that's a big human who opted to play baseball. That's so cool.

But yeah, it is a very nifty thing. It is a nifty thing to see an AL manager really keen to get his pitcher one more at bat in an NL ballpark. So it's very cool. You are cognizant of it in a way that I think just watching on TV doesn't even necessarily let you appreciate because then you can just watch him be on deck. You're like, wow, that guy's gonna that guy's gonna touch

100 tonight and he did that's so cool yeah and play right field he's now appeared in the outfield five times for a total of six and a third innings and he has yet to get a chance out there he hasn't had a fieldable ball and as much as i don't want him to put himself at greater risk i feel like a great catch in the outfield is the box we're still waiting to check on the Otani highlights bingo card. So I sort of want to see that at some point. But overall, it was an encouraging performance because we talked about how he's been more of a control artist lately and has seemingly dialed down the velocity a little bit. But in this outing, he showed that he still had it because he was touching 100. He was throwing high 90s, even though he wasn't sitting there. So that was encouraging. I think it's not that he suddenly

can't hit those speeds if he wants to try to, but he seems to, whether it's for load management and trying to manage his fatigue or whether it's because he's trying to have better control, he seems to have taken a little bit off in his merely throwing in the mid-90s most of the time. But he still has that top end speed if he needs it. And he had some things go against him in this game. One was that he fouled a ball off his own knee and hit that ball as hard as Shohei Otani usually hits balls. And so he was, you know, limping around for a while and it was clearly paining him. He was limping around for a while, and it was clearly paining him.

And he did walk the pitcher in the bottom of that inning, which seemed maybe related to lingering pain from the foul. And then the box, which you mentioned. And I messaged you during the game to say, we need to ban box. And I wasn't totally serious about that. I understand that there are some reasons why we may need box, but we need to figure out how they work or something because this is just ridiculous. I've been watching baseball for a while. I've got a pretty good handle on most baseball things. And with box, I'm just as clueless as I was the first time I watched a baseball game, basically. I have no idea what's going on. He was called for two

box in this game in the same inning, and it directly led to a couple of runs scoring. I think it did score one run, and then another runner advanced because of a balk and scored on our favorite, the drop third strike. And he had no idea what was happening, and Joe Maddon didn't seem to. And I was watching the Angels broadcast, which, you know, can maybe be a bit Homer-ish when it comes to Otani at times, but they seem to have no idea what these box were called for. And neither did I really watching. I mean, you sort of have to try to read the umpire's minds and slow it down. And, you know, these are like former players on the broadcast. It's like

Mark Lubiza and Jose Moda and players who like would know what a Bach is and they just didn't know what was happening here. And, you know, I guess after the fact, the explanation was that Otani flinched on the first one and didn't come to a full discernible stop on the second one. And Otani said, after looking at the replay on my own, I felt like those calls were pretty hard. And I agree. And, you know, on the slow motion, it seemed like he came to a discernible stop. It was sort of a quick pitch, but it seemed like he stopped if you slowed it down. That was maybe the more understandable one.

The first one was just pretty inexplicable to me. It was like a pickoff attempt to second. And it's almost like unavoidable that some part of your body, as you were making that motion to spin around, might move like a millimeter toward the plate or something like that was the best explanation. I watched a full breakdown of this from Close Call Sports on YouTube, which I will link to. And it was like, even with them slowing it down and laying it out, I had to watch it multiple times to understand what exactly the umpire was seeing here. And it was almost all worth it for Otani's reactions because he continues to be extremely expressive and the gifs and the memes were almost worth it but like it really is just

like the john boyce bach rules come to life every time where no one watching in the park or at home or many of the people on the field understand what happened and on top of like the delays to the game and all of that it's just it's a strange situation where just no one knows what is going on. I think that it underscored for me how much of a disadvantage the sport puts itself at in terms of the in ballpark experience by not having calls like that explained on the field. And I know that there had, we had expected to get them, right? We were going to get umpire explanations on at least replay review. And I think in a moment like that, it really would be to the benefit of everyone assembled to have somebody explain, even if the explanation isn't lengthy, even if it just gives the broadcast something to tee off of so that when they are then explaining to folks at

home what the rationale is and can go to the relevant portion of the rulebook for something as complicated as a book, it would smooth the way for everyone you know this was a this was a call against a visiting pitcher and so you would think oh this isn't going to really inspire much in the way of umbridge but there uh i will say those angels fans travel they came to to chase to see that game and there were a lot of them around me and they were very vocal and it was really just really just lovely. It was, you know, it's like, um, like everybody get vaccinated. It's really nice to be out in the world again. Like you feel, you feel nice sitting there, but yeah, I think that it is a really weird omission of explanation for folks in the ballpark and at home. And I think that it's one that seems pretty easy to easy to remedy because people are just going to boo umpires no matter what.

I don't think that it increases the odds that folks are going to be booed or anything like that. But when you have a call that is consequential enough to lead to a run, I think having an explanation of what the rationale for it is would be helpful for folks. So everyone get on that again. I don't know why we – why did we drop that? That was going to be a thing. I'm not like misremembering, right? It was just that there were no fans in the park. And so it was lower priority, even though it'd be nice to have it on the broadcast too.

Just to spare us the half inning of, oh, I wonder what they were saying. I wonder what that was, yeah. So yeah, I think that this is a good opportunity for us to add some clarity to the sport. So everybody sort that out. But yeah, if you have the opportunity to see Otani do both things, even if you only have the opportunity to see him hit, it's worth it. But if you have the opportunity to see him do both, I would recommend it. It is a cool and very special thing.

to see him do both, I would recommend it. It is a cool and very special thing. And we don't know how long in the course of his career he will manage to do both things. And we certainly don't know how long he'll manage to do both to the level that he is right now. Jay Jaffee wrote for us at Fangrass today about how he is very easily making the case to be the AL MVP. So, you know, it's one that I think it's worth making time for if you have the opportunity. I know that not everyone is close to a major league ballpark that will have an Otani pitching appearance and that games are expensive. So, you know, seeing him on TV is certainly its own thing, but if you have the chance, I'd encourage people to take advantage of it because it was pretty cool. I was really glad I went went it really lived up to

the billing so yeah that's glitter in person man i was like how does anyone ever want any wood on that ball how do you make contact with it magical pitch pretty magical pitch the problem with the box i guess is that even if you do explain what the rationale was it doesn't always clarify anything it's like okay it's good to know what they were thinking and what they thought they saw. Doesn't mean that I can see it or understand it, which is just kind of the problem. Depending on the type of Bach, some are more obvious than others. Some, it's just purely like an interpretation of the rules that it seems like you could either call never or call all the time. Right.

And it just gets called very rarely. There were actually three box in that game, right? Because there was one called against Ryan Buckter in extra innings, the Diamondbacks reliever. And that one led to a run scoring for the Angels, the game winning run, right? So at least they were consistent. They called it on both sides. But it is weird. It's like just depending on the game and the umpiring crew or what they had for breakfast that day or whatever, like some tiny little imperceptible flinch that you can barely even see on instant replay. And some things are weirdly like more obvious in real time than they are on instant replay and others are the opposite.

But yeah, even after watching that in slow-mo, it was hard. Like, okay, I get it. Like technically correct, I suppose, if you want to take the strictest interpretation of this rule, but it's still sort of unsatisfying. So that kind of thing where like no one can even see it. I mean, I understand that you need something. I guess we've talked in the past about like literally whether you actually need box or whether it should just be a free-for-all and runners should just be on their own and pitchers should be free to deceive them as much as they can. I think if we want to encourage runners to take extra bases and steal bases and everything, maybe it's in our best interest to have some sort of box on the books, but the ones where you can't even tell

what it was after the fact and no one possibly could have been confused in the moment because even afterward, we can't tell what the Bach was supposed to be. If we could somehow get rid of those, I don't know if it's just like happy medium between year of the Bach and no Bachs and just the weird random arbitrary Bachs from time to time. It's almost charming in how quaint and impenetrable it is, but not that charming. I mean, not that charming when it goes against Shohei Otani, of course, but also just in general. We should probably understand the rules of the game and why things are happening. So yeah, it's a weird situation. It's very strange. It's also a hard word to say.

Yes. I've had trouble with it too. That doesn't help. I think that that might be at least 20% of why they haven't instituted umpire explanations of the rule because then an umpire is probably going to have to say it at least three times in the same sentence. And after the second time, they're going to get hung up on whether they're saying the word correctly or whether it's a real word at all. See, I can't even. The mere psychic suggestion of it tripped me up, Ben. It just, by its potential presence, I was flummoxed. I'm tempted to like overemphasize the L because it can be almost like a silent L like balk but then

I want to say like balk right that's not how you say it either yeah it's just terrible in every way yes it's it's very confusing in no other way do we ever say L's like that we just never we we lack other L's for context maybe that's part of the problem maybe we need more of the sound not less so that we have practice but I think that we could just call it something else and write a less sort of impenetrable rule and then we'd be really off to the races but uh but yeah it was it was a friday evening well spent so there you go yeah and the angels were catching the diamondbacks at the right time because the diamondbacks can't get out of their own way at the moment, and they had just fired their hitting coaches. And so the Angels swept the Diamondbacks when he got hurt and 15 and 10 since without their best player. Although I guess they've gotten Anthony Rendon back and he's been hitting during

that time too. So if you're going to lose Trout, getting Rendon and a healthy and hot hitting Rendon back is about as close to an even exchange as you can make, but still strange. Anyway, they're over 500 as we speak for the first time in a while and that's fun and they haven't even had mr hot hitter albert pool holes on their team imagine if they had this pool holes guy who has a 125 wrc plus with the dodgers so far i did sit there and say where's albert and then i was like, oh, right. Weird. Very strange. It is a really odd bit of business. I actively missed Mike Trout at one point in this game. I was like, oh, where are you? Why are you? Why did this happen to you? Why are we this way? So yeah, but I worried.

I was like, maybe both teams will lose this game. I had that impression, but then, yeah, I had to look at what the recent fortunes of the Angels have been, and they have not been as terrible as the Diamondbacks, who... Oh, Diamondbacks. You poor Diamondbacks. What a thing. I guess the only downside to going to

see Otani on Friday is that you presumably did not get to see Jacob deGrom. Those games were not on at exactly the same time. So I was able to watch most of both of those games, which was fun, but maybe it was not as easy for you as you were making the trip to the ballpark. But he is just also on another level now. And he was pulled or pulled himself sort of early from this game after six innings and 80 pitches with a flexor tendon issue. It's a finger ligament problem, and it doesn't seem to be serious, which we've heard about every single Mets player, and often it turns out to be serious. But in this case, at least so

far, it seems okay. And evidently, he does regular testing himself and monitoring of himself it seems like he really understands his body in a very advanced way now and what it can handle and what it can't but he pitched you know six scoreless innings with one hit against the padres a good hitting team although not so much of late and no walks and 10 strikeouts and entered the game with a 0.62 ERA and lowered it to 0.56. And I guess a couple of thoughts. I mean, A, it's just like he's totally putting on a clinic here and it's probably the best I've seen a pitcher be since peak Pedro. I'm not saying he is peak Pedro. No one compares to peak Pedro favorably as far as I'm concerned, but I think he's gotten to the point now where you could say maybe his run that

he's on now. And it's hard to say even if this is peak deGrom because he seemingly keeps getting better weirdly. And he's about to turn 33. And I think he turns 33 this week on the 19th, and he is throwing harder again for the fifth consecutive season. I think he was throwing maybe a touch less hard in this game, like 99 consistently instead of 100 consistently. Kelly at MLB.com did a piece before this start about how DeGrom had two entire starts where his fastball averaged 100 or higher, which is unprecedented for a starter in the pitch FX slash stat cast era. And he's just in a class that is only occupied by relievers now of just sitting triple digits. And it makes me sort of scared, as I've said before. And he's been not fragile, but vulnerable, mortal, at least when it comes to health issues. And that's why I keep thinking, I don't know, maybe if he could just sit 98 or something, maybe that would get the job done. Maybe he'd have a 0.9 ERA instead of a 0.6 ERA or whatever, but like that would be sufficient. Like, I just don't know when you are flying that high. I've made the Icarus comp before when it comes to him. I don't want that to be how this story ends. I just wonder like how he balances that in his head.

gets much run support. And so he's probably thinking like, I need to be peak to Grom at my best at all times. But like when you're that good, when you're just like basically sitting on your curve ball, which seems to be a good pitch that he doesn't even need to throw really just like, do you think like I need to be max effort every time? Or is it like I'm dominating to such an extent that maybe I just take some off here and you know, that way I don't hurt my fingers and I can throw more than 80 pitches. Like if he's like a 80 to 85 pitch pitcher as a hundred mile per hour to Grom, could he be a more durable pitcher as, you know, 97 or 98 mile per hour Grom? And I don't know know like the answer is that I don't know like maybe the fact that he hasn't gone as deep into games or thrown as many pitches lately has nothing to do with his velocity it's hard to make a one-to-one comparison there but I just

wonder like when you have the stuff that he has whether there's any thought to like is it better to back off here and like preserve myself it seems like he has a scent for that and he's clearly thinking of that all the time. Whereas with Noah Syndergaard, it seemed like at times he was just like, I want to throw as hard as I possibly can, or he made some comments to that effect. And it

was like, I don't know, maybe at some point discretion is the better part of valor or something. So he's just so good that these are the things I think of. Is he throwing too hard? Is he too good? Should he purposely be less good in order to preserve himself? Which like with most pitchers, they don't even have the luxury of thinking, should I hamstring myself on purpose so that I can stay healthy? Yeah. I don't know what the right answer to that is. I wouldn't, it's like, I don't have the, I don't have it fully sorted. I wonder if it just, when it feels free and easy, and you are super in touch and in tune with how your body is responding to subtle variations in your performance and approach, that you just feel confident that you know what the limit is for yourself? I don't know. what the limit is for yourself i don't know i just there's so there's so little about how good he is at his job that i find remotely relatable that i i really struggle to even put myself in the mindset of like how many how would i how would i feel the need to regulate this like how would i

operate the dimmer switch i just don't even know he's he's allowed four earned runs. Yes. Four. Driven in five, as everyone has pointed out, because he's suddenly a really good hitter, too. He's allowed 26 hits. That's it. Yeah. I mean, the upside of his not being extremely durable lately is that it probably helps his chances of breaking Bob Gibson's record. Yeah. it probably helps his chances of breaking Bob Gibson's record because if he can just kind of skate in right above the minimum, like the fewer innings he pitches while still qualifying for an ERA title, the better his chances theoretically of actually pulling this off,

which like Dan Siporsky wrote about his odds recently, and he does have a real shot. And that was before his last scoreless outing. So, you know, it's still unlikely that he does it a real shot. And that was before his last scoreless outing. So it's still unlikely that he does it, statistically speaking, but there's a real chance. And so, yeah, if he could just come in at 162 innings or something on the dot and do it, yeah, maybe that would cheapen the accomplishment a little bit, or you would look at it a little differently than you do Bob Gibson's record, for instance, but to have the record that it might enhance his chances. But you're right, it doesn't look like it is all that stressful. I mean, I'm sure it must be, but it doesn't look

like it. Max effort. No, it doesn't make you grit your teeth the way that you do with some pictures where it's like, oh, that just looks like it hurts. It looks like something's going to break. When you see the radar readings, then you maybe think, oh, boy, can a human body actually sustain that? But when you're just watching him, I'm not going to say the cliche, oh, it just looks like he's playing catch out there. Maybe not quite that. But still, it doesn't look like he is throwing max effort, which maybe he isn't because his peak velocities keep increasing. Right. Maybe this is him with the dimmer switch fourth game.

Right. I guess we have to allow for that possibility. In two fewer starts and four fewer innings, which kind of gives you a sense of the innings thing we're talking about here, he has 130 strikeouts than last year. I'm comparing this to his totals from last year. He has a 22 FIP minus. A 22. Ben, did you know that

100 is league average? 100 is league average, so lower is better for pitchers here. He has a 15 ERA minus. These are F a 15 ERA minus. Yes. These are FIP and ERA numbers that are adjusted for park and league.

Every one of his outings now is accompanied by a forest of fun facts, whether it's about his hitting or it's about lowest ERA through X starts or fastest to 100 strikeouts or whatever. There's just a Jacob deGrom fun fact cottage industry. Yeah. So I guess I think our real takeaway here is that for a couple of years, the hair was holding him back. Yeah, that could be. Right.

Is hair length correlated to velocity? Oh, man, growly TED talk. Well, hopefully we will see those guys. Otani is the leading DH all-star game vote getter. And one thing that I thought was amusing was there was a fact that was not very fun for the Jays on Friday. So they were playing the Red Sox in Fenway and they lost the Friday game six to five and they crushed the ball in this game. So I saw this tweet from Chris Black of Sportsnet who said, this is legitimately one of the bonkier notes I've ever looked up. And it was the list of games where a team had 25 or more

hard hit balls in a single game, defining hard hit ball as 95 miles per hour or more. So the first time was August 15th, 2015, the Red Sox, and they won that game 22 to 10. The next time was July 31st, 2018, the Nationals, and they won that game 25 to 4. Then the third time was last September 1st. It was the Giants. They won 23 to 5. The fourth time was this Friday, this past Friday, the Blue Jays, and they lost 6 to 5. So all these other teams scored more than 20 runs when they hit this many balls this hard. The Jays scored five and lost the game, but they made up for it in the rest of the series. They won 7-2 on Saturday, and then they won 18-4 on Sunday, and they hit eight home runs, which is the most home runs ever hit against Boston, not just in Fenway, but any game against the Red Sox who go back quite a ways. And we've talked about how strikeout records and home run records are maybe not quite as fun in this era of record home run and strikeout rates. But still, that was an absolute display of power and the messianic bat. And the Jays, I guess they haven't actually been the best

offensive team in baseball this year, although it seems like it. And it seems like Vlad alone has put on that sort of show nightly lately. But the Astros have had a better team WRC plus this year than the Blue Jays have. And the Jays are second just ahead of the Dodgers. But lately, they've really been turning it on offensively. And Vlad is, I mean, in the way that DeGrom is on another level of pitching, Vlad seems to be on another level of hitting now. He's like, basically in almost Bondian territory. And I don't want to use that lightly, but he's hitting 344, 450, 688 with 21 home runs and just about as many walks as strikeouts. And he's hitting fewer ground balls. Surprise, surprise.

That is leading to more home runs and more power. And it's just kind of incredible that he went from like, is Vlad actually going to be that great? At least some people in some quarters were wondering to just totally fulfilling the promise like overnight, basically. And of course, he is still 22 years old, but that's been a lot of fun to watch. And that whole lineup is a lot of fun to watch, even without George Springer to this point. Yeah, I do. I do i do wonder like i think that we have covered this responsibly you and i i do want to push back slightly on the people who were like everyone said vlad was a bust and i was like i'm pretty sure most prospect people spent

the last like two years being like relax please it's fine and now some of those prospect people are like we told you it was fun so everybody just it's fine we can just enjoy this part this is this is the fun part we don't have to it's fine there's no recriminations can i tell you my favorite thing about vlad junior's line for this year so far that he has positive base running value actually that's my favorite part about vlad yeah but um yeah yeah a two a 203 wrc plus will will play i think that'll play i think it's yeah and i i picked the jays to miss the playoffs this year like sort of reluctantly and i guess as things stand as we speak here on monday they are still out of playoff position because of the pitching which was why I made that prediction when I was

forced to make predictions. And I think they are third worst in pitching war this year, fan crafts war. They're fourth worst in park adjusted FIP, although who knows what the park adjustments playing in Florida and Buffalo. So that was also part of why I picked them to miss the playoffs is that I don't really know what the effects of having possibly three home parks are during a season. It seems like it probably couldn't help. I don't know how much it would hinder, but it seems like it probably would be a hindrance if anything. So between that and the lack of pitching, that was kind of my thought. And I don't know, the wheels are kind of coming

off the Red Sox in a very dramatic way in the last week and they're surprisingly successful pitching staff. So it's certainly possible that the Jays could still sneak in there and maybe they will get reinforcements internally or maybe they will make additions at the trade deadline. So I hope that that happens at this point because it would be fun to watch these guys mash in October, especially when Springer comes back. But I just, I don't know. That was my reservation heading into this year, just after the active offseason that they had and the high hopes and the, of course, bright future and all of that.

I just wasn't sure this was the year and I'm still not sure that this is the year, but obviously they're a pretty good team as it is and a very fun team. So even if they do end up on the outside looking in like this is, you know, the most fun and promising the Pujays have been in some time. don't make their way into the playoffs this year then they are certainly going to be well positioned to do so in the future i think this young position core has like very thoroughly arrived and is quite excellent as we have just said and uh yeah it is sort of sad though because you're you're sitting there and you're like but but robbie ray's been pretty all right and so if robbie ray's pretty all right surely the rest of the staff will have been good and the answer to that is no so we don't have to make up twitter guys to be mad at for for vlad we can just be mad at at the the unfortunate display that has been blue jays pitching don't make up twitter guys just be mad at the pitchers don't be mad at anyone that's a silly way to live life but yeah i think that

brighter days are ahead and certainly this is a club that has seemed to, once they actually land the free agents they want, had a willingness to compensate them. So whether it's trades that they do at the deadline or reinforcements that they try to bring in this offseason, I imagine the things are going to be all right for Toronto. And I hope that they make the playoffs this year because I'd like to see Vlad hitting in the postseason in this form. But I do kind of like the idea of playoff baseball returning to Toronto when people in Toronto can go and see it. I'm sure that they would be very – most Blue Jays fans are like, no, we'd be perfectly content to watch them play on TV.

Don't you worry. But there is something sort of poetic about that, I suppose. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, technically, I guess they were a playoff team last year, which I forget because it was so brief that they just, you know, wildcard series and they lost to Tampa Bay 2-0. So, yeah, you know, maybe in retrospect, that will look like when this team arrived, like if they make the playoffs again this year and if they continue to, that was like the beginning of a run, perhaps. But, you know, that was maybe anticlimactic or wasn't quite the like thundering arrival that we have been awaiting. So that was not the true coming up party for the Blue Jays, I guess.

Right, right. But it was a weird season. So you're forgiven for forgetting. That's how words work. Back, guess. Right, right. But it was a weird season, so you're forgiven for forgetting. That's how words work. Back, back, back, back. Hyunjin Ryu has been really good, though, for them. That's true. They could use a few more of him.

Yes. But that signing has worked out. He has proved to be durable and quite consistent thus far. All right. So that is our banter for today. We are giving over the rest of this episode to some exciting developments with the Negro Leagues and baseball reference. So last year,

we did a series of episodes on the history of the Negro Leagues, and we talked throughout the year about the change in perception of the Negro Leagues and how MLB belatedly reclassified the Negro Leagues as major leagues. And we did an episode on it when that announcement was made. And we were kind of speculating about, OK, what comes next? This is just the start. There will be a whole lot of byproducts about this. And hopefully, this will change the way that people appreciate these players and these

leagues and are able to access the stats. And a big step toward that future is taking place today. If you were listening to this, when this podcast is going up on Tuesday, if you navigate to baseballreference.com right now, you should see a big banner on the homepage that says the Negro Leagues into the site in a much more comprehensive and respectful and fully fledged way to reflect the major league status that MLB and Sabre both recognized last year. So now you will see on player pages, you know, instead of before where the Negro League stats at baseball reference, which had been there for some time, but were incomplete relative

even to the seam heads Negro Leagues database. And also we're sort of consigned to separate pages. And, you know, if you went to a Negro Leagues players page, or if you went to a player who played in the Negro Leagues and also in the American or National League, then you would have separate tabs where it would be minor leagues or international leagues or Negro Leagues would be sort of in their own separate space. And now those things have been brought together and the leaderboards have been changed and those stats are now combined. And it's, I think, sort of a landmark moment for how people will be able to access and view these stats in the way they're displayed. So it's just a start, really, and

there are ongoing efforts to collect more information and complete the statistical record. But to have things on Baseball Reference, which is sort of the de facto, you know, historical stat site of record in many ways, I think is a big leap. like of a continued relationship between the site and the new release museum, because I think that you want to, you want to center the incredible work that has already been done in this space. And you want to add a robust platform to help support future work. And I think this is a really great combination of those two things. So it's a very exciting day. And I, uh, I'm excited to get to poke around and see what I didn't know, which I am embarrassed to say is probably a great deal. And I'm happy that I will soon be able to help rectify.

Yeah, I was one of the beta testers for this rollout and just spent a long time just browsing around and I'm looking forward to doing it once it's all finalized and live, which it is as you're listening to this listener. And some of the changes are summarized very handily at the main page where it'll point you to some of the notable changes, you know, either with famous players and Hall of Famers, but also players who are now appearing on leaderboards where they were not appearing before. Primarily rate stat leaderboards just because of not appearing before. Primarily rate stat leaderboards just because of the length of Negro League seasons, but also some career leaderboards

too. And some of the most significant changes are summarized for you there, but really just getting to poke around and use a lot of the tools that have been available for other major leaguers in the past, but not until now for Negro leaguers is really going to be a boon to researchers and fans, and I hope will spur further investments and interest. And I think that's one of the best byproducts of this, hopefully, is when a lot of people were rightfully pointing out that this took way, way too long to happen. And even is it right to do this? And they're thoughtful critiques and takes on both sides of that. I hope that one positive thing that will come out of this is just more attention, more people

just coming across these names and these teams and these leagues and digging a little deeper to find out more about them and to see those names listed alongside and just like looking at the homepage and now seeing the count of major leaguers reflect all of the Negro leaguers who were not previously counted there and looking at the headshots. Like the first time I loaded up the development site and I saw the headshots and you had a mix of, you know, it was like Daryl Strawberry and some like modern American or national leaguers and then players from white baseball and the players from black baseball and the headshots were all just intermingled in a way that they

wouldn't have been before. And I thought that was really nice. So we'll talk in our upcoming segment about, yes, you obviously have to recognize why those players were separate at the time, but I think to have their stats side by side and sort of displayed on an equal level is pretty important. So we will take a break now. And when we come back, you will hear some thoughts from a press conference on Monday, Larry Lester and Sean Gibson, who have both been guests

on Effectively Wild. Larry joined us last July on episode 1560, and he is a great Negro Leagues researcher who's responsible for a lot of these stats being collected. And Sean Gibson, the great grandson of Josh Gibson, who joined us on episode 1626, they'll share some of their thoughts from that press conference. And then we will be joined, quote unquote, live by Sean Foreman, proprietor of Baseball Reference, to talk about this effort. So we will be back in just a moment. much slack you take the bad times with the best and keep on coming back i'll keep coming back all right so as promised we are back to discuss the baseball reference relaunch with Negro League stats redesignated as Major League. And we will bring on Sean Foreman to talk about that in a few minutes. But we want to hear first from Larry Lester and Sean Gibson speaking at a press conference about this redesign held on Monday.

This first clip will be about the historic significance of this relaunch. You will hear the name Ron Teasley mentioned. He is one of the three surviving players from the 1920 to 1948 Negro Leagues period. And you can actually hear him for a few grandson and the founder of the Josh Gibson Foundation, Sean Gibson. The first voice you'll hear is Larry's followed by Sean's. And those truths have long been a staple of Negro League stats and narrative. But while these stories can be entertaining, now our dialogue can include quantified and qualified stats to support the authentic greatness of these great athletes like Josh Gibson. So as baseball reinvents itself, every fan should welcome this statistical reconstitution towards social reparation, as I call it. The beauty of the stats are that they now humanize these folk heroes, and they're no longer mythical figures like Paul Bunyan or the still-driving John Henry.

These stats legitimize their accomplishments. I'm going to speak on behalf of not just the Gibson family, but all the other Negro League families as well, because we do keep in touch. First of all, we're very excited to have Baseball Reference come out with these statistics. We all know that Major League Baseball made a huge announcement last year to include Niggle League statistics into their record books. I was very excited to work with Sean, myself, as well as my historian, Tom Kern, to work with Sean on Josh Gibson's piece. As the families speak about this, it's very exciting to us because, as Larry mentioned, it not only gives you the Paul Bunyan aspect of it, but it also gives you the historical aspect of it, where now you can relate the NICLE statistics to Major

League Baseball statistics. There were several conversations I used to always have about black and white, right? And she'd always be like, well, Josh Gibson is considered one of the greatest black baseball players. Well, now we well, Josh gets to consider one of the greatest black baseball players. Well, now we can say Josh gets to consider one of the greatest baseball players of all time. There's no such thing as black and white. As we all talk about it, as we move forward, it's very exciting to see this opportunity come forefront.

You know, we know they announced what happened last year and to finally see this actually take place and to finally see baseball reference be the first one to step out and show the statistic that will be coming out tomorrow. We're very excited to be a part of this. As far as the families, I know we have Satchel Page family is on here today, Linda Page, Buck Leonard, as Sean mentioned, Vanessa Rose, she's with Turkey Stearns, Ron Teasley, who's one of three players that's living still from the 1920 to 1948 era. We've all started at Negro League Families and Player Alliance.

And we all stick together. And we all want to make sure that we all work together. And we're very excited that this opportunity has come today. We're very excited to answer all the questions leading up to not only Josh Gibson, but the other great Negro League baseball players that will be included into the statistics. Okay. And I want to play one more clip for you of Sean and Larry in this one, which also lasts for a few minutes. You will hear them talk about the personal significance of this news to them and to the families of Negro Leaguers and to the surviving Negro Leaguers themselves. This time, the first voice you hear will be Sean's followed

by Larry's. Well, for me, I'll go first, Larry. But for me, it's going to be very exciting to see Josh Gibson's name, as well as other great baseball players in some of the categories, and not just in some of the categories, but ranked as far as the top five. And, you know, in Josh's situation, you know, we all know his batting average in 1943 may be the all-time single-season batting average that year. So, like Larry said, tomorrow you'll see a lot of black faces and black names tomorrow included

in these statistics. Whether it's Arthur Charleston, Bullet Rogan, Satchel Paige, Bud Leonard, and the list goes on. It's very exciting, but as far as the family perspective, we're just very excited to see this happen. You know, Major League Baseball made the announcement. It was a lot of unanswered questions of how this is actually going to take place. And, you know, Sean and his crew has definitely showed us how it will take place. That will be coming out tomorrow. So we're very

excited. But it's also going to give a chance to see like a guy like Ron Teasley, as I mentioned before, he's 94 years old. And for him to be still living and to be able to see like a guy like Ron Teasley as I mentioned before he's 94 years old and for him to be still living and to be able to see this come true for him is a blessing for our families he is only one of three players that are still living that in that era Willie Mays and I want to say if I can correct me I think it's Bob Gleason and and Ron Teasley and so for him to be able to see this, he probably never thought that he would see something like this in his lifetime.

And so I'm very excited for him, myself, more than about Josh, because he's still living. Josh can't see it. But Ron Teasley, we're able to actually see his name included in those record books. So from the family's perspective, it's very exciting. And from a player who's still living at 94 years old, it's very exciting. And from a player who's still living at 94 years old, it's going to be phenomenal for him to see that.

I agree with Sean. This has been an emotional roller coaster ride for me. I've been in the living room with many of these ballplayers to interview them when nobody knew they were on the radar. And to listen to their stories of how they competed against their white counterparts is overwhelming and sometimes bring a tear to your eye when you talk to them about their greatness and what they were able to accomplish. And so this is a long journey for me, bittersweet, bitter in that it took so long for Major League Baseball to recognize the Negro League stats. I think this country has become awoken based on several social issues and concerns with police brutality and systemic racism. And now we have come full circle to recognize the greatness of these

ballplayers who Sean and I have already, we know that the greatness of these men, in some cases, women. Effa Manley has always been on our radar screen, along with great owners like Gus Greenlee and Tom Wilson and J.L. Wilkerson, so forth and so on. So this is an opportunity for America to learn about some of the greatest ballplayers who ever played the game. They just happen to be of a darker complexion. So I'm looking forward to the advocates, the promoters. I welcome all the critics.

We got the stats to back up our talk. So bring it on. And I welcome any and all questions and concerns about the greatness of black men of color. Lastly, I figured that some of you will be wondering, well, how complete are these stats? What research still needs to be done? We get into that with Sean Foreman a little later, but Larry Lester gave a slightly longer answer about that at the press conference. So here's Larry speaking for a couple minutes about the work that has been done and the work that still needs to be done. Basically, in the 20s, baseball was covered extensively by the black press. So we have between 95% to 99% of those games in the 1920s. Based on schedules that have been printed,

we go into the 30s with the Depression, we have less coverage. Sometimes it's sporadic. We may have maybe 60%, 70%, 75% of the games discovered. And as we move forward into the 40s, with World War II and a new awareness with this country moving forward, we once again find 90% of the gains. We have amassed a great database of gains. However, there are some gains that are missing, especially in 1948, because the black press started to cover with Jackie Robinson and Larry

Doby and Hank Thompson and Willard Brown and other former Negro League players as they go into Major League Baseball, that one black reporter is following the integration of baseball. And so there's less coverage in 1948 versus 1920. So we still have a large body of data that we can quantify the greatness of these ballplayers. And so what happens here, because the Negro League teams play between 50, 60, 70 games a year, it's hard to compare their numbers to major league numbers. Now, this is not going to change the leaderboard, as some people have suggested, because the Negro Leaguers played less career games. But we can still quantify their greatness by showing that Satchel Paige struck out almost

one batter every inning, which is very close to what Nolan Ryan and other ballplayers have done. We can show that Josh Gibson hit a home run every 13 to 14 times at bat, which is right in line with Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, and Babe Ruth did. So across the board, we can take statistics and show how great these black players were. Career leader boards may not change, but we have a lot of new leaders that will emerge after tomorrow. And so when we Google research, we're going to have some new leaders and they're going to be black men across the board. Okay. So now we are joined by Sean Foreman, founder of Baseball Reference and president of Sports Reference. Sean, welcome back and congrats on unveiling the results of this redesign to the public. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

So I guess to dramatically oversimplify things, this is sort of a two-part process. I'm sure in reality it was a hundred-part process, but the two parts being you had to decide that you wanted or needed to do this, and then you had to make it a reality. So we definitely want to ask about the how, but the why, first of all, when and why did you decide that this was something that you wanted to make a priority for the company? Yeah, that's a very good question. To be honest with you, it was the article you wrote back in August that really kind of, I guess, you know, the scales fell from my eyes and I was like, why haven't we even discussed doing this in the last, you know, 10 years? This seems like an obvious thing to do and a step that, you know, that we should take. And so,

you know, so I'd credit the piece and whoever kind of instigated that piece and got that, you know, got that ball rolling is really, you know, to credit for this. We, you know, we've had Negro League stats on our site for probably 10 plus years now. We had to work with the Hall of Fame to implement the Negro League researchers and authors group data that they used in their last big push to expand the Hall of Fame inclusion. And so we've had that data on our site. And then obviously, the SeamHeads group,

I think has pushed the field forward in dramatic ways. We had actually had some discussions with them last summer about coming back to them and licensing their data and incorporating it onto the site. And then once your piece came out, we decided this is more or less what we wanted to do. We negotiated a deal with the Seamheads group, and fortunately, they were willing to work with us.

And once that happened, it was kind of full steam ahead to incorporate it onto the site. Yeah, that's great. And I'm happy that the article had some sort of impact, although I can't claim that the scales fell from my eyes all that long before they fell from yours. Really, it was prompted by an effectively wild listener email, actually. Oh, really? A listener named Philip Han last summer, last July, emailed us to ask, why aren't the VicoLeagues considered major leagues by MLB? And I didn't really have a good answer for that. And there wasn't a good answer for it,

really. So once I started digging into it, and then you see the rabbit hole, and of course, many thinkers and researchers and historians had already come to that conclusion and had asked that question and found that there was no satisfying answer. And so I was really just turning up work that already was out there and was coming to greater attention because of the centennial of the Negro Leagues and everything that was going on in the country at the time and everything that was going on in baseball. And MLB honoring the Negro Leagues while still dishonoring them by abiding by this old and biased decision about classification.

So once you decided to stop abiding by that, even before MLB did, what steps did you have to take? I think I've heard you describe this as maybe the biggest project that your company has undertaken. So what made it such a heavy lift to actually make this happen? Well, you know, you don't realize how many assumptions you baked into something until you have to unwind a lot of those assumptions. And so the site's 21 years old now. And so we, you know, to be honest with you, probably the abbreviated season last year helped in some ways in terms of kind of, you know, readying us for accepting that. No, a season doesn't have to be 152 games or 154 games or 162 games and and and you know there can be some ambiguity in terms of

what you know what we're able to accept and not accept in terms of you know major league totals and things like that so it's a lot of it has been just kind of unwinding all the hard-coded assumptions we've made about you know what's a major league and what's not over the last you know the last 20 years of building the site and so so we created a branch on our code and for any software engineers out there and spun up new machines on AWS to kind of host this section. And Kenny Jacklin and Dan Hirsch and Mike Kenya and other developers on our site have pretty much been working on this full time for two to three months, really working to get it out the door and and make sure everything was was working um you

know we also a big a big issue we we don't you know as i've said we we've been treating these stats as as less than in the past and the negro leagues is somehow less than you know a major league less than the american league or the national league and so for us it was very important that we took a very respectful approach that we were we were not doing that one of the first questions Sean Gibson asked me when I talked to him was like there aren't going to be the asterisks or anything like that on any of the numbers and and you know I assured him that was the case our goal is to is to present these as full-fledged major league numbers and

and so you know if you run a run a query on StatHead, you might see Mike Trout next to Neil Suttles or Josh Gibson. And that's fully our goal in this process is to, you know, respectfully present the players' legacies, present their statistics, and let everybody, you know, see what they've done and add them into their, you know, into their thoughts about, you know, what a major league player is and what they can do. And so that's really been our process this whole way. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that part because, you know, you guys have played such an instrumental role in sort of our historical understanding of the sport.

And there are a lot of sites that offer a look into baseball's past. But I think that given the attachment that we have to some of these numbers, this had to have been sort of a unique experience for you in that it went beyond the typical fan sort of attachment to the past and was about real people and their families who have for so long have not seen their relatives respected and sort of held up in the way that they should have been. So I'm curious what some of the other considerations were for you guys around how you're presenting this data to make it obvious that it is, you know, it is correcting a long held historical oversight rather than elevating a league that really shouldn't have needed elevation, right?

Right, absolutely. I agree with everything you said. as part of that process, we've tried to be very clear with ourselves that we're not experts on the Negro Leagues. You know, it's obviously things we've read about and studied. And, you know, Dan Hirsch actually was the web designer for the Seamhead site that probably most people are familiar with. We do have expertise internally, but we very much wanted to cast a wide net. And so as part of the process, we invited, I think, 40 or 50 people to review the site. It included Sean Gibson, Josh Gibson's great-grandson, Vanessa Rose, who is Turkey Stern's granddaughter, wrote a piece for the site. We reached out to a wide cast of researchers, many from the Society for American Baseball Research. And so we really tried to reach out to those people initially, Bob Kendrick and Dr. Ray Donswell from the Negro League Baseball Museum. telling more of the story than just the statistics because the context in which these statistics were created is often a big part of the story. And so we've made an effort and hopefully users can see that when they come to the site. And I really encourage people to read the articles that we've

commissioned. And also we're launching a podcast later this week, a limited series, I think probably nine or 10 episodes, led by Curtis Harris, who's a sports historian that we hired to advise us and also run the podcast. We really want to broaden everyone's understanding of these leagues and make the case that, yes, they're major leagues. And it's been an oversight that we haven't been recognizing as such in the past. Yeah, and as Mick was saying, I guess this is somewhat unfamiliar for you in that if you're working on other larger projects

like making the site more mobile friendly or changing from the play index to StatHead and adding new functionality or just a couple of months ago when you were adding advanced batting and pitching tables with StatCast data. In cases like those, you don't necessarily need to consider the social and historical consequences or whether you're presenting things respectfully or doing justice to some larger legacy. And there's a way in which baseball reference, I don't want to say makes it official when it's on there,

but MLB can say something and Sabre can say something and Elias can say something. But until you can look it up and your site has kind of turned into the way that most people consume baseball stats, I guess. So it's almost abstract if you say that these statistics are major league until they are listed as major league statistics along with all the others. So I guess it's sort of a weight almost that maybe you couldn't have anticipated 20 years ago or something. Hopefully it's a welcome weight, but still there's a sort of a heft to that, that you might not have known was coming down the road.

Yeah, I certainly, you know, I appreciate that. You know, I appreciate you saying that. We, you know, I certainly, we certainly have felt that at different times. And I'll just say for me, I live in Philadelphia. My kids go to public schools. Players who previously they might not have been able to find. And so I really feel like we've been able to make a dent doing this and hopefully, I know the whole team has felt a lot of pride and a lot of importance in doing this work. And so we really, really put a lot of effort into it. And so I, we're very proud of it and very, very honored

that people have chosen to work with us and we've had the opportunity to work with them. And it's a responsibility we take very seriously. We can get into some of the leaderboard changes that have gone on in a minute more specifically if we'd like. But I'm curious about how you thought about contextualizing that aspect of this specifically, because I think that when the announcement was made that the leagues would be recognized for the major leagues that they were, one of the things that we kind of delighted in was that there could be some shakeups, right? That our understanding of the career batting average leader was going to need to include names that we had previously excluded. And I really liked the way that you talked about this on the site where it isn't just a matter of folks appearing on the list at a particular place, but that the unfortunate sort of limitation of the lengths of their careers requires us to sort of think about those stats differently, not just in terms of the raw output, but in terms of the context in which they were produced and sort of the rate at which they were produced. So I'm curious how you guys thought about sort of providing that contextualization to folks as they're navigating through the site.

Because, you know, when we get an accurate sense of Josh Gibson's actual home run output, it might be a bit of a letdown for some. But when you think about what that was on like a per plate appearance basis, it's really eye opening, right? So can you talk about that a little bit more? Sure. This is something we've obviously had to deal with ever since the site was created, right? For instance, we include the National Association as a major league, which Elias and Major League Baseball don't at the moment. And so those teams played a variety of length seasons and and so you know our batting average uh you know type

our batting average leaders will include you know white players from the 1800s who you know didn't have you know may have had 75 games or 80 games uh in their schedule so that's something that wasn't completely new to us i i will say you know it's going to be it's you know part of the fun is pulling up the slugging percentage leaders for a single season and seeing, you know, Josh Gibson there with the 947, I think it was. I think it was 1935 or 37. And so, you know, you look at that list now and obviously we have the headshots there and it really, it hits. It really hits you to see, you know, Josh Gibson there four or five times on the single season, you know, slugging leaderboards. You know, his headshot,

and then see Neal Suttles on there as well. And seven of the top 12 for single season slugging leaders are now Negro League players. And so I think that really hits and really points out the quality of these players. I'm sure we are know, we are aware there's going to be, in certain circles, pushback on this and say, well, they're only playing 70 games or 80 games. And, you know, I guess I would ask the listener or the viewer, you know, to remind themselves, that's not the player's fault, right? It was, if you want to blame somebody, blame Kennesaw Landis or blame, you know, the people who were involved in drawing the color line. And so these players were responding to the circumstances ofis or blame you know the people who were involved in drawing the color line and so

these players were responding to the circumstances of their time you know the leagues and the owners you know were creating systems that were working and you know black baseball was very vibrant in this time with you know with with you know both uh independent teams and and what we might call might consider might be comparable to minor league teams and and major leagues and so it's it's um you know they're responding to the situation that was placed in front of them and playing the games that were that were put on their schedule and so we you know our our view is if you uh you know if you want to filter out you know we don't encourage we certainly don't think you should do this but if someone's you know so offended that they don't want to consider those well that's you know

you know consider josh gibson had to put up with segregation his entire life. So it's a small, we just think it's the right thing to do. And so we're, you know, we're completely comfortable putting these numbers up and listing them as single season leaders and without any caveats or any such concerns. Yeah. So I guess that was one critique that came up after MLB's announcement about just the different were separate leagues. If you're displaying the stats on the same page, are you sort of obscuring the reason why these stats were not compiled in the same league? And so I wonder whether you gave any thought to that concern and whether that was part of your desire to sort of surround the release of the stats with kind of an editorial component. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm fully aware it's three white people here talking about these issues. And so, you know, we want to be, you know, we want to be careful about how we discuss these things and how we present them. You know, I think, you know, like I said, one of our company's core values is respect. And so we, you know, we sought out as many people as we could to, you know, kind of give feedback, make sure we're on the right path, you know, make sure we weren't, you know, stepping into territory that was somehow diminishing the players or the context in which they operated in. And so, yes, so, you know, including the articles that we've included, including the podcast series that we've created you know all of those are an effort to

kind of give a context for for the leagues and I really hope this is you know for most fans and baseball baseball fans this will be the start of their exploration of Negro Leagues there are so many great books one of the pieces we have on the site is a historiography of the Negro Leagues by Gary Gillette that he put together, which lists dozens and dozens of places where you can go for more information and learn more about it. And so really, that's our goal in all this. We want to provide information that's useful to the users and really illuminates the history of the game. Yeah, I guess on that score, I mean, you're right to say there's just been so much

wonderful research that's already been done here to even get us to the point where something like this could be accomplished, right? Coming through old box scores and finding them and compiling them. And I'm curious, I don't want to say that there's been anything lacking in that research because it is so thorough and we'd sort of be lost without it. But I am curious what you hope this might inspire in folks who are less familiar with Seamheads, but to have it integrated into your guys's search functionality makes it even more accessible. So I'm curious what you hope comes next for folks. Yeah, I find it very exciting. I mean, we, you know, I, I know David Neff a little bit, who was who was the editor of the of the baseball encyclopedia back in 1969. And, you know, I often was a little jealous, you know,

he got to do kind of all the cool stuff and discover all these things and build them into, you know, into a cohesive whole. And I feel like this is, you know, if you're a young researcher who enjoys this stuff, you know, this is a tremendous opportunity for you to get involved. And I know RetroSheet would like to find play-by-play accounts for as many games as they can. I know SceneHeads is continuing to look in libraries and microfilm. And we're at an age where a lot of this research is now more possible because of things like newspapers.com and paper of record as well. You don't even have to leave your house to do some of this research so so I would say that I would also point out you know that the white major league records were not that they were not just given to us by God right I mean there were hundreds of people thousands of hours probably hundreds of thousands of hours that went into actually compiling that information and providing it to us and so you know in 1958 if I had what asked you you know what was the leading batting average of the American Association in whatever

season they were considered a major league, you probably would not have been able to tell me without – you just probably couldn't have told me. So choices were made all through this process to decide this is important, people are going to spend time on this. Millions of dollars were put into compiling the baseball encyclopedia in today's dollars. And so, you know, I'm looking forward to us putting, you know, thousands and maybe millions of dollars into, you know, we don't have quite as many years to cover. But, you know, putting lots of, you know, as CNET finds new data, as new data becomes available, we're very committed to, you know, to keeping our site up to date, to improve. You know, one of the things they're worried about in working with us is, you know, are you going to incorporate changes as we do this?

Because they don't want a situation where, you know, we just kind of let it linger, you know, sit in the background unimproved. And so we're fully committed to making those changes and finding those improvements. So I really encourage your listeners to, they're probably pretty dedicated baseball fans, and this is something where they can make a difference and see these numbers up, available to the public if they're so inclined. Do you have any expectation for how often updates might occur? Is it going to be something like the retro sheet kind of puts out an annual data dump and then you update things on your site

or expand the level of detail in the data that's available? Do you anticipate that something similar will happen with the NecroLeaks data? That's a very good question. I know, for instance, I think currently SceneHeads actually has more data for 45 and 46 than what we have at the moment. So we're probably going to be updating that sometime in July, I'm guessing. So it kind of depends on the speed with which they work. And with so many eyes on this now, i would expect them to be pretty motivated and and uh you know hopefully you know i mean one of the fun things about our about my job is i get emails from people like you know i i've always been

always loved women's college basketball and so i've compiled all of these pdfs of season stats for women's college basketball over the last 30 years, and do you want them? And so we get a lot of things like that that kind of shake loose when things become public. And so I'm pretty optimistic that we'll see more sources of data. Maybe there are scorebooks out there that people, relatives have been storing for the last 70 years. But all that stuff, I think, is to be determined. And we'll certainly make an effort to keep up to date. Now they will see many more than 20,000 players listed as major leaguers on the homepage. So do you have an exact or even an approximate number for how many players either their major league stats changed as a result of this update or they are now regarded as major leaguers who were not previously?

You hear me typing in the background. I, you know, we actually, you know, Kenny actually told me who the 20,000th, new 20,000th player. I'm completely blanking out who it was, though. I think, so we're going to, you know, if you come to the site, so we're talking the day before launch, but if you come to the site tomorrow, we'll have something like 22,418 players in Maple League history. So, yeah, so I think you have to go back probably about 10 years now, I think, for the 20,000th player.

So, yeah, I mean, it really changes all over the site. You know, you have similarity scores now. You know, that might be relevant. You know, you have people who have moved on career leaderboards in some cases. You know, all of that changes. Players who maybe previously were listed, you know, with generally we cases you know all of that changes players who maybe previously were listed you know with generally we uh you know bold is for a league leader but we put a little gold aura around them if they're a major league leader some of those are going to change you know ted williams

may not have as much of that on his site on his page as he did yesterday which i think ted would probably be okay with yeah and so you know i think i think you know it's it's it's going to be it's going to reach into all aspects of the site which is is one of the reasons why it was a big undertaking for us and a reason it took three, four months of effort to make it happen. you mentioned that people are reaching out to you often. And I wonder if any of those folks have a hand in broadcasts, because I think that one of the really powerful things about this is that this is going to change the way that folks not only who regularly visit Baseball Reference and are sort of already bought into some amount of stat nerdery, but the folks who watch TV broadcasts and see the graphics that go up that put a particular player's achievements into their relevant context. Have you had any outreach from broadcasters or folks at the league who are keen to incorporate this information

into how it's displayed out on TV broadcasts? Yeah, I mean, that's going to be an interesting question. I know, obviously, Elias is, I believe Elias and Major League Baseball are working towards in this direction as well. I've had a few discussions with at least one broadcast channel and, you know, they're very interested to see what happens in this regard. You know, I joked on our press conference today that, you know, all the trivia books are going to have to be rewritten and it's, yeah, it's going to make a significant impact on all of those things.

I think there's just going to be, you know be a period where we're kind of feeling out exactly how we manage those things and how we include them in our discussions. But it's a huge change, and it's going to be the right change to make. And I think people will make adjustments pretty quickly as we go forward. So I'm excited to see what it looks like. I'm excited to see how people use what we've been able to show on our site. And I'm excited for the changes we're probably going to have over the next three to five years as we get more data as well. Yeah.

Yeah. I've tried to keep that in mind myself this year, especially when we talk about Shohei Otani, for instance, and you'll hear or read that he is the first to do such and such since Babe Ruth. And often, you know, it's something that maybe Martin DeHigo did or Bullet Rogan did or something. And you have an excuse sort of for not doing it when the data is not easily available to search those things. And hopefully StatHead incorporating that will help. And, you know, at least people will specify maybe that if they're saying, you know, first major leaguer, maybe they'll say first American or national leaguer or something, or hopefully we'll just be able to say first major leaguer and we'll actually have that data at their

fingertips. So MLB and Elias, to be clear, it's just a totally separate effort. You know, there's no real coordination when it comes to providing this data or making it more widely available. Correct. We, you know, our historical data is what has been produced by Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette. So we, you know, I have a lot of respect for Elias and Major League Baseball, but I don't think I've ever seen Elias encyclopedia. Elias and Major League Baseball, but I don't think I've ever seen Elias encyclopedia. So I couldn't tell you what numbers Elias has presently for American League or National League players. So we've kind of forged our own way and that's the approach that we've had to take and will continue to take as we're going forward. You made mention of all of the great pieces that you have

accompanying this update, many of which have been written by folks who have an affiliation with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. I'm curious how you see that relationship sort of developing in the years to come, because it seems like a really natural one and one where you might be able to help to promote the work that they're doing and vice versa. Right. They've obviously been keeping the flame alive for these players and the history of these players. And to an extent that when white baseball or major league baseball was not really paying attention to these issues. And so we're honored that we've gotten to work with them and gotten to know them a little bit. And I you know, I hope that relationship will continue to grow and we are, you know, looking forward to the opportunity to continue working with them.

And I think, you know, we need to, you know, make sure that we're, you know, recognizing their centrality to these stories. And, you know, at the Negro League Base is is is really central to this story of of you know that this move has been made and that we've we've uh you know we've had this opportunity to do this and and this you know this oversight has been rectified and so you know we don't want to like i said uh we you know we're not the center of the story you know baseball reference is doing a small a small part here and really you know it's important that we keep the researchers and the players, you know, in the center of the story and keep our eyes on their legacies and what they've done. And so really that's, you know, I think to me, that's where

almost all the credit goes in this story. And hopefully things will advance to the point where the data is complete and comprehensive and you can display anything for a player from the Negro Leagues from 1920 to 48 that you could for an American League or National League player. But for now, and I'd encourage people to go to your site and read about all of this in great detail, but what are some of the areas where as of today, you're not able to offer certain features or maybe you have to just do the best that you can with something like war for instance right so i mean for war war is a full season stat so we have been able to compute war for the players the one one caveat i would say is we haven't yet applied any

park factors to those numbers and so there probably are some numbers out there i think willie wells may maybe one player who's you, perhaps has a lot of inflation in his stats because his numbers need to be park adjusted a little lower than what they are now. So that's, you know, that's, and we, you know, the reason for that, that we haven't, haven't done that yet is because we don't have, you know, game by game results yet. And, you know, so home and road scoring is kind of the first step in computing a park factor for these teams. So that's one thing that you should keep in mind. The other is we don't, you know, for the 20s, you know, it's a little ironic that the further back you go, we actually have some more data. And so in the late 40s, you know,

you saw the kind of, you know, the black press was reporting on a lot, most of these games, but they started to focus more on Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby. And so there was less coverage in the newspapers at the time for some of these seasons. And so, you know, that is a little bit of a challenge. We're missing, you know, bigger numbers of games. For instance, Willie Mays, you know, hit a home run in 1947 as a 17-year-old, but we don't have the box score for that game. So that home run is not included in our records at the moment. So it's, you know, there's always, you know, you have to accept it's going to be different than what maybe you've come to

expect from the white major leagues that we cover. And so, you know, but keep in mind the reasons for that. Like I said earlier, you know, all the time and money and investment in compiling those statistics, that's work that still needs to be done. And so, you know, we're at the start of that process, not the end. And so, you know, I encourage people to have an open mind and hopefully, you know, perhaps we'll see some of your listeners contribute to that process. And there are essays that people should read about how this data came to be. And Gary Ashwell has a piece about building the SeamHeads Necrileaks database. And to be clear, like there are a lot of box scores that have been collected.

And so the game by game data could be parsed, right? It just hasn't been, or, you know, wasn't yet. It hasn't been yet. And then, so that's obviously a big, big thing on our wishlist is that, you know, we will be having Josh Gibson or Willie Wells Fox scores or game logs on our site is obviously a direction we want to head. And I think, you know, the other question is, you know, these stats are different and the leagues were in a different context than the white major leagues of the time. And so, you know, the Kansas City Marhawks, for example, had a number of seasons where they played purely as an independent team, but they were playing a lot of these league teams that we're including on our site. So there may be a step at some point where we start to recognize some of these independent seasons as major league seasons and incorporate those into the site. I think for us, probably we launched a soccer site three years ago.

In the world of internet of football of world football things are much uh less clear and there's so many different competitions and different phases and different things like that so probably we're probably a little more inclined at this point to work with that ambiguity and maybe accept it as as part of the process and so you know i think i think you'll see some recognition going forward at some point that some of these other contexts should be included as age-related performances. And I guess in all of your work on this and your reviewing of the site, is there any specific discovery that you've come across or something that was new to you or a player or a league or

a team that you have come to appreciate more just from perusing all of this information that's now available at your site you know to be honest with you we've been running so fast to get this out the door i'm not sure that i've taken the time to really appreciate uh you know what what what all the changes are so it's it's uh you know i i think, you know, not a number or a particular player, but just the generosity of everyone we've worked with. People have been very open to working with us. And, you know, I hope that indicates we have a strong reputation and people trust us to do things the right way and do things in a respectful way.

But just everybody's generosity has really been phenomenal. And, you know, we really feel honored that we've been able to do this and work on this project. Yeah. Oh, and I guess one last thing, and this is maybe more Jay Jaffe's department, but when it comes to the Hall of Fame, it has been quite a long time since a Negro Leagues player was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. And so I wonder whether you think this will give any impetus to not just any particular player's chances, but just, you know, any player who is deserving. I know that you have updated career totals on the new site where you show, you know, players who played in the Negro Leagues and also in the AL or NL, and you show how this changed their stats. And

someone like Mini Mignoso, for instance, gets a boost to his career totals because of this. So whether it's that or it's, you know, players who spent their whole careers in the Negro Leagues and maybe have fallen under the radar for whatever reason, having this available, is that another hope of yours that that will burnish some players' cases or at least bring them back into the public eye? Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, we see our role as providing the risk for those discussions.

And so anybody who wants to make those cases, please come to the site and look at a lot of pages and make your case. So it's, you know, I certainly hope that, you know, that this will lead to more people using the site and just learning more about these players and the role they played in baseball's history you know it's been too big of a gap in our site and and so we're the fact we're now able to you know to fill this gap and do this is something we're very excited about so i i hope every you know please give the give the um look at the players and talk talk about you about your new favorite player that you found. There are going to be lots of great stories and lots of great players that aren't in the Hall of Fame

or you don't know about or that I didn't know about that we're going to learn about. And so I think that's going to be most of the fun. All right. Well, I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone who's listening to this podcast how or where to find Baseball Reference, but just go to baseballreference.com right now. As you are hearing this, it should be live and you can just go to the homepage and you'll see the big banner right there. The Negro Leagues are major leagues and you can click there, read all the new content or just browse the site to your heart's content as you would normally. and you'll see a whole lot of new features and new faces there. So, Sean, thanks for helping make that happen and for coming on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both. Well, after we finished speaking to Sean, he emailed me to give me an update on the new 20,000th Major League or two debut, according to Baseball Reference, which would probably be different from MLB's quote unquote official 20, 20,000th because baseball reference starts its count with the National Association, whereas MLB begins with the National League.

That said, Sean reports that Dustin Ackley and Randall Delgado are listed as co-number 19,999s, but Ackley debuted on the West Coast and Delgado was an East Coast starter, so that means that much to Meg's amusement, another Seattle player, Dustin Ackley, is the new number 20,000. I should also note that after we recorded our intro, Albert Pujols had a pinch hit single, further bolstering his stats as a Dodger, which are now up to 258-303-532. The Angels lost, the Blue Jays lost, but Vlad Jr. homered again, number 22, and his slashline on the season is now up to 346 451 697.

That'll do it for 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. Henry Thornton, Lucas Allen Dawson, John McMillan, Ellis Farson, and Eric Walsh.

Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at 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 another episode soon. Talk to you then. I only want to make my name For others who never had the chance Lay down at some time to push you back