Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1709: Number One With a Bullet

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on previous discussions about player predictions and game postponements, answer listener emails about a sticky-stuff pitcher protest, the talent level in the College World Series, the wave as a player-distraction device, a six-year-old who roots for walks, and when the Astros will stop being booed (with an aside […]

I never get your bullet out of my head now, baby I never get your bullet out of my mind I never get your bullet out of my head now, baby I never get your bullet out of my mind How can I get your bullet out of my head now? Hello and welcome to episode 1709 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing all right.

Shall we take a one-day break from foreign substances? Can we talk about other things? Is that possible? You know, I think that baseball is a beautiful and complicated game that continues to thrill and surprise me every day. So I imagine that we can manage it. It might take a little work, but I think we can try. I imagine it may come up again next week, just possibly. But for today, at least, let's do

an old school episode. Before we used to talk about foreign substances every day, we will do some emails, we'll do a stat blast, we'll meet some major leaguers. We'll play all the hits. So just to start, a couple of follow-ups to things we talked about last week and readers wrote in to share interesting anecdotes. successes. And we kind of came to the conclusion, or at least the suspicion, that a big part of this is that players are constantly predicting these things and that we only hear about them when they actually happen, which skews the perception of how prescient players are. So we got an email from Clay who writes, have been listening to your episodes about players making predictions and wanted to share an example that represents one of the most historic moments in Twins history while being acknowledged by many as yet another empty prediction. Dick Bremer, Twins broadcaster, in his book Game Used, which came out last year, recounts Kirby Puckett's speech in the locker room before Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. While many fans recall what

has been known as an amazing prediction of his heroics in game six, most don't realize that Puckett made these types of predictions all the time. And in fact, it was a running joke in the clubhouse. While I love to romanticize the history of baseball and especially a rare Twins playoff victory, it seems to me that this locker room prediction was nothing more than an empty promise. So he sent us a picture from Bremer's book, and it says the Twins were on the brink of elimination. They had let a 2-0 lead in the series slip through their fingers, and now the Braves could win the World Series

if they could find a way to win one of two at the Metrodome. According to Twins lore, Kirby Puckett walked into the clubhouse before Game 6 and loudly proclaimed that he was driving the bus that night and everybody had better get on board. He then went out and did what he promised. Of course, he hit the game-winning homer and he had the legendary catch. In reality, Puckett did that on a regular basis, the prediction that is, whether it was a World Series game or a relatively insignificant game in May. It became a bit of an amusing cliche in the Twins Clubhouse. At one point, Randy Bush, who seldom started, walked in with the same boisterous proclamation,

and everyone busted out laughing. So there are some other stories and corroborations about this and the idea that this was kind of a regular thing for Puckett when he retold the story years later, and this is in a Tim Kirchhen piece. Puckett said, I went to the clubhouse and I gathered everyone up. I said, everybody together, we're going to have a short meeting. Everybody comes in. And I said, guys, I just have one announcement to make. You guys should jump on my back tonight. I'm going to carry us.

And other twins and former teammates have said that, yeah, this was kind of a Puckett thing to do, that he did this kind of all the time. And there's a story from 2009 that I was just reading that does make it seem as if he made a more specific prediction later in the game. So this is from the Pioneer Press. press. It says, it turns out Kirby Puckett actually did call his famed homer in the 1991 World Series for the Twins. Terry Crowley, in town this week as hitting coach of the Baltimore Orioles, was a Twins coach from 1991 to 98. He has a special memory, game six of the 1991 World Series, when Puckett's famous 11th inning walk-off home run advanced the Twins to game seven, which they won. Nicknamed Crow, Crowley was among the first people Puckett eagerly embraced on the field after the historic clout to left field.

There was a reason, and most people were not aware. On some replays of the tape, if the crowd noise is diminished, Crowley said, you can hear Puckett tell me, I told you so, Crow. Just before Puckett went to bat against Charlie Liebrandt, he told Crowley he was about to end the game with a home run. Puckett told me, Crow, if they leave Liebrandt in there told Crowley he was about to end the game with a home run. Puckett told me, Crow, if they leave Liebrandt in there, this game is over. That's the God's honest truth. That's fact. And that happened. If you listen to the tape, he gives me a hug and says, Crow, I told

you. And I said, yeah, you did. And then the story goes on to say that Puckett's pal and teammate, Kent Herbeck, said Wednesday he couldn't recall Puckett specifically forecasting the homer, but he also said it wouldn't surprise him. You know, Puck, how he liked to talk, Herbeck said Wednesday he couldn't recall Puckett specifically forecasting the homer, but he also said it wouldn't surprise him. You know, Puck, how he liked to talk, Herbeck said. He was always saying, jump on, I'm driving the bus. He talked like that all the time, but he had the guts to back it up. So great game, legendary game, but maybe not quite as impressive that he predicted it as it might seem. It seems like more of a catchphrase than a prediction, right?

Yeah. Like, I know that the verbiage varied a little bit, you know, maybe game to game. But yeah, it seems more like a catchphrase than it is necessarily a prediction. Yeah. I guess if he specifically predicted a Homer off Liebrand, that was more of a prediction, but maybe he did that all the time too. I'm going to hit a homerun every time. Anyway, that's a little backup for our theory there. And then we got one more email from Brent, which was in response to our discussion on episode 1705 about teams calling or delaying games.

And we answered a question about whether teams could do some gamesmanship by delaying postponing games because teams before the game starts have the authority to call a game on account of weather. call a game on account of weather. And the question was about, well, if you wanted seven inning games, if that was more advantageous to you because of your pitching staff, then maybe you could kind of game the system to work that out. And we talked about whether that would actually be advantageous, but I was sure that we would get someone telling us an example of a time that something like this had actually happened because it certainly seems plausible. And Brent says, every Braves fan is familiar with the times the Nationals intentionally delayed a game. And this was actually pretty recent. This was just a few years ago, July 2017. And the Nationals had a situation where they delayed a game where it wasn't raining and seemingly the weather was

fine. So I'm reading from a story in the Chicago Tribune here. The Nationals have tried more than once now to apologize for what happened Thursday night when fans were given little information about why a dry, tarp-free baseball field could not accommodate baseball, about whether those circumstances might change, and about what they should do if they had already invested hundreds of dollars into food, tickets And parking but could not stay The immediate answer was nothing Many fans spent the night being angry

Extremely angry and if they wanted a public Voice for their frustrations they could look Inside the Braves television broadcast booth Where Chip Carrey and Joe Simpson Repeatedly filleted the Nationals for their Handling of the situation This is a travesty. This really is, Simpson said about an hour into the delay

when the field was dry and the tarp still ensconced in its wrapper. I hope MLB looks into this because this is a blatant abuse of gamesmanship by the Nationals, in my opinion. As you see, there's no tarp on the field. There's the tarp. It's still got its cover on it. It's not even unrolled in anticipation

of any rain that, as you said, is expected to get here not until nine o'clock. If it gets here, we could have already played five or six innings by the time the rain might get here. This is all about the Nationals fearing they might start the game and lose Gio Gonzalez and then have the game started later and then have to go to their bullpen, which we all know is the worst in baseball. This is a horrible attempt by the Nationals to manipulate this. And of course, maybe some bias there on the part of Braves broadcasters, but that was a theory among angry fans of both teams. The Trib said that the relief pitching bereft Nats were trying to avoid burning Gonzalez for three innings and then turning the game over to the guys beyond right field. If that was their motivation, it sort of worked out. Gonzalez went six innings and sort of didn't. Four relievers pitched, allowing five hits and two runs, and the Nets lost anyway. So that's a real-life possible example. And evidently, even Bryce Harper was upset about this and said in some video on social media that it shouldn't have happened and that it was absolutely brutal.

So I don't know whether that argues against the theory. But anyway, there's a pretty recent possible precedent. Just play baseball when you have the opportunity to play baseball. And don't mess about with – it's really just the worst thing you can do to your fans. Because I think that we get spoiled because if we want to go to a game for work purposes, we can just do that for work purposes. Like going to baseball can be work. And like I am approximate to a pretty bad baseball team right now.

And so sometimes it's easy to just go for cheap when you don't want to work. But a lot of people don't, you know, they might get to go to one game a year. And that's it. And it's expensive and it requires planning. And you got to make snacks for your kids and like figure out how you're going to distract them when they get bored in the middle innings. And you should, you know, you should be respectful of all that time and effort that people expend to come see the product. So, you know, you should be respectful of all that time and effort that people expend to come see the product.

So, you know, don't mess about. And if you do, I hope you lose on the back end every time. So I just want to think about that. All right. Let's get to some emails. I know I said that we weren't going to talk about sticky stuff today, but we did get a bunch of emails about it. Oh, Ben. I'll pick one.

One just because it's a weird, effectively wild hypothetical that is related to sticky stuff. So Sean says, from what I understand, any pitcher caught using a foreign substance will be suspended 10 games with pay and their team cannot replace them on the active roster. Along with this announcement has come the assumption that pitchers will comply. My question is, why don't pitchers resist? comply. My question is, why don't pitchers resist? Unless I miss something, pitchers will likely miss only one start, as rotations can be adjusted to avoid missing two. Pitchers will still be paid while under suspension, so the only true punishment is teams will have to go without a full active roster for 10 games. That, my friends, is a management problem, not labor's problem. The way I see it, every pitcher in the league should stand united and keep on pitching as they

have been, especially seeing as Tyler Glass now has become the first test case that complying with the rule could be detrimental to pitchers' health. What is baseball going to do? Suspend every single pitcher? Force teams to use position players on the mound for 10-game stretches until pitchers return and start the process all over again? There's no way. MLB picked this fight, and the players can absolutely win it if they so choose. It wouldn't take many suspensions before the cracks in this new legislation would begin to show.

In less than a week, it would become a crisis and MLB would have no choice but to back down or make revisions to the rules. Having already made one unnecessary scene, is the league really going to be motivated to make this an even bigger story during its brief window when it doesn't have to compete with the NBA, NHL, or NFL for headlines. Actually, there are plenty of NBA headlines these days. The more I think about it, the less reason I see for pitchers to comply. MLB could have done this quietly over the winter and allowed pitchers to make necessary adjustments leading up to the season and into spring training, but it didn't. For pitchers to simply give in would completely let MLB off the hook for the negative attention this has brought to the sport to every pitcher I say choose chaos what say you Ben and Meg and just one thing I will say is something that Jeff Passan wrote in his column this week which makes this sound slightly slightly less far-fetched Jeff wrote players aggrieved by

mid-season enforcement are engaging in amusing what-ifs with teammates. Like what if, in protest, every pitcher on a team went to the mound with a giant splotch of pine tar in his hand and got ejected one by one? Would that be the sort of statement that simultaneously embarrasses baseball, illustrates how farcical they believe the rules to be, and brings them to the table for a discussion? It's cathartic and it's amusing and it's probably rhetorical. Probably. So that lends some credence to the idea that it's not just Sean who has had this idea cross his mind. I think that you would have a collective action problem. It would be one thing to be able to get everyone on your team to do that but you'd also have to get everyone on the other team to do that right you'd have to you'd have to collaborate with your opposing players because i think that the question underestimates the degree to which

players want to do two things i think that they want to win, first of all, which is why they're using spider attack in the first place. And so the idea of sacrificing a win in order to stage a protest that probably doesn't actually result in the kind of change that they're anticipating or wanting seems unlikely to me. But also like their teammates, you you know they work with people and we like it when our co-workers like us yeah you know and so i think that part of what this rule presupposes is that major league baseball players are not universally i'm going to do a swear are not universally assholes and so they would like it if their teammates who are there to win, whether they are other pitchers who may or may not themselves be using a foreign substance, or position players will be put in a position to best win. And I don't say that as if them staging a protest would be like a moral failing on their

part. I think that there might be something striking about that. Given the current sort of posture that the league has taken toward players when it comes to both this issue and many other issues, I don't know that the reaction the league would have would be a conciliatory one so much as a defiant one. And so maybe you would do this and maybe it would work, but I think you'd have to be really sure. And in the meantime, you're doing a slightly less objectionable version of like microwaving fish at work maybe right and again like we we spent a bunch of time on our last episode talking about the the limitations that we saw and the issues that we saw with the way the league decided to go about enforcement i don't need to reiterate or relitigate any of that and i don't mean to say

that i think that the way that they're doing this is like perfect or anything like that. But I think that generally, they are going to want to attempt to win baseball games. And so they will do that, even if the way they go about it could be potentially harmful to them from an injury perspective or or a performance perspective and i think that what is likely to happen what's likely to happen is not a big protest but someone trying to be sneaky like the way that they will try to circumvent this and sort of have their cake and eat it too have their spider attack and you wouldn't want to eat it it's probably very bad for your teeth yes is that they will just attempt to fool the umpires they will just try to do it anyway and some of them will succeed and some of them will succeed and some of them will fail and get ejected and get suspended. But the way that the league is going about implementing this, both in terms of the inability of teams to replace the pitcher on the roster and

the punishments that are present for other members of the organization, should they either facilitate the use of foreign substances or fail to sort of curtail it sufficiently suggests to me that they they are trying to simultaneously make this a individual and collective effort and problem for organizations and so i think that like you might get a nasty gram not only from your teammates but like from other from front office folks being like so you have done this and now I'm facing consequences from the league office. So that all taken together makes me think that they will not do it, but I have been wrong before. Yeah, I think for multiple reasons, this won't happen. I think for one thing, it would be pretty impossible to get every pitcher on board. Some pitchers are okay with this. Some pitchers don't mind the ban. They may prefer a slightly less comprehensive ban, but I think some pitchers are okay with it.

And especially some pitchers who have not been using foreign substances, if there are any, or at least that have been using less potent foreign substances are probably pretty happy now that the pressure won't be on them, that maybe relative to other pitchers, they will perform better now. So you wouldn't even get universal support among pitchers for this. And then hitters would be pissed, I think, because most hitters are probably happy with this in the broad strokes, at least. So you'd really get a big pitcher versus batter civil war in every clubhouse. I know there are clicks already, but it would get pretty heated. And players want to win, as you said, and this would hurt your chances of winning unless you could really count on every

single other team to do it. I think it would be a tough sell. Also, there'd be a huge public backlash. I mean, fans, whatever sympathy that fans have for pitchers now, which there are certainly some fans already in the tough, they were cheating. So whatever happens to them now, they deserve camp. But I think if this happened, if pitchers just came out and said, we are not going to play because we're not allowed to cheat anymore, that would, from a PR perspective, be a pretty untenable position. They would surrender whatever sympathy points they have earned, I think. There's some sympathy now, but if you took it to this step where it's like, I'm going to go so far as to basically throw the game, I don't think you would have really anyone on your side supporting that kind of action. battle sort of played out between the players and the owners last summer when they were trying to

determine how they were going to return to play in the course of the pandemic was there were definitely people who are still like just play i don't care like take less money around but i think that there were a fair number of people who found the players position persuasive and part of that was that they wanted to play more games yeah right like they were on the side of let's play as many games as possible please whereas at various times the owners seem to be saying let's play fewer games please and so i think that you're right like the dynamic is such that they have to be conscious not only of how this plays in terms of its efficacy in negotiation with with the league but also in our understanding of them as people and players and they don't want to be perceived as like stridently trying to cheat. I thought that the way that Garrett Cole talked about this

yesterday after his start was both reasonable and I think probably the smart approach, which was to say like our issue was with implementation. We're aligned with the commissioner's office. We just want to work with you, right? Please include players in your process because we're the ones who are gripping the ball. And that seems like a pretty reasonable perspective to have, especially for a guy who's, you know, for better or worse, kind of become the face of this controversy along with Bauer. So I think that they do need to be mindful of how they are presenting themselves, especially because the interests of players are not aligned completely on this. And they don't want to sow further division.

And so, yeah, I think we are unlikely to see heavily gooped guys trot out one after another. We will not have a Spartacus moment. So it's too bad. I agree. All right. Well, we've got the College World Series starting this weekend. So here's a question related to the college tournament. This

is from Blake, who says, please settle a work debate. Meg talked about college tournament starting on a recent episode. So hopefully this is somewhat timely. I live in Sioux City, Iowa, which is about an hour from Omaha where the College World Series is played. A couple of my coworkers were raving about how nice it was to be able to go to the College World Series and watch such high level baseball within a short driving distance. I said that it's funny people always say that about the College World Series when we could stay in Sioux City and see the Sioux City Explorers of the American Association, which is a higher level of baseball than college. To me, the College World Series is more about the fun atmosphere than blessing myself with a level of baseball I cannot find anywhere else. The Explorers are pretty good for the American Association. I said they would dominate teams in the College World Series because most Explorers players have played at a higher

level than elite college players will start at. They looked at me like I was a space alien and said I was crazy. Who are you taking in a best of seven series? A pretty good independent team like the Sioux City Explorers or an elite college team like Vanderbilt? I have the Explorers in five because Vandy's pitching is good enough to take a game. So I put this question to Eric Longenhagen, our lead prospect analyst. And so anything that I'm about to say that sounds goofy is a result of me bumbling the translation of what he said. is a result of me bumbling the translation of what he said. And anything that is smart is his doing.

So I'll just say that in case I goof something and he listens to this and is like, oh, Meg, you got that wrong. In talking to him, it sounds like this is a bit closer than Blake is maybe thinking it is. But there are some places on the roster where the dynamic he is describing would play out. So if you take a team like Vanderbilt, I think that Blake is underestimating the degree of quality of prospect

that are sort of their top guys, right? The ability of someone like a lighter or a rocker to really take over a game is pretty pronounced. And some of their position players are sort of a better caliber of prospect than the guys who he is pointing out on the explorers. But the place where he, I think, probably gets this right is when you go sort of further down both on the position player side and on the pitching side, where college teams are going to be at a decided disadvantage in a scenario like this is when it comes to depth. So the 10th best pitcher

on Vanderbilt going up against guys who sort of topped out at double A, you're probably going to get rocked by those guys. Those guys are going to mess up that kid's day. And so I think that it is closer. I don't think that it would necessarily be they win one game and that's that. But when you start to get deeper into their, you know, their rotation into their bullpens is where you're really going to start to see that. And there are going to be teams that make it to Omaha or who played in like the regionals and the super regionals that a team like the Explorers would just like knock around. So I think that there is variability here. And perhaps like one of the

places where we might think about this and sort of see the real difference is like the top college team in the country, Arkansas, right? When the Razorbacks were sort of facing down elimination in the Super Regionals, best team in the country, and they're relying on Kevin Copps, right? Like they looked around and said, we do not have anyone else who we feel more comfortable with. And some of that is a testament to Copps' ability, but some of it is just the reality of depth on a college roster where you look at it and say, we'd rather this mostly reliever throw 112 pitches in an elimination game than go to guys deeper into our rotation because of where the days where they were starting fell versus the regionals and the super regionals so i think it is based on my conversation with eric closer than what blake is is saying but he is hitting upon something right which is that when you get to

i don't know like let's look at the the sioux city explorers i had this page open earlier and then i closed it like a real like like just a dumb dummy, you know? But some of these guys had like really respectable double-A career lines. If you go look at how they played in the minors, like they were good hitters. And so going up against like the underbelly of Vanderbilt's bullpen or like their sixth starter, well's you know that's not the best but also like lighter and rocker can just take over a game so that that is my answer to this

but also ben like can we what would it take for you to get more excited about college baseball because can i can i share an insight that i had and i shared it with with your fellow i don't care about this comrade in arms, Greg Goldstein. So I watched a lot of the regionals and the super regionals. And we talked to Craig at length about the ways that we can make the game sort of more dynamic, the underlying realities of the way that teams not only position their defenders, but the skill of those defenders and what it's really going to take to get more action on the field and not just have balls in play get gobbled up by well-positioned defenders. And I realized that like what you're describing is just college

baseball, man. It's just like college ball because sometimes they make these beautiful, incredible defensive plays and you sit there and you're like that kid's a prospect and then sometimes they just boot balls and you're like oh oh boy and it's just you just you like college ball your platonic ideal of baseball is pro quality players playing college baseball yeah i think we need to put ankle weights on them or like really do make the gloves smaller maybe put holes in the gloves like more holes in the gloves i don't know man but like i think that what you really want is just college baseball yeah that is basically the case that michael bauman has made to be in his many fruitless attempts to persuade me to care about college baseball is that it's just fun it's a brand of baseball that is a little different from Major League

Baseball because of the caliber of competition not being quite as high. It's just a little less predictable and funky and strange stuff happens. And there's no such thing as a routine play, really. And I understand the appeal of that. One thing I do appreciate about it is that we talk about the biodiversity of Major League Baseball, right? And that's something you certainly get at that level where you see a lot of strange stuff that mostly doesn't make it to the majors because players have to specialize and maybe only certain skill sets tend to work at that level. So you see a lot of two-way players in college. You see just funky deliveries and weird looking bodies and

just all kinds of diversity when it comes to physical skills and appearance. So that is a selling point, but I don't know. I guess it's just that I only have so much time and attention to distribute and Major League Baseball is more than enough to occupy the amount of time and attention that I have to lavish on baseball, basically. And the players are the most physically skilled and talented. And maybe there are some downsides to that, but also there are a lot of upsides to that. So it's not college specifically that I am disregarding. It is, well, most other sports I don't pay that close attention to and most lower levels of baseball just because there's a lot of baseball being played in the big leagues already.

It's not like I've exhausted all of the games and the potential storylines there. There's so much I miss and never see at that level that I'm trying to pay attention to. So it's partly that, I think. It's not so much college baseball's problem. It's not you. It's me. The catching might make you crazy. So that's the other part of it.

And I don't mean the framing is bad, although often the framing is bad. The actual just receiving is sometimes you're like, but is there butter on your mitt? Anyway, that's my plug for for college baseball if you if folks have not been watching the the tournament i just was so impressed with the quality of the broadcast for both the college world series and all of the college softball world series coverage like espn just did a really good job. I know we like to poke fun at the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast on occasion, but there's really good sports to be had. It's really exciting to see them being embraced by a major network for both baseball and softball

because if you show people fun sports, they get excited about them and want to watch them again. I've just been very impressed and pleased by it. It's a lot of fun. So I hope people who maybe want to check out something new, take some time as we march to Omaha to do that because it's pretty cool. Yeah. Another nice thing about college baseball is that maybe because the stakes are a little lower, at least in some places, or there's a little less scrutiny or there's more turnover, you do get a lot of analytical experiments and innovation that happens there. So tactics and strategy and player development practices, a lot of major league teams have of late been plucking coaches

from college because they've really been on the cutting edge in a lot of cases. And a lot of college programs have these pitching labs and player development machines that were predating a lot of big league organizations making those moves and some strategies. You'll see like the mid-plate appearance pitching change, which I talk about from time to time, which doesn't happen in the majors, does happen in college sometimes. So that's just another example of just seeing a broader range of possibilities maybe in college baseball than you see in the majors. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

All right. Here is a question from Simon. So I just finished attending my first live game in a year and a half, the result being a typical Angel 6-2 loss. It was great to be reminded of all the great experiences one can have in a ballpark, such as watching Shohei Otani leg out a hustle double and triple. Unfortunately, this question is not about those experiences. In the top of the eighth, the crowd sustained a fairly consistent wave for most of the inning. During this wave, Junior Guerra gave up a five pitch walk to Jed Lowry and immediately followed it up by allowing a home run to Seth Brown. Once the wave ended, Guerra retired the next six batters he faced. This got me thinking,

besides being annoying for fans, does the wave distract players, particularly pitchers and hitters, or is this just a classic version of the post-hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy? Moreover, if you think the wave does have detrimental effects for on-field performance, how would you go about trying to measure it and establish causality? More broadly, has anyone tried to quantify the effect fans have on the game in some systematic way? Thanks for reading this perfectly useless question that nevertheless deserves an answer. I mean, it definitely doesn't matter, right? No, I don't think it matters.

I don't think it matters. I mean, you'd have to I don't think it matters. I don't think it matters. You'd have to account for any number of things. You'd have to account for the quality of the pitcher and the hitter, for one thing. If the result of the plate appearance is a walk, you're also needing to account for the quality of the umpire and the framing talents of the catcher. I really don't think that most players really notice fans at all. I really don't.

Like, I think that some amount of what we are measuring when we measure home field advantage probably is the energy in the park, right? I think that the general, you know, you hear players talk all the time about how good it feels to have fans back in sort of a general way. But I don't really think it matters beyond that. players talk all the time about how good it feels to have fans back in sort of a general way but i don't really think it matters beyond that i'm sure that we are already accounting for some amount of this in in home field advantage maybe like maybe it affects empires i don't know but i really just don't think that it makes any difference yeah you'd have to account for a lot of factors you'd have to record exactly when the

wave took place right and and like let's imagine for a moment that we thought the wave did matter right so we'll just take that as a given for the sake of this question do you think that it matters more for the pitcher if the wave is going on beyond behind home plate as he is preparing to well maybe as he is preparing to release the ball or as he is actually releasing the ball? Or do you think that it matters more for the hitter when the wave is happening in the outfield? What is our theory of wave efficacy even? You know what I mean? I don't even know.

Yeah, that's the problem with this. It's like, who do we think it matters for and when do we think it matters for them i think you'd have to have you'd have to have a you know a unified theory of the wave before you could possibly go about measuring whether or not it was having an impact on a given plate appearance right it could distract everyone equally and the effects would cancel themselves out and you'd never know. But I guess the closest comp would be basketball and fans trying to distract free throw shooters, which there's been a lot of writing about and we've talked about on the podcast before,

I think a few years ago when Arizona State was doing the whole curtain of distraction thing. And from what I've seen, most of the studies seem to suggest that that doesn't work either, that team free throw shooting percentages tend to be pretty similar on the road and at home. And maybe it's worked in some cases for some amount of time. And maybe there are certain patterns you could use that would be more distracting than others.

But on the whole, it doesn't seem to be a big deal. you could use that would be more distracting than others. But on the whole, it doesn't seem to be a big deal. And that's a case where you would think it would be and that it would clearly affect only the team that fans were trying to affect. And yet even that doesn't really seem to work so well. So it really seems like players are pretty talented at tuning out distractions like that, as they would have to be to get to that level. If there were players who were so distracted by heckles or fan noise, then they'd probably be filtered out pretty early on because that stuff is a staple even at lower levels of sports. So yeah, I just don't think it would make much of a difference. Mostly the wave isn't even in your field of vision most of the time because it's traveling all over the place. I guess the sound of it could be distracting, but really it's probably a leap. And in order to test it,

that's the other thing is that how could you even get a sample big enough to really, are you doing a wave constantly? And if you are, then is there even a distraction effect? Like the theoretical distraction comes from it being fairly rare. It's not the baseline. And so even if you did it once a game or something, and how long does it even happen? Half an inning? Even that would be long. So what sort of samples are you using here to compare wave versus non-wave?

So it would be difficult for any number of reasons. wave so it would be difficult for any number of reasons i think it is much more annoying to fans yeah at least at least to fans like me who don't like participating in things and resent being pressured to participate in the wave and i'm always the like wet blanket guy who's just sitting there when that happens and refusing to stand i refuse to be peer pressured into the wave. I mean, hey, if you have fun doing the wave, that's fine. I'm happy for you, but it's not my thing. I just think that like part of what's really lovely about baseball is that,

and I think I maybe wrote a short relief about this for Baseball Perspectives way, way back in the day. Like one of the really great things about baseball is that you get to sit, right? I greatly enjoy going to Seahawks games with my dad. It is just a really lovely thing that I get to do, and I'm grateful to do it. But the social expectation at that is that you are going to stand for just really most of the time, and you're going to scream for most of the time.

So it's really quite exhausting as an afternoon. And the thing with baseball is like sometimes you stand up, but like the general expectation is that you will be at rest, right? You will enjoy leisure. It will not be taxing on you. And so even setting aside the fact that it obscures your field of view, which is the part of it that I find the most irritating because look, some folks know when to wave and i don't think you should ever wave but like i i understand that there are circumstances where it is you know it's a blowout like let's say you're at a diamond packs game and uh and like people are gonna wave because it's like what else are they gonna do

but like you're sitting there and sometimes people they do do the wave at inopportune moments. Wave as a way to alleviate boredom in a game that is long won by one side or the other, but still marches toward its inevitable conclusion for a couple of more innings. That's one thing. Boredom wave I have some amount of tolerance for, even though I, like you, do not participate in it because I don't like being told to stand up when I'm comfortably sitting. Yeah. even though I, like you, do not participate in it because I don't like being told to stand up when I'm comfortably sitting. This is why I don't wear my Apple Watch just around the house

because I'm like, I don't need to be told to stand up, I know. Stop, leave me alone. Anyway, but sometimes people will do a wave because they are trying to do what this question assumes, which is influence the outcome on the field. And I would rather see the action please so don't don't do the wave is is what i think about that yeah that too i i always resent it

even if it's uh i'm at a concert if i'm at any kind of thing if we're standing like once one row stands then the row behind it has to stand And if the first people in front would just not stand, then we could all continue to sit and be at rest and expend less energy. And that will be like, oh, if you really love and understand baseball, you should not need to do the wave because you should just be zeroed in on every pitch. And these are just these casuals who are coming here and they think it's fun to do the wave. Why aren't they entertained by baseball? And I can acknowledge baseball is pretty boring sometimes. And so it is okay if you need to find some way to distract yourself. And that's why people are constantly looking at their phones or falling asleep or talking to their friends or whatever. And that's all fine. But the burden that you are imposing on those of us who

do not want to stand or participate, that is the thing that makes the wave objectionable to me. Yeah. It's not for me. It's not for me. I just like, it's so nice wave objectionable to me. Yeah, it's not for me. It's not for me. I just like, it's so nice to be able to sit. All right, here's a question from Scott about walks and the next generation. He says, one positive byproduct of the pandemic is that my six-year-old daughter is really into baseball.

We're coming off her first season of Little League baseball and watch or listen to games most evenings, usually the Mets. One thing I've noticed is that in addition to rooting for Grand Slams, as any self-respecting six-year-old should, she roots for walks much more often than hits. This has to be a function of the times and what she is seeing generally, and particularly with the Mets this year. Ouch. particularly with the Mets this year. Ouch.

My question to you is, should I bother to quote unquote correct her and encourage her to root for hits? Or is this what baseball is going to be like for the near to long future? Well, no one think of the children. First of all, what a delightful email to get. What a great email. I'm so glad that you are getting to enjoy the game with your child. That is so lovely. What a great email. I'm so glad that you are getting to enjoy the game

with your child. That is so lovely. What a great thing. Let's start with that. That's just really heartwarming to me. I don't know. I think the children I don't know why I find this so lovely. I think that kids develop an aesthetic really early

and they root for stuff sometimes because it's sensical like as you're as the question notes like this is partly a result of the state of play but also like i don't know kids spend like years obsessed with paw patrol and they move on to other stuff so maybe the maybe walks are her Peppa Pig. And then she'll start to root for other stuff, for balls in play and for that kind of aesthetic to have its place. But I think that if you are blessed with a child who is just enthusiastic about baseball, you take whatever version of that you get and you just kind of run with it. I mean, like six is old enough to start answering questions and having a conversation about like what she's seeing on the field and what it means. But, and I say this as an aunt, not a parent. So like, you know, you can take it with the proper sort of positional adjustment,

if you will. But I have found my interactions around the game with my nieces to best occur naturally. So she asks you questions about what she's seeing. Then I think you start to have a conversation with her about it. But I think that if she's jazzed about baseball, you just let her be jazzed. She's appreciating discernment and. And a walk well earned. And I think that that's fine. Yeah. I'd love to know more about how this happened. Yeah.

What it was that made her such a fan of walks. Has Moneyball been her bedtime reading or what exactly happened here or what her rationale is why she finds walks so rewarding. But generally, we usually say there are a lot of different ways to enjoy baseball. And whatever floats your boat other than the wave is fine with us. So if this is what gets her into the game, like you, I would assume that she will grow out of this and that she will not be like a 40-year-old fan one day who is still rooting for walks over hits. But hey, I i mean walks are good opp is life as they say so i guess she has internalized that early on and that is good

i guess i wonder like is anything short of a grand slam disappointing to her then relative to walk like a single a double a triple is it all a letdown because it wasn't a walk or is it like all right that was good i guess it wasn't a walk but it was pretty exciting does she understand that hits are generally better than walks just because you can advance the runners more than one face like i i don't know the answers to those questions and if scott wants to fill us in more and share his daughter's perspective on this i'd be interested in hearing about it but i don't know i guess like if it's i guess part of your role as a parent is to teach and instruct so yeah if if

this is coming from like a failure to understand why hits are good and better than walks on the whole, then I guess you could share, hey, you know, on the whole, it's more beneficial to a team to have a hit because you could advance runners more. Like if she just doesn't know that, then I guess it would be good to impart that piece of wisdom. But hey, if she just enjoys walks then uh i say let her love what she loves yeah i think that that's right and and perhaps little league is the place where if there is sort of a a misunderstanding you know maybe that's the place that you you sort of do that course correction because you're already you know in the process of coaching right and

she's playing the game so she can kind of see you know in a very practical way the process of coaching, right? And she's playing the game. So she can kind of see, you know, in a very practical way, the benefit of one versus the other. But I think that, gosh, I wonder, what is her little league stat line? I know, I was going to say. Yeah, is she just like an OBB machine? If she refuses to swing because she only wants to walk, I would say at that point, maybe you take her aside and say, this is not great for the team.

And just out of obligation to your teammates, maybe you should swing every once in a while. It's like the people who used to accuse Joey Votto of taking too many pitches and he should have been a run producer and he should have been driving in runners. And that was probably mostly bunk. But if Scott's daughter is actually just taking all the pitches a run producer and he should have been driving in runners and that was probably mostly bunk but if scott's daughter is actually just taking all the pitches because she loves walk so much then yeah maybe like i don't know if uh your opponents can exploit that at age six i mean maybe they're

hitting off t's or something at that point anyway in which case you'd have to swing or maybe it's coach pitch or I don't know what it is, but probably you're not going to have an opposing pitcher on the mound who realizes, ah, Scott's daughter is not going to swing. I can just throw a bunch of strikes and strike her out every time. Do they even have strikeouts at that level? I don't know how Little League works at age six, but yeah, that's just kind of a basic, this is how baseball works and how runs are scored kind of conversation. Put her in against Jacob deGrom.

Yeah, right. She'd never swing. Doesn't make much of a difference anyway. And she'd never swing. And then maybe it would go better for her. I don't know. I'm referring to a piece that Devin Fink wrote for us at FanGraph. So I'm not just sitting here being a weirdo about Jacob deGrom.

I might also be being a weirdo, but not just that. Right. just sitting here being a weirdo about jacob degram i might also be being a weirdo but not just that right but from a certain perspective he is uh so dominant with two strikes right that you theoretically might be better off not swinging except for the fact that once he realized that you were never swinging then he would be yeah it would be really bad but the one time yes that one first time uh kid naturally enthusiastic about baseball how cool what a nice thing that is nice Yes. By all accounts, the biggest cheaters on the Astros during the period of cheating were essentially in order Springer, Beltran, Gonzalez, Bregman, Gurriel, Correa, Marisnik, Gattis, McCann, White, Redick, and Altuve. Of those, only Bregman, Correa, Gurriel, and Altuve remain, and Altuve had the fewest bangs of almost anyone on the team despite having the most plate appearances. Nearly the entire pitching staff from that era is gone too.

having the most plate appearances. Nearly the entire pitching staff from that era is gone too. Of course, Bregman, Correa, and Gurriel are perhaps the three most notable cheaters outside of Springer, so maybe they have to depart before it's truly a ship of Theseus situation, but we are at roughly 20% of the original squad at this point. I can't speak for how much of the front office remains that was actually involved in the banging scheme, but I know some are still present along with a handful of dugout personnel. Are the Astros just destined to be the team that cheated forever and ever? How long do you think it

will take until advanced baseball fans stop booing them? Casual fans? I know the Yankees are the Yankees are the Yankees, even though they are fairly far gone from the team that won 27 championships. One title in 20 years isn't aggressive, but booing them for their history remains. Branching off of this,

were the Chicago White Sox roundly booed by all fans in the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal? If so, is there any documentation of when it cooled off? As far as I can tell, no one is out there today booing the White Sox because of the actions of Arnold Gandel. Are there other teams out there that became pariahs after certain events and did they catch the ire of the actions of Arnold Gandel. Are there other teams out there that became pariahs after certain events

and did they catch the ire of the whole baseball world to the extent of the Astros? So when will teams finally leave those poor Astros alone? Yeah, well, I think that there are two things that determine the timeline here. And the first is the continued presence on the roster of individual players who were on the team at the time of the banging scheme, regardless of their level of participation.

Because I think even just one, and you're going to boo that player if you're on the road. Because we see that individual players who hit big home runs against a franchise in a pivotal playoff moment will get booed, even if the team that they hit that home run for isn't the team that they're on anymore, right? So like, I think that that does follow us. Like people just, gosh, I can't think of an example right now. But you know, people booed... Ryan Braun, right? People booed Ryan Braun. For the rest of his career, yeah. That's a perfect example. People booed Ryan Braun just forever and ever and ever. So I think that one thing that will dictate the timeline is the composition of the roster. And then I think

the other thing that's going to dictate the timeline is what else happens in the broader ecosystem of baseball to put that particular scandal in context. I don't think that most people view sticky stuff the same way they view the banging scheme, but we know that other teams have been rumored to participate in illegal sign stealing, and there are all kinds of other scandals that might pop up along the way as we go here because we just do a really great job of avoiding those as a sport. So I think that the other part of it that will kind of affect how how the team is perceived is whether they are still the most recent sort of team specific sort of concentrated example of scandal and if that stops being true they probably will continue

to get booed but the ire is probably going to be directed elsewhere. But I think that some people are just stubborn. So the organization will always be synonymous in their mind with something that was taken from them. Like I think that it'll take, even if it were to come out tomorrow, and I don't say this like knowing anything, just to be very, very clear. I think that we should be careful about accusing people.

I'm cheating. I'm referencing Twitter drama, which is immature. But I think that if it were to come out tomorrow that the Dodgers had an equivalent level system in place to garner signs, Dodgers fans would still boo the Astros at any opportunity because they feel like they had something taken from them. And it doesn't matter if the individuals involved

are still present because the loss is still something that they feel. And so there's sort of going to be a normal distribution, right? And the tails are going to be, I think, fervent for a long time. But I think that most people will move on eventually once the the roster has fully turned over and i think the amount of time that passes between the revelations of the sign stealing scandal and the number of years that we are back in the ballpark will have a big impact on it too because you know if you look at the team now as this email says like very few members of that squad are still present on the roster and And granted, some of the most high-profile players are, but in percentage terms, it's quite small. But this is the first chance that anyone gets to give them the business.

Right, exactly. So they're going to be enthusiastic about giving them that business. But next year, maybe we don't care as much because we've had the chance to get it out. Yeah, exactly. I think that's a big part of it i think if fans had had the opportunity to taunt them in person last year we probably wouldn't even still be talking about this now like i think maybe as soon as next season there will still be a smattering of boos for the team and certainly for individual players but i don't think we'll be seeing routine headlines all over like, oh, the Astros went

to this city they hadn't visited before and they got booed. I think, yeah, fans will kind of get it out of their system. And it's sort of silly sometimes. Like recently, the Astros got booed big time in Boston. And it's like, all right, your manager is Alex Cora. He came up with the system like, you know, Marwin Gonzalez is on that team. The Red Sox cheated too with sign stealing to a lesser degree, of course, but still. And that kind of cheating was probably pretty pervasive

and the Astros were doing that after 2017 as well. So, you's like a glass houses situation to some extent, but I know that the Astros took it further and had an attitude about it and a response to it that made people even more mad and people didn't like the Astros already. So it was piling on in addition to that. So yeah, I think this will start to die down and eventually people will just lose interest or it'll feel like, all right, it's probably time to let this go. But I did ask Jacob Pumranki from Sabre about the response to the Black Sox. He's a big Black Sox scholar. He's been on the show before to talk about them. And he says, that's a very good question. And unfortunately, there aren't many parallels here between the Black Sox and the Astros. For one simple reason,

the Black Sox players were suspended so close to the end of the 1920 season, and then they never played in the majors again, that fans in other cities never had much of a chance to boo them. There are some isolated cases of other players and occasionally some fans directing disparaging remarks toward the Black Sox in the summer and early fall, especially since rumors were swirling that they continued to throw more games during the 1920 regular season. Don Ziminda even found a few more suspected cases of 1920 fixed games in his new book, Double Plays and Double Crosses. But as soon as Eddie Seacott confessed to the grand jury on September 28th, there were only

three games left in the season. The White Sox players were immediately suspended. The rest of the team played out the string, season opened, in part because the team became so bad after losing all of their talented stars. So there wasn't this aura of defiance and count the rings like we see today from some Astros players who were on the team in 2017, which may be fueling some of the anger, as is probably the fact, this is me editorializing here now, that there were no suspensions in the asterisk case. And so fans feel like, OK, it's up to us to punish them, because in part that was stated as like an explicit punishment right by the league when it said, oh, they will still be punished, just not officially because it'll be a stain on their reputation. So fans are trying to uphold that part of it too. But I do wonder just, you know, the sticky stuff, as you mentioned, that doesn't seem to be as big a part of the conversation around that. Like,

are we going to hold this against players or certain teams? Like if a certain team, let's say suddenly lost 400 RPMs or something across the board next week. And that team had been successful recently and then stopped being successful. Would that team be targeted? Would it have the same stain on its record? Would it be known as the sticky stuff team? Maybe it would be the Astros also, or maybe it would be some other team, but that kind of thing, or is this going to affect a player's Hall of Fame chances or something like that? I don't think it would in the same way. At least I don't think it would be considered disqualifying the way that if you have some PD stain attached to your name, a lot of voters just say automatically no, or especially if it's after testing was put in place. It's an automatic No for some people maybe with Carlos Beltran if he had a hand in Engineering the sign stealing scheme Maybe that will be held against

Him potentially he's probably A borderline Hall of Fame guy anyway I would certainly vote for him based on His performance record but some people Might hold the sign stealing against him so I don't see how sticky stuff could be Considered a deal breaker in the same way especially Because there are already so many Hall of Famers who are associated with and even celebrated for ball scuffing and spitballing and cheating by defacing the ball or putting something on it.

So what grounds would you have to keep someone out on that basis? Not that there aren't also Hall of Famers who use PEDs or stole signs, but if they did, it's not as big a part of their legacy as doctoring the ball is for some great pitchers. If you had like a borderline pitcher and it turned out that he suddenly became a lot less effective once the sticky stuff ban were put into place and he lost a lot of spin or something, then I could see it not so much just because he cheated, but because it might call into question his previous performance. And was he only good because he was cheating? Right.

I just don't think that we're approaching it that way. And part of this is that, like, I think that even fans who view the sticky stuff, conversation, discourse, scandal, like, I don't even know that I want to call it a scandal. course scandal like i don't even know that i want to call it a scandal but this you know even fans who are viewing that and and find it really really objectionable right or maybe putting it on sort of maybe not equal footing but closer to equal footing with steroid use than we are i think that there is an acknowledgement that this is like a widespread and sort of institutional issue and steroid use was or the the continued prevalence of steroid use was an institutional issue also. So I don't mean to say that it isn't, but I think that we have learned from what that time looked like in our understanding of individual culpability versus

institutional culpability. And we're just looking at it differently than we did. It's like I said last time, I think most people are just refusing to start a moral panic about this. We're like, it's not the way that we're viewing this. And so I don't imagine that it's going to impact the Hall of Fame chances of anyone. I would say I would be surprised if it did, even if somebody gets popped and suspended after the ban goes into effect on Monday, you know, or the renewed enforcement.

Like, I just don't think people are going to think about it the same way. I don't know. No, I don't think they would in the sense that like, oh, they're a cheater. And so we can't put them in because of that. I think it just might in the sense that you might discount their previous performance. If you thought that it was purely or largely a product of cheating, then you might say, oh, well, he wasn't good after that. And so he was really propped up by the sticky stuff.

But I think it's just so pervasive that, I mean, if everyone was doing it, then how mad can you be at any particular player or team? Like no one's the face of it. I mean, I guess Bauer is kind of the face of it, but Bauer is considered by some a positive figure in the story because he brought attention to it. There isn't really anyone who is sort of to the degree that the Astros are associated with science dealing or that it was so much more blatant than what everyone else was doing, which seems to be the case potentially with the Astros. So I just I don't think it's the same sort of story.

him into a bad pitcher, right? Like he is still going to be, I would imagine a very good pitcher. He just will have a little less spin on his four seamer. And so the guys where it really might be what's making the difference in their ability to stay in the majors, they're not going to be in the hall of fame conversation anyway, right? Those aren't the dudes that we're going to have to have this debate about. So, so yeah. Yep. All right. Well, we can wrap up with Meet a Major Leaguer. So I will do a quick stat blast first. Okay. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length,

and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Deistoplast. All right, so that was a question about a ship of Theseus. This is also a question about a ship of Theseus, or in this case, a lineup of Theseus. This question comes from Chris, who says, The Twins have had a lot go wrong for them this season, but one of the most frustrating has been injuries. Eight of the nine players from their opening day starting lineup have been or are on the IL, and their current roster has very little in common with what they started with. This made me wonder how many teams have fielded a lineup where it was completely different from their opening day lineup and none

of the players matched. Who had it happen the fastest? And like the Ship of Theseus thought exercise, how much is this the same team? Now I have a follow-up based on that what baseball team's opening day lineup contributed the least to a full season success bonus points for who did it while still making the postseason i will stop this email now before it spins off into another half a dozen stat blasts so the twins uh they have been hard hit i guess if you look at the baseball prospectus il ledger they actually don't really stand out in terms of days missed or wins above replacement player lost. So many teams have been hurt. They do haveyes is back. Max Kepler's about to be back. Byron Buxton seems to be nearing a return. But they've also had some new injuries

strike. Michael Pineda, Rob Refsnyder just went on the IL. Josh Donaldson and Andrelton Simmons left Wednesday's game with injuries. So it's not looking great there. Many other things have gone wrong for them. But it's true that there have been a bunch of guys from that opening day lineup who were very quickly removed from their lineup. So I sent this to

frequent StatBlast consultant, Ryan Nelson, who ran all the numbers and really went above and beyond here in answering all of Chris's questions. So reading from Ryan's response here, it turns out that this seems much rarer than I thought. Only 166 times in MLB history going back to 1871 has a team run out a lineup where zero of the nine hitters played on opening day for that team. That is just 0.04% of the time. The majority of these come late in the season. 60% came after game 150 and 80% came after game 130. My instinct is that these are mostly September call-up lineups where they let a bunch of kids play since the team is out

of contention. But there were nine times that a team ran out a no overlap lineup before game 100 and he lists them here. I will put all of the data for this online for anyone who wants to look at all of the specifics. But the 1951 Chicago Cubs were close to the quickest, June 22nd to June 24th. They're 56th, 57th, and 58th games. They had no overlap lineups. This is the second earliest ever to have one. Here's the opening day lineup and the reason for missing games 56 to 58. So Wayne Terwilliger, the second baseman, was traded to Brooklyn. Frank Baumholz, right fielder, off days. Hank Sauer, left fielder, off days. Unknown, could find no mention of the cause. Bill Serena, third baseman, injury, fractured wrist, sliding into second. Andy Pafko, center fielder, was traded to Brooklyn. Dee Fondy, first baseman, was sent down to AAA. Roy Smalley, shortstop, was out with an injury, an ankle fracture. Rube Walker, the catcher, was traded to Brooklyn. And Frank Hiller, the pitcher, was just in the rotation. He just missed those games. So this was mainly caused by a June 15th

blockbuster trade with the Dodgers. Johnny Schmitz, Rube Walker, Andy Pafko, and Wayne Terwilliger were traded by the Cubs to the Dodgers for Eddie Mixus, Bruce Edwards, Joe Halton, and Gene Hermanski. So that accounted for a lot of that turnover there. But this was not the earliest or weirdest no overlap lineup. That would go to the 1912 Tigers, who on May 18thth their 29th game of the season throughout quite the lineup for this one it was easier to explain who was in the lineup that day rather than who was missing and this is a famous game which we have talked about before the tigers lost 24 to 2 and he passes along the reason for this which we we have discussed in previous podcasts on may 18th, 1912, the Tigers

players went on strike to protest the suspension of star center fielder Ty Cobb, who had gone into the stands on May 15th to attack a disabled fan who had been abusing him. Rather than forfeit the next game, the Tigers sent out a team of replacement players, mostly local college and sandlot players, but also including Tigers coaches Joe Sugden and 48-year-old Deacon McGuire. Manager Huey Jennings also entered the game as a pinch hitter. Starting pitcher Alan Travers gave up 24 runs on 26 hits in a complete game loss, both American League records. So that's a pretty famous one.

If you count that, 29 games into the season is the record. If not, 56 is. If we go by the Twins' achievement, only one player from the opening day roster remaining is much more common, but still not very. It's happened 1,296 times, that's 0.29% of games, and it's happened at least once in 109 of the 120 seasons since 1900, including every season since 1958, except the shortened 1994 and 2020 seasons. Again, this usually happens later in the season, 67.5% of the time it happened in game 130 or later, but has happened pretty early in the season as well. It has happened 39 times in a team's first 60 games and five times in a team's first 30 games. And the fastest time was the 1933 St. Louis Cardinals, April 30th, the 15th game of the season.

Wow. Yeah, where the only player in both lineups was Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch. So that opening day, 1933 Cardinals lineup, Sparky Adams, third baseman, traded to Cincinnati after eight games. George Watkins, right fielder, benched for three games. Frankie Frisch was in there at second base. Ripper Collins, first base, benched for 15 games. George Watkins, right fielder, benched for three games. Frankie Frisch was in there at second base.

Ripper Collins, first base, benched for 15 games. Joe Medwick, left field, benched for two games or a day off. Ernie Orsatti, center fielder, benched for 15 games. Jimmy Wilson, catcher, day off or unknown. Gordon Slade, shortstop, replaced by Pepper Martin after three games. And Dizzy Dean, the pitcher, was off that day. And Ryan even dug into the archives here, found a contemporary news article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that may explain the rationale behind this one.

It says four new men to be in cards, new lineup today. When a shakeup is considered necessary, Charles E. Street, manager of the Cardinals, doesn't believe in halfway measures. The Cardinals suffered their eighth defeat in 13 games at Pittsburgh today. And tonight, Sergeant Gabby announced that he would use an entirely new outfield and a new first baseman in tomorrow's doubleheader with the Cubs.

Ray Pepper will replace Joe Medwick in left field. Ethan Allen will take Ernie Orsatti's place in center. And Steel Crabtree will replace Watkins in right. Pat Crawford will take over the first base job from Jimmy Collins, etc., etc. Apparently, in 1933, a 5-8 stretch meant you benched everyone. Wow. Maybe an overreaction.

Slightly. Possibly. Yeah. How did that team end up doing? I guess they ended up at 82-71, which was fifth in the National League. So I don't know. Maybe it didn't really light a fire under them, but they did better than five and eight at least. Finally, as far as which teams got

leased from the players on their opening day lineup, the most satisfying approach would likely be some kind of war comparison between the players on the opening day roster and the team as a whole. That data is available, but it would be another pretty messy merging project. So in lieu of that, I used a proxy measure, the percentage of a team's player games that come from the opening day roster. For reference, the average team since 1871 has 64% of their player games come from the

opening day lineup. That's a fun fact. This used to be much higher, 83.7% before 1900, but it has been pretty consistent since the turn of the century, and it's been 63.2% in the last decade. The highest percentages are almost all from the 1800s, when I guess they just only had so many players and didn't really have guys to sub in. But the highest fives since 1900 are as follows. The 2014 Kansas City Royals, 85.12. The 1976 Oakland A's, 85.99. 1926 Cleveland, 86.0. 2007 Seattle, oh, the Mariners, 87.52. And 1975 Oakland again, 89.99. day lineup for that A's team. Second, Burt Campanaris sighting in as many stat blasts and how many games they played that year. It was Bill North, Burt Campanaris,

Sal Bando, Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudy, Billy Williams, Gene Tennis, Claudel Washington, and Phil Garner. The lowest five all-time are the 1932 Red Sox, 34.05%, 1961 Angels, 33.4%, 46, Brooklyn Dodgers,

30.93%, 1952 Red Sox, 30.16, and 1952 Detroit Tigers. 29.06% of their player games came from their opening day players. The 1952 Tigers were a mess, a 50 and 104 record that year. They traded their opening day starting pitcher Dizzy Trout in May. The only two legitimately good hitters on their team, Vic Wertz and jerry pretty played 85 and 75 games respectively due to injury no other opening day starter had more than 60 games so my god that's uh not what you want so as of this writing this was five days ago when ryan sent all these stats to us through 63 games the 2021 twins had gotten 323 player games from

their opening day starters, or 56.9%. Really, though, this isn't a fair comparison since the Twins and AL teams started on the road in Milwaukee, and so their ninth batter was Kenta Maeda, who to date had not batted in another game. If we include the ninth batter from their first AL game, Nelson Cruz, it

actually goes up to 65.4%, which is above average. So perhaps not as bad as Chris would have thought. But thank you very much for all of that info, Ryan. That was extremely in-depth and I bow before your SQL skills. Just imagine being the one guy who's like, I guess I'm doing this the whole year. Like, guy who's like i guess i'm doing this the whole year like who are you yeah you know right nice to meet you you'll probably not be here very long if recent history has any indication but let's see what we can manage today all right well we wish better health to the twins so let's end with meet a major leaguer yeah meet a major leaguer i am very eager to meet this nascent major leaguer it's the thrilling debut of somebody new let's meet this mysterious major leaguer is Dylan Thomas, who is not a poet, but does inspire a lot of good puns.

And Thomas is currently in the Mariners organization. He made his debut with Seattle. And I think that he embodies the spirit of this exercise. It took him 10 years to reach the major leagues. So he was a fourth round selection by the Rockies in the 2011 draft and kind of bounced around in the minor league system there and then elected free agency in 2017, having obviously never debuted and didn't find work,

so he went to the American Association. He signed with the Texas Air Hogs, and he was the player of the month for them at one point in July, and he was named an American Association All-Star, and then sort of latched on with the Brewers and stayed in the minors, was with Oakland for a little while, and then signed a minor league contract with Seattle in January of this year and was originally assigned to Tacoma. And now I'm going to read a bunch of quotes because when I saw his postgame after his debut, it made me teary.

And so I wanted to talk about him because I think that a lot of guys kind of stick around for a long time like he did and they never make the majors. And I think that whether they do or not, it's useful to remember that that kind of a persistence and time in pro ball, especially when you're making the kind of money you do

in the minor leagues and you're going through the grind of that and not knowing if it will ever pay off is often a family affair and that's what thomas pointed to here so i am going to be reading now from daniel kramer at mlb.com story about his debut so he said in this story the jitters began pre-game when seattle began infield practice an 11th year mariner kyle seager turned to Thomas, ensuring his teammates were within earshot and said, Mr. Thomas, this is a big day for you. And it continued into the postgame celebration along the Comerica Park first baseline. Thomas hit a game winning RBI.

So his his debut was sort of idyllic. Where Thomas met his family that trekked to detroit including his four-year-old daughter whose reaction to his call-up was seemingly straight out of a hollywood script when he embraced his girlfriend to relay the news after a phone call with mariners director of player development andy mckay a teary thomas caught his daughter off guard she asked why he was crying when he told her why thomas's daughter beamed with a wide grin then erupted around the house shouting daddy is a big leaguer and after the game thomas was of beamed with a wide grin then erupted around the house shouting daddy is a big leaguer and after the game thomas was of course asked about you know the achievement of making

the big leagues and what it was like for him and he said it was a family affair to get here thomas said tears beginning to emerge from his eyes i couldn't be sitting where i am right now without both my mom my dad my sister just everybody in family. They've been the ones that have kept me going all these years. And I'm so grateful to have had that support system. So his time in the majors so far has been brief. He played two games for Seattle before being optioned back to Tacoma. But it's really easy to forget these guys. And it's really easy to forget the sacrifices that their families make in order to keep them in the game and help support them as they go up the rungs and make pit stops in independent ball and then come back to affiliated ball and uh i just think that it's really nice and whether they stick for a long

time or not that's work and dedication that should be recognized and i wish it was easier for folks along the way but i'm grateful that families kind of help their loved ones out and make it possible because otherwise we'd have a lot less cool stories a lot fewer cool stories I'm a terrible editor and so that's Dylan Thomas and I would also say

be creative in your Dylan Thomas puns pals there are a lot of poems out there go read some new stuff and then use that on Twitter you'll be funny and you'll feel so clever Cowles, there are a lot of poems out there. Go read some new stuff and then use that on Twitter. You'll be funny and you'll feel so clever. Yeah, I cannot get enough of call-up stories.

It's a genre where they follow sort of a standard template often, but I just love hearing players describe when they get that call, which is inevitably one of the best moments of most of their lives. So that and the major league debuts stories, even if the playing experience doesn't go quite as well. I think that moment of euphoria when you find out that you are a major leaguer, that is pretty special. So that's a nice thing about this segment is that we get to consume those stories and share them with everyone. So my meet a major leaguer contribution will be a bit different today. My plan was to go with Tigers pitcher Bo Burrows, who was called up for this season on Saturday and made his season debut, got torched, puked on the mound multiple times, and immediately

got demoted to AAA Toledo. Wait a minute. How have I not heard about this? I am shocked that you were not notified about this. Yeah, the fact that this escaped my mentions, I don't know if I'm disappointed or if I have renewed faith in humanity. There were bodily substances spewed very visibly and publicly you can watch the video if you care to he did throw up and it seemed like maybe it was because of the heat yeah he was

feeling the ill effects and he was pulled from the game after that and he threw like 50 pitches and an inning and two-thirds and it just did not go great he gave up four runs and to add nausea to injury he hurled in more than one way so the combination of of that and then immediately getting devoted it's like yeah that's just you know one of the most ignominious debuts you could imagine the problem is or at least the problem for me as i was preparing for this segment is that that was not his major League debut. That was his season debut, but he actually debuted last year, unbeknownst to me, because we were not doing the segment and I was not tracking everyone who made his Major League debut, but he did pitch in five games last year,

so ineligible. Therefore, I was forced to pivot, and we got an email Just this morning from Kevin Patreon supporter which was well timed In this case he said it occurred to me after Your episode on the Negro League stats being Integrated into baseball reference that you could Expand your delightful meet a major leaguer Segment to occasionally include A Negro Leagues player who is now part

Of the official record just an idea And that is a good idea I will do that today, at least. And I am going to go with a major leaguer who hopefully you have heard of or met previously, but I think deserves all the attention he can get. And that's Bullet Rogan, the great right-handed pitcher and hitter for the Kansas City Monarchs of the 1920s. This week has been a Bullet Rogan appreciation week,

I think because of the baseball reference move to reclassify those stats as major leagues. Suddenly everyone has been looking at leaderboards and looking at the New Negro League's stats hub on the site, and everyone has suddenly been saying, whoa, Bullet Rogan, check out this guy. And I saw a bunch of tweets that were like, holy whoa, Bullet Rogan, check out this guy. And I saw a bunch of tweets that were like, holy crap, Bullet Rogan. And again, I think that's one of the benefits of

Baseball Reference doing that is that he's not an unknown player. I mean, he's a Hall of Famer, but he is not quite as famous as your Josh Gibsons and Satchel Pages. And so if you haven't looked at the stats before, rogan may have escaped your notice or at least the amount of notice that he should get and it seems like he is getting it now and this is well timed because shohei otani is making his 10th start of the season on thursday or will have done so by the time you were hearing this against a new major leaguer by the way tigers prospect matt manning That's an exciting matchup. But that is Otani's 10th start of the season. He is one of only two major leaguers who have ever gotten to double digits in starts on the mound and home runs and stolen bases as a

position player in the same season. And he has done that twice now. He did it in 2018 too. But the only other player ever to do it is Bullet Rogan in 1922. So between that and between the anniversary, the 100th anniversary of a famous game in Bullet Rogan's career, where he went head to head on June 12th, 1921 against Cincinnati's Jose LeBlanc, who was kind of the other best pitcher in the Negro Leagues at the time. And that was just written up by Sabre's game recap project. So all sorts of things are coming up Bullet Rogan right now. And I can't do full justice to him in this segment. We've devoted full episodes or interviews in the past to Oscar Charleston and to Martin DeHigo. And maybe Bullet Rogan should get that treatment at some point too. But for now, I will

direct everyone to the baseball reference pages, admire the stats. He stands out on the baseball reference hub because he has the most war of any player accumulated in the Negro Leagues. So, you know, there were players who spanned the Negro Leagues and the American National Leagues, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, who had more war. But Bullet Rogan had the most war of any player exclusively in the Negro Leagues and by like 10 war over Willie Wells. And he did it because he was fantastic as both a hitter and a pitcher. And just to try to put this into perspective, in his five-year peak, 1921 to 25, this into perspective. In his five-year peak, 1921 to 25, that's his age 27 through 31 seasons, the Monarchs played 424 league games that are included at Baseball Reference, and that should be pretty close to their total because the data coverage for the 1920s is pretty good. So 424

games over that five-year period. Bullet Rogan combining his batting and pitching war was worth 39.8 wins above replacement. Now, if I've done the math correctly, that means that per 162 team games, Bullet Rogan was worth 15.2 war over that period. Or if we want to go with the 154 game schedules that AL and NL teams were playing at the time, that would be 14.5 war per 154 games. The best single season war ever by a major leaguer, according to baseball reference, is Babe Ruth's 14.2 in 1923. So relative to the Negro National League replacement level, Ruth's contemporary, Bullet Rogan, was playing better than peak Ruth, better than anyone has ever played. He just was an incredible two-way player. The stats are eye-popping on both sides, really. His ERA plus career is 161. His OPS plus career is 152. So he was 50% to 60% better at both of those things at the same time. And there just are not

enough superlatives. So some of the other fun facts I've seen, Jeremy Frank on Twitter, the list of players with 50 plus career wins and 50 plus career home runs. It's Cy Seymour, Babe Ruth, and Bullet Rogan. And a tweet from at BraveStats, effectively wild listener,

had the list of players with at least 120 career OPS plus and 120 career ERA plus with at least 500 plate appearances and 200 innings pitched. Charlie Ferguson, Bob Carruthers, Babe Ruth, Bullet Rogan, Leon Day and Martin DiHigo. DiHigo and Rogan are the only two who have at least a 130 OPS plus in both of those categories. have at least a 130 OPS plus in both of those categories. And Rogan is the only one who has 150 or better, or even 140 or better in both of those categories. So really kind of incredible. And I'll just a brief summary. He didn't make his debut until he was almost 27 in 1920, which is the beginning of the Negro League. So he was already well into his career in life by the time he got there, which makes it even more impressive. He was born in 1893 and he was in the army for a while before he was in the Negro Leagues. And he played on a famous

team in the military, which was called the 25th Infantry Wreckers in the Buffalo Soldiers Regiment. The Wreckers were a really skilled team in the military at that time, and a lot of their players went on to form the core of the Monarchs teams of the 1920s. And so he excelled there and served in the Philippines and was just in the army for years before he made his Negro Leagues debut. And he could do it all. And the quotes, the testimonials are really impressive. William Big C. Johnson, one of his teammates in the army said, Oscar Charleston was everything, but Rogan was more. Rogan could do everything everywhere. Satchel Paige famously said in his unique diction, he was the onlyest pitcher I ever saw

I ever heard of in my life was Pitching and hitting in the cleanup Place because he would often Back cleanup when he was not pitching According to Rogan's longtime Catcher Frank Duncan if you had to choose Between Rogan and Paige you'd pick Rogan Because he could hit the pitching you'd

As soon have Satchel as Rogan understand But Rogan's hitting was so terrific. Get my point. I do. And Casey Stengel also called Rogan one of the best, if not the best pitcher that ever lived. And the tributes go on and on. And he was actually 5'7", which was not big even then. And yet he was the hardest throwing pitcher, it seems like, probably in the Negro Leagues.

He, unusually for the time, often pitched without a windup and pitched from the stretch and had a sidearm delivery sometimes. So you wouldn't think he could get the zip on the ball that he did, but he really could bring it. And he also had a variety of other pitches and he threw a curve and a spitball and a palm ball and a fork ball but the fastball was where his nickname bullet came from he's known as bullet joe also he he went by joe sometimes but just to avoid the confusion with other joe's rogan i am calling him bullet rogan in this segment his given name was charles wilbur Rogan but really he did it all he played every

position except catcher and was a great defensive center fielder by all accounts too Buck O'Neill said you saw Ernie Banks hitting his prime then you saw Rogan Frank Duncan the catcher I mentioned already who caught both Page and Duncan said Satchel was easier to catch he could throw it in a court cup but Rogan was all over the plate. High, low inside outside. He'd walked five to six men, but he didn't give up many runs. Bullet had a little more steam on the ball than page and he had a better breaking curve. The batters thought it was a fastball heading for them and they would jump back from the

plate and all of a sudden it would break sharply for a strike. I would rank him with today's best. I have never seen a pitcher like him and I've caught some of the best pitchers in the business Apparently he was sort of effectively wild Another Monarchs teammate, George Carr Said Rogan was the greatest pitcher That ever threw a ball He had not only an arm to pitch with

But a head to think with Rogan was a smart pitcher with a wonderful memory Once Rogan pitched to a batter He never forgot that batter's weaknesses and strong points. And, and here's maybe even more impressive, he also managed and was a great, or at least a very successful manager. So he is very close to the top of the all-time leaders for winning percentage as a pitcher at Baseball Reference now. At 698, he is fourth. that is just ahead of Clayton Kershaw but here's the amazing thing his 698 winning percentage as a pitcher is the same as his 698 winning percentage as a manager which is the best all time and he managed from 1926 to 1930 he was also playing for much of that time so he was a player manager and apparently he was like a strict disciplinarian as a manager at first, which is not surprising maybe given his military background and

wasn't the best teacher at first because he was like one of these great players who's like, just do what I do and no one else can. But over time, apparently he softened up a bit and became a better instructor and was extremely successful as a manager, and then went on to be a major league umpire as well in the Negro League. So two-way player who was also a manager and umpire in the majors, just an incredible career. After his time in the Negro Leagues, he went on to work in the post office for many years. He died in 1967 at age 73, and he was inducted into the hall in 1998, which is almost 30 years after Page got in. So it took a while. So I'm glad that people are appreciating him now. You can see in Stathead, he has the most innings pitched of any major leaguer with an ERA of 160 or higher, 1500 innings. He actually has the most innings pitched with the era plus higher

than clayton kershaw who is uh currently at 156 so just amazing at everything 2.65 career era and as a hitter his uh slash line was 338 413 521 in almost 2500 play appearances so just you know not enough superlatives really to describe Bullet Broken yeah what could I even say except that I'm so glad that we're gonna that we have sort of an easy to access statistical record that we can use as a jumping off point to discuss guys who should have been well known to baseball fans and analysts a long time ago. Yep. Really cool. Yeah. Really cool. All right. Well, I suppose we

can end there. I've been thinking of Scott's walks loving daughter all the time since we've talked. Yeah. Maybe next week will be big for her, right? Because if they take away the sticky stuff and guys start nibbling, maybe we'll see more walks and it'll be the golden age for scott's daughter so i'm happy that she'll be happy if that happens yeah and it's like are there particular kinds of plate appearances that end in walks that she really likes like is it the long battle that ends with a free pass where she's like aha triumph the count to go full and you work the rock? Or does she just want the four-pitch walk? Let's get to it. Get that walk in there.

Yeah, I don't know. Cool. All right. That will do it. Okay. By the way, I should mention that Meg informed me that Fangrass is looking to add Negro League stats as well. That's apparently in the process of being worked out.

So one day we will be able to enjoy the work of Bullet Rogan on that website as well. In the meantime, we can enjoy the work of the modern-day Rogan, Shohei Otani, who had another good two-way game on Thursday, walked twice for Scott's daughter, I hope she was watching, and also pitched six strong innings against Detroit. I just never tire of watching this man. I know you all know that, but my heart feels so full after each of these outings. I must share it with the world.

I've just never enjoyed following an athlete the way I enjoy Otani, both the incredible athlete he is and the person he seems to be watching from afar. We are very lucky to be watching what he's doing. And Meg and I are lucky that some of you support us on Patreon, which we are grateful for. You can support Effectively Wild there 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. Matt Bougie, Articuno Johnson, John Topp, Jacob Carl, and Greg Scarfo.

Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Meg via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance. Happy first federal holiday of Juneteenth. Happy 33rd to Jacob deGrom. We hope you have a wonderful weekend,

and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Don't you walk away, the sun won't swallow the sky Don't you walk away, statues will not cry Don't you walk away, why don't you walk away Why don't you walk away, why don't you walk away