Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1711: Strip Search

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about MLB’s much-maligned All-Star Game uniforms and a pair of odd games, discuss the highs and lows of the first few days of MLB’s enforced foreign-substance ban (with special attention to Max Scherzer, Joe Girardi, and Sergio Romo), review Wander Franco’s debut and note the less-hyped arrivals of Lars […]

I've got new red pants Got them from a stranger, yeah I look so attractive that it could kill you It could kill me too I've got scoliosis I need Tylenol Help me break this fever Throw me a curveball

Swing at that curveball, yeah You like Esser? Oh, sure. Yes, I do. I don't know. Leave it all in, Dylan. Hello and welcome to episode 1711 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, returned from a few days off, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm okay. Welcome back. Missed you on Monday. Thank you. Thank you for carrying on in my stead and to Mike for filling in for me. I hope people enjoyed it. It's always a little bit fun to go away and get to listen to the podcast. So I appreciated being able to do that, but I am glad to be back. And I have watched five innings of baseball since Saturday. Which innings were they? Was it all in one game or was it a sampling of games? They were mostly yesterday. I watched some of the Dodgers-Padres game, but only some of it.

And then I was doing other stuff. So yeah, baseball. It happened, I hear. There have been some truly wild games that you have missed. There was the weird Nationals-Phillies game where both of their bullpens blew multiple leads. And apparently it was the first game ever where both teams hit a Grand Slam and a three-run homer, which I think surprised a lot of people, myself included. And there was the extremely weird Angels-Giants game where Otani started and pitched well,

but because the Angels surrendered the DH to let him pitch and hit, and because I think their bench was shorthanded to begin with because Justin Upton had a back issue, and then all hell broke loose and the game went 13 innings, and they eventually had to call in Taylor Ward to catch because Kurt Suzuki got hurt and Griffin Canning was playing the outfield. It's not just Otani who plays outfield on that pitching staff, apparently. So between the pinch hitters and the injuries and the shorthandedness, there was all sorts of wildness that kind of came back to bite the Angels. And I hope that doesn't discourage them from letting Otani hit and pitch in future games.

But that went weird there at the end. And it all could have ended a little earlier because Juan Lagares was called safe with what would have been the game-winning and game-ending run, but then that call was overturned on replay kind of controversially, and then the game went on and it got weirder from there. So yeah, there have been some fun ones and some weird ones yeah i'm like looking at the standings for the first time in a couple of days the thing about seeing your family is that uh sometimes their patience for you looking at the sport you cover is very low you gotta you gotta satisfy the the mom and the grandparents but right i'm doing this live on air i'm checking

to see if anything has shifted too terribly much oh boston's back on top of the alias well look at that um that's an interesting thing new segment it checks the standings yeah meg meg learns about baseball live and also checks in on on the playoff odds which which I don't think have shifted too terribly much. I did see that the Diamondbacks finally won a baseball game. Yes, they did. That seems good. Yeah, we broke the curse by having Mike on, although I think they then got shut out the next day

and they allowed Vogelbach to score for no reason, really, as he was kind of limping around the bases and they just let him limp home. So I don't know that their problems are solved, but at least they snapped the streak. Yeah. And apparently a new feature of baseball is that people just take off their uniforms on the field in non-walk-off scenarios in order to comply with sticky stuff enforcement checks. So a good amount of Meg stuff happened while I was away. And I now have a new

reason to resent the mid-season enforcement of sticky stuff, which is that Rob Manfred couldn't wait for me to be back from a trip. So I don't know, Rob, kind of rude. We can discuss how that's gone. Although it seems like as we speak here on Thursday afternoon, people are mad about uniforms for a different reason. noon people are mad about uniforms for a different reason. So these all-star uniforms, Ben, are objectively horrible looking. And as we discussed with Craig Goldstein when we were looking at the new era, like city hats, I like ugly stuff. I have a weird amount of affection for ugly hats and uniforms. I think that it stems from just the reality that I will end up buying something

that is objectively bad to look at, and then it will get put away into a box and it will be resurfaced five years later. And I will end up having nostalgia for it because I'm a millennial and I've been culturally conditioned to appreciate nostalgia. It seems like it's all our culture runs on these days. And even I, looking at these uniforms, think that they are

troublingly bad to look at. So there is like the aesthetic part, which I think we should talk about, but I actually have what I hope to be a more sort of legitimate gripe with these, which is that they're going to be worn. My understanding, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that these are going to be worn in the actual All-Star game itself, not just in batting practice or the home run derby, but in the All-Star game itself, the one that they're going to televise on TV to people. Is that your understanding as well? That is my understanding, although I would not say I have a deep understanding. Whatever understanding I have is gleaned from very surface level looks at Twitter. But yes, I believe that that's some of the source of the controversy is that this time it counts with these uniforms. Yeah.

So I think that the default sort of position that baseball should take to events where they assume they are going to have or where they have the potential to have a meaningful look-in audience is that you should assume that the people who tune into these big marquee events with a look-in audience are not necessarily fans of individual players or overly familiar with individual players, right? And I think that if you assume that that is going to be a non-trivial portion of your audience, that you should make it very easy for them to spot their guys, right? If you're a casual baseball fan, or maybe if you're a fan who has not looked at the game in a while, like 2020 was a weird year for a lot of people. And I think that

there are folks who kind of tuned out, even folks who perhaps watch the post-season, but not a lot of the regular season and thus might not be overly familiar with individual players. And I think that you should operate as if that person might see something, right? They might see a guy wearing their hometown jersey hit a big dinger or throw a really nasty pitch and say, oh, that all-star sure is fun. Maybe I'll go watch a game the next time they're in town. And if that is part of what the allure of this event is, which I think is an understood and sort of expressed purpose behind having these big, you know, marquee events, you should make it very easy for folks to spot their dudes. Like just put the bar on the floor.

That's where it should exist, right? And so I think it's actually a small, not a big, but a small disservice to the game more generally and to the sort of exercise of trying to attract new fans to change up the uniforms they're wearing. I remember a couple of years ago, I guess this probably would have been 2018 or 2019, the Arizona Fall League changed up what they were doing with their uniforms. So I think in a typical Fall League year, the prospects who play there wear a hat for the fall league team they play for, like the Saguaros or whatever. And then they wear their parent club's uniform. And the one year they did like full uniforms for the fall league club,

including the hats. And I remember sitting there and fans were really confused, right? Because they don't necessarily know what Shane Baz looks like. But if you put him in a Rays uniform, they're like, oh, I'm a Rays fan and I'm out here in the desert and I'm going to watch the Rays, guys. Just make it easy for people to engage with the one part of the sport that they maybe know a little bit because maybe they'll want to know it better if you make it easy for them. This is my thought on this. Yeah, it makes sense to me. And I can't claim to care deeply about uniforms. In fact, I generally claim to be pretty apathetic about them, which I think maybe puts me in the minority. It seems like people tend to have pretty strong opinions about uniforms, whereas I have to think hard to remember what they look like or to form an opinion on them.

If you had asked me prior to today what uniforms players wore in the All-Star Game, I would have had to think about it for a while. I haven't even really watched the last few all-star games at least not closely i plan to this year thanks otani but before now i don't think i had any particular opinion but now having been forced to form an opinion i think my opinion is the same as yours which is that it does make sense to have the natural local team uniforms when players are representing their teams in the All-Star game. I guess from one perspective, it's kind of cool to have special threads for the All-Star game just to mark it as a memorable occasion. Like, hey, you're an All-Star. It's significant to make the All-Star team. You get to don this special attire. to make the all-star team, you get to don this special attire. But it is also kind of confusing, I think, for people who are tuning into one of the few mid-season national baseball events. It's

such a regional game and people follow their local team and may not pay close attention to other teams. And this is supposed to be the exception. It's obviously a much smaller draw than it used to be back before the days of constant interleague and everything. But still, it's one of the marquee events. It's the marquee midseason event. And it is a big deal to have a player from your team in the All-Star game. It's a rule that there has to be a representative from every team because that representation is considered important. So to obscure it by making everyone wear the same thing does seem kind of counterproductive to me. I guess it's during the Home Run Derby, people will be wearing their usual uniforms, but then these are the all-star ones. all-star ones and then as for the aesthetic appeal or lack thereof it seems like it is pretty universally reviled in this case and again i can't claim to have a fashion sense and my personal style would be like equally fashionable or unfashionable in any decade since the 1950s, probably. It could just blend into any era. It is not subject to the whims of the fashion industry, which I am unaware of. And so again, it seems sort of subjective. There are some uniforms that produce these polarizing reactions, and some people love

them and some people hate them. And I'm like, eh, okay. I'm not particularly paying attention. Unless it's like new era local market cap bad. Right. When even I can tell that something has gone horribly wrong. And I guess these are kind of close. Or at least it seems like the Twitter reaction has been equally up in arms almost compared to the caps. But maybe with a little less levity. Because the caps were so bad that they were funny, whereas these uniforms are just bad. They look like, I don't know,

they kind of look, the National League ones sort of look like they're supposed to be Team USA soccer kits. Yeah, it doesn't look like baseball uniforms. They don't look, yeah. I've seen people compare to like polo or some kind of equestrian event or something, but it doesn't really scream baseball. don't read cleanly at all. The Reds one is particularly bad in that regard. I think the D-backs one is weird and mushed that way too. I don't know. What about them is supposed to read Colorado? That's the other thing. It's like, I would be open to an edit

of the existing team uniforms, but just make everything purple. Put it all in purple as like a proof of concept because i think i have made this point on our podcast before and i have certainly made it on twitter we embrace such a limited color palette for sports uniforms and there is a whole range of purples and pinks that i think could just be really wonderful and we could move away from all the stayed red, white, and blue, right? We could embrace a broader palette and, you know, experience new flavors, but we don't do that. And here we are in one of the few cities that uses purple in its color scheme. So make, if you want to make them

all purple, that's fine. You could do a purple edit of the cap and there's the purple all-star game logo on the side of the cap but as for the jerseys doesn't look like there's a lot of purple from what i can tell here so not even on the rockies no it's very upsetting i you know I'm gone for a couple of days. We're playing a different sport in any number of ways. It's very upsetting. Well, now that we've dragged Nike for a bit, we can get to the news of the week, which there's been a bunch since you've been gone. Some stuff has happened.

As you said, the foreign substance crackdown began for real and wander franco arrived oh yeah his arrival was uh somewhat overshadowed by the debut of lars nutbar of course but he still made an impact and the knuckleball is back in the big leagues yeah for now courtesy of favorite of the podcast, Mickey Janis. So some exciting developments here. I guess we can start with the sticky stuff, which, as you said, I guess you haven't been monitoring as closely as some, but I assume you've seen some of the highlights or lowlights, the couple of instances where a pitcher didn't take too kindly to the inspections.

I've certainly seen much more of Sergio Romo than I had previously. I'll say that. Yep. So I feel like this has gone okay for the most part. The Max Scherzer blow up and the Sergio Romo self-pantsing garnered all of the headlines and the gifs and the videos. But that was about it, really. Like, that's all that's happened so far. And again, we're speaking before most of Thursday's games. So for all I know, by the time people hear this, there will be some sort of mass stripping event and it will be a disaster. But nothing really happened of note on Monday.

And then on Tuesday, that was the Scherzer-Romo day. And then on Wednesday, nothing really happened either. And there are hundreds of inspections happening here. I mean, every pitcher is getting inspected. Starting pitchers are getting inspected multiple times. And really, it's only been two incidents. And so I saw a lot of people saying, oh, it's already a farce and this has gone off the rails. And yeah, we can talk about those two incidents are really just the Scherzervin suggest, or whether he was just kind of pissed because he had pitched poorly and then was inspected. But no harm done there, really. And the Scherzer one stands out more. But even that I thought was pretty fun as an isolated incident. It would be bad if that were repeated nightly, but it was kind of fun one time. So I sort of enjoyed the possible gamesmanship there and the wild-eyed Scherzer, which is always fun.

So I don't know. What did you make of that? I didn't really make it out to be a big disaster unless it's something that gets repeated often. I find it curious that they have opted to do the checks on field. And I suppose that the rationale there is that going down into the tunnel takes some amount of time and they're trying to move these checks along so that they can happen between innings and fit comfortably in the innings break. But I do find it a little weird that they're know can happen between innings and and fit comfortably in the innings break but i do find it a little weird that they're doing them on field if only because there is the potential for nudity really right or you know which is you know not necessarily a

downside but close examining ben you know i saw that otani got checked and I had a number of jokes in mind at your expense and I didn't it was all smiles. It was just Otani, like in addition to being the best at everything, he's like way too talented to be that nice. Like I've been conditioned to believe that if you are that skilled at something and if you are a professional athlete, there must be something wrong with you. You must be some sort of sociopath. You must be just a total jerk or bad to be around. And Otani, from all appearances, just seems to be a very pleasant down-to-earth person. And he was in that inspection too. He's constantly going around picking up bats and handing them to bat boys or picking up pieces of trash as he's running down to the first base or

just making it so easy on the umpires or joking around with near mortals like David Fletcher and Jose Iglesias. It doesn't make any sense that he is as nice and as endearing as he is. But that was more the norm, really, than the Scherzer incident. Most of them were just routine once over. No one seemed to be visibly upset about it for the most part. If anything, the inspections were mostly so cursory that I lost a little confidence that they would actually find something if a picture were using something.

It was very routine. It's like, okay, look at the cap, look at the glove, turn out your belt buckle. Okay, everyone move along. It didn't seem like they were going way out of their way or physically patting people down, which is probably for the best and maybe it's enough of a deterrent, but it's not like the full TSA screening being pulled out of the line and waved with the wand type thing. It was really pretty quick and painless in most cases. So the Scherzer one was a special circumstance, right? Because for one thing, you have Scherzer, who is just like a

penned bull anytime he is on the mound. But also you had the gamesmanship aspect of it where he had already been subject to multiple inspections by the umpires in that game and then this one was a mid-inning inspection prompted by Joe Girardi who said or claimed that he had seen Scherzer doing something suspicious going to his hair more often than he typically does and so that triggered Girardi's suspicions and got him to lodge a complaint, get the umpires to inspect Scherzer. And so that's why Scherzer was so mad about it, that it seemed like Girardi was trying to throw off his rhythm and Scherzer had already been inspected a couple of times. And so understandably, he was upset about that, but

that was the exception, not the rule. For the most part, it was almost unnoticeable except for the fact that it was new and novel. And so all the broadcasts were focusing on whenever this happened. Right. And it has been, as you noted, sort of an interesting insight into different players' personalities and how they're going to respond to stuff like this. If nothing else, the reaction from the Nationals bench when gerardi lost his mind and got ejected was was delightful right the right amount of what do you what do you come at me bro you know so there was there was some of that and i think that this was probably the best possible sort of entertainment experience of this thing i don't think we need to relitigate our our concerns around mid-season enforcement and what have. But to have a couple that were obviously silly, to have a couple

that were fraught mostly because the opposing manager was insisting on additional checks, not because the umpires ended up finding anything that resulted in a beloved player getting ejected and then suspended. I think it's mostly been fine so far. I think that it's a situation that could continue to evolve as time goes on. As you noted, I do wonder if the league's perspective on whether or not they find anything will make them sort of shift around how they're doing these checks, because you would imagine that there have to be a couple of guys who are going to still try to get away with it, right? And so if they never find anyone to have violated the rule, is their understanding going to be, oh, people got the message and the disincentives we put into the enforcement were sufficient to get everyone to comply? Or is their understanding going to be that they are not

being sufficiently sort of stringent and invasive with their checks? And it does make you wonder, like, what is the umpire's understanding of just how much they can get in there? It's a really strange dynamic to try to police. I can't imagine that the umpires are thrilled that they're having to get close to guys and like touch Max Scherzer's sweaty hair or look at it. That seems suboptimal. And I would imagine, you know, based on his reaction that that's not Scherzer's preference either. I know that there was one, it seems like earlier today that Diego Castillo was required to wear a different hat

that his inspection came kind of pre-pitch. So I do still wonder about that. Are there going to be guys who are sort of given the opportunity to put on a new hat or a new belt when the umpires are like, wait, we think there's something funny here, but maybe not something we feel like sufficiently confident in that we're going to eject a guy. So I imagine that the sort of tone and tenor of the enforcement might change over the next little bit, depending on what they

find and what they don't. But it seems like it's been okay so far. And I think that we have all learned that Joe Girardi does perhaps does not have sufficient regard for his own safety because I I mean I think that Max Scherzer has proven himself to be a thoughtful guy who takes on a different kind of persona when he is on the mound and I don't know I don't want to mess with that I think I would I think I would opt to not if it were me. I would also opt to not. Yeah. There have been some caps swapped. There have been some gloves swapped, although it's not clear whether that has to do with the color of the gloves being too light in some cases or whether it's related to sticky stuff. And yeah, I mean, I think I was asked last week on the Ringer MLB

show how many suspensions I thought would come from this over the course of the season. And I said four. I thought that it would be a significant enough deterrent that not many people would test it and that maybe the inspections wouldn't be so thorough that you would catch 100% of the pitchers who tried it, but that it wouldn't be zero. And yeah, as you're saying, if you never caught a single guy, that might make me think that maybe you just weren't catching players who were still trying to cheat because it seems unlikely that you would go from close to 100% seemingly using something to zero overnight, even given how much scrutiny there's been and how regular the inspections are. So you would think that there would be someone, however ill-advised or not good at hiding the stuff that would be caught at some point. So yeah, not catching a lot of guys could be seen as a success, but catching zero guys could potentially also be seen as a failure if it means that you're a little too lax. Not that I want the full cavity search to be occurring on broadcasts and at the expense of

players' privacy. But yeah, I mean, I think it was inevitable that when you institute a change this significant at mid-season, there was bound to be some sort of friction, as little friction as there's been with the baseballs themselves in the absence of sticky stuff, just going from no enforcement to full court press enforcement. Some pitchers were probably going to be upset about that. And Girardi, he says or suggests that he kind of had probable cause because Scherzer was going to his hair often. And I think Scherzer did admit as much that he was rubbing his hair or the back of his head because he wasn't getting his usual grip. And that was the only place he was sweaty and he was trying to get some sweat to mix with the rosin. So I don't know how much of it was Girardi

seeing that and actually thinking that something was amiss or just wanting to throw off Scherzer's rhythm? Because Girardi seems completely capable of doing it for that reason alone. And he said that wasn't why he did it, but he basically has no credibility at this point, I think, when it comes to explaining or not explaining his in-game moves after the Bryce Harper is not injured, but actually was injured debacle. And then coming out and saying that he basically was not going to be forthcoming when it came to preserving whatever small edge he thinks he has, tactically speaking, and that he wasn't going to explain the strategic moves. His denials just don't mean much anymore. And clearly the Nationals were not buying them, or at least they were sticking up for Scherzer. And Mike Rizzo, the GM of the team, had some pretty harsh words for Girardi. He called him a con artist.

He said he wanted to mess with Scherzer. He said, what are we, idiots? Of course he was trying to mess with Scherzer and other comments in that vein. So there are provisions in the rules to prevent this sort of thing. And they'll be anticipated that this could happen, but it's still kind of a judgment call when it comes to why did the manager call for a check here? Was it that he had a legitimate reason to think that there was cheating going on check here? Was it that he had a legitimate reason to think that there was cheating going on? Or was it just that he was trying to screw up that pitcher's rhythm?

So if this becomes common, then I could see MLB instituting some harsher penalty or having some other kind of provision. But if it's just once in a while like this, if it's just Girardi, who seems like the most likely manager to do something like this for reasons that aren't on the up and up, then I don't know that it's actually something that makes a brave ballpark DJ who plays pony during one of the checks. Just lean into it. The reason I say that there might be some adjustments as time goes on is that when the commissioner spoke to Rick Rowley, he made a point of saying that this is early in the enforcement game and they are trying to adopt some sort of flexible approach that meets the circumstances.

But yeah, we'll just, I don't know, we'll have to see. Are they going to do checks during the All-Star game? Here's another- Why bother? Yeah, why bother? But here's another question that I have. they're checking all of the all of the relievers either at the conclusion of their first inning of work after they've entered or at the conclusion of their appearance whichever comes first right so if you have a guy go multiple innings he's going to get checked after the first one so are

we ever going to see a closer get checked on tv probably not right whoever the last picture of the game is is going to enjoy a bit more privacy because I doubt that the broadcast camera is going to linger unless something happens to that guy, right? They find something and then it's like, oh, aha, you are now suspended for 10 games. But it's a weird thing. It sort of pays to be in that last inning because you're going to get left alone much more often than not, I would imagine. because you're going to get left alone much more often than not, I would imagine. Yeah. No, I think that's a good point. And Clayton Kershaw suggested that there should be some sort of penalty if the manager forces an inspection like that and nothing is found. Maybe you lose a replay challenge or I don't know, maybe some other penalty is assessed, which could be one way to handle it if this really becomes rampant. But again, I don't think we're at that point. And for the most part, it's been pretty smooth. It hasn't seemed to slow the game down in any significant way.

So on the whole, I'd say it's going all right, despite the highlights or lowlights there that sparked a lot of discussion. And we have seen some notable spin rate declines. Although again, even in some of those cases, the pitchers have pitched fine. Garrett Cole had a big dip in his spin rate, but pitched well still. And maybe with not quite as many strikeouts

as he typically had before, but clearly he still throws really hard and is still a pretty good pitcher, even if he doesn't have supernatural spin. So I don't know that there was any precipitous drop after the policies began to be enforced. I think the lowest day for average spin rate thus far was Saturday, which was before the policy actually went into effect. And I don't know that there's been a steep drop off since, but I think for all the conversation about how MLB is drawing attention to this stain on the game's reputation and is putting cheating front and center and all of that, I don't know. It just

doesn't bother me that much. It seemed like more of a problem to me to have this escalating spin rate arms race than to have pitchers check to enforce a rule that was already on the books. So I don't know. To me, it seems like it's gone okay and it's still too early to draw any conclusions really about what this will mean for offense or for the effectiveness of certain pitchers. But I think it's had the intended effect when it comes to reducing spin rates, at least on a league-wide level. And the comments, the reactions have really been mixed, like as critical as some pitchers and players have been about these policies, others have not. Others have defended them.

I saw Joe Kelly said something about how he's happy about this because he never used anything, which if the sticky stuff does help pitchers with control, I guess that would actually explain some of Joe Kelly's wildness in the past. But he said he was happy to have this level playing field. And I saw Pedro Martinez tweet, a pitcher has no need to go and grab anything else but the rosin bag and some sweat from the forehead. When it's hot and humid, you don't need anything else. Hashtag pitching. Hashtag facts. Pedro was pitching in an earlier

era when perhaps the baseball was easier to grip if you believe the present players. But still, it wasn't like everyone falling along party lines when it comes to pitchers and hitters. Like plenty of players, plenty of pitchers were breaking ranks to sort of support the policy. And I also saw some hitters who were saying, hey, you know what? This is good. Like as much as we've said for a while that we want pitchers to have a grip and everything this might be better for us like i saw chris bryant say we were so stupid as hitters saying oh yeah it's for control we just don't want them to hit us that was such a cop-out i love that

things are kind of going the other way if we get hit we get on base percentage so bryant prominent player obviously is kind of departing from that common line that we often hear hitters say, which as you said, we hear isolated hitters say that, but we don't know. We haven't had a full survey of hitters and players' opinions on these things. So we get a quote here and there and we sort of extrapolate to what the league as a whole thinks, but there are clearly players who are on board with this. So it's not as if they have unanimously protested the way that this has been implemented. Yeah. And I think that, you know, provided that we don't see a spike in injury that we can kind of attribute to this. And I think that's the, because we have not yet had sufficient time to really know what effect it will have on that on a week on a league wide basis i'm reticent to be like this was fine but this seems like it's been okay so far and

provided that it doesn't lead to a bunch of guys getting hurt i think that maybe we will end up having not overreacted to the potential for you know nonsense with a mid-season enforcement, but being pleasantly surprised by how smoothly things have ended up going. I do think that the likely best solution to all of this remains a tacky version of the baseball because the part of Pedro's quote that is telling is the hot and humid part. Well, it's not always hot and humid. Part of what Scherzer was grappling with was that it was in the evening and it was a little bit cooler. So I think that there is still an issue that ought to be addressed there and having some kind of consistency, either via a league provided substance or just a tacky baseball is probably the best way to go

about it. But I am open to being pleasantly surprised by competent implementation of something in the game. I'm open to that. What a lovely thing it would end up being. And I think that as long as the enforcement remains universal and fair, and we don't see a spike in injury, which again, we still kind of have to wait and see on, that that would be great. And I think that the next thing that we're going to want to see, and we're going to need to let it kind of sit and fester for a little bit before we can say anything conclusive, but it's one thing to have spin rates drop, and now we need to see what it does to actual offensive performance. And if we see an uptick there, well, then great. We've said that

several times. If we can pluck low-hanging fruit to try to improve the balance between pitchers and hitters well wouldn't that be great so so yeah i think that we can be at this moment cautiously optimistic while still keeping an eye on some of the issues that we worry might derail us but but provided they don't. You know, if it makes guys feel better to present their pants to the umpires, well, then present them they shall. It's not like they're nude under there. They're still wearing briefs. Let's hope.

Yeah. I mean, we'll find out. I guess we're already being introduced to a bunch of bald spots that perhaps we didn't suspect were there. So who knows what else we will encounter. But I do think there's kind of a fine line between something that's silly in a fun way and something that actually reflects poorly on the sport. We talked about this with sign stealing even and that whole scandal where that seemed to reflect very poorly on the sport. And yet it generated a ton of attention at a time when typically no one is talking about baseball. And it gave us all an interesting story to follow. And it created a heel and a villain and it got everyone riled up. And so even with that, it was like, is this bad for baseball? It's bad if people are cheating and people don't have confidence that these games are on the level. And yet it's also kind of fun to have an intrigue and a scandal like this. But with this, it's even lower stakes,

really, when we're just talking about pitchers taking their pants off now and then. Is that really a stain on baseball? Is that like in the twisted world of Marge Simpson when they throw the pretzels on the field and the broadcaster says, this is a black day for baseball? I guess that's Hank Azaria in his pre-Brockmire days. What's the line between a black day for baseball and just sort of a silly departure from the norm that gives us something to talk about and gives us some entertaining gifts and then goes away. I think, frankly, it was fun to see the Girardi-Scherzer matchup and the Romo pants drop. And as long as it doesn't graduate to a daily occurrence, I'm fine with some nonsense like that. It's just baseball. It's a sport. It's all meaningless anyway. So if we get a chance to see the players' personalities and see them clash a little bit, as long as it's not destabilizing the game in some larger sense, I'm kind of okay with it. And thus far, it has not risen or sunk to that level for me. Well, and it'll be interesting to see kind of how we interpret it and how it reads to us, because on the one hand, we'd be naive to say that the reason this is being done isn't because

there has been a large-scale violation of the rules. Now, I think that we are in agreement that the sort of culture around the game and the atmosphere and sort of environment of enforcement that the league was hewing to would make you say, well, at this as not assuming that there is cheating, but just perhaps making sure that the rule is being properly enforced. And I do think that there is a bit of daylight between those two things and making sure that the rule is being followed, you know, is something that we have a preexisting context and language for within the landscape of sport, right? This isn't the first time that a sport has said, oh, we need to make sure that the rule is being followed and has used some means of enforcement by virtue of their officials to do that. And so I don't look at this and say, oh, what will people in the park come away from the game thinking that everything is terrible in the sport? I don't really think we need to think about it that way.

I do think that it is still useful for us, even if the implementation of this goes smoothly, to be mindful of the things that we took issue with in the beginning, because you don't want to assume that everything is going to be fine when you just enforce a new rule mid-season. I think that being conscious of the best way to implement changes to the game so that the next time you do it you can you can feel even more confident that it will go well is still useful but i think this has been fine and you know provided that joe gerardi doesn't go down any like alleys in dc i think everyone will come away relatively unscathed there's got to be i'm trying to decide how many suspensions i think there will be given the first

couple days of enforcement i'm trying to determine if it has calibrated or recalibrated my expectation up or down and i think it's down but i don't think it's zero i mean we're gonna get somebody's gonna get popped it seems impossible that no one will right i would think so yes all right so i guess you didn't catch franco's debut then probably you were otherwise occupied but he did make an immediate impression and he hit a home run in his first game. And it was an impressive home run, although perhaps more impressive was his earlier plate appearance where he went down 0-2 and then worked a walk because that's kind of his calling card as a prospect. I guess he has multiple calling cards, but the primary one is his plate discipline. And I think even in his next

game, he went hitless, but he had a couple of walks and that is what he's going to do. So I talked to Mike about him on our last episode. And I don't know if you have any other thoughts or if you've seen him play in person during his prospect days, but it is exciting to have him. how he might not be as eye-catching from day one as some of the other great young stars who have debuted in the past few seasons. And of course, he was. He was incredibly eye-catching on day one. But that general comment probably applies to his game just because plate discipline is something that often goes underappreciated. It's technically not even a tool, at least according to the old school five tools structure, but it's probably more appreciated these days than ever has been. And just his ability to put the ball in play, play multiples of positions, play competent defense, and have this very precocious, I don't know if I want to say Soto-esque, maybe that is setting the bar too high, but to make the kind of contact he does and have the sense of the

strike zone that he does at his age is pretty impressive. So I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do. I just am, you know, you can know how old a guy is. And then he's really in the big leagues and he's only 20. And he's a young, he's a young 20. Yeah. Right. He only turned 20 in March. I watched the highlights, but I think that doing that does obscure, to your point, some of the places where he is really just going to distinguish himself as a big leaguer, which

is, you know, they don't show highlights of him walking. That's not what's on MLB.com. And so it's been two games and 10 plate appearances, but for him to have a 30% walk rate, it's just like I feel – I was trying to communicate to my family kind of what the state of the game is like right now, and these are not folks who are particularly invested in baseball. My grandparents enjoy going to baseball games, but like they live in Colorado. So they like see the Rockies, you know, it does temper your sort of enthusiasm for things. But I think that he is an example of a continuing trend, which is that there is just so much talent

in the game right now. We are so fortunate to get to watch some of the players that we do. And I think that it impresses upon you how important it is that we continue to hopefully make the game better in any number of ways, more inclusive and more exciting and with a labor structure that is sort of befitting the players we have because we're so lucky to get to watch them. And I think that it's, you know, this is just another in a long recent line of examples of like guys where we're going to, if everything kind of goes the way we expect it to and nothing in this game, in his two games makes you think,

oh, he's definitely an all-star, but nothing makes you think that the prospect reports were wrong either. Right. And I think we just were very, very fortunate to be getting to watch baseball right now. And it's really exciting. And I hope that, you know, despite its own best efforts at times that we are able to keep sort of track of that part and not lose sight of it. Cause it's really cool. Like he's 20, he's 20 and he's the only i saw some discussion of this in the facebook group when i was checking in um earlier today like he is he is the only 80 future value prospect in the future value era of fangraphs like this is this is like a game altering guy potentially right and we get to watch him from day one it's very very, very cool. Yeah. And he's not a big guy. I mean, he's listed

at 5'10", but he's solidly built. He's not one of these young guys who comes up and looks sort of willowy and you think, oh, he'll fill out and add power. I mean, maybe he will fill out more and add power, but he clearly has already filled out to a great degree and already has power as he demonstrated in his first game. So that's not to say he is by any means a finished product, but it doesn't look like he's 20 necessarily. So I would not be at all surprised if he does produce right away as he did in that game. And yeah, it is exciting. as he did in that game. And yeah, it is exciting. And I think one of baseball's calling cards is its international player pool and the number of countries that play baseball around the world. And there's really no better illustration of that than this generation of young stars,

which really, when you think about all of the potential, quote unquote, faces of baseball right now, or all the players who are in their 20s and are on the rise and are really exciting, I mean, they're all born outside the US, almost exclusively. I mean, whether it's Guerrero or Acuna or Tatis or Soto or even Otani. I mean, just all of these candidates, Wander Franco, to kind of take on that mantle of just being the next big thing, or in some cases, already are the big thing. They are all from around the world, which is kind of a cool thing about baseball. It's not unique in that respect, of course, but it is a nice thing that there's just an increasing international presence in baseball and that it's not just the numbers,

but it's the stars. It's the most prominent players who are coming up and going to be the standard bears for the next decade or more. So I think that is exciting when it comes to hopefully growing the game even further and opening up the doors for people from all over the world that can only benefit baseball really if more people are interested and more people see themselves in rosters, reflected in rosters. So that's also a striking thing really about this crop of incredible prospects turned great big leaguers already. So looking forward to watching Franco and even Lars Knutbar, Cardinals outfielder. I feel like that's kind of like, I've always been sad that Sicknarf Loopstock never made it and Lars Knutbar making it. It feels like I can, I finally got some closure on Sick Narf Loopstock. He may never make it, but at least we got Lars Knutbar and we got Mickey Janus. And I will refrain for now from doing a full meet a major leaguer on Mickey

Janus, because I'm hoping that we will be able to meet Mickey Janus for real on the podcast. I've been in touch with him because I spoke to him a couple of years ago for a feature at The Ringer about the future of the knuckleball and how robo zones might help knuckleball pitchers because calls tend to go against them. And I got Janus' thoughts for that piece. And so when he got the call, I sent him a message and invited him on the pod. And it seems like he'd be interested in doing that when things settle down a bit and an opportunity arises. So perhaps we can meet Mickey Janus that way. But it is nice to have a true knuckleball thrown, I believe. There have been some position players who have thrown knuckleballs or what passes for knuckleballs or what's been classified as the knuckleball. But there has not been a dedicated knuckleballer in the big leagues for a while now.

And baseball is better when someone is throwing knuckleballs. So I'm happy that Janice made it. And when I talked to him a couple of years ago, it was all about how high-speed video and edutronic cameras had helped him refine his knuckleball, which normally you do not think of that technology being applied to knuckleballs. It's all like nasty high-spin sliders, but apparently it can help knuckleballs too. And so he's made it at 33 after quite an odyssey to all levels and leagues. And signing with the Orioles was a masterstroke because pitching is not their calling card. They have the highest park-adjusted ERA in the American League thus far. So how much worse could Vicky Janis B. My only regret is that I took him in last year's minor league free agent draft, but not this year's minor league free agent draft. So poor timing on my part, but good timing on his part. Anyway, amusingly, he was also inspected for sticky stuff, even though you would think

a spin enhancing substance would probably be detrimental to the knuckleball. That's one thing I'd like to ask him about actually is whether there's any benefit to getting a grip or whether just because you're holding it lightly the way that knuckleballers do, you don't actually want sticky stuff or it wouldn't be beneficial. But it makes sense. You have to hold everyone to the same standard. So Mickey Janus must disrobe as well. well it really was one of the more delightful aspects of this to see him getting checked and it did make me wonder like you said it's like this seems like it would be counterproductive for him but if it if it weren't entirely counterproductive would he is there going to come a point where they're like well you're a knuckleballer so like we you know we can be kind of more cursory in our checks and then is he incentivized more than almost anyone to try to gain some edge there because the odds of him getting away with it are so much higher? I mean, I won't ask him that directly because it's sort of rude. And I think probably not borne out by any of the science around this stuff.

But it did make me wonder. I was like, hmm, are you perhaps the one who could benefit the most and get away with it the most easily? Who knows? Yeah. And, you know, that was another thing about the Scherzer-Girardi incident is that Scherzer's spin rates were down significantly in that game, which you would think. And I don't know if Girardi was aware of that. Like, he's not supposed to be using internet-connected devices in the dugout, so he shouldn't be going on Baseball Savant to peep those spin rates, although someone certainly could be back in the thing where you would think that one reason Scherzer might have reacted the way he did is that he was trying to cope and compensate for not having the

sticky stuff that he is used to, and that was reflected in his spin rates and his stuff. And even so, he was forced to subject himself to yet another inspection. So I do wonder whether we will get to a point eventually where the spin rates will trigger an inspection. I mentioned this in one of the interviews on the last episode, that maybe if you are convinced that everyone has actually gone away from this stuff and you have the clean baseline and you've been doing the inspection so rigorously that you can conclude with some confidence that, hey, here's everyone's natural spin rate profile, then maybe eventually you could back off a bit and just look for red flags, look for guys whose spin rates do spike and then communicate to the umpires in game, hey, this guy, his spin rate just leaped up

between pitches or between innings or between outings. And then that could be the impetus for more of a targeted inspection rather than the blanket policy. But I think at least for now, at first, to try to establish that baseline, it makes sense to go full speed ahead. But eventually, that might be a way to back off and not make people take their pants off on tv and to be clear i don't know that they were being forced to take their pants off they were just feeling feisty and they said well fine i shall make a point about this and yes i mean didn't romo it hadn't romo given up like a big home run in that ending right so like if i were him i'd be, really? Clearly this did not go as planned regardless of the stickiness of the stuff. But yes, it was, you know, we get, sometimes you get an evening where everyone comes together and Twitter feels like it did in 2015 and you're like, ah, what a time. We were so young and innocent then. We had fewer gray hairs. had fewer gray hairs. Oh, and also there was kind of a confluence of a couple of things that we've talked about recently. Now that we've mentioned multiple times that players predict every event on the field and that every walk-off turns out to have been predicted by someone, we have been notified whenever that happens. And there was a recent incident where a Twitter user let us know

that Jesse Winker, who was the subject of a recent conversation of ours, he also has the power of prescience. So this was June 22nd, which was, what, Tuesday, I believe. Tyler Naquin, who I think had a four-hit game, he hit a game-winning homer. And after the game, as quoted or as reported by Reds beat writer Bobby Nightingale, David Bell, the Reds manager, said that Jesse Winker had called Tyler Naquin's game-winning home run from the dugout. So again, this is a lot less impressive

to me than it might've been at one time. It's just all of these predictions are coming out of the woodwork now, now that we have made it a banter topic multiple times. Everyone is letting us know when it happens, and it turns out that it is, in fact, a regular occurrence. A regular occurrence, but not every prediction is accurate. And so now I am given to believe that Jesse Winker's neck acts like Pinocchio's nose and every time he predicts the thing that doesn't come true it grows and that's why he has such a long neck so this provided closure to us on any number of levels ben yeah that must mean that he's made a number of poor predictions in his day you're doing it every time the odds are not in your favor this is this is part of the problem but it's just just, you know, it's like his picture.

I think I sent to you the picture of him in one of the early sort of rounds of all-star voting results. And his picture, his neck is just so prominent compared to everyone else. The little Rocky Mountains make every other player look like their chin is resting on the Rocky Mountains, like, oh, I'm taking a little rest. Then there's Jesse Winker and his big neck. It's not a flaw. I mean, it is objectively a very long neck. Yep, every other player is playing at mile high,

and then Jesse Winker is at mile high and a few inches more. We also got an email from a new listener, Ilan, who said, I felt like I could add something to discussion around player predictions. I'm on a college baseball team and not only are players constantly trying to predict what they will do, they're also trying to predict what everyone else will do. I have a teammate who predicts a home run every time Luis Vargas is up to bat. He's wrong a lot, but he gets it right a shocking amount. Anyway, don't know if that information helps. And I think it helps a little bit because college baseball players in many cases become pro baseball players and these habits form early. And so it makes sense to me that this would be common clubhouse behavior. So just further corroboration for this hypothesis that it happens all the time. We haven't talked about them much this season, except in the context of people booing them.

But they are a team that didn't lose while you were away. And in fact, haven't lost in a couple of weeks going into Thursday. They have a 10-game winning streak. And they are absolutely raking, as Mickey Janis discovered in his debut, which did not go great. So they have the best record in the American League. They have gone ahead of the A's now. I think they are still behind the Giants for the Major League best record, but they've been really good and they have hit incredibly well. I don't know. You know the famous drill tweet about the correction on a previous post regarding ISIL. You do not under any circumstances got to hand it to them. I think with the Astros, you do got to hand it to them at a certain point, even if you hate the Astros. That is justified to some extent. They keep mashing year after year, and they keep making contact better than any other team.

And unless you think that they are still cheating and still getting the signs and that they still know what's coming, I think at a certain point, you just have to concede that they hit well. Which does not change the fact that they cheated, but does perhaps change what you think about how it helped them, which a lot of the studies seem to suggest that it may not have on the whole, which doesn't mean that it might not have at some pivotal moment and doesn't change the morality of the whole thing. But just when it comes to assessing their skill and the impact on their performance, at a certain point, you just do have to sort of sit up and take notice and say that presumably they're not cheating anymore, or at least not in the way that they were. And it hasn't hurt them at all offensively. So they have a 126 WRC plus as we speak on

Thursday, which is easily the best in baseball and is tied with the 2019 Astros team for the best Astros offense during this run. So far, of course, things could change over the rest of the season, but that 2019 offense was one of the best ever. As I recall, it was one of the best since Murderer's Row and the 2021 Astros have hit just as well. They have the best strikeout rate or lowest strikeout rate in baseball yet again, which I think they have had every season since their 2017 reinvention, which coincided with the banging scheme, but also with the drastic turnover in their lineup that seemed to be oriented toward a more contact forward approach. And they have sustained that. I think maybe 2018, they had the second lowest strikeout rate. But other than that, it's been the best strikeout rate, best contact rate year in, year out. And it's largely the same group of guys. And they lost George Springer and they have not missed a beat offensively. It's pretty impressive that they have managed to keep raking this way. So yeah, at a certain point,

you can continue to boo the Astros, but I think you do have to hand it to them as well. Well, and I think that our concern for them, I don't know that I imagined that they would hit quite this well, but I think part of our concern for them, I don't know that I imagined that they would hit quite this well, but I think part of our concern for them was just what they were going to do on the pitching side of things because they were injured and they had guys who were sort of unproven and we weren't quite sure how that was going to manifest. And I think that if you look at them in our leaderboards, they're sort of a little bit better than middle of the pack from a league-wide perspective. But even their pitching in the last month has been really very good. So yeah, they're seemingly rounding into form in but without Cole, without Verlander, they have managed to piece together this pitching staff. And I think probably some credit is due to their player development system. And probably some credit is due to Dusty Baker, who has really revitalized and rehabilitated his reputation as a manager of pitchers.

And he's managed to really break in and incorporate these pitchers who, for the most part, were not highly ranked prospects, but have really more than held their own. I mean, guys like Luis Garcia, one of the three recent Luis Garcias, which is tough to keep track of. Jose Urquidy, Christian Javier, Frambois Valdez is back and has been good again. Like these guys are good. They don't have the name recognition and the pedigree, and maybe they don't have the depth in their staff that they had a few years ago, but they've been more than good enough given how great their position players have been. And speaking of headshots, check out Christian Javier's headshot.

I don't think I've ever seen a sadder looking expression in a headshot. I don't know what he was so sad about on photo day. It looks like he's about to shed a tear. Be happy, Christian. You're pitching well. You pitched well last year. I don't know. He really does look like he's

about to either start crying or sneeze yeah what are what are the two yeah but uh bad headshots and like you know not this isn't bad it's not like his eyes are closed or anything but like he does look very upset but sort of headshots that are not pristine are always so confusing to me because truly, one, what else are you there to do except capture these guys in a way that they feel comfortable with? And you're using a digital camera. It's not like you can't take another shot. It's not film. We are not in the 90s any longer. But yeah, he really does look like he's about to start crying. Cheer up, Christian. Yeah. I don't know. Sometimes players take intentionally silly headshots. Other times, probably they just don't care and they're just rushing through there.

And the photographer says, here you go. And they say, great, print it. I got to go back to whatever I was doing. So that might explain it. I got to go back to whatever I was doing. So that might explain it. But yeah, and part of, I guess, the run prevention success has been the defense, which is also really good. They are leading the majors in defensive efficiency. And so between that and between the hitting, they have by far the most war produced by position players this year. So yeah, there was some question about that after last season because in the shortened season, they were basically a league average offense. And some people I think took that as confirmation of, oh, see, they don't know what's coming. They can't hit now. And some guys like Altuve and Bregman had down years. And some guys like Altuve and Bregman had down years.

But then they all seemed to turn it on at once in the playoffs. And it was like, oh, they look like the old Astros again. And so there was some question. I remember when we did our Astros preview segment this spring, we asked, you know, were the real Astros the regular season Astros or the October Astros? And thus far, it seems like the October Astros. Or the October Astros. And thus far, it seems like the October Astros. So even without Springer, like Brantley has been his usual great self. Correa has been great, especially lately. Yuli Gurriel is hitting again. Jordan Alvarez always hits when healthy. Altuve is hitting again. Kyle Tucker is hitting. Bregman was not great. I think he's on the IL now, but not terrible, but really almost top to down with the Astros. Again, there's just too much firepower in this lineup. And between that and the pitching reinforcements, they kind of look like the Astros of old as opposed to just the old Astros, which is kind of what they were looking like for a while when some of the core

was getting up there in age and they were not really spending to replace some of the departing players. And it sort of seemed like, okay, maybe we're seeing the last days of the dynasty here, but they have rejuvenated themselves this year, much to most people's dismay probably. Everyone is going to be furious. if they have an extended playoff run, people are going to have to come up with new mean things to say. Yep. Yep. Well, I guess it's good for the people who are releasing Astro's sign stealing books this summer. That seems like old news now that we're all obsessed with sticky stuff.

But for the Astros to still be in the news, I guess that'll sell some books. Yeah. So that's something. All right. Well, I suppose we can leave it there and we will be back with one more episode soon before the end of this week. Well, after we recorded this episode, the Red Sox no-hit the Rays into the eighth inning and the Cubs no-hit the Dodgers all the way.

A combined no-hitter, but still a modern-era record-tying seventh on the season. We went a while without one there. The Dodgers did draw eight walks in the game, which caused reporter J.P. Hornstra to tweet that the girl from last week's email show who roots for walks more than hits probably wondered what all the fuss was about. The league batted.234 on Thursday, despite the lack of sticky stuff. But the Astros hitters had no trouble as usual. They scored 12 runs against Detroit, and the Astros won their 11th game in a row.

Last thing, listener Donald wrote in to alert us to a Thursday conversation on the Reds broadcast about Jesse Winker calling the Tyler Nyquan homer on Tuesday. And Donald didn't even know that we had discussed that on this episode. But you will want to hear what Barry Larkin said when this topic came up. So I'm going to play you a roughly one-minute clip. It starts with a description of Winker's reaction to getting his prediction right, and then you'll hear Larkin jump in. The only one that might have been equally as excited

about that home run as Naquin is this guy, Jesse Winker. Why? He called the home run. We found out from of all people David Bell normally doesn't divulge such things but it was Winker that called the shot to David Bell and of course in true Jesse Winker fashion after it

happened the entire team knew about it because he kept going on and on and on and on and about it. And he was as excited as you get when Naquin hit home plate. You ever do that Lark. Do you ever call a teammate shot or vice versa.

Lutely. Called it all the time now whether or not it happened. Just got throw it out there just in case. I told you. I told you. Yeah.

But you told me he was going to go deep to what happened he punched out. Yeah. But you told me he was going to go deep to what happened he I told you I told you Yeah but you told me he was going to go deep too What happened he punched out Yeah well don't worry about that I told you about this one Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story That's right

So there you have it from the Hall of Famer himself Correctly casting doubt on the prescience Of player predictions Okay you can support Effectively Wild On Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. John Ford, Benjamin Miller, Steve Hackerman, Jackson, and Duncan McHugh.

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thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. As already mentioned, we will be back soon with one more episode this week. Talk to you then. I was wearing those hot pants But I know that no one wants to dance with you Tonight Tonight Tonight Tonight