Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1725: Jerry Built

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Padres trading for Adam Frazier and other pre-deadline activity, Joey Votto’s offensive resurgence, Shohei Ohtani’s dirty uniform, and more, then react in real time to the Mariners surprisingly trading Kendall Graveman to the Astros for Abraham Toro. They also answer listener emails about adding a pitcher/DH position, […]

Jo's in a dream, Jo's in a dream, Jo's in a lovely place, Jo's got a smiley face. Jo's in a dream, Jo's in a dream, Jo's in a lovely place, Jo's got a smiley face. Hello and welcome to episode 1725 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, happy trade deadline week. Thank you. Yeah, we're recording here on Tuesday evening, and it's kind of the calm before the storm still but you know the storm is coming the rumors are flying fast and furious yeah flying fast and furious sometimes they are resulting in trades sometimes those trades are coming up short and being found wanting but getting snags holdups yes yeah they're halted love the trade deadline language this is the thing that happens you know sometimes you have a trade and then you get the medicals i assume that that's what's going on here although

we have not i don't think heard a definitive explanation for the delay in the the anderson deal and then you get the medicals and you're like oh no and then stuff has to get moved around and sometimes oftentimes it resolves sometimes it doesn, you know, this is all part of the thrill of Deadline Time. Who will end up wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform? Tune in to find out. Yes. The baseball world waits with bated breath to find out if Tyler Anderson will, in fact, be a Philly.

There are some other bigger names that are also on the block and are probably consuming more mindshare as we speak. I would imagine so. Not a lot of deals done as we speak. Really, it's just a few Pirates-related moves and I guess some reliever deals. So the big one so far has been Adam Frazier to the Padres from the Pirates. Then, as we mentioned, there is the snagged Tyler Anderson deal. Clay Holmes went from the Pirates to the, as we mentioned, there is the snagged Tyler Anderson deal. Clay Holmes went

from the Pirates to the Yankees. Who knew that the Pirates still had so many players left to deal after telling a bunch of players before? And then in the non-Pirates trade, the Cubs traded reliever Andrew Chafin to the A's. So I don't have a whole lot to say about any of those except for, I suppose, the Adam Frazier deal. I don't know what would surprise me more if you had told me at the start of the season that this deal would be made and all of the circumstances surrounding this deal, which is Adam Frazier and $1.4 million to the Padres for Tukupita Marcano, about whom you will hear more later in this episode, and two other prospects. And so I don't know what would be more surprising, that the Padres are

in third place and that they are trading for yet another player who can play multiple positions, or that Adam Frazier would be that bet and that he would be an NL All-Star starter. I don't know that I saw any of those things coming. I remember heading into this season when it looked like the Padres were the presumptive second place team, at least in the NOS, that there was a positional logjam at that time. And we were wondering, how are they going to get these guys at bats and who's going to slot in where? And they still have all of those players, but not all of them have performed as expected. So you have Jerickson Profar who who hasn't hit very well. You have Hasan Kim,

who has hit even worse than that. And then you have some of the other guys who are less flexible in terms of position, but also haven't performed up to expectations. Eric Hosmer, who I guess has performed up to many people's expectations, but not the Padres perhaps. And then Will Myers, who has been down from where he was last year. And so I guess Frazier could fit in in a number of places, but presumably he stays at second where he spent most of his time and then maybe Jake Cronenworth slides over to first, maybe Hosmer loses playing time, maybe Myers sits every now and then, but they really have the Dodgers-Rays setup going now where they have so many players who can play so many positions that in theory, they shouldn't have holes in that

lineup, but they've had more holes than you would have expected. It's been a good offense, but not a great offense. Yeah. Despite Tatis' season and Gruneworth being good, it hasn't quite been. Certainly what we saw last year, I don't know. It's so interesting because i suspect that if the padres i'm about to say a thing you're gonna be like that's not insightful i don't think but stay with me okay i was gonna say you know if the padres were in first place in the nls they wouldn't have made this trade yeah although maybe they would have anyway because you can always use more depth and even if they were in first place, I imagine that even in that timeline,

the West is a competitive division and they might want to shore up their roster despite not needing to with quite the urgency they do now. I mean, like even a bad Eric Hosmer, you have more patience for if you're a first place team, but when you're a third place team, even a third place team that seems destined for the post season. I mean, I think that the teams

we should really be feeling bad for are the teams with wild card aspirations and the NL that do not play in the West. Because it seems likely that some combination of the Dodgers, Giants and Padres will end up occupying those spots. But yeah, I think that there has been some talk of Adam Frazier also potentially seeing time in the outfield as a way of dealing with this. So yes, you know, maybe it's Myers, it's Hosmer. I know there have been wild talks of wanting to offload Eric Hosmer onto some poor suspecting franchise, presumably with a prospect attached to make the money make better sense for the team taking him but absent that yeah i imagine that he will just see less playing time going forward

again you you kind of tolerate the down bat when when you can but they really need to push in here and try to move ahead although look i don't want to ruin anyone's good time i don't want to harsh anyone's vibe ben i don't want to i don't want to be a downer i'm not a skeptic is too strong but i i don't know if i buy adam fraser i don't know if i buy it like i think i am happy for him i'm happy for him ben but i don't know that i necessarily suspected that or believe that this will sustain itself going forward but then again if you're the padres you don't need it to sustain itself for all that But then again, if you're the Padres, you don't need to sustain itself for all that terribly long and you have all that prospect capital. So why not go and try to fix some of your problems? But I know that some people looked at this deal and

thought that feels light for Adam Frazier. And I think the part of it that truly kind of pushes it into strange territory for me is actually the money more than the prospects. I could see Adam Frazier having a softer market than we necessarily anticipated that he would. Although I do find it surprising that the Mariners or the White Sox could not have bested this offer, which again, maybe means, or not again, but maybe just as a testament to the internal evaluations that the Pirates have on these guys, right? They just might think quite highly of them. And in that case, they are sitting there going, well, you don't get it, but that's fine.

Because if you did, then you would have traded for them. And we're glad you did not do that. Right. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm not fully believing the Adam Frazier breakout in his age 29 season. He is leading the major leagues in hits. And as I mentioned, he's the all-star starting second baseman. And so, yeah, you would think.

They had two. They had two starters. True. Those pirates. Yeah. They had two. That's surprising. They're not a good baseball team, but two.

Purely based on that, you would think, oh, we're going to get a great prospect haul here. He's under team control for 2022 as well. But yeah, I don't think teams are necessarily buying Adam Frazier as a star, as a solid player, versatile player, all of those things. Absolutely. But he is a very batting average dependent guy, makes a lot of contact. And so if the ball bounces right, then he has a high batting average and everything looks great. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't look so great. So you can kind of see the swings in Adam Frazier's possible outcomes in 2020 and 2021.

So this is probably the upper end of his range. And if you look at the BABIP and you look at the batted ball stats and all of that, then this is probably not quite who he is. But hey, it helps. And the Padres lineup is a little bit righty-leaning, so you get another lefty in there and more depth and multi-position players. So talking about the Patres this week if Preller's history is any guide. Oh, yeah. So he's just warming up. This is just how he gets started. Yeah. I mean, we spent so much time building up the sort of mystique and myth of Jerry, the

tradesman. But we really should have had Bauman write a little song about A.J. Preller. Yes. And there are a lot of funny stories about AJ. So, you know, he could have done a lot with the lyrics, presumably. But yeah, I imagine that they will be quite busy because even if they are destined to play in the wild card game,

I imagine they're keen to at least host it. Yeah. Well, we may be talking about Jerry DePoto later this week as well. There are probably a lot of trades in our near future and our next couple of episodes will be trade centric. But since we don't have a ton of trade activity to talk about today, we're going to do some emails. We're going to do a stat blast and maybe a meet a major leaguer segment. It's been a while and maybe that will involve some players dealt in a few of these recent trades. Just a couple things first.

I was all ready if when we did the intro, you said, how are you? I was going to say, I'm good, but not as good as Joey Votto, because have you noticed the Votto-sants? I don't know whether we brought this about by being down on him about a month ago. Long-time listeners or month-long listeners will remember episode 1712, we talked about Joey Votto's decline and how it was sort of demoralizing that he had proven mortal that his bat had declined, which was understandable at his age, but he always seemed like someone who would just be able to figure things out somehow and adjust his approach and compensate for declining skills. And that hadn't really happened. And he seemed to have bottomed out a bit. And that was

June 25th. We talked about Votto and that night he went 0 for 4. And after that 0 for, his slash line stood at 241, 328, 426 after 184 plate appearances. That was a 103 WRC+. It wasn't like he was bad, but he was just barely above average and not great for a first baseman. However, he did have a 363 expected WOBA to go with his 330 WOBA. So his batted ball quality was a bit better than his stats thus far.

And over the past month, since we talked about him, he has been on a tear. He has been hitting like peak Votto. I am pleased to report. So since that day, so from June 26th through July 26th, so entering Tuesday of this week, he hit 315, 423, 630 over that span, 111 plate appearances with a 174 WRC+. And yeah, that's the old Votto. And he was 15th in WRC+, among the 164 qualified hitters over that span, 14th in position player war, back to being good again. And his BABIP was up to 373 over that span. And his expected weighted on base this time was about 20 points below his actual weighted on base. But both numbers were far higher than they had been.

So 439 WOBA, 419 expected WOBA. So even if you think that he was getting a little lucky, he was still performing quite well and hitting the ball better. So happy to see this. Not sure if this will continue or if this was the last gasp or what, but I'm sorry to say that I doubted him, and I am pleased to see that he has found his mojo again, however briefly. Yeah, because you want people to go out on a good note if they're going to go out on a note, right?

You want them to strike a good one. I watched parts of their game against the cubs last night and um i i did notice i was like hey you know who's having a good little night for this cincinnati reds team is joey vato and you just i know that we don't do like plate discipline highlights like you know when when you're sitting there watching MLB TV and the dulcet tones of come on, they're never showing you like Joey Votto, just taking a,

taking an excellent take, but boy, you know, we'll miss it when it's gone. I know that it has declined from what it was and, and what have you, but like, it is,

it is really a very cool thing to see and you know he also did he also did fun things like drive-in runs and i think he hit a home run in that game so it was not just for those who sit there and like i get really excited about play discipline guys but i do and it it's a it's a really cool skill to watch live for someone who is such a skilled practitioner of it so so joey we salute you yep 14.4 percent walk rate over that month we just talked about yeah yeah it is pleasing to the eye to watch someone who has a great sense of the strike zone and you just feel like all right they're not giving away plate appearances they're not giving away pitches it's easy for me to say

oh how could you swing at that? I'm sure every pitch looks enticing and I would be swinging wildly at everything or just swinging at nothing at all and hoping that people would throw me balls by accident. But it is really nice to see someone who just knows what a strike is more or less and will not chase. And he has been among the best of that over the course of his career. So nice to have him back again, at least for a little while. My daily Otani observation is based on his outing on Monday, which was great. He played two ways. He started for the Angels. Granted, it was a start against the Rockies who were on the road, and not many teams are worse ever, really, than the Rockies on the road this year. But still, he went seven innings, didn't walk anyone, gave up just one solo homer.

Great outing. And he also singled in a run and stole a base and made a nice defensive play. Just your typical Otani outing. But I was thinking about what I will remember from this season, because this season has been one of the best and certainly one of the most impressive and one of the most enjoyable and one of the most memorable that I have ever seen and probably will ever see. He is now on pace for 10.8 Baseball Reference War and 10.0 Fan Crafts War. And I was wondering what images would come to my mind when I think back on this year, and maybe it'll be some of the Titanic home runs or him hitting 100 miles per hour in the seventh inning on Monday, which was pretty impressive, or just the great hugs that he gives in the dugout and the smiles.

I don't know exactly what will come to mind, but I think the little illuminating moments that just drive home for me that this guy is doing both jobs, which again, just still somehow boggles my mind. doing both jobs, which again, just still somehow boggles my mind. But I mentioned recently the little moment where he forgot to take his base running gloves out of his back pocket when he went to the mound. And so he had to just trot off and deposit those back in the dugout or hand them to a bat boy or something. And that was like an only Otani moment, especially for an American league pitcher who otherwise would just have no reason to have base running gloves in his back pocket while he's pitching. And there was a similar moment in this game because in the bottom of the first, he, of course, was batting second in his usual slot. And he singled and he stole second base, but not before German Marquez, who was pitching for the Rockies, threw over several times.

And in Marquez's defense, Otani had already tried to steal once and gotten a great jump and then had to go back because the ball was fouled off, I think. And so Marquez knew he was going to go and that he had timed him pretty well, but he was throwing over and over and over again, almost as if Marquez was messing with him, like trying to tire out the opposing starter. But despite being forced to dive back into first over and over, he still ended up still in the base. And so when he returned to the mound in the top of the second, he was covered in dirt, like top to bottom, his uniform top, his uniform bottom, his pants, it was total dirt all over the place. And you just never really see that. I mean,

certainly you'd never really see that for an American league pitcher. Like how could that happen? I guess if you were, I don't know, backing up a play at home or something and he slid, like if he happened to slide somewhere on the infield dirt, I guess that could happen. But otherwise you very rarely see that. And even for a national league pitcher, you almost certainly wouldn't see it in the second inning because a national league pitcher is unlikely to bat in the bottom of the first. And if he does, he's not going to steal a base while he's on base. If he gets on base and he's not going to have the opposing pitcher checking him back over and over and forcing him to dive back into first. And a lot of pitchers, even if they get on base, they're wearing a windbreaker. And so they wouldn't even be able to get their uniform dirty so that to me like if you

had to take a still image just to memorialize this season I guess Otani standing there just covered in dirt on the pitcher's mound like you just never see that and that was one of those little moments that made me realize yep we're seeing something that we never see otherwise we talked about this the last time that the MVP race in the AL really seems to be a matter of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Otani. And Otani is really starting to put some meaningful distance between him and Vlad in a way that I think is going to shift the way that people think about this, particularly if he continues his performance. He has been less good than Vlad, although still superlative when it comes to hitting. I think Guerrero is having a better offensive year, although they're both excellent again. But with a full win of distance between them when you factor in the pitching, it's starting to feel more like Otani's to lose, I think. And also, I would like to ask that the Colorado broadcast not revive the MVP definitional debate, which you

started to do on last night's broadcast, and I would say, hey, we don't have to do that. We can like ourselves. Hey, we've got a trade breaking news here. You might have to direct some traffic at Fangrafts while we're recording here. I don't care for this trade at all. I don't like it.

This is an interesting one, so we'll get your real-time Meg take on a Mariners-related trade here. So a four-player trade that is being finalized between the Mariners and the Astros. So this is odd just to start with in that you have two teams in the same division that are both in playoff contention making a trade. So that's weird. And the deal is Kendall Graveman, closer for the Mariners, is going to Houston and Abraham Toro, the infielder, is going back to Seattle. And then Rafael Montero, who I guess was originally supposed to be the Mariners closer, and that didn't really work out. He was recently designated for assignment. He's also going to the Astros.

And Joe Smith, the veteran reliever, is going back to Seattle. So, wow, that's an interesting one. We've got relievers going in opposite directions and then Toro going to the Mariners. So break this down for me. Okay, I have a couple of things that I'd like to say about this. Okay. We just said Jerry was going to be busy, and he gave us about five minutes.

Yeah, I think by the end of it, I will have made everyone mad. So that's a thing to know about it. I think I should start by saying, I don't know that this Mariners team is actually very good. That's a baseline from which to start. I think that when you look at some of the underlying metrics, for instance, they are currently outperforming their Pythagorean expectation by 10 wins.

You think, oh, Pythag, that's not everything. And then you look at their base runs record, and it's the same. They are outperforming that by 10 wins. And you might ask yourself, so hey, Meg, if that's what's going on here, then how is this team 55 and 46? What's up with that? And the answer is that their bullpen has been quite good, except now it's going to be worse

yeah sort of illustrate this point 23 and 8 in one run games yes this year 20 23 and 8 and that's a like that's a pretty good record and i think that when you start to look at how things break down for them from a pitching perspective right now from a bullpen war perspective they are second in baseball not just in the american league but in baseball behind only the tampa bay race and slightly ahead of the new york yankees which is funny for any number of reasons um they have a 355 bullpen fib 399 bullpen. And when you look at their rotation, it is less good than that. Like they're 23rd in Fangraph's war as a staff and have FIP in the high fours. So I think it is reasonable if you are trying to evaluate this team as a front office member to say, well, that seems unlikely to

sustain itself in the second half. And this is probably despite being just a game back at the second wildcard, like maybe this is a team that fades as time goes on and they aren't able to sustain this down the stretch. And then they fade from playoff contention and they will have missed an opportunity to pick a piece that they think is valuable for them going forward. And I think all of that is like a reasonably defensible thing. I also think there are a couple of pieces in the

Mariners bullpen, like Paul Seewald, who are sort of outperforming what we might have expected. And so you can get excited about that. The whole bullpen is outperforming what you would have expected. I mean, it has been good, as you've said, but that was not something I saw coming. And if you had told me the names, I still would not have seen it coming. It's like the Mariners bullpen was terrible last year. We've talked about that. And they turned over most of that pen and they ended up with new names, but not big names at all.

It kind of backs up the idea that pens, you just sort of have to strike it lucky sometimes. The idea that like pens, you just sort of have to strike it lucky sometimes. And if you pay for a reliever, maybe he won't be so dependable. Like I guess Montero was the acquisition they were hoping would be the late inning arm. And then it ended up being, you know, Drew Steckenreiter and Misevic and all of these names that like if you had told me them a few months ago, I would not have been able to tell you anything about those guys basically. had told me them a few months ago, I would not have been able to tell you anything about those guys basically, except for Graveman, who, as we have talked about, has been just lights out as a reliever after converting from the rotation. Yeah, just lights out. So yeah, you're sitting in the Mariner's front office and you think, we're not sustaining that. But you know what a really good way to not sustain bullpen performance? from your best reliever right that that tends to put it a real definitive nail in that in that coffin so i understand the

skepticism that the folks running the team might have in terms of the sustainability of their performance thus far but i also think that this is a team that's only a game out of the second wild card and as we have mentioned a couple of times hasn't been to the postseason since I've been in high school so I think that you kind of want them to ride whatever good performance unsustainable though it may be and one way to try to bolster that performance and add more substance to it, make it real is to add instead of sell in a more real way than this. I mean, I think that we can

debate the wisdom of moving some of the top prospects in the Mariner system in what is a good system for established big leaguers. And I know opinions are going to vary on that. And it depends obviously on the players moving in and out out but you have a really good farm system and you have a cushion so surely there are some players one might add that can bolster not only your chances this year but perhaps in future seasons but that doesn't appear to be what the mariners are interested in doing here i mean like i don't mind Abraham Toro. That's fine. Joe Smith has literally the most anonymous name in baseball and has not been especially good over the last little bit.

I don't think that that adds a whole lot here, but this does feel like them saying, no, no, we're not interested in the wild card and we're certainly not interested in the West because we're trading this guy to the team that is ahead of us in the standings. So I don't really especially love that either, mostly because it's just been such a long time. At some point, you just want to win.

And it does sound like this has created, in just a short amount of time, a good deal of acrimony in the Mariners' clubhouse. Yes, one would imagine. Because I don't know if anyone was paying attention to their contest against these very same Astros last night, but they managed to come back from quite a deficit to win 11-8 and are now sending their best reliever

to the next bullpen over. The reliever who got the win in that game. So I don't feel as if this is necessarily sending the best message but also apparently trey turner has just been pulled from the game in philly so maybe he's going to seattle i don't think that's likely no probably not but there may be more moves that i suppose could make this look a bit better we will see but yeah maybe they figure that everything you said about the Mariners playing over their heads, and it's not just that they are doing so well in one-run games.

They're also, I think, 10-1 in extra inning games, and some of those are the one-run games as well. But I think they are 27-8 in one-run and extra inning games. That's a 771 winning percentage. And I'm familiar with these stats because Joe Sheehan just wrote a piece this week in his newsletter about how lucky or clutch or whatever you want to call it the Mariners have been this year. It's not just that they have squeaked by in those close games or that they have the great bullpen. But well, one reason why they

have squeaked by in so many close games is that they have had incredibly good timing on offense. It's not a great offense, far from it, but they've just been timing their hits incredibly well. Basically, the opposite of the Yankees. We've talked about their poor sequencing and timing this season. The Mariners are on the other extreme and have historically been good relative to their overall performance with runners in scoring position or in high leverage moments. And again, that's not something that you would necessarily expect to continue, but probably the players on the Mariners feel pretty proud of that. And so, yeah, one would imagine that they are not taking this well and that fans who are being treated to a somewhat unexpected Mariners playoff run after the

step back or whatever Jerry DiPoto termed the teardown or rebuild. Maybe they're a bit ahead of schedule, sort of in one sense, or behind schedule if you go by the initial timeline. I don't know. The timeline is muddied, but I didn't expect the Mariners to be where they are right now, which as you said, they're a game out of the second wildcard spot. They're only a game behind the A's. That's the team that they were trailing in the wildcard race and in the division and six games behind Houston, which is the team they're trading with here. And yeah, I guess DePoto is looking at the Fangrass playoff odds and saying, well, we're at 6.2% and that is lower than the Angels even who are four games behind the Mariners as we speak and can't count on that clutchitude continuing over the next couple months. And, you know, maybe they figure, well, Graveman is also pitching a bit over his head and his FIP is a couple of runs higher as you would expect of a pitcher with a sub one ERA.

Maybe Smith has been a little bit better than his terrible ERA would suggest. And Graveman is an impending free agent, whereas Toro is under control for the rest of the season. And I think four more years after that. So he's not just a rental. And as you were just saying, maybe the Mariners could use Adam Frazier. Well, I guess they got Toro instead. So there's some value there, but again, it is tough to send that signal to your fans and to your players when you're as close as they are just going by the standings, which is what ultimately matters more so than the run differential, which has been quite poor for them. But still, it's tough to give people the impression that you're raising the white flag,

at least as we speak now, or at least not improve your team and possibly make it a bit worse when they're in the position they're in. Ryan Divish asked Kyle Seeger about the deadline and trying to win now. This is on Sunday. And Seeger said that when he was asked whether the team should add at the deadline and whether they should be a team that's winning. And Seager said, you always want to be on a team that's trying to win, right? Like I've said in the past, at some point, it has to be about winning. That's the goal of baseball. You don't necessarily always want to be playing for rebuilds and doing that stuff. Especially for me, kind of where I'm at, I want to be playing for something bigger than myself. I want to be

playing for something big and you can feel how much the city is just starving for it. You can see it with the fans. It's been way too long, obviously, but yeah, you have to be about winning. And then he goes on to say, you want that obviously, right? You want people to believe in you. You want them to feel like we're doing a good job and that this is the team to go for it. I think it's been preached about this rebuild so much, but I mean, we're right there on the edge of this thing. So certainly you would like to have them make moves and get the team as good as we possibly can. And knowing me personally, I mean, good Lord,

I'd like to make a run out of it. Yeah. And I think that that sentiment is echoed by, certainly by a lot of people in that clubhouse and a lot of fans in Seattle. And like I said, starting off when you asked, I don't think that this team is as good as their record. I think there's good reason to believe that they're quite a bit worse,

but it's not as if the only option they had was to sell or do nothing, right? They could have tried to add in a way that might have had a bigger impact this year. And I don't know i don't care for it ben well good move for the astros i guess who now get because what you really want to always be saying as a team is like our division rival you know what they are today happy yeah we helped out houston so they get another good dominant right-handed setup, man, for Ryan Presley, I suppose. So that's something. And Toro had not been contributing a ton to their major league team this year.

So not losing a lot there. In terms of 2021, that is, he's hit much better in the minors and is still a pretty promising player. And who knows? He and Joe Smith might be better than Graveman the rest of this season. Stranger things have happened, such as the Mariners having the record that they do in the first place. All right. Well, we will see if anyone else makes a move before we finish this episode. So moving on to a couple emails. Here's one that is Otani related, and I was planning to segue from my Otani banter into this question until we were rudely interrupted by Jerry DePoto. But this question comes from Eric who says,

I've been thinking about maximizing the Otani entertainment value along with encouraging the development of two-way players. Otani is once in a century, but I wonder if more teams will be willing to allow two-way players more time on both tracks after seeing him. Forgive me if you've already talked about this possibility on the podcast, but I think with the hopeful addition of the universal DH, it's time to create the pitcher slash DH position. It's an NCAA rule where a pitcher can stay in the game as DH after they are removed as pitcher.

Games where Otani is starting on the mound and batting second are probably the most exciting games in baseball. He just stole second in a game he's starting as i type this if a team is really willing to bench a hitting specialist to allow their pitcher to hit why not let him play all nine innings it would still be rare but would incentivize the two-way player so eric is i suppose essentially advocating for the all-star game exception for otani to be made in any game in which otani is pitching or any comparable two-way player if there ever were one. But I mean, sure, I would love that because I want to see as much Otani as possible. But I think given his rarity is why this won't happen, right? Because there's no incentive for anyone else in the league to think this is a good idea, really, right?

Yeah, that's true it's basically like an advantage for the angels right it's writing an otani rule into the rule book i mean and maybe maybe seeing otani and and being able to really maximize the the performance you get out of him maybe that incentivizes teams to think more sort of creatively about two-way players and to see the real potential upside to that. But I don't think that most teams in baseball are in the practice of granting one team like a competitive advantage. Yeah. I suppose that is a problem. I tend to think of things from the maximizing Otani perspective more so than the competitive perspective, but yes. But it is an interesting approach to take to try to resolve this tension around, you know, pitchers hitting. Because like if you have a couple of guys who are halfway decent early on, you have incentive to really try to think about their rosters creatively and to not simply stand pat. But despite all that beautiful imagination, I think it's unlikely.

Yeah. I asked Michael Bowen about it, just my designated college baseball consultant. And he said he likes the rule at that level. There are a lot of two-way players in college, of course. And he said there are some things it doesn't account for. Like if you move a player from a field position to the mound, you lose the DH, at least in college baseball, which was a problem briefly for Arizona when Bobby Dahlbeck was their closer. And he noted that it also opened up a weird tactical loophole in college that they used to use at Vanderbilt, where their coach, Tim Corbin, would write out his lineup card and put a starting pitcher he

wasn't going to use at DH and then not reveal who his actual DH was going to be until that spot came up in the order, kind of like the phantom DH that Earl Weaver used to use in the majors until Yeah, maybe not as much. It would be fun and it would be nice for Otani, but maybe not so nice for everyone else. But maybe in the future, if a bunch of other two-way players come along so that it wouldn't be as explicitly a one-team rule. Or Ben, we lean into it and we think about what are some of the other guys where you would want to see a single player rule. Yeah, actually, we got a suggestion for an offseason draft episode of rules that were named after or prompted by one particular player, which would be a fun one. We can file that away for a future winter episode when we're not in trade deadline week, but there are quite a lot of those. So so hear that everybody we're filing it away we're filing it away for the off season which means because we love all of your emails and want to give them their due

and not forget about them because i have to file them in away from my inbox there are too many to keep there and and not lose other emails you should wait to send your suggestions until later we will say hey we're gonna do this episode next week we'd love to hear from you we're gonna say all those words out loud and then you'll send us your brilliant emails and we'll be like these are so great and meg did not misplace them so okay and so we're saying to everybody okay cool all right here's another email about a rule change or really a rule reversion this is from sam patreon supporter who says i was listening to the episode where ben and meg were talking about the extreme shift on joey gallo you mentioned that once the count hit two strikes the shift got even shiftier and it gave me an idea what if mlb did

away with the foul bunt tip with two strikes equals a strikeout rule? That seems to be the big risk with attempting to bunt. If the rule were removed, would it cause teams to shift less? Would players feel more confident bunting against the shift and do it more often? And so Gallo has been someone who has been known to go against the shift, beat the shift from time to time. someone who has been known to go against the shift, beat the shift from time to time. And so often you will see that teams will shift more extremely with two strikes, either because they think the batter is less likely to lay a bunt down or maybe just something else about his batted ball profile with two strikes. Maybe he's more likely to hit the ball in a certain spot when he is trying to protect and is a little more

defensive at the plate. So the idea is if you make bunting a little less punishing and you let people bunt indefinitely as long as they're fouling off the pitch, then maybe players would be a little more likely to try to lay one down and then you get more players beating the shift and maybe you don't have to ban the shift. Maybe you can kind of beating the shift and maybe you don't have to ban the shift maybe you can kind of finesse things and give batters a bit of an edge there so this is a rule that dates back to i want to say it's like maybe the first decade of the 20th century right around there where it was changed and rules were constantly in flux like late 19th century around then they kept changing like how many strikes are there?

How many balls are there? What happens if you foul off a pitch with two strikes? Does that count as a strikeout? Or if you bunt with two strikes and you foul it off, is that a strikeout? And eventually it was made a strikeout, I think mostly because of pace of play concerns. Like in that era, there were enough players who could just foul off pitches indefinitely and bunt indefinitely that you kind of had to do this so that you didn't just get guys having extremely long plate appearances where they would just bunt over and over and over again,

either to spoil pitches or because they were just trying to get a bunt down. So in this day and age where bunts are a lot less common just because players don't practice them as much, the sack bunt has fallen out of fashion for good reason. And also it's just harder to bunt than it was in 1903 or whatever because pitchers are throwing much harder and much more movement and all of that. So maybe now there would be a little less downside to this because you probably wouldn't get as many hitters who were just sort of spoiling pitches indefinitely. And in that sense, I kind of like the idea a little bit more than banning the shift, at least, which still instinctively makes me recoil. Yeah, especially because I don't have numbers on this.

recoil yeah especially because i don't have numbers on this i don't have numbers on what i'm about to say but i think that you are just much more likely to experience the for the reasons you mentioned the sort of feeling of like infinite foul offs of the ball would just try and hit it than bunting it these days and so i think the the danger of it sort of unnaturally prolonging plate appearances to the point of irritation isn't really present there in the same way. So I quite like this. I suspect that while the possibility of foul outs on bunts are part of the concern, that it is not the bulk of the concern

or the bulk of the reason that that hitters don't try to bunt in defiance of the shift but any amount you know piece of the pie that you sort of remove and shift back to i'm thinking of it like trivial pursuit which i'm realizing is a visual that is evocative to me but isn't present in everyone else's mind so might not be as useful to them but you know anything you can do to kind of shift the percentages there, I think is meaningful. And so, yeah, I think this is a nice idea. And you know me, I'm in favor of us changing antiquated rules, if only because I think continuing to establish the precedent that doing that is fine and good for the game means that we

will get rid of the drop-throat strike. Yeah. Yeah. So foul balls are pretty common these days. I remember Travis Satchik wrote a piece for FiveThirtyEight a couple of years ago, headlined foul balls are the pace of play problem nobody's talking about. So fouls on swings are something that are maybe lengthening games, but not fouls on bunts, obviously. And even if you change this rule, i don't know that bunts would become super common just because you still don't want sacks usually and of course if someone is attempting to bunt then they can't hit the ball in the air and hit it hard and a lot of players are usually trying to do that now so it's not like this would be out of control or as rampant as it was like in the dead ball era where it was more advantageous to

bunt because it wasn't as beneficial to try to lift the ball and hit for power so i think now given the way that the ball is behaving in the way that hitters are trained it wouldn't get out of hand the way that it would have more than a century ago but you might just level the playing field a little bit and you know if hitters were telegraphing the bunt, then that might make teams stop shifting or shift a little less extremely. So if you were up there laying down bunt after bunt or attempting to and fouling it off, then probably at some point you would get the fielders moving to defend against the bunt. And maybe then you swing away.

Who knows? But that's that cat and mouse game that can be quite entertaining. So I kind of like this in a way. Maybe we're not considering all of the implications and there were reasons for this to be changed to the way it works now initially. But yeah, this might make more sense in today's environment than it did then. So a little bit of breaking non-news, I suppose. It looks like Trey Turner has not been traded. So it may be a physical issue because he was running super fast and he slid into third base and then he was removed from the game and went right into the tunnel. So it may

be a problem there, which that can happen with players who are on the block and drawing a lot of trade interest right before the deadline. On Monday, Shohei Otani hit Trevor Story in the hand and Story yelped and was massaging the hand for a while. And they played it the sound so many times. More times than they probably needed to, yes. But I guess his hand is okay as far as I've heard. to yes but I guess his hand is okay as as far as I've heard but he seems to maybe have some physical issues already with his elbow and getting a little less sip on his throws I know there's some concern about that and his offense just generally being down but like that and Taylor

Rogers the twins reliever who was you know one of the most attractive arms on the market and he's hurt what did he fracture a finger or something? There was some issue with his finger. I don't know. I don't recall the extent of it. Yeah, sprained finger, actually. So he's going to be out of commission for a little bit. Could still be traded, but a little less likely now.

And then you have Turner. Who knows? We're waiting to hear what the deal is there. But looks like, at least as we speak, he was not pulled because of an impending trade so that's that all right i've got a couple questions here concerning catchers one is from steven who says my aunt who is a big yankees fan has been trying to trade gary sanchez for the last half decade i doubt the yankees were dealing him and his latest injury might make that moot but i also feel like trading for a starting catcher at the deadline is a dubious proposition. Does that play out over history?

It feels like starting catchers are both some of the least traded players at the deadline, and they would have the toughest time post-deadline because they'd have to learn the new pitching staff in addition to maintaining their hitting. And like you, when you said the last thing you said, I don't have numbers for this on hand either, although this could probably be stat blast fodder. But I think that there's something to this, and I'm basing this essentially on secondhand testimony from someone who did have numbers on this, Craig Wright, who I often mention on the show because he writes the pages from Baseball's past history newsletter.

And he was a trailblazing sabermetrician, the first person to hold the title sabermetrician with a major league team, the Rangers in the early 80s. And he worked in baseball for decades and he's an author and I have a lot of respect for him as a scout and as an analyst. And he told me that he did studies when he was working for teams on what happens to catchers defensively after a midseason trade. And he found that there was a notable decline, at least judging by sort of his homebrew catcher ERA metric, which is better than standard catcher ERA because he was adjusting for like which pitchers the catchers were catching and comparing those to, you know, which pitchers the backup catchers were catching, that sort of thing. So a more sophisticated catcher ERA metric, which is pretty telling, I think, at least over large samples, he found that there was a significant hit to that over some span of time. So I don't

have the exact numbers, but I tend to trust his analysis. And I'm sure he found what he found. That was a while ago, but I would not be surprised if that held up. And you would think that in this era, it would be even more perplexing and bewildering for a catcher to be traded midseason because you have to deal with so many pitchers over the course of a season on the average staff these days and getting to know all those guys and their repertoires and how to call pitches for them that would be a lot to deal with while trying to familiarize yourself with a new team and perhaps a new league and new pitchers and all the other things that can be disruptive when you're traded at mid-season so i don't know if it's true that catchers or starting catchers are traded less often at the deadline or midseason, but I think there is at least some basis to the idea that it might be tougher for them to adjust, which makes it, I guess, even more impressive that AJ Preller is as active as he is because I remember remarking on this at last year's deadline when he essentially changed all of his catchers on the Padres at the deadline

and traded for Austin Nola and Jason Castro. And just like, okay, we have new catchers now. Good luck working with our pitchers. So that was just an example of his aggressiveness. I don't know that many GMs would have done something like that. Right. And I think the feel of it gets more complicated. Like if you have a guy who's sort of known to be a personal catcher for a given pitcher, which granted we don't see, you know, on every team by any means, but it does seem very surprising that the Padres did that. where you feel confident in changing your backstop sort of wholesale? It's like, are you prioritizing just raw pitch framing because you expect that they'll be able to adapt to whatever the staff is throwing? Do you say, okay, these guys are particularly adept

at framing pitches in particular parts of the zone, and so we're going to prioritize that even if they're less good other places like i i would be very curious to know what sort of the granular analysis is because it does seem like it has to be more than just these guys are good and those guys are bad you know like it has to go beyond that although it's not as if pitchers who have come up through the minor leagues and have interacted with a bunch of different teammates and have been subject to you know trades before aren't used to trying to you know figure something out i imagine that the learning curve on that is perhaps actually not as steep as we're expecting because it isn't as if the padres throw like a pitch that no other team throws right like the exact shape of the arsenal might vary

and the degree to which you have a staff that throws, you know, is doing high fastballs or what have you might kind of vary team to team, but they aren't going from not catching to then catching, right? They're catching other stuff and now they're adapting to this new stuff and that might not be quite as dramatic a shift as we're maybe anticipating but I feel like you know I wonder what it says about teams

confidence or understanding in game calling as something that is measurable that they do have a seeming willingness to move on from guys mid-season when they need an upgrade which might just say that the guys are moving on from are bad at game calling i suppose but it does make me wonder sort of where the team understanding of that as a measurable skill sits and maybe they they have a super sophisticated approach to it and they're using that in their trade analysis for all we know but it does make you wonder kind of where that fits in. Because I would just find trades so disruptive. Even if I weren't traded, it's like, what if that guy's your work friend? And then they leave.

It's like we sit here and we try to quantify clubhouse chemistry. And we talk about how hard it is to do that. And I think that winning solves a lot of stuff. And the guys who move to teams that have postseason aspirations are often really excited about that, even if they miss some of their old co-workers. But I just, I don't like change. I find it really upsetting. Yeah. And in that specific case with the Padres, their catchers hadn't hit at all prior to the trade deadline. I think they were just looking at the leaderboards. I think they had the 24th you would expect Austin Nola and Jason Castro to do compared to Austin Hedges or whoever was catching before they got there, then maybe that more than makes up for that defensive loss anyway. And as it happens, and this is small sample on

both sides of last year's deadline because the whole season was a small sample, but prior to the deadline, the Padres staff had a 4.31 ERA with a 4.14 FIP. And after the deadline, basically September, they had a 3.15 ERA and a 3.44 FIP. So if there was any cost on the catching end, then they more than made up for it on the pitching end because the pitching was perfectly effective. So it wasn't a big deal, but it would enter into my thinking if I were a GM right now who was thinking of making a lateral move for a catcher. It would have to be a significant offensive upgrade or an upgrade in other ways for me to want to do it, I think. Well, and not to say that there aren't guys who are good framers and bad framers still, but I do think that the general, it's all tightened up in terms of what the spread on that talent is. So

I might be reacting to this from a place that is would be better suited to like, you know, catching from five years ago or 10 years ago than it is right now, because the difference there, I think is, is quite small, which is why the spread on the offensive side can be so wide, right? Because the defense has really tightened and there is sort of an acceptable level at which you are a big league catcher or you're not, or you're catching for the White Sox. So, you know, there are exceptions to the rule,

but generally you have guys pretty tightly clustered, which is why so many of them are so god-awful at the plate and the guys who are good are are really good and and they're you know they're all the way over there yeah well that's a perfect segue into the second catcher question so this comes from another patreon supporter peter who says i heard you talking about the electronic sign system to be tested on episode 1724 now as i understand it the pitcher is ultimately the decision maker with respect to which pitch and location is agreed on, which is achieved by shaking off other suggestions by the

catcher. Wouldn't this new system be an opportunity to switch sender and receiver and allow for the pitcher to send his pitch selection electronically to the catcher instead of vice versa. So for those who were not with us on episode 1724, MLB is going to be testing the system very soon in A-Ball that is basically based on a wristband that, at least for now, it sounds like the catcher will wear, and that will beam instructions via this sort of headset thingy to pitchers who will, via bone conduction, headset thingy to pitchers who will via bone conduction just, you know, feel, which sounds worse than it is. It's like, you know, bone conducting headphones, right? Where you can just, it's transferred through your skull essentially, which sounds weird, but it's fine. And that way the catcher can select the pitch silently and where he wants it. And that will

just get beamed in theory, securely and silently to the pitcher and there won't have to be any flashing of signals. And so this will be hard or impossible to steal signs in the system. And perhaps it will improve pace of play, at least after some initial adjustment to this. But as Peter points out, well, maybe the wristband could be on the other wrist and maybe the pitcher could be the one calling the pitches. Because I guess the question is whether historically the system developed as it works now because it's better for the catcher to be the one who is calling the pitches or just because the catcher had to be the one calling pitches. Because if the pitcher called pitches in the past, well, then the batter would know exactly what was coming. And so you had to have

the catcher do it so that it would not be visible to the batter. But now, if you don't need that, then I wonder. And I was just looking back at the history of signs, and former Effectively Wild guest Paul Dixon wrote a book called The Hidden Language of Baseball, which is all about signs and they either invented or helped popularized it. So here's a reporter from a California paper writing on September 26, 1869. It must be remembered that the first nine of the Red Stockings are picked men from among the best players of the United States are in constant practice and have perfected a stream of telegraphic signals as easily recognized as if spoken words were used. The Red Stockings have really two captains, the ostensible one in the

position of center field who directs movements of the fielders, and the other is the catcher who indicates by signs to the pitcher and basekeepers the proper thing to do at the right moment. And often, of course, the catcher directs the fielders now, too the batter at close quarters, and gets to see the batters and observe their peculiarities on a much more regular basis. The use of the military term battery to describe the pitcher and catcher as a unit was also introduced, with the pitcher playing the role of the man who aims and fires the cannon and the catcher the man who calls the shot. Signs and the lore surrounding them became part of the culture of baseball as the game progressed in its early years. Signs and the lore surrounding them became part of the culture of baseball as the game progressed in its early years. Larry Corcoran of the Chicago White Stockings is widely credited as the first big league pitcher to work out a system of signals with his catcher. Corcoran's system involved his catcher moving a wad of tobacco to different sides of his mouth.

Clearly, the system worked as Corcoran won 43 games in his rookie season of 1880. Another account credits Silver Flint. That's a great name, Silver Flint, with the tobacco signal. While another suggests that Chicago's catcher slash outfielder Mike King Kelly invented the modern system of finger signals, by which one finger was a call for a fastball and two for a curve. And then the last thing, as signals proliferated, codes of on-field behavior developed out of them and were well-established by the turn of the century. A player who disregarded a bunt sign or ran through a coach's stop sign was reprimanded

or fined or both, even though his disregard had yielded him a hit or an extra base. While pitchers were not required to accept their catcher's calls, they were obliged to signal for a different pitch by shaking their heads so catchers were not crossed up and could alert the rest of the team as to what kind of pitch was going to be thrown. So we've had the system for 150 years or so. What say you? Will the new wristband system change the way it works? No.

Well, I think that there is a, I don't know how accurate an assessment this is, but I think that part of what's what here is that there is a sense that the catcher, in addition to whatever strategic elements they are meant to be helping to sort of bring about on the field, to say, I know that we want, I've seen your pitches coming in. I know how this one looks. I know what this guy can hit. There's that part of it. I also think there's the part of it that is them being sort of a temperate influence on

the pitcher, perhaps in moments of heightened stress or high leverage, moments that are very taxing, where it might behoove the catcher to say, you shouldn't throw that. You think that throwing that is a good idea, but I think that that's a bad idea. And that might be informed by, again, what the catcher is seeing as the pitches are coming in, right? He might have some insight into how that particular pitch is playing on any given night. He might have an understanding of what the hitter is good at hitting versus not. not he might also just by virtue of being a different person whose emotions are perhaps differently calibrated because he's not responsible for throwing the pitch be able to be more honest with himself and thus his pitcher about like what's working and what isn't because maybe

you're getting hit around a little bit and it's pissing you off because you have good stuff and that good stuff isn't playing tonight and you're like like, no, I'm going to give you one more fastball. And maybe that fastball is right down Main Street and that's not what you need. So I do think that there is sort of an emotional regulator role that kind of falls to catchers sometimes, not all the time. And there are plenty of perfectly sassy catchers and there are plenty of very even-steven pitchers. So I don't mean to say that they always have to do that.

But I do think that there is some benefit to being able to be slightly removed from the act of having to deliver the pitch. It's not that emotion always leads to bias or an inability to make clear decisions, but it is sort of a close cousin to that at times. And you also are just able to see it. You're just sitting back there,

seeing those pitches as they're coming in. It seems like that would be useful. that at times and you also are just like able to see it you're just sitting back there seeing the seeing those pitches as they're coming in it seems like that would be useful so yeah i would say no but i don't know maybe my sense of that is wrong i mean you do see pitchers shake their catcher off right you know that happens too i could see it making sense for some pitchers like greg maddox is is famed for having sometimes called his own pitches or even called other pitchers on his team's pitches from the dugout, from the bench. So yeah, if you have a Maddox maybe. Otherwise, I don't know. I guess it's true that a pitcher in theory knows their stuff better in one sense than any catcher could and knows how they're feeling about

every particular pitch maybe better than anyone. But as you and knows how they're feeling about every particular pitch maybe better than anyone but as you said maybe they're fooling themselves maybe it's better to have that moderating influence of the catcher and maybe it's better for the pitcher just to be able to focus on as they say executing the pitches you know pitchers have a lot on their mind so maybe if you take that load off their mind catchers are just squatting back there anyway, right? I mean, they have a lot going on too, but pitchers are trying to catch their breath and gear up for the next pitch and think about their mechanics and all of that. So, yeah, why not just say, hey, don't worry about it. The catcher will handle this.

The catcher will be the one who is studying the scouting reports maybe even more intensely than you are and can give you the best advice here. So I don't know that it would necessarily be a better system. I think it's definitely more feasible that it could work the other way around now. And with certain pitcher-catcher combos, maybe it would make more sense. I guess another byproduct of this is that maybe you might eventually shift to more of like a college type system where you have like a manager or a coach who's calling pitches from the dugout and the manager has the wristband, which I would be sorry if that were the case. Like I know that that happens on some teams to some extent already, but I've kind of lamented, you know, players just relying on cards and in-game information more so than their own instincts. There's something about just players being self-reliant, at least in-game, that I kind of like. And so if they're just being fed pitch calls from a coach who is being fed those calls from the front office, then I would think a little

is lost there. I like that there is some skill to game calling, whether it's the pitcher or the catcher, and that that skill shows up on the field. So I'd be sorry if that were the effect of this. But if this responsibility were taken out of the catcher's hands, and you also take framing out of the catcher's hands when you have the robo zones, then suddenly the defensive load on catchers is a lot lighter than it has been ever. And so you might see catcher really become an offense first position. I mean, you'd still have to block, you'd still have to throw at runners, but really most of the job would now not be the catcher's responsibility. So I think giving signs, I mean, that affects even how catchers set up at the plate. Like in Dixon's book, he cites Bill James saying that the reason catchers began to squat rather than crouch, as they did sometimes into the 20th century, was to hide signs from the opposition.

I don't know if that's true, but it's been a staple of that position for so long. And you would not see a Jeff Mathis anymore who is reputed to be a wizard as a game caller because that just wouldn't be his job anymore. Although I guess if you have a Jeff Mathis, then you might as well use him for that. But yeah, it could really change catching dramatically. And another thing that occurs to me is that you have historically had infielders who've been able to get at least a little bit of a heads up on what pitch is coming, maybe are able to lean in one direction or another, figuring if this is a fastball, the guy's a little more likely to be late on it, so I'll shade over this way or vice versa. And now, unless you give all of the fielders those receivers so that they're able to intercept the pitch call too, they're not going to know, right? And so I wonder if that would have some slight effect on the jumps that guys get on balls as well. Yeah, that's a really excellent point. It's not just base runners who are using that information, right? So there would need to be some shifting around of like a change in the communication style

to accommodate that stuff. That's a very good point. I find it unlikely that this will happen for all of those reasons. But I also have been sitting here for the last 10 minutes wondering about just how conductive bones really are to sound.

And is that why when you pop your joints, they make so much noise? Are they? We're going to get emails so much noise. I don't know. We're going to get emails about this too. We love your emails. I don't want to complain about them. They're the lifeblood of episodes like this. We'd be lost without your emails.

But sometimes we get silly ones and I'm like, oh. Mostly I feel bad when the silly ones come in because I'm like, oh, you spent like five minutes of your day doing that. Yeah. All right. Well, speaking of emails, last one here. This is from JB who says, do you think you would be able to love baseball as much if you couldn't watch it at all but could only look at stats? I started off this season watching almost every game the White Sox played, but since I have started working at a job whose schedule coincides with most games, I have barely caught any.

That's a bummer. However, maybe not a bummer. I have found that my enjoyment of baseball has not diminished as I still consume stats as much as, if not more than, when I was watching games. These include checking the daily FranGraphs war leaderboards, which player put up the most war on that specific day and checking how that impacted their season line among many other advanced statistics I think this is possibly because the White Sox are doing well overall and I enjoy seeing how much do you think you would

be able to love baseball as much if you couldn't watch it at all only consume stats well I feel like this is like a trick this question I feel like this is a trick trying to get the stat nerds to out themselves as people who don't watch baseball yeah I feel like it like a trick this question i feel like this is a trick trying to get the stat nerds to out themselves as people who don't watch baseball yeah i feel like it's a trick no i don't think that that's a trick at all and also i have so much sympathy for your your day job

getting in the way of you being able to watch baseball so i hope that your schedule changes ever so slightly soon but i think the answer to that question is no but that's due in part to all the weird ephemera that i take like a disproportionate amount of joy from and i do think that there are things about stats that watching the game helps you really put in context i don't think that it's necessarily that you know you you are able to like discern things from watching that you might not otherwise although i do think that it helps you to really understand and sort of construct a more meaningful mental image of what you're seeing in the stats when you watch them.

But I think that there's a context to how guys are doing that you really get a better sense for when you're actually watching them. If you watch a if if you watch an inning and a pitcher is like you know really getting done in by his defense that's going to show up in the stats to a certain extent but like you really get a better sense for it when you're watching a team and you can you can start to see like when when a hitter is trying to make an adjustment at the plate or maybe a pitcher is underperforming your expectation and you watch him and you have some context for him in the past and you're like,

oh, well, his mechanics are different than they were. His arm slot has shifted or his breaking stuff is moving differently than it used to or whatever. I think that you can discern some of those things obviously by looking deep into the stats, but I just think that you can discern some of those things, obviously, by looking deep into the stats. But I just think that you can sit there and really get a good feel really quickly if you're marrying what you are observing in the data with what you're actually seeing. I don't know. It just provides a richness to your understanding of the stats in much the same way that the stats provide a richness to your understanding of what you're watching. That is, I think, why I've always been uncomfortable with the idea of them sitting in opposition to one another because I think that they complement one another so well. If that's the way that you come to the game, we should not set them at odds. It's like this is two tastes that taste great together. Right. Yeah. We get emails from people sometimes who say they've stopped watching baseball and they only follow baseball through the podcast, which is gratifying in a way, or people who

live abroad and aren't able to watch games easily and all sorts of things that can come between you and watching a game. And if you find a way to enjoy it anyway, then that's great, whatever works for you. But I think ideally, you would be able to watch the games in addition to following them via stats or other kinds of coverage. There are definitely times where work gets in the way of my watching baseball.

Sometimes I'm busy with non-baseball stuff or whatever things are going on. And so I'm not as able as I'd like to be to sit down for hours at a time and watch baseball. But I think if I have watched a lot of baseball and I have that familiarity with it, then I can go for a while without watching something and still be able to enjoy it following from afar. But that's because I have that mental image. Like if I see someone's name on a leaderboard, it's not just a name and some numbers.

I can see that player in my mind's eye. I have some memories. I know what his stance looks like. I know what his mechanics look like. I can see his swing, et cetera. So like we were talking about Joey Votto's hot streak and you were saying that it's fun to watch Joey Votto. Well, I haven't seen a whole lot of Joey Votto,

to be honest, over that last month where he's been doing well, but I've seen plenty of Joey Votto. Well, I haven't seen a whole lot of Joey Votto, to be honest, over that last month where he's been doing well, but I've seen plenty of Joey Votto in the past and he is a person to me with a personality and mannerisms and an appearance. And so if I go for a while without watching him, but I see that he's doing well, then I can still enjoy that because the names and numbers are attached to a face and a human. But if I went years without watching baseball and suddenly I didn't even know who these people were and everyone was a stranger to me, then I think the numbers would be more meaningless to me or less meaningful. Obviously, there are people who play out-of-the-park baseball simulations or tabletop games or whatever,

you know, out of the park baseball simulations or tabletop games or whatever, like years, decades into the future, you know, franchise mode, create a player or whatever it is. And these are just made up players. And maybe in some of those games, at least you're not seeing them in any real way. They are just names and numbers and they become real to you. Your imagination fills in those details. So that's possible, I think, but I would definitely enjoy it a lot less. I mean, something like Otani, for instance, who I watched just about every second of, I would still enjoy his season if all I knew was that he was doing this and that it was immensely valuable and I looked at the numbers and everything, but I would enjoy it a fraction as much as I do watching him because the aesthetic experience of it is so pleasing to me.

But there are plenty of boring baseball games for sure. And there are games where I'd be fine on just looking at the box score afterward and seeing how it went instead of devoting four hours to something slow paced. So I'm not saying it's always better to be glued to the TV. It's always better to be glued to the TV. I'm just saying to have some level of personal intimate knowledge where you're listening to games or watching games or going to games or whatever, like that tangible connection. I think in addition to deepening your understanding of the sport also enhances your enjoyment, all else being equal. For sure. I have to break more news, Ben.

Oh, boy. What now? It's not great. It could be worse, but it's not great. The reason that Trey Turner was pulled is because he has tested positive for COVID-19. Oh, well, that's a shame, but also better than an injury, I guess, probably. I guess, but can we take a moment? How are we still having mid-game test result reveals? Yeah, that's odd. I feel like this needs to get

tightened up the fact that that is still a thing that happens is really profoundly very strange and like they're outside except when they're in the clubhouse so it's like you're sitting there and you're worried anyway I hope that Trey Turner is vaccinated and is doing okay

we would prefer that he not be injured nor COVID ridden. But what a turn. What a roller coaster of news. And even more breaking news here from Ryan Divish, who says, DePoto said the trade doesn't make sense as a standalone trade. That's what we just discussed. But that it will with the succession of moves they want to make. So we will see. He has a few days to make good on that. But apparently,

Jerry has some sort of red paperclip sequence lined up here. Yeah, of course he does. I've processed this trade more in the time that we've been talking. And I think that the place that I've landed is that it is weird. And I think that I also don't necessarily hate all the pieces and I think for all the reasons we talked about, it is perhaps both more understandable and less hard to bounce back from play perspective than Graveman's numbers might initially suggest. But also, I find the timing of it very odd

and everyone in the clubhouse seems really sad about it. And so I don't like that part. So that's where I've landed. That's my analysis. We'll have more at fanagraphs.com tomorrow from Ben Clemens who will truly put some actual numbers to that. Yeah. If there's any lesson to be learned, I guess, from the 2021 Mariners bullpen, it's like don't get too attached to any particular reliever or don't buy too much into the track record of some reliever.

So in that sense, like if the Mariners weren't in this position exactly, then you would say, yeah, sell high on Kendall Grayson, right? The guy who entered the season with a career 4-4-4 ERA, albeit mostly as a starter, and then has an incredible half a season or so. Yeah, sure. Trade that guy when his value is at its peak and he's about to reach free agency. It's just that they're in this particular position

and so it's a little bit different. But again, I guess we will reserve final judgment until we see Jerry's grand plan here. So we have a meet a major leaguer related to some of the trades we talked about. Yes, two in fact. related to some of the trades we talked about. Yes, two, in fact.

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. So I would like us to meet a man in the news, Hoy Park, now of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Yeah. And I guess we should say,

just because we haven't done this segment in a little while, the point here is that we are highlighting some perhaps lesser known major leaguers who have made their big league debuts this year because there are just so many new players constantly making the majors in this era. And a lot of them escape our notice or we just don't know much about them. And so we are singling out or doubling out new major leaguers every now and then, freshly minted major leaguers. So proceed. Right. So he is going to be familiar to some of our listeners, many of our listeners for his recent inclusion in a trade. He signed with the Yankees in 2014 for a $1.2 million signing bonus. He was an international free agent. He is from Seoul,

South Korea, and is now a part of the Pittsburgh Pirates organization and I thought I would cheat a little bit and just use this opportunity to familiarize people with a piece of the Clay Holmes trade who they might have skipped over focusing as they did on Clay Holmes himself or perhaps on Diego Castillo who is ranked more highly

but I'm going to read liberally from the work of Eric Long and Hagen here. So bear with me. Park is an average shortstop defender with a plus hit tool and feel for the strike zone. Though he's experiencing a huge uptick in power output this year, sources indicated to me that there hasn't been a corresponding increase in his underlying exit velocity, such that would suggest this is sustainable. So sorry, guys. corresponding increase in his underlying exit velocity such that would suggest this is sustainable so sorry guys the skills in place make park a likely utility man but i'm not taking his line at face value and suddenly projecting him as regular the lack of power is going to make it

harder for his control of the zone to hold water in the big leagues as pitchers go right after him without worrying about park hitting them but if you want to feel optimistic, you might reflect on his time at AAA this year, where in 48 games and 223 played appearances, he has hit 327, 475, 567 for a 177 WRC+, which went better than his debut. He had just the one game. He had just one played appearance. He did not do much of anything.

He has a negative 100 WRC+. But that's not his fault because when you have one plate appearance and you ground out, then that's what happens. But he will now presumably be a member of the Pirates organization who sees some time. As with many trades this year, you have to factor in the timing of a guy's addition to the 40-man roster as motivation for part of the trade, which seemed to have been part of the motivation here. Both Park and his trade mate Diego Castillo were

Rule 5 eligible and did not get selected, but may well have gotten selected this year. So, you know, teams try to use the deadline as an opportunity to move these 40 man crunch guys and while it diminishes their leverage in those trades they get something instead of nothing just losing them to the rule five and for park i think it's exciting because even if he is not an everyday guy the internal options that new york had in the middle infield were likely going to stymie his ascension through their organization. So this is one of those things where it's like he gets potentially a much better shot to actually see big league playing time, even if it isn't starting big

league playing time. So that is Hoy Park. All right. Nice to meet you, Mr. Park. And my pick is very much in the same vein, actually another player who is just traded to the pirates so the major leaguers we are meeting will also be meeting each other and like park this player probably finds himself in a better position as far as future playing time and that is the aforementioned tucapita marcano who i almost chose earlier in the year for this segment just because his name is tucapupita Markano. It's an 80 name. It absolutely is.

The rest of the profile is not an 80, but the name, it's top of the scale. Absolutely, yeah. Among the players I most wish I could hear former Yankees PA announcer Bob Shepard introduce. You haven't lived until you've heard Bob Shepard say Shigatoshi Hasegawa, and I wish I could hear him say Tokopita Markano. But unfortunately, I will have to just imagine that in my mind. But apparently he's a player the Pirates have liked a lot and tried to acquire in the Joe Musgrove trade, which maybe kind of laid the groundwork for this Frazier deal. He's a left-handed hitter.

He won't turn 22 until September. He is listed at six feet and 170 pounds. He's actually a lot like Adam Frazier in some ways. He's a fellow lefty in terms of contact and versatility. He's like Frazier with more walks and less power. He is quite skinny, and his lack of power is probably the biggest knock against him, along with his probably being stretched as a shortstop defensively because of a so-so arm. If you are wondering why he is named Tukupita, here is a hint.

He was born in Tukupita, Venezuela. So the city is not named after Marcano. Marcano is named after the city. And he is the son of another pro player from Tukupita, Raul Marcano, who is well-known in Venezuela and also played in the Mexican League and in Indie Ball in the States. And Tukupita Marcano had not played in games above A-ball before he made his Major League debut on opening day of this year.

But this was not like when the Padres promoted a bunch of lower-level Rule 5 picks in 2017. Marcano was in the Padres system. He signed with the Padres as a 16-year-old for a $320,000 bonus. And Eric had him as the Padres' 11th best prospect in May. But the Padres system is somewhat depleted by promotions and trades. And so Eric had the Padres system as 16th in baseball in his midseason update, and the Pirates ranked third behind Tampa Bay and Baltimore. So now, according to the latest update, Marcano only rates 34th in the stacked Pirates prospect list. So maybe Eric is a little lower on him than some other outlets, but he's not a top

prospect. However, he managed only a 485 OPS in 25 games and 50 plate appearances in two stints with the Padres at the major league level this season, but he had an 811 OPS in AAA. And between the majors and the minors this season, he played five positions, second base, short, third, left field, and right field. He walked more than he struck out in the minors. So good contact guy, good sense of the strike zone, made the opening day roster after hitting 405 in spring training. And he drew a pinch hit walk in the sixth inning in the first game of the season and came around to score the tying run in a game the Padres won eight to seven. And I would think that like Park, he probably finds himself in a better position here because he went from a team that has Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado,

and Jake Cronenworth locked up forever, essentially, in that infield to the Pirates, where he could probably just slide right in and replace Frazier if they wanted him to. So in that sense, things have worked out well here for Marcano. And Eric wrote about him in May. I love Marcano's feel for contact. He's got more career walks and strikeouts in the low minors and was trusted to be a bench stopgap in the big leagues earlier this year. He has plus plus barrel control and is capable of making contact all over the

strike zone, but he's quite weak and often gently serves balls into player inside out stuff he'd ideally turn on and pull. Even though he's only 21, Marcano is so rail thin that I don't think he's going to add meaningful weight and strength. You could argue this is a low variance 45 sort of profile, but I don't think Marcano is so good at shortstop that that's the case.

One note offensive players like Freddy Galvis and Jose Iglesias, classic 45s are each both comfortably better defenders than Marcano. His defensive footwork is great, but his hands and actions are just OK. I'm cautious about overgrading Marcano just because he's so advanced. I think he'll end up a utility player in the Cesar is Turis mold. So that's something. And Jace Tingler said about him, he's just a ball player. That's been my impression. I know that we bantered about this compliment, this descriptor at some point in the podcast.

He's a ball player. It's like not the most diffusive praise, but it's like, all right, he looks the part. And Tingler said, I feel very comfortable with him defensively at a lot of positions. He's a short-handed guy. He's a good decision maker. He's very trustworthy out there at a lot of different positions. He's certainly trustworthy in the batter's box. I love his hand-eye coordination, his ability to find the sweet part of the bat. He can hit line drives. He can hit them a lot of different directions. He can run. He can do a lot of things. He's just a baseball player. He certainly caught my eye. And Ben Charrington, who acquired him for the Pirates, says he's a skilled player, always been really young for his levels. He's young this year for AAA, and he's performed really well despite being a young

player everywhere he's been. He's got a good feel to hit, a good decision maker in the box, controls the strike zone, has always had a good ability to make contact, line drive approach. He's grown into a little bit more power this year. He's a versatile defender. We see him with the ability to play shortstop, second, probably move around the entire infield and outfield if needed. So that versatility is appealing. And then all the work we've done on him suggests

that the character and work ethic and the aptitude is strong. So it seems like this is a mold. A lot of teams are looking for players like this these days. And now the Pirates have Tukapita Marcano to be part of hopefully the next good Pirates team. So nice to meet you, Mr. Marcano. Tukapito. All right. So I will end with this stat blast. Step West. Today's is today's step last. This is a question from Matt, who says, and this was July 7th that he sent this question.

After watching the thrilling D-backs Rockies game tonight, my buddy texted me that the D-backs are unstoppable when Merrill Kelly starts. Sure enough, or I guess it was a 31-game and 35-day losing streak. Has there been a streak this long where a team's only wins have come from the same starting pitcher? And, you know, Merrill Kelly, I guess, is the good outcome if you're a Nationals fan who's worried about Steven Strasburg, who we found out on Tuesday is going to be undergoing surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome, which can be very serious and has ended careers or been a significant setback. And people often cite Matt Harvey as a pitcher who's never been the same after that. Well, Merrill Kelly is one of the positive outcomes. He had that and he has come back and been better than ever. So that's something. And the Diamondbacks are happy that he has. Strasburg, by the way, barely pitched really since his incredible 2019 season and since he signed that long-term deal.

So that's a bummer. That's been really the knock against him throughout his career is the injury proneness. And that has been the case over the last couple of seasons. I hope he can come back Merrill Kelly style. That has been the case over the last couple of seasons. I hope he can come back Merrill Kelly style. Anyway, the question is about the Diamondbacks, who, as I discussed with Mike Farron on a recent episode, went through a really historically terrible rough stretch. They won a game against the Mets on June 1st, and then until July 6th, they did not win

a game that was not started by Merrill Kelly. They did not win a game that was not started by Merrill Kelly. So I sent this to frequent stat bus consultant Ryan Nelson, who did his usual magic. So it is actually quite notable. The streak is 31 games that the Diamondbacks went without a win in a game started by someone other than Kelly. So Ryan writes, it took me a bit to think about how to break this down into an easily solvable problem. And here's how I did it. Put a table of every game ever played with the franchise, the score, and the starting pitcher for the game in order by year and by game number, the first game of the year, second game of the year, et cetera. From there, we can iterate through the rows and determine if the streak continues. We start with the first row. If it's a win, then the winning pitcher is now the pitcher of streaking record. We go to the next game. If it is a loss, the streak continues. If it is a game by the pitcher of streaking record, the streak continues regardless of whether the pitcher

actually got the win. This is team wins, not pitcher wins. The only way the streak ends is if a different starting pitcher can lead the team to victory, in which case the old streak ends and a new one is started with the new pitcher of streaking record. The one thing that this doesn't do is count for losses before the first win in the streak. For example, in the recent D-back streak, the first win for Kelly didn't come until June 21st, 18 games into the eventual 30-game streak. So I've actually gone back and manually adjusted for all 32 streaks that were logged as less than 30 games could have theoretically been longer than 30 games that proceeded by enough losses. Only one was. And he says, with that said, here are all

the longest streaks of all time. I think you will notice a pattern. So if we go back to the 19th century, then we get some extremely long streaks because basically like one pitcher was making all the starts for certain teams for one or two. So like the 1873 to 1875 boston red stockings they had a streak of 120 games where the only wins were by al spalding but you know he was starting most of the time for those teams and same thing with the 1871 to 73 red stockings and al spalding and the 1874 to 75 Chicago white stockings with George Settling and the 1878 to 79 Boston red stockings with Tommy Bond and the 1878 Chicago white stockings with Terry Larkin. These are streaks of, again, 120 games, 91, 82, 82, and 47.

So Ryan writes, yeah, there are a lot of old stocking teams where only one guy pitched. However, if we look from 1900 to 2020, the data is as follows. Now, there is a 45-game streak. This is the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics. They went July 11th to August 10th, I guess, and the only wins were in games started by Bullet Joe Bush. And then the 1920 Philadelphia Athletics had a 34-game streak, in which the only wins were games started by Slim Harris, June 1st to July 6th. And then lastly, the 1943 Philadelphia Athletics had a 34-game streak as well, and the only wins were in games

started by Roger Wolfe. But that's it. Those are the only streaks ahead of Merrill Kelly and the Diamondbacks. They were, again, at 31, and that bests the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies, who had a 30-game streak with John Buzzhart. And then the 1912 to 1913 New York Highlanders had a 29-game streak with Ray Keating being the only guy. So the Diamondbacks streak that we just saw is the longest, well, of any non-Philadelphia team in the 20th or 21st centuries, and also is the longest since World War II. So since the 1943 Philadelphia A's, this had not happened in a longer streak. So Ryan also checked just to look for, you know, streaks with one non-streak win in the middle, like one win by someone else. And he found that that didn't change anything. There weren't actually any longer streaks. So I did not know this. This is why I love stat blasts that are often prompted by listener emails because, you know, we cover the game on a national level and we pay attention to

everything in theory but can't pay as much attention to any given team as a fan of that team does and so we find out about things like this like i i knew kelly was having a good season and was like the only man standing from the diamondbacks planned opening day rotation and i just did not know that he had been a historic stopper, just like I didn't know that the Mariners hadn't swept a homestand since 1991, which was our stat blast last week. So we have our very informed and perceptive listeners who are able to ask about these things and often really hit on something significant.

Sometimes not. Sometimes the stat blast questions are not as interesting, but some of them are really good. So thanks again to Matt for the question and to Ryan for the research. And as always, I will put the data online for people to peruse, but pretty cool. You know, I was expecting to see like Steve Carlton

maybe when he went 27 and 10 for the Phillies in 1972 and they were 59 and 97 as a team. But no, it's Merrill Kelly. I wonder what the like what you're feeling is if you're another starter in that rotation, because on the one hand, especially when wins have been so hard to come by, as they have been for the Diamondbacks. I'm sure you're thrilled that the team has won. Like that's your that's the that's the primary emotional response but i do wonder what percentage of your feeling is like why does he get all of the wins right like i'm sure there's a little bit of it because you're also competitive you're not just competitive with the the opponent you're

competitive with every other pitcher in the league including guys in your clubhouse who you hopefully have like a good relationship with, but you're like, I want to be the best pitcher. And you can't share some of those wins. Like, I do wonder what percentage of you would think that because, you know, we're emotionally complicated little creatures. So. Yeah. I guess when the Diamondbacks were, you know, setting records for losing streaks, you know, Becker's probably pretty far down, yeah. Yeah, just happy to have the wins no matter who made the start. All right, just scanning MLB trade rumors one last time. Don't see any new trades.

So hopefully everyone has enjoyed our real-time trade reactions here, and we will have much more trade talk in the remaining two episodes this week, and we will get out before some other major trade breaks. All right, that will do it for today. Just a few follow-ups before we go. All those nice things we said about Joey Votto on this episode, that was before he hit two home runs on Tuesday. So those stats have now bounced back even more. The man is on fire. Also, there were more Mariners developments.

Ryan Divish wrote a really wild story for the Seattle Times, which I will link to on the show page, all about the Mariners' reactions to that trade. People were crying. People were furious. People were feeling betrayed. Are you bleeping kidding me, says one player. It never changes. They don't care about winning. How do you trade him? And say you care about winning and you trade him to Houston. It never changes. Sources said equipment was broken and smashed while one player went absolutely mad. He hasn't come down here, a player said of DePoto. He sits up in his suite playing fantasy baseball and rips apart our team without telling us anything. I've seen a lot of teammates walk out that door, but this one hurts the most and is the most expletive up. The team deserves an explanation. It goes on from there.

Then the game started, and the Astros won 8-6, although Abraham Toro hit a home run. It probably should not have been a home run. It was off Kyle Tucker's glove and over the fence, but it counts as a home run. And I saw a great fun fact from ESPN Stats and Info. Abraham Toro homered for the Astros against the Mariners on Monday. He was traded to Seattle on Tuesday and proceeded to homer for the Mariners against the Astros. He's the first player in MLB history to homer for and against a single team on consecutive days. I'm almost happy this trade happened just to give us that fun fact.

And for what it's worth, DePoto backed up his vow to make more moves by trading for Tyler Anderson. So it was not in the end the Phillies who landed him. It was the Mariners sending a couple of prospects to Pittsburgh for the left-handed starter. So we'll see whether that mollifies any of the Mariners. It's funny, this sort of outrage is why you probably don't want active players making moves for the team. They get attached to their teammates and maybe they don't take the long view. But sometimes there's something to be said for the short view too, and at the very least, it seems like DePoto didn't break this news to the team in the best way, or any way. And you'd think he'd have a better understanding of how that would have been received in the clubhouse,

given that he was once a player himself. There was also a minor Yankees trade. They dealt Luis Sessa and Justin Wilson, a pair of relievers to the Reds, which seems like it's probably a little bit of 40-man and payroll clearing in preparation for further moves and probably additions in the days to come. each other in separate transactions. Last time we answered a listener email about the idea of a baseball equivalent to pulling the goalie. The suggestion was that if a home team was trailing in the ninth, let's say, then in the top of the ninth, that team could pull a fielder from the field and in exchange get an extra out in the bottom of the inning. And maybe depending on the fielder you pulled, maybe you'd get a different count on the batter in that extra out. A few variations were discussed, but generally the idea was giving up something to get something the way you pulled. Maybe you'd get a different count on the batter in that extra out. A few variations were discussed, but generally the idea was giving up something to get something the way that hockey

teams do when they pull the goalie to get an extra attacker. And I lamented that there weren't more examples of losing something to get something in baseball, but there were a couple of good discussion threads about this in the Facebook group, and people pointed out that there are some analogs that are not exactly the same, but if you sacrifice bunt, for instance, you're giving up an out to advance a base runner. If you issue an intentional walk, you're allowing a base runner, but getting to face a weaker batter. Maybe if you pinch hit for a starter, you're gaining some offense, and maybe you're losing something defensively. Or, and I think maybe the best comp, is that if you try some extreme shift, you know, a four-man outfield or a five-man infield, then you're giving up some

real estate in one spot because you think it'll help you in the other spot. So there's some similarities there. I still kind of like the pulling a fielder and getting an extra out idea. It's a little more bold and dramatic, like having an empty net on the ice. But good discussions, as there often are, in our Facebook group, which you can find, by the way, at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. On the subject of cycles, which we have discussed a few times lately, Joe K. from Herndon, Virginia wrote in to say, Your discussion on Friday's episode about what would happen if a batter hit a homer but tried to stop at third to get a triple to complete the cycle reminded me of an infamous moment

in the NBA involving journeyman shooting guard Bob Sura. Sura was going for his third straight triple-double, double digits in three-stat categories, usually points, rebounds, and assists, for the Atlanta Hawks against the New Jersey Nets, a feat that hadn't been achieved since Grant Hill seven years prior. Down to the final seconds, Sura was at double-digit points and assists with nine rebounds when he found himself with a wide open layup as the buzzer neared. He intentionally missed the layup and grabbed the miss for his Good point. Quite possible. That is to say that I imagine if someone did try to get a Miggy cycle, the hot takes would force someone in MLB's front office to find a way to negate it. Good point. Quite possible. And Bobby writes in to say, regarding the alternate versions of the cycle, the most famous one I've heard of is the Lou Piniella bad base running cycle.

On April 16th, 1970, Piniella was thrown out at every base. It started with him reaching on an error to load the bases in the top of the first. The next batter doubled to drive in two runs, but Piniella was gunned down at the plate to end the inning. He hit a home run in the third inning, thus avoiding getting thrown out at a base. He singled to lead off the fifth, then was forced out at second on a ground ball. In the seventh inning, Piniella singled and moved to third on a single. He was then picked off third base. Finally, he came up in the ninth inning and grounded out to second baseman Tommy Harper.

According to this Sabre article, Piniella was the first player to be thrown out at each base in a game. In the game, Piniella had a homer, two singles, and reached on an error, but only scored on the home run. The article also points out that Piniella made three outs on the bases in a game on August 3rd, 1971. He was thrown out in the fourth and eighth innings while trying to stretch doubles into triples. In the fifth inning, he was thrown out at the plate trying to score in a single. He was four for four in the game with two doubles, yet didn't score a single run. Given Piniella's fiery personality, you can imagine that he had the proverbial baseball red ass after those games.

He was also pretty bad at stealing bases, going 32-for-73. That's 44% success rate in his career. Thank you, Bobby. And as often happens, something happened in a real-life game that mirrored what we were talking about on the podcast. Max Kepler the other day started a game 0 for 5 with a pop out, a ground out, two fly outs, and a line out, which Twins writer and effectively wild listener Brandon Warren pointed out could be the opposite of hitting for the cycle. There was then a long Twitter reply thread where some people suggested, no, you need a strikeout. Hey, listen to the podcast. We covered it all there. And I think Kepler had a walk-off single in his sixth plate appearance, so it ended well. Another fun thread in our Facebook group,

Casey Bresler, a listener, made a graph of no-hitters and cycles over time. And I will say that even as someone who's not super enthusiastic about either cycles or no-hitters, it is kind of cool that the frequency of the two track each other quite closely. I'll link to his graph, but it's two lines increasing at roughly the same rate and ending up at roughly the same place. There have been 332 cycles and 312 no-hitters, so pretty close. And Casey was wondering what the cycle equivalent of a perfect game would be, because a perfect game is a no-hitter, but a better and rarer version of it. And C. Trent Rosecrans, another listener and Patreon supporter and Facebook group member,

suggested the natural cycle, getting all of the hits in order, which I think is a pretty good comp in terms of frequency, at least, because there have been 23 perfect games in 14 natural cycles. I think that's part of why we get excited about both of those things, or why the general baseball audience does. They're just the right degree of rare. Last thing, I want to make a podcast recommendation. Meg and I are sometimes on Hang Up and Listen, Slate's sports podcast, and I would recommend

that generally, even as someone who doesn't follow most other sports closely, I always enjoy the discussions on Hang Up and Listen. And if you go to the Hang Up and Listen feed, you can find a recent episode called Mary Shane's Rookie Season. And this is an episode that was reposted from a Newslate podcast called One Year. And the conceit of that show is that essentially it dives deep into one year at a time and covers maybe some less remembered but interesting stories. And this episode is about Mary Shane, who became the first regular woman baseball broadcaster in the majors in 1977. She

called White Sox games. And it's a really interesting story, which I was not aware of. It is inspiring and touching and sort of sad. So you can find it on the One Year feed, and you can also find it on the Hang Up and Listen feed. It's hosted by one of the hosts of Hang Up and Listen, my internet friend, Josh Levine, who also produces One Year. So please do check that out, especially right after the milestone of the first all-woman baseball broadcast. It's pretty illuminating to go back and hear how it all started. 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. Aaron Grossman, Dustin Caruso, Brian Bardolph, Matt Johnson, and Kendall Johnson. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back soon to talk trades and other topics talk to you then you took my sadness out of context at the mariner's apartment complex i ain't no candle in the wind i'm the boy the lightning the thunder kind of girl who's gonna make you wonder

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