Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1731: In Good Standings

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their imperfections, follow up on flying horses, Justice Blackmun omitting Mel Ott from Flood vs. Kuhn, and a possible defense of pitcher hitters, then assess the state of the standings and playoff races, contemplate a position change for Fernando Tatis Jr., discuss the Field of Dreams Game, and […]

🎵 That's all you gotta do Hello and welcome to episode 1731 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball co- What? It's a podcast, Ben, and it's brought to you by our favorite supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm good. I like that you always want to leave in the force. Really commitment to authenticity.

We all mess up sometimes and we leave it in. And you know, Dylan does so much to smooth things out and make us sound as if every thought we've had is smart right off the bat. But they're not all winners. And I think it's useful for people to know that even though we have recorded many episodes of this show, we sometimes go...

Yeah, because otherwise people might think we're too perfect. Right. That is probably what people think about us. They're just so well-spoken. They just never stumble over anything. Every take is correct. It's intimidating, really, to listen to us. So it's probably better that we be relatable

just you know we don't actually screw up but every now and then we pretend to have just so that the listeners won't be you know too put off by just how perfect we are right i don't want people to if they if they meet us at like a meetup or just on the street to be like, oh, couldn't even approach them. Too famous. Unapproachable. Yeah. Too famous. That's our problem, really.

Right. Exactly. We have a lot of news to discuss today. Some interesting little wrinkles in some of the pennant races lately. Yeah, man. And Fernando Tati's junior position change, which is also related to those playoff races. So definitely want to get to some of that but Just a few follow-ups from

Not our last episode but the episode Before that 1729 Because I know everyone has been wondering Since we put that episode out Horses do fly Just for anyone who Wanted to know after you raised that very Important question about how the horses

Got to the Olympics, yes, Virginia, horses do fly. Not by themselves. They do need mechanical assistance, I believe. But they can get into planes, and they can be transported in those planes. And, of course, we got an email from a listener, Stephen, who is a USDA veterinarian. Stephen, who is a USDA veterinarian, and he actually sent us some pictures that he snapped of horses in planes, just proving the axiom yet again that there is a listener of Effectively Wild who does every job and has every kind of expertise and whatever question could possibly come up on the show, there is someone who listens who knows the answer. But yeah, there was actually

an Economist article on this just last week, So you were not the only one wondering how horses get from place to place. I mean, they are so powerful on their own, but they are land bound. I mean, they can swim, but it seems hard and clearly aren't going to swim across the Atlantic coming from the States or any other spot. So I was so gratified to learn that they can fly, although it did inspire me to ask. We'll never be able to know because horses can fly, but they can't talk, Ben. Apart from Mr. Ed, we're going to be left wondering,

but I did wonder, what is the experience of flying like for a horse? I don't know how horse memory this is another way where i'm just so relatable i don't know how horses memory works and so you sit there and you wonder like if you're a horse and you are used to being on the ground what do you think is happening to you when the plane takes off right or and lance what do you think you're just dying and do you remember like do you do you acclimate to the experience of flying if you're a horse so that the next time you're like, oh, I survived last time. I did not, in fact, die.

Or do you have the experience of terror all over again? I just am worried about what international horse competitions are doing to the psyche of horses. I'm worried about those international horse competitions are doing to the psyche of horses. I'm worried about those horses. Right. Yeah. No, if you've watched Game of Thrones, you know that crossing water is a problem for horses. This is why the Dothraki were not considered a threat by Westeros for so long because they couldn't even cross the narrow sea.

It was the poison water. The horses could not cross until, of course, they were eventually transported in the wooden horses, but they don't have planes in Game of Thrones, so that didn't really answer your question specifically, but now we know horses can fly. I don't know what they make of the situation really, but maybe they just go with the flow. Yeah, I mean, and perhaps they're tranquilized in some way so that they are not made afraid by what is a frankly quite unnatural thing that we force upon them. So that's one follow-up, very important follow-up that I know everyone was wondering. A couple others. I did a stat blast on that same episode about Flood versus Kuhn,

the Supreme Court decision and Justice Blackmun's decision or opinion that was just really an ode to baseball for no particular reason other than the fact that he loved baseball. And he had this list of 88 figures from baseball history that he just listed the original. Remember some guys and I kind of quantified the players that he listed and most of them were quite good and most of them were Hall of Famers, but some of them were not. So I came up with reasons why he might have chosen some of the players who statistically seemed less deserving. But then I also came up with a list of snubs, players from that same period who one would

have thought would be on Justice Blackman's list, but for whatever reason were not. And prime among them was Mel Ott. I was surprised that Mel Ott did not make Justice Blackmun's list because he's right from that period. He's a Hall of Famer, one of the all-time greats. Seemed like he was right in that sweet spot. And I learned subsequently because another listener emailed us who had studied with someone who had clerked with Justice Blackmun, and the story was relayed to our listener that he actually did not mean to omit Mel Ott from that list, that it should have been 89 names, and that he was quite distraught when he discovered that he had unintentionally omitted Mel Ott from his very long list. this. And here's one from 2001 by Edward Lazarus in Find Law. And it writes a little bit about the memorabilia that was in Justice Blackmun's office. So here we go. Among the prolific memorabilia in

Justice Blackmun's stately corner office at the Supreme Court, the most colorful objects were the orange Wheaties boxes prominently displayed on several bookshelves commemorating the twins' two World Series victories. Blackmun was a Twins fan. The office brimmed with baseball stuff, signed balls, caps, even a life-size Louisville Slugger Mel Ott model bat that was mounted on one wall. There was a story behind every item. The Mel Ott bat had earned its place in chambers as a result of Justice Blackman's authoring the court's opinion in Flood v. Kuhn. In that decision, the justices upheld baseball's

reserve clause against antitrust challenge. And at the end of the day, Justice Blackmun, following various precedents, ruled on behalf of the court that Congress had exempted baseball from the scope of the federal antitrust laws. But the opinion is famous not for its holding, but for its introductory section, Justice Blackmun's encomium to the national pastime. When the opinion was published, one of Justice Blackmun's friendscomium to the national pastime. When the opinion was published, one of Justice Blackmun's friends called to ask why Mel Ott, the New York Giants' celebrated right fielder who hit 511 home runs, did not make the list of favorites. Of course he did, the justice replied. But when he checked, Ott was nowhere to be found. In Justice Blackmun's

personal copy of volume 407 of U.S. Reports, the justice in the spidery crystal clear script that was his trademark penciled in Ott's name next to the flawed list. I shall never forgive myself, he is reputed to have said. And the Mel Ott bat that hung on his wall had that self-chastisement inscribed on a plaque below. This haunted him for the rest of his life that he had unintentionally left out Mel Ott. Quite a snub. Do you think that he called it Eris and Otterata? Good one.

No, it wasn't, but I did it anyway. The last little follow-up from episode 1729, I also answered a question in that episode about which is worse or which performs worse, position player pitchers or pitcher hitters. And I came to the conclusion, which matched your intuition, that pitcher hitters are worse. And I did a deep dive on this at The Ringer in written form. Got two emails from listeners who made the same point in response to this discussion, and I think it was an interesting point.

And I'll read one of them from listener Matt, who says, in a recent podcast, you ran a lot of numbers to demonstrate that pitcher hitters have performed worse than position player pitchers. But it struck me that your empirical analysis, or at least your interpretation of the numbers, was flawed in that you didn't seem to appropriately account for a particular selection bias in the major leagues. In practice, starting pitchers who are really terrible at hitting are frequently required to hit. While only the most competent position players tend to be asked to tow the rubber, it would not be a stretch to assert that if baseball required position players to take the hill occasionally in order to stay in the hitting lineup, the results of those instances might be a lot uglier than the position player pitching outcomes we've become accustomed to seeing. Managers aren't plucking just anyone off their benches to pitch an inning. Conversely,

if a manager could always send his best hitting pitcher to the plate in a pinch, pitcher hitters would perform a lot better than they do. So that's an interesting point. That's something that I hadn't really considered, but pitchers have to hit, even if they are completely terrible at it, as long as they're National League starters, as long as they're in the batting lineup, they have to hit. Whereas position player pitchers, that's voluntary managers decide which ones to send in. However, I take slight issue with Matt taking issue with me here. And I have two responses, which first, even if this selection bias did exist, I'm not sure it would change my conclusion.

It might change, as he said, my interpretation of the results and the difficulty of doing these things. But mostly I was just interested in which have been worse, which are worse relative to average. And even if there were some selection bias that produced those results, it wouldn't actually change what the results were. So what I found about which has actually performed better or worse, that stands, I think. But it's still an interesting point. But I do kind of quibble with the idea that this selection bias does exist. It's plausible, but I think there might even be a bias that operates in the opposite direction, because what Matt was saying is that only the most competent position players are asked to pitch. But I think that's not actually true. He wrote that managers aren't plucking just anyone off their benches to pitch an inning, but they are almost always plucking someone off their benches, off their benches being

the operative phrase there. They don't take starting players generally and make them pitch. So the best position players, many of whom would probably also be the best pitchers just because they're stronger or harder throwing or more athletic or maybe more likely to have been good enough to have played two ways in the more recent past are essentially off limits because you don't want to risk hurting them or tiring them or embarrassing them or anything so when the twins want a position player pitcher they signal for williams astadio not andrelton simmons who was like a legitimate pitching prospect and a two-way player before he was drafted. Or when the Angels wanted one

this April or last August, they have Jared Walsh on the roster, who was actually a professional pitcher, but they choose backup catcher Anthony Bemboom, or at least they have a couple times. And that's not always the case. Jake Cronenworth, who was a two-way player, did get a couple of outs for the Padres this year, but that's more the exception than the rule. Mostly, managers are limiting themselves to a small group of replacement-level position players, basically, and ruling out the players with the best arms. And in recent seasons, which is what I was focusing on in that article and on that episode, they haven't even really been all that selective with the

scrubs that they put into pitch because there have been so many position player pitchers lately that now you don't even have to throw hard for a position player to get in there. The average velocity of position player pitchers has sunk pretty precipitously. So if pitcher hitting worked the same way that position player pitching did, I think some of the good pitcher hitters, quote unquote, like Baumgarner and Granke and Dontre Willis and CeCe Sabathia, they might have been deemed too valuable to let hit. And so you just have all the at-bats going to like replaceable relievers. I think that might be actually a closer analog to this situation. So I'm not sure that this bias actually exists or that if it does exist, it's not balanced out by this equal and opposite bias toward not letting your best position players take the mound. Yeah, it's amazing how rapidly the sort of barometer for success in moments like that shifts from what we commonly understand in baseball to something that isn't really about the results on the field at all, right? And you can see it in the selection sort of trends that you're

noting here, right? You're trying to get out of it, but like you don't care by how much because you've already blown the thing and you really don't want anyone valuable to get hurt. And so the sort of gauge by what you're saying is so different than what we expect. You know, it's kind of like when actual pitchers have to pitch in blowouts, you know, their barometer is different too, right? You're not worried about, I mean, you're still wanting to get guys out, but you're wanting to get them out in service of like not having to get someone else warm because it's already this huge. There's already this huge differential. So the goal shifts ever so slightly. And I don't know, I always find those moments interesting because I do think it tells us something about sort of how we understand stakes and sort of accomplishment in any given moment. But yeah, the fact that we saw Rizzo pitch to Freddie Freeman is kind of wild when you think about it.

Like, what were they doing? Right, I know. They probably should not have done that. I mean, I'm glad they did, and clearly it worked out fine and did not result in any sort of injury or anything like that. But it's really very surprising that we saw that in 2021. Yeah, you don't see that often. And that was a fun moment. So I'm glad it happened. But it was definitely an outlier. And like even going back to when Jose Canseco pitched and threw his knuckler

for the 93 Rangers, and he hurt himself, which was like the worst nightmare. And I've read about that and like Kevin Kennedy was reluctant to use him just because, yeah, he might get injured. And that's not something you ever want to risk a really good player on. And even if like a Rizzo pitches or someone like that pitches, I think they're not throwing all out. Like they're just kind of lobbing it up there. They're playing catch, really. So and you even saw that this weekend where you had brock holt who

in addition to throwing some harder pitches not hard but harder he was throwing like 31 mile per hour ethos pitches right and you know that's like almost as slow as you can possibly throw like according to physics like right and still get the ball to home plate yeah yeah mike fast did an article on that for the hardball times like yeah yeah mike fast did an article on that for the hardball times like 10 years ago or so and he concluded that it's about like 27 miles per hour roughly like with the right amount of backspin with the right launch angle and everything like you can throw a pitch that crosses the plate so 31 like that's it's cutting it close yeah of like not even getting there and that is a true eph. I mean, people sometimes call things Ephuses that I would not actually call an Ephus or

is different from the original definition. But this was an Ephus. Also, the Red Sox had Jonathan Aros pitch position player. And they have more capable pitchers on that roster who could have pitched instead of him. They have Bobby Dahlbeck, who is a former closer and postseason starter on a team that went to the College World Series. And he, in theory, could have pitched that inning instead, but he has never pitched in the minors or the majors despite his pitching background because he was a prospect and he's not having a good year, but even so, he's been a starter. And so they don't throw him and maybe he just didn't want to,

I don't know. But the point is, even if you have a much better option, usually you don't go with that option. You just go with your utility guy or your backup catcher, basically. So you're really limiting yourself to not the top tier athletic talent among your position players. Yeah. I think that your analysis still stands, Ben. Well, thank you. I do wish I had mentioned Matt's objection because it's worth bringing up if only to argue against it. But that's an experience I have, much like Justice Blackmun omitting a lot, I suppose, almost every time I write something. At some point, like in the next day or two, whether it's in response, like some listener points out something I could have mentioned and didn't, or it just dawns on me, oh, I should have said that, or I meant to say that, but at some point it was lost in my thought process.

So almost every time I write something, even if it's a piece I'm pretty happy with, I always think, ah, I should have said that one thing. So I feel your pain, Justice Blackmon. Yeah. I feel like half of my job as an editor is to say, you're going to get this question, so proactively address it so that that's not what the comments are about. Right. Yeah. All right. So we have a bunch of news to discuss. I guess we could get into this playoff picture reshuffling because, man, things have changed over the past week. And we don't usually do like week to week, you know, who's hot, who's cold, because these things are always changing and shifting. Some team that is having a rough time or is playing over its head and you can just get too deep in the weeds. If you actually follow the baseball season on that level, it's more accurate, at least in the long term, to just sort of zoom out a little bit and say it's a long season. It's a marathon, not a sprint, whatever cliche you want to apply. But we're getting down to it.

We're in the last couple of months here. Like this is the stretch run, right? When does the stretch run start? This feels like the stretch down to it. We're in the last couple months here. Like this is the stretch run, right? When does the stretch run start? This feels like the stretch run to me. Yeah. It's the last third of the season or so. I think that's right. It's getting real.

We've gotten to the point where we can use the sourdough starter to make sourdough. Right. So I think it's worth paying some attention to these things because on the Ringer mlb show last week we did like a weekly segment like a unnamed playoff odds weekly segment where we actually looked at how much the playoff odds had changed in a week because we figured okay it's a 60 game season like a week actually matters quite a bit yeah and it typically doesn't in 162 game season, but just looking at the FanCraft's playoff odds now and doing the change since a week ago, and we're speaking here on Tuesday afternoon, so by the

time you hear this, there have been some games on Tuesday night that will have changed this slightly. But over the past week, we've seen some teams' fortunes really rise or fall because they've won almost every game and their direct rivals have lost every game and so i guess the biggest beneficiaries of this past week are the phillies the suddenly red hot phillies who have gained 26 percentage points in playoff odds over the past week and are now the favorites in the nl east and the mets are the team on the other end Yeah. Not only did they have the whole Kumar Rocker saga that we talked about, but then they lost three out of four to the Marlins. They got swept by the Phillies and Zach Wheeler, their former pitcher, was the one who really drove the nail into their coffin. Not that they're dead far from it, but he cemented the sweep and bolstered his own Cy Young case on Sunday.

and bolstered his own Cy Young case on Sunday. And not only did they fall out of first place for the first time since the first week of May, but they fell out of second place too. So I guess before we go anywhere else, we should talk a little bit about NL East. Yeah, I mean, we should say, I feel like we should get this out of the way so that the Phillies fans in our listenership

can be like, I'm furious, but then get over it because sometimes you got to feel the feeling, which is to say the Phillies have at times this year been quite poor and I still am very nervous about their pitching situation. So it's not as if this can't move again. Yeah, no. But yeah, when you're playing the teams that are directly behind you, those games are bad ones to lose. I think that the Phillies pitching situation remains kind of unstable from my perspective, but maybe we can also use this as an opportunity to talk about just how good Bryce Harper has been this season because he has been quite good and he has been quite good of late so that seems to be working in their favor the Mets remain sort of dogged by injury although

not as dogged by injury as they once were and so I think I'm trying to decide what would be most concerning to me if I were a Mets fan the fact that their offense has been producing at the level that it has been or that it's been doing that in spite of the fact that they basically have everyone back except Lindor, which is a significant loss to be sure. But, you know, we've come to think of their loss of DeGrom as sort of this defining moment in their season. But the pitching hasn't been terrible. It's just that they have not been able to score lately. Yeah, which is a great surprise to me. I thought this team was going to hit. Mike Petriello just did an investigation into why it hasn't hit. And obviously,

yeah, part of it is injury absences, but it's not just that. It's like it's a pretty disciplined offensive team, but they just have not hit the ball hard. They have not produced much on contact. And part of that is the ballpark, of course, but not all of it. So there are still guys in this lineup I'm expecting to start firing on all cylinders. And there's still some time for that to happen. But it's really the two New York offenses, the Mets and the Yankees, that have dramatically underperformed my expectations and I think most people's expectations. So I'm still sort of expecting that they'll hit and they both made some upgrades at the deadline.

And I just, I don't know, that's one of the surprises for me of the season. And the Mets were my preseason pick to win this division. And so like part of me is kind of anchored to that where I'm not going to be budged from that until there's a real reason to. And right now the difference is small enough that I'm not flipping yet. And, you know, if you look at the Fangraphs playoff odds, like all three of those teams have very similar rest of season winning percentages. So the playoff odds think that they're roughly equivalent teams and they're separated by two and a half games in the standings from first to third as we speak here. So it is anyone's division to win. Obviously, I still

sort of lean Mets, but it's kind of a toss up at this point. Yeah, I mean, I think the Mets have a slightly harder strength of schedule the rest of the way, I believe. But it's not so dramatic that you think, I mean, it is the difference between them playing teams above 500 versus below, but that isn't hugely dramatic, it doesn't feel like. But also when the difference is a couple of games in the division and despite the Padres looking far more mortal of late, assuming that you're going to need to win

the East in order to feel confident you're going to have a playoff spot, doing that seems at least easier than navigating the wildcard picture. That difference might end up being the difference, right? Or maybe Bryce Harper will keep hitting the way he has in August and it won't matter because the Phillies will just outscore everyone and walk in. I mean, we talked about MVP stuff a little while ago. I really think that Bryce Harper needs to be talked about more actively in that conversation. Now, we will get to Tatis in a little bit here. If Tatis comes back, is healthy, and is playing kind of as he has, I think that it's probably his award to lose just given his performance to date.

But there's a lot that goes into kind of getting some games back on the team ahead of you and the division. You mentioned Wheeler and how wonderful he was. But in August, Bryce Harper is a 248 WRC+. That seems pretty good, Ben. He has four home runs. I think that sounds helpful. If you're sitting there going, hey, how did they do that?

Well, I think Bryce Harper helped a lot, so that's pretty exciting. I love that we're just going to constantly have reason, I think Bryce Harper helped a lot. So that's pretty exciting. I love that we're just going to constantly have reason to revisit the Bryce Harper conversation for the rest of his career. And despite us saying for a couple of years now that he has gotten to the point that he might be slightly underappreciated, we keep doing it. Why do we keep doing that, Ben? We should stop and stop being so surprised by stuff. Yeah. No, we talked about that earlier this year when no one was really talking about him because he's just kind of overshadowed by the young guns. And for good reason.

Like, he's been around for a while and he's not Mike Trout. And he's also not like the new guy. He's not Guerrero. He's not Tatis. He's not Acuna, et cetera. But he is really producing at a very high level. And so even though he's not the new hotness, he's still like the, you know, not old hotness. And he's like playing a really crucial role on a team that needs every win right now.

So, yeah, it feels like, you know, no one was talking about him at the start of the season. Then we pointed out no one was talking about him. Shortly after that, he went on a real hot streak and people were talking about him. And then, I don't know, he cooled down a little bit, I guess, faded into the background. It seemed like the Phillies were destined for another sub 500 season. And now the Phillies have returned to prominence, largely driven by him as Tatis has been on the sidelines. And so now there is another Harper reappreciation. So yeah, I guess just because of the way he came up and just how hyped he was, no one could ever fully match that hype, even if you have a Hall of Fame career probably. But I guess he is just destined to, is he overhyped? Is he underappreciated is he you know he was like this kind of brash divisive figure earlier in his career and now he's really not that at all yeah he's just a good player who just doesn't make many headlines surprisingly yeah i think

he'd have to i mean we we kind of touched on this a bit when we celebrated trout's 30th with jake and jordan but i think he'd have to be Trout. He would have to have had Trout's career in order to live up to being on the cover of SI at 16. He hasn't had that, but he has had a very good career and he's having a very good season this year. He's been very good at some really meaningful times for Philly, so that's cool. And very good at some really meaningful times for Philly. So that's cool. Also, I don't know why, you know, I sometimes forget that he's like, he'll turn 29 this October, but he's only 28.

It's just like very cool. Anyway, and then there's Atlanta, which I don't expect is going to end up winning this division, but has, despite the loss of Acuna, managed to stay in in it so that's good for them that remade outfield is is proving useful so uh so yeah like the east it's suddenly interesting yeah on the one hand like there are so many teams in other divisions or leagues that will probably not make the playoffs that would win this division going away. Like it's a pretty mediocre division. So someone has to win. But like, you know, whoever doesn't end up winning that second AO wildcard spot, for instance, like would probably easily win the NL East. It's just it's not a powerhouse of a division, but it is suddenly an interesting race.

Like we've talked before about whether it matters whether the teams are good or whether the proximity of the teams matters more to how entertaining a playoff race is. I think it's a bit of both, but when we did our trade deadline breakdown of all the moves and all the teams, we didn't touch on the Phillies' moves all that much. I mean, we mentioned them, but we didn't dwell on them. And those are significant acquisitions that they made. I think getting not so much Galvis, I guess, is nice to have, but really to get Ian Kennedy and to get Kyle Gibson, like those are pretty big acquisitions for them. Like I still worry about their bullpen and even getting Kennedy only

assuages my concerns somewhat, but to get Gibson, you know, that pitching staff still has holes, but like those were really significant additions. And I still have to like pinch myself every time I realized that Ian Kennedy is like still around and is like a good closer. Now this is like,

what that happened because i like was still a fan when ian kennedy came up like he was part of that like phil hughes java chamberlain group of pitching prospects and those guys are long gone and ian kennedy who was you know the least hyped of the three i think he is still around and has completed this career transition where he's like, you know, not a lights out dominant closer exactly, but, you know, pretty solid at the back of a bullpen. I just I did not see that coming for him at age 36. So that's kind of nice. Will you allow me a minor tangent? Yeah.

You know who's pitching in the majors again? Who's that? Kevin Quackenbush. Oh, yeah. I saw his pitching in the majors again who's that kevin quackenbush oh yeah i saw his giant beard the other day i mean you have to have a beard if your name is quackenbush right like i think bushy all right yeah i think it's required there's like a lots of minor amendment to the constitution i i felt better not knowing that he had uh that he was still around because he he was away for like three years he did not pitch he was away for like three years. He did not pitch in the majors for like three years.

So I had thought, oh, has he and his beard been floating around places? No, he was not. He was in the Dodgers minor league system in 2019 and then obviously didn't do anything in 2020, and then here he is again. But pitched big league innings for the Dodgers. I mean, they were winning that game pretty handily when he came in, so that had something to do with it.

But Quackenbush, Kevin Quackenbush, back in the fold. Here we are. I hope he can be joined by Joe Bimal sometime soon. That would be fun. He's coming back too. He is coming back, which is funny because the last time I saw Joe Bimal was at a dri driveline pro day a couple of years ago. And I was like, I think Joe Bimal is pretty washed, but he, here he is coming back. Yeah. A spry 44. I mean, I will say

he looked great. The pitching that day kind of underwhelming, but I was like, I hope that I am anywhere near this level of fit when I'm in my 40s. My goodness. He has been taking good care of himself. We do not need to extend my tangent to this conversation just yet. And perhaps we should save it to have Craig on the pod or something. But we need to talk about some of the remember some guys in the Dodgers bullpen right now. Because there's some guys in there. Phil Bickford and Kevin Quackenbush, they got some guys. So we'll save it, put a pin in it,

but we need to return to it at some point because I have had moments in the last week and a half of disorientation when I have turned on baseball because I have not been on Twitter. And I don't know that any of them have been as profound as Kevin Quackenbush. Yeah, John Axford made a very brief comeback. Very brief, unfortunately, but he made it back to the Brewers and he got one out and then he hurt his elbow. But that was the first time he pitched in the big leagues for a few years since he was with the Dodgers. Right.

A bunch of, remember some guys we remember because they're actually active again. Yeah. It's kind of fun. Yeah. So East is interesting and there are still some Mets on the comeback trail. Carrasco is back now. A lot of those hitters are back now, but they still have like 15 guys on the IL. It's so many dudes.

They still have Cinderguard hopefully coming back, possibly bound for the bullpen. And then Lindor, I'm looking forward to the Lindor-Bias double play combo whenever, if ever, we see that happen. So I continue to believe that despite sabotaging themselves in every which way that they will somehow make it. But I don't know. It's going to come down to the wire now. And I guess you kind of have to hand it to Dave Dombrowski to some extent if he actually makes the Phillies a playoff team. And, you know, he did his usual thing at the deadline and he traded some guys and he got some guys and maybe that will actually be enough. I don't know

if it helps the Phillies long term or not, but just for them to make the playoffs like even once would be a victory of sorts. I mean, it's not what you hope for when you do a rebuild, just like you squeak into the playoffs with one division title, but it does change things to get on the board and not be totally shut out at least. So in that sense, I'm rooting for them not to be complete failures, even though I really do enjoy watching this Mets team. There are a lot of entertaining players on this team,

even if the roster doesn't fit quite together perfectly or hasn't produced up to my expectations. Well, regardless of who emerges, I think, unless it's Atlanta, we're going to get a bunch of process stories, Ben. We're going to get a bunch of stories about process. So look forward to that. There's also been some movement in the other East not quite as dramatic,

but we have the Rays now opening up a significant lead and the Red Sox who have fallen on hard times and they have also lost double digit percentage points in their playoff odds and now, I mean, it's still like according to Fangrash playoff odds, it's, I mean, it's still like, according to Fangrash

playoff odds, it's about 50-50 that the Rays will actually win this thing. But the Red Sox are like a one in four shot because you have the Yankees and the Blue Jays who are not far behind. And I guess we can kind of blend together the AL East race and the AL wildcard race because they're directly related here. But this is a fun one too. And some pretty good team is going to end up on the outside looking in here because there just aren't enough spots for all of the teams that I would buy as playoff teams. But we talked about this in our trade deadline recap episode too, that the Red Sox were not very active. And to the extent that they did anything, they didn't really do much on the pitching side.

And certainly on the starting pitching side, they brought in a couple of relievers who have not been good this year. They traded for Kyle Schwarber, who seems like sort of a suboptimal fit for that roster and is also still a bit banged up. And they didn't get a starter. And of course, they have Chris Sale coming back this weekend. a starter. And of course, they have Chris Sale coming back this weekend. He's scheduled to pitch against the Orioles, which is almost a minor league rehab start. But he's had a few of those actual minor league rehab starts, and he has pitched very well. So you have to be concerned. Obviously, you shouldn't necessarily expect him to be peak Chris Sale ace again. It's been two years since he's been on a major league mount, which is a long comeback, even for someone who went through Tommy John surgery. But that could be a big boost to that staff, but they really need a big boost because it as well as it did. And I think a lot of it maybe comes down to the durability that they have had and the

Mets and Yankees, to name a couple of teams, have not had. Like they just have not had a lot of injuries. And so I think one of the problems with that team was depth and their depth has not really been tested as much as some of their rivals. So now it's like, can they hang on? Can they fend off not only the Rays who have leapfrogged them, but also these other pretty good teams that are nipping at their heels here and were the teams that were expected to finish ahead of them before the season started? They did. The Yankees were like, hey, we should be scoring more runs.

So as we've noted, they went and got all the beef boys. I also want to preface what I'm about to say by saying it is not good that Anthony Rizzo has COVID, and we hope that he gets better soon. But it is a testament to the beef boy lifestyle that the Yankees are living, that Rizzo is on the aisle, and they just put Luke Boyd, famously also a big beef boy. There he is. He's just being the backup beef boy. Beef boy, beef boy. Yeah.

I watched part of that wild Yankees-Royals game. Wild game. Went into extras and they just like no one wanted to win that game. And they were just blowing leads every inning and coming back but there was one shot where Brett Gardner who was playing center was flanked by Joey Gallo and Aaron Judge who were playing the corners and he

looked so tiny. Tiny! It was like when you see like two parents who are like swinging their kid between them or something I was expecting Judge and Gallo to do that as they ran in he's so small compared to the giant Beef Boys. So yeah, even if they lose some Beef Boys who have not been vaccinated or they've also lost some players who have been vaccinated. Yeah, they're having a hard time.

They lose some Beef Boys and they've got more Beef Boys behind them just to step in and take their place. They have reserved Beef Boys. And then, of course, Toronto has just been scoring like mad and we were like it sure would be nice if they had better pitching and they were like cool and then they went and did that and it has gone well for them so i would feel very nervous if i were the red socks i might almost feel you tell me you tell me if this is overreacting to like sort of recent burials of it all but i would almost be more more nervous about Toronto than the Yankees if I were Boston. You can tell me I'm overreacting though.

And I'd be open to that feedback. Certainly run differential wise. Because holy Moses. They've outperformed most teams in baseball. They have the best run differential in the East. Yeah. Yeah. So that makes them scary.

And obviously the lineup is incredibly potent. And now the pitching is rounding into form a bit. I still certainly have concerns about their bullpen, the way I do about the Phillies' bullpen. But even so, they might just hit enough to- It doesn't matter. Yeah. And now they're home also, which they had a great first homestand

they were like nine and two or something which is nice and who knows whether that has anything to do with like the morale boost of being back in Toronto again but certainly a nice story that they're back there and they have a home again so yeah they are pretty scary and i don't know which is is scarier i guess like the yankees i mean the yankees have like 19 guys on the il as we speak if not 20 like glaber torres just went on there with a non-covid related injury yes they have all the covid guys and then they also have you know some guys that could be back soon ish like Severino and Kluber. Like those guys might actually be reinforcements, hard to count on them, but could be significant additions. And I expected the Yankees to be much better than they have been. And so the fact that they're playing better now is

not a surprise to me, but yeah, like there's one game separating the Blue Jays and Yankees as we speak. And I don't know which one I would be more afraid of. Like it would, honestly, I might bet on both of those teams passing the Red Sox by the time it's all said and done. And so then the question is like, do they pass each other? Which one actually ends up with a wild card here, assuming that they don't somehow make up six or seven games on the Rays, which seems unlikely. It does seem unlikely.

And it's not as if this Rays team, I mean, like their run differential is pretty strong itself, so it's not like they're, you know, paper mache or anything like that. Is that a thing that people think fake teams are like? Like paper mache. Mache. Paper mache. I think also that like the Red Sox, I don't know, my boss Bill Simmons was tweeting about his dissatisfaction with the Red Sox at the deadline and what they did or didn't do.

And it's true that they did not go all in. And I don't know how much to fault them for that or how much to say, well, they're kind of playing over their heads anyway. Like it's not the Mariners exactly, but it's similar to that where you didn't really expect the Red Sox to be ready to contend for a playoff spot this year. And they're a bit ahead of schedule at least. And also like there were rumors that they were interested in some of the other big guys who got moved, Max Scherzer, et cetera, Brios maybe. But they also don't really have the prospects. Yeah, they wouldn't have had the prospect capital. It would have been tough for them to match some of the prospect packages there.

So I think their hands were tied to an extent. And also maybe they were reluctant to really go all in when they were not expecting this to be the year. So you could say, oh, it's gravy. Like you had four fun months and they're still very much in it and they're in playoff position as we speak. four fun months and they're still very much in it and they're in playoff position as we speak and so that's more than you were expecting for this team you know like the year after they traded Mookie like not bad but also you know it's hard to watch a team that gets you that close and take that philosophical stance and say oh right it's just it's a bonus no once you see a team get that close you want them to win you want them to win yeah i don't know i don't know how i feel about their deadline given all of that i mean i think

it's hard to look at the the moves that the rest of their division did i mean even tampa to a certain extent i think relative to the yankees and the blue jays they were quieter but they also like nelson cruz is a good acquisition for them, right? Like that addresses a- Some of the other stuff they did was kind of confusing. It was like, are they buyers? Are they sellers? They're trading closers. Why not both?

Yeah. So there were a lot of lateral moves there, but also they got Nelson Cruz. But also they got Nelson Cruz. So you're like, even the Rays got a Nelson Cruz. And I don't say that to knock Kyle Schwarber, but I do say that to be like, it's not as impactful a move given what some of the other needs on the roster were. And like you mentioned, like his current injury status, and I know that he's had a little bit of a setback, so he's delayed coming back too. So I don't know. I also wouldn't be surprised. I think that that ace team is not a

bad team, but I also wouldn't be surprised if we end up with two wildcard teams out of the East. No, neither would I. Yeah, that's interesting also because they lost a pretty significant player just in the past few days too. And I don't know whether they knew that there was going to be a positive steroid test and that they were going to lose their

center fielder do you think they knew that before they traded for starling marty i don't know oh gosh i don't know i'd hate to i'd hate to speculate yeah a lot of that stuff uh yeah sometimes those things really are confidential right up until like you know sometimes there are appeals and and who knows but right yeah they needed starling Marte regardless. Correct. Agreed. So it doesn't even matter really. But the fact that they've lost Ramon Laureano now for the rest of the season and, you know, he's not a superstar, but he gives you good defense and above average bat. And so it's not like you lost the step forward that you took when you got Marte, but it is sort of like you filled a hole and then another hole opened up. And that's like, you know, even if it costs you a win or so over the course of the season, over the next two months, like that might be enough. Yeah, it might be a win. And so that's

tough. Like, I don't know right now as we speak, it's just the A's are two games ahead of the Yankees and three games ahead of the Blue Jays and yeah going by pre-season expectations you probably would have expected the Yankees and the Blue Jays to be those two teams there if one of them wasn't winning the division yeah and I don't know if that's enough of a buffer for Oakland to hold them off. But that's a fun race because it's like at least four good teams and three like potentially really good teams and they can't all make it. So there's some actual stakes there. Yeah, I think that we still we still find ourselves like confronted with a landscape that is littered with haves and have nots.

But I think that these races have been more exciting than we were expecting. You know, Rob Maines wrote a good piece at Baseball Perspectives this week or last week about sort of how much competition there really is and sort of how much mobility there is in baseball these days. But when we came into the season, I was like, well, one of these divisions will be interesting and then it'll be kind of boring. But I've been pleasantly surprised, at least of late, with how much movement there's been and the knock-on effects

that that has had at least in the al wild card race and even the nl wild card race is a little spicier than it's been just because the padres have faltered and then there's been the uncertainty around tatis so yeah i also while we were we're talking, went to remind myself of what my preseason predictions were because I think I could have talked myself into saying anything. I could have been like, I totally foresaw this and I did not. I'm going to tell you I didn't. I had the Angels win in the West. Ooh, that was a bold move, bold pick.

I'm blaming you. I think it was your fault. I was like, ah, the Otani of it all. That'll be enough. I never said they'd be good. I said they'd be the best or the most watchable team, perhaps. But if you had told me that Otani would have this season, then I probably would have picked the Angels to make the playoffs too. Yeah. So anyway, that's neither here nor there. But I do love that I misremember this every single time we talk about it. I guess I should also acknowledge we kind of glossed over this, but the A's are only two games in back of the Astros too, by the way. So that's not out of play.

The Astros are a better team, I think. But when it's almost mid-August here and you're talking about a two-game deficit, anything can happen. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable given how their offense has come on and sort of how stark the run differential is a crude tool, but it is an instructive one. And you just look at the gap between those two and you'd think that the gap in the standings was significantly broader than it is, but it has not been. Yeah, and something I think that the other baseball prospectus, Rob,

wrote about recently is that there doesn't seem to be a super team this year the way that there have been recently. The Dodgers still have the best run differential in baseball, and I would consider them sort of a super team from today on. And yet they are still in second place. There's no team that's running away with it. The Astros also have a very good run differential, best run differential in the American League, I believe, even better than the White Sox. And so they still seem like juggernauts to me, sort of, but results-wise, they haven't been.

They're not running away with anything. And so that could be something that I know Jeff Passan cited as a possible cause of why the trade deadline was so busy this year is that other teams felt like they could come for the Kings. Like, you know, there was actually an opening this year. And I don't think that you have the same sense that, oh, it's going to be a Dodgers-Astros World Series this year. Because while it could be, you have a lot of teams that look really strong. And some of them are total surprises, like the Giants, who really no one saw coming,

but they have not at all flopped as the season has gone on or you have the White Sox who also look really tough to beat right now and they have Jimenez back and they have Luis Robert back and they'll have Grandal back at some point before the playoffs presumably and suddenly they have no holes either so there isn't really one super team they're just a handful of very good teams, which is good. I just love how real the Giants of it all is. I know. It's really satisfying. They're like a win above their Pythagorean expectation.

They're right in line with their base runs record. This is a good team. And this is, you know, this is like, this is a good team. And it's just, I should stop being, this is another thing I should stop being surprised by. Like we're deep enough into the season. We've talked about them enough since we brought Grant on to be like, explain this strangeness to us, won't you please? To be a little less surprised, but it's just really great that they are so, they're quite

real. I still think that, that you know relative to the dodgers they will probably end up uh in in second place in that division when it's all said and done but it's not like you look at them and say oh they're they're a paper mache team or or that you look at them and say like they're a team that's like an automatic early out in the playoffs you know sometimes teams are good but you look at them and you're like yeah i don't know about you in october i don't feel that way about the giants just like really nice yeah i'm probably more concerned about their pitching than i am about their lineup at this point especially post bryant like that's just a good hitting team like a good hitting team

a good approach like good discipline like they bunch of good old they hit the ball in the air they don't strike out that much like it's just a good offense and i don't know how much of it is farhan finding undervalued gems and how much of it is the fact that they have like 15 coaches and they've done a good job of translating those insights to the players or a combination of both but really it's a pretty impressive offense and hasn't even been at full strength and might be before the end of the regular season here. So yeah, I mean, I guess they strike out a fair amount, but it's not like out of control. But before we wrap up this little state of the standings discussion, I guess we should also acknowledge another team, which is very hot

right now, which is the Cincinnati Reds. Yeah. They have been winning just about every day and they have boosted their playoff odds by 10 percentage points, 11 percentage points or so. And they're now five and a half games back of the Brewers, who seem to be running away with things in the Central for a little while there. That is, you know, I mean, the Giants are up by four games on the Dodgers, which is not nothing at this point in the season and five and a half games. I still see the Brewers as a better team, but the Reds have put themselves back in that race and also have inserted themselves into the NL wildcard race because it has not been boom times for the Padres lately. And so now in the NL wildcard race, I think the Padres are only

three and a half up on Cincinnati. So it seemed for a while like a foregone conclusion that there would be three playoff teams from the NL West, but it's not a sure thing anymore. Yeah, it's definitely not. Although I don't know how my, i guess we'll just have to see tatis in center yes that's the other thing i'm able to like come to an updated uh opinion of what the likelihood is that that san diego will slip or not but yeah for a while just seems like if you didn't win your division in in the national league you were just going to be out of luck because there was no way that those wildcard spots would not be occupied by some combination of NL West teams. And now it's at least interesting in a way that it wasn't a couple weeks ago. So I think that the Padres are probably still a better squad than a couple of the teams that are behind them from a

squad than a couple of the teams that are behind them from a wildcard perspective, but it's tighter than it was. So that's something. Yeah. The Reds just have a bunch of guys, Joey Votto, Jonathan India, Kyle Farmer, Jesse Winker. None of these guys has made an out for the past month or so. So that helps. And they made some bullpen moves that have maybe helped a bit too and like it still just boggles my mind every time i look and see that wade miley has a 2.75 era

yeah 121 innings yeah what is that what is that all about ben what is what are we what are we doing? It is 2021. Wade Miley is, you know, you said that Bryce Harper is not the young hotness anymore. I don't know what Wade Miley is. No. Yeah. Did not see that coming either. So you mentioned that there, Fernando Tatis, it sounds like he is coming back and is probably not going to have to have season-ending surgery after all. We'll presumably have some surgery after the season, but it looks like he is going to keep giving this a shot. And in order to try to keep him healthy and not re-injure the shoulder again, he is preparing to play outfield, preparing to play center and maybe some right, which is interesting.

It's unorthodox i suppose i mean we've certainly seen a lot of stars especially in this era who can play multiple positions but to do a mid-season swap of someone who really was pretty entrenched at one position like they hope it'll be less wear and tear and fewer throws, I guess, and fewer, I don't know, dives and collisions and all of that. And, you know, he's been somewhat error prone at shortstop as well. Like I think he has the physical skills to play that position and be good at it. But he has not always been the most on target with his throws or even with some routine plays. have been the most on target with his throws or even with some routine plays. So it might not be the worst idea, like potentially even long-term, I guess.

And I don't know, you have Trent Grisham out there. So he and Tatis can kind of take turns. And then you have Tommy Pham, you have Will Myers. I mean, we've talked about just how many position players they have who can play all over the place with Frazier and Cronenworth and Kim and on and on so there are like multiple levels of redundancy there but like even after this season because Pham is a free agent and who knows maybe Tatis could just like if he takes to center maybe he's just a center fielder and yeah maybe you have I don't know Cronenworth plays shorter like cj abrams is coming along so there are a lot of options there i was just about to say you know we we've talked a lot

about how the you know the padres have traded away from their farm system and consolidating some of the guys there to bring in players who are in the majors who they hope will help them now a couple of the guys who they have been very adamant about staying away from are middle infielders. So it's not as if they don't have prospects who might be able to cycle through there in the slightly longer term. And then you get guys who can fill the void. Right now, I like it as a way of both protecting him and sort of dealing with

a potential weakness of his that he has at times been able to corral, right? We saw him be plus at short last year. Obviously, it was a shorter season and what have you, but it isn't as if he hasn't demonstrated the ability to get the error stuff under control and like we can talk about errors as a sort of imperfect proxy but like when you have as many of them as he says it's like it's a problem like you don't want to because you watch those and you're like yeah that was an error yep whoops that wasn't the best fernando so i think that it has the potential to be both sort of savvy in the short term and potentially beneficial to them and to him in the long term. I don't think that he's like unplayable at short by any means, but it might end up being a

kind of elegant solution to both a short and long term problem, you know, depending on how it goes. So yeah, I was reading Robert Murray reported that the Padres were also interested in obtaining Trey Turner at the trade deadline, which makes the Dodgers winning the Scherzer-Turner sweepstakes all the more important. At the time, it seemed like Scherzer was going to go somewhere in the NL West, but Turner moving to that division too was sort of a surprise. It was like, wow, the Dodgers got Scherzer. They blocked the Padres and maybe also the Giants in their pursuits of Scherzer. But Turner, it didn't seem like he would necessarily be on the table if you're talking to San Diego and Tatis had not suffered his latest aggravation at that point.

And so I guess they could have stuck Turner in the outfield. Maybe that was what they were planning to do. But if that had come to fruition, then that would have been an even bigger deal because if you had gotten Turner at the same time that Tatis hurt himself and you considered moving him to another position then that would have been big too so even more important that the Dodgers were the ones who wound up winning that war yeah it would have been and then like think about think about how happy AJ would have been. Oh, yeah. Turners out there. Anyway.

Sometimes you got to come up with new plans, though. You have to come up with new plans. So they have to come up with a new plan. All right. Well, we've covered the suddenly pretty interesting playoff race. I'm glad that there's still some intrigue and uncertainty left here because it didn't seem like there would be for a while. And now, like, really? I mean, the White Sox are a total lock to win the AL Central. But beyond that, like, I think the Rays should feel pretty confident about winning the AL East. The Astros, you know, I'd feel pretty confident about that. Like, their division odds are 84%

right now, but it's a two-game cushion, so you can't feel very secure. And then the NL East is just a total free-for-all, and the Brewers, I think, should feel pretty good about their position in the Central too. But then you've got the Dodgers and the Giants jockeying for a position there. They're still like, you know, most of the playoff spots are sort of assigned to someone or other, or like there are only a couple spots, I guess, that are totally in play. But almost everywhere, there's still some uncertainty about like, you know, will you win the division

or will you win a wild card? And that's all you can ask, I suppose, at this stage of the season. You know, I was worried that it would be all sewn up and it is not. Yeah, we have a bit more variability, and I know that it is probably just wreaking havoc on the nerves of several fan bases, but we thank you for your service because it's making it a lot more fun for the rest of us.

All right. You planning to watch the Field of Dreams game? Is that something you're excited about at all? I mean, I'm excited about it because of the teams that are playing. Right. White Sox Yankees. Yeah. Yeah.

It has felt, I mean, it's a pretty gimmicky gimmick as gimmicks go. I know that one's opinion of a field of dreams can cause rancor and hateful emails. Now, we've never gotten hateful emails about that. But I know that people feel very passionately about Field of Dreams, often in one direction or the other. And it is not a baseball movie that I feel compelled to revisit with any regularity. And so I think by virtue of that,

the premise of the bit I'm kind of iffy on and the ticket price thing seems not the best. The average ticket price apparently is $1,300. Yes, so that seems- Up to $4,000 or so. Yes, I don't know about that. I guess how accessible do we think a game in the middle of a cornfield was going to be regardless of the ticket price?

I don't know that we need to get super wound around the axle on that score but i don't know like those are good teams and i'm excited to see them play against one another even if i find the premise to be sort of forced so so probably but not because i'm like will someone actually emerge from the cornfield? Yeah, it's funny. One of the weirdest elements of Field of Dreams is the way in which the field is seen as a money-making venture. Right.

And when Terrence is like, oh, yeah, people will come, right? Like, they'll definitely come and they'll fork over all their cash. It's so weird when he's like, they'll pass over the money without even thinking about it. Right. For this money they have and peace they lack. And so we can make a fortune. Right. And so you see this long line of cars and it's like $20 a person or something.

Well, MLB did one better there and it's like $1,300 a person or something. But it's in line with the spirit of the movie, which weirdly is not like, hey, we have this mystical cornfield where dead people come back to play baseball. And boy, we can charge a lot of people to pay so much money to see this. So it feels true to the movie that it's become like a price gouging thing. But I think they should make Bull Durham the bit. And it should just be about how everyone gets to wear white on their wedding day if they want make it about the latent feminism in bull durham mlb i agree that bull durham much better baseball movie and baseball movie in general and if you want my thoughts on

field of dreams sim and i did a whole episode on it last year episode 15 18 and we've sort of staked out the unoccupied middle ground in the field of dreams debate, which is like, you know, it's okay. We like parts of it. Other parts of it are very strange, but usually it's like, oh, this is the most amazing movie and it reminds me of my dad and I cry like a baby when I watch it. Or this is the most just like saccharine, know pat kind of thing and it's so sappy and it's so unrealistic like a lot of people hate field of dreams and i am kind of in that middle ground where i'm like you know i've kind of enjoyed watching field of dreams i don't think it's a great movie but it has some things to recommend it and so i don't have any great

attachment to it where i'm excited to see it for that reason. But I am sort of looking forward to seeing baseball being played in an unusual location. I always like it when people play baseball in other countries or other ballparks or, I guess, states where they don't usually play baseball or you're not even able to watch baseball if you're on MLB TV and you live in Iowa and you're blacked out of everything so I like that you know crossing off another potential location to play major league baseball like you know it'll be sort of interesting to see major leaguers and the beef boys in that context boys beef boys I think they should including Lance Lynn by the way yeah so many beef boys the beef boys we'd say see they shouldn't make it about field dreams at all it should all be about beef boys they should just have it be the the beef boys brawl i mean i don't want them to actually brawl but i need another i need a different action verb

i think that they should make them play in the food court of an abandoned mall because i like abandoned mall photography i find it compelling and spooky. And I think they should play baseball there. I mean, it would be weird. It would be like the ball would like parkour off the walls and stuff, but that would be cool. I guess that Field of Dreams is really among the only baseball movies with a bit like that where you can lean into sort of a strange location.

And so in that respect it is cool but i'm kind of with you like i i want it to be clear i don't have super strong field of dreams feelings it's not my favorite and i haven't as i said felt compelled to revisit it but i think i occupy the middle like meh ground with you guys i'm like fine it's fine yeah and speaking of balls going off walls i do feel strongly that if you are going to play in a cornfield and you're going to build a ballpark in a cornfield, that the corn should be playable. Like there shouldn't be a fence. I think you should hearken back to old school baseball where outfielders just sometimes had to chase down the ball. Yeah.

And every now and then we get a listener email about what if they did away with outfield fences? And I'm sure that we've answered that at some point. I know that we have. But that to me, like that would be part of the intriguing ground rules of playing in this unusual location is that, yeah, Dreams here if a fielder were to venture into the corn and not disappear and fade away in a ghostly way and go to heaven or whatever but I think it would still be... Wouldn't that be more... Wouldn't that be reassuring to people? It's like no like Aaron Judge is fine. He's

coming back. Yes and I guess that would set up a sequel where you can bring Terrence back for Field of Dreams 2. But yes, I do feel strongly that the corn should be playable and that you should just have to find the ball. There's like a corn maze out there and I'm a fan of corn mazes in general, but I think for the purposes of the game, yeah, you should just have to go in there and find the ball. And if that meant a lot of inside the park home runs then so be it can i offer what is probably actually a controversial take i think that field of dreams is the second based corn related baseball movie behind signs oh yeah no i i think i would agree with that actually i appreciate that the mel gibson of it all can make it kind of an uncomfortable rewatch but I think it is time for us to revitalize the reputation of Signs not of Mel Gibson

to be clear but of Signs because because you know that's spooky that movie is spooky and it's clearly a baseball movie oh absolutely yeah so good take yeah and I'm also kind of relieved that I can watch the Field of Dreams game because I think it's on at 7 Eastern. And the headline, the marquee matchup of that night, Shohei Otani pitching to Vlad Guerrero Jr. and the Blue Jays. That will be a late game because I think that's a night game on the West Coast. So fortunately, I don't have to choose between those two things.

Do you think they planned it like that on purpose just for you? Let's pretend they did. It's nice for you to have nice things, Ben. That is the main event for me. I mean, you can build a ballpark in a cornfield and you can charge people thousands of dollars to get in, but it is overshadowed by Shohei Otani pitching to Vladito. I'm sorry. Yeah. I mean, I had perhaps not realized that those two things were lining up. But if for some reason that, that field of dreams games goes are ridiculous, are they going to have new extra innings rules to accommodate the venue? Anyway, if there's any sort of conflict,

if, if for some reason that game goes 14 innings, like I will, I will click over to watch Shohei try to take on that blue Jays lineup because that seems like the real main event. Yeah. Last thing I wanted to get your thoughts on, there was a good Twitter thread this week by someone who did a thesis on umpires and racial bias and discrimination. And there have been so many studies of this over the years with different data sets. This one is looking at kind of a long

term, like 2008 to 2020. And it found that, yeah, there does seem to be some bias toward calling pitches more favorably toward a member of your own race, let's say. There have been different studies and some have found something and some have not found something and some have found different things than others. But this one does seem to suggest that there is all else equal. And it's also clear, he says, that this discrimination has not diminished over time. While overall pitch calling quality has improved in the last 13 seasons, the predictive effect of batters and pitchers races has not substantially declined. I have not read the paper yet. I will link to it for all those who are interested. But if this is the case, does this mean that we are obligated to lend our support to robozones and to robot umps? Because in theory, not that AI and computers can't be racist too if they're programmed by people,

but if we assume that robo umps would not be and they would call things based on how they see them and where the pitch was and not who was taking the pitch or calling the pitch, then does this mean that we have a moral imperative to embrace the robo-umps because it might be less subject to implicit or explicit bias and it might be more fair for all involved? I mean, I guess the way I would answer that question is I have greater confidence in our ability, sadly, to program a version of the zone that fits the sort of probabilistic kind of nature of it that we kind of like now than I do with us being able to overcome a systemic bias, race-based bias. So yeah, I'm curious to read the paper, not that I want to call into question the conclusions that he's reaching, but I'm curious how framing factors into this analysis and factors into the conclusion that he draws, not because it couldn't, I mean, that might itself have a racial component, obviously, just thinking about the demographics of catchers too. True. Yeah.

Saying that you're excited to read the paper about racism and umpiring is the wrong word, but I am interested to read that because you're right. There have been a number of looks at this over the years, and they have not tended to go in the umpire's favor, even if the degree of the impact is at times been in question. So yeah, I think we have to consider it. I think we can be philosophically in favor of a probabilistic strike zone and be definitely philosophically opposed to racism being a factor in how pitches are called. Those are not, I don't think, at odds with one another in a hypothetical sense, but might end up being at odds with one another practically. So that's a bummer. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Well, I will link to that paper for everyone to peruse, but that's another

aspect to consider as we chew over the pros and cons of the robo-umps, which generally for us, the pros and cons of the the robo umps which generally for us uh cons have maybe outweighed the pros and this is something to think about for sure so i also just uh i saw a tweet by codify which suggests that uh apparently some of the spin rate has returned to mlb which is kind of interesting so there was the the giant plunge in spin rate. And then, you know, the ban, the enforcement went into effect and it really bottomed out. But then like about a quarter of the spin has returned after that. And I don't know how that correlates to the actual offense and the results. I haven't looked at that, but I wonder what that means that some of the spin has returned. And, you know, Saris quote tweeted this and said he saw what that means that some of the spin has returned. And Eno

Saris quote tweeted this and said he saw 40 pitchers got some of their loss spin back, but only about three that got more than two standard deviations back, like 250 RPM or more. And if anyone has gotten that back, I wonder whether that means that umpires are now getting a little lax. Like, you know, are pitchers now that almost no one is safe for Hector Santiago, who subsequently has been suspended for an entirely different reason? But I wonder whether the fact that almost no one has been popped for that has made umpires a little less likely to do in-depth checks or pitchers a little more likely to risk it because they figure that the standards are a little lax or whether pitchers have figured out some way to regain some spin without using sticky stuff, whether it's a different grip or who knows what. So that is kind of interesting. I didn't really expect to see it come back in a significant way.

But maybe you'd be emboldened if you just see that, okay, they're checking the hat, they're checking the belt, they're checking the glove. So as long as I don't put it there, maybe I could find some other spot to stick my sticky stuff and they'll never know. Yeah, I don't have anything to say, but yeah, but yeah. Well, I'll link to that tweet too. All right. So that will do it for today.

Enjoy the Field of Dreams game if you do not hear us before then. And of course, enjoy Otani versus Guerrero. That'll do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. 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 eric yellen stewart babinder brian good ro shapiro and marco gasparo thanks to all of you you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild you can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and spotify and other podcast platforms keep your questions and comments coming for me and Meg via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging

system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Bye.