Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1733: Corn-Fed Beef Boys

Episode Date: August 14, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Field of Dreams Game, “playing catch” vs. “having a catch,” scouting baseball movies, and a quibble with baseball in Twilight, answer listener emails about extending the Field of Dreams Game concept to other settings (and other baseball movies), the aesthetics of no-doubt dingers and wall-scrapers, saving the […]

Hit or miss, heaven beats Iowa That field of grass was holding you back Call your energy back, we're under attack Heaven beats Iowa Call your energy back, we're under attack Heaven beats Iowa And it never seems quite real Hello and welcome to episode 1733 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Friday email show. Yeah. Field of Dreams game. Pretty good, right? Pretty good. There were a lot of haters out there. I get that there's some grounds for hatred and some people just hate the movie, which I don't share the sentiment, but I understand it. Or some people thought it was overly gimmicky or schmaltzy or commercialized or overpriced, which it certainly was, or catered to too old an audience. There's a long list of complaints, but also it was pretty fun.

Yeah. I mean, I think that what we are learning is that good uniforms plus good baseball game plus an enthusiastic John Schmoltz equals a good time like he just seemed like he was having a blast and his uniforms were sharp we all got to think about corn just like a lot we thought about corn a lot it was a great fun time and i was toward the end of it switching between otani half innings and that game. And I'm very glad that I did not miss the ninth inning of the Field of Dreams game. Because what an inning it was, Ben.

Yeah, that was really my only quibble is that they couldn't wrap it up before 2A Otani took over against Toronto, which I had to watch. And yeah, a lot of the excitement in the Field of Dreams game was after that point. And so I was flipping back and forth and missing some of the exciting events. I mean, it was exciting no matter which game I was watching, but yes, I appreciated their effort to have that kind of cordoned off at seven and there were no other games at exactly that same time. So it did have the spotlight. But it went on for a while. And eventually it did overlap with other games. But how much do you think it was just a great game, period?

And how much was the setting and the special event? I think that it was, ooh, what percentages do I want to put on this? I actually think that the bulk of it, but not an extreme bulk, was the game itself being quite good. So I'd probably say 60% of it was the game being very good and 40% was the setting because I think if it had been

a kind of a dud of a game, after a while, it's like, you can only say so much about the corn. You can only be so amped about the corn.vin costner can only be in the booth for so long before you're like wow here's kevin costner he was certainly there he was all over the place yeah he was he was very present spent a lot of time with kev so um so i i think that that had the potential to to sort sort of wear and lose its luster and certainly its novelty.

But because it was juxtaposed with a really good game and a game that highlighted how cool a location that was, right? Home runs into the corn. We had all these home runs going into the corn. So I think because of that it it sustained itself in terms of viewer interest for a lot longer than i was anticipating it was just very it was very well done so yeah it was and apparently a lot of people tuned in it was cool to have everyone watching a regular season game at the same time according to fox sports pr it was the most watched regular season baseball game in 16 years with 5.9 million viewers across Fox and

Fox Deportes. It was also the most streamed regular season baseball game in Fox Sports history. And I think if it had just been that great game in any other setting, if it had been played in Chicago or New York, it still would have been a great game, obviously, but we wouldn't have been paying close attention. We probably would not be bantering about it right now it would just be another good game there are a lot of good games but they also definitely lucked out in that they happened to have the inaugural field of dreams game with two good teams which i guess was pretty predictable but also with just great games and five lead changes and ninth inning dramatics and blown saves on both sides and eight home runs. Yeah. Which do you think that was? Obviously, it was partly your beloved Beef Boys who were doing their thing.

Beef Boys! But was it also the ballpark? Do you think it was hard to gauge? Yeah, it really was. I don't recall exactly what the dimensions were. Like once it's in the corn, it's in the corn. So I couldn't tell if this was like course field midwest or whether it just happened to be two good hitting teams matching up yeah i similarly struggled to

understand exactly how the park was playing versus what was you know a bunch of very good hitters who tend to hit the ball hard and far but i was kind of okay with that the the low tech vibe that it had just in general was nice it was really nice to watch an entire game without a k-zone i i was not you know i'm not the only person to have noticed this and certainly many folks remarked on it last night on twitter but it was just uh it was just nice it was nice to not be intentionally agitated by a little box. And I think it would have been aesthetically jarring to have a K-Zone in this place that was clearly kind of low tech. So yeah, I don't know. It was just a really nice combination of things. have exit velocities or launch angles, which I guess that's part of our inability to tell whether it was the Beef Boys or the ballpark or just one of those things is that we knew we were hitting those balls hard, but we didn't know exactly how hard they were hitting them. So you had to eyeball it.

We just had to scout it like we did back in the olden days prior to 2015, way back when, when we didn't know exactly how hard and at what angle each ball was hit. But it was pretty cool and capped off by Tim Anderson with the walk-off to win it and come from behind. Just a really good game and I guess a good advertisement for baseball. I mean, it seems like one of those things where everyone who was interested in this game was probably already a baseball fan because

otherwise I don't know how culturally resonant Field of Dreams is at this point among the youths. But it was still a pretty fun event, I think. And no matter what quibbles you have with it, I think they got lucky with the specifics. But also the production was nice and they really put a lot of care and effort into it, which it's a once a year event. So I guess that makes sense. But you had camera angles that you weren't used to seeing.

And I even kind of like the zoomed in center field camera, which at first was like almost too close. I was like, oh, it's like claustrophobic back up a bit. But I grew to like it and it was nicely centered. And yes, yeah, there was just something charming. I can't deny it about seeing those balls just go flying into the fields it was very pastoral and sort of soothing yeah it was it was cool to have the sort of metric be corn or no corn you know just about whether the corn was involved if there was corn you're like haha the the beef boys uh editor dylan uh messaged me during it and asked

when i was going to make a corn fed beef boys joke and i thought about it but you know i think that was really dylan's joke so i'm here to tell his joke but attribute it to him as i should but yeah they they sure hit the ball far and hard we think i. I don't know. It looked cool. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. It's safe to assume when it's Aaron Judge and John Carlos Stanton that they hit the ball far. Yeah. I don't think that Eloy Jimenez is known for hitting the ball softly. So I think we can safely assume that they were pretty well thumped. But yeah, I enjoyed it. As many people remarked, both during and after the game, I hope that this encourages the league to think creatively about other venues that they could host games in that aren't typical.

You know, I think the pastoral nature of it was cool. It would be really neat to see games played sort of more casually in, you know, sort of urban settings and see them try to fit a major league game into a neighborhood that's densely packed, just because I think that there being variation in where we see baseball played is neat. And I hope that next year when they're thinking about how to structure this, that perhaps something can be done to mitigate the expense. I know that, you know, when we talked about it, I made the point that you're playing a baseball game in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa. So it's sort of funny to think about price as the only barrier to accessibility, but it certainly is a major

barrier to accessibility. And so it would be neat to see a game that is, and teams do this to a limited degree, but it would be neat to have a game where it was really just kids, right? Have it be an all kid game with chaperones because otherwise I could get out of hand in a hurry. But yeah, I think just like think about different places where you could conceivably fit a game and bring it to communities that don't get to see Major League Ball all that often. It would be pretty cool. Yeah, we got a couple of questions along those lines. Ethan said, in light of the Field of Dreams game, I have a modest proposal for MLB. Each season, there should be a game or two or three or four in which teams play in cities and states that don't have MLB teams. Let's have the Twins play in Fargo, the Cubs play in Des Moines, the Mariners play in Portland, the Red Sox play in the other Portland, etc. each season outside their home ballpark. Maybe some seasons they'll play in the ballpark of one of their minor league affiliates

so the community can see where their former hometown stars ended up. Yeah. Assuming they didn't contract their minor league affiliates, I guess. MLB keeps talking about growing the game. This seems like a great way to get communities that lack MLB teams more connected with the sport. What are your thoughts? You just heard them.

What locations would you like to see certain teams play in? Would this be too much of a scheduling logistical challenge would the players be opposed to this idea and i guess there is a point of diminishing returns where you run out of really interesting locations or it does get complicated from a scheduling standpoint or just the novelty wears off like this is especially cool like you could play in all sorts of non-maajor League ballparks, but a lot of them wouldn't have the weight associated with it that the cornfield did. Even if you don't like the movie, it's still a famous and recognizable thing and it looks a lot different. So I don't know that there are an endless number of places that you could do this, but I like the idea of just crossing off states and countries where Major League Baseball has not been played I saw various suggestions like Rob Nyer pointed out that

perhaps they could play at one of the few surviving Negro Leagues ballparks that has been renovated some are still being renovated so maybe it could even be a way to raise some money or just bring some visibility to that history. And you could partner with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and really do a nice blowout event. So there are a lot of possibilities like that. And it's fun when they play international games in places where you're not accustomed to seeing that. And I saw Dennis, a listener in our Facebook group, suggested that they play at Koshin

Stadium in Japan, like places that have history maybe in other countries. I mean, we've seen baseball in Puerto Rico or Cuba. I mean, if political situations allow it at various places at various times, then I say go play everywhere. Go play in London. Go play in even more far-flung locations. Of course, yeah, once you have to travel overseas, then maybe players are not quite so enthused about it, I suppose. And maybe then it becomes some kind of collective bargaining issue. But in general, I'm all for it because one of my favorite things about baseball is the variation in the places where it's played, which really sets the sport apart, I think. And often that comes down to the dimensions and the field heights

and that sort of thing. But sometimes it can come down to the surrounding areas. And as long as it's like a major league quality place, so no one's going to get hurt. And I guess you don't want it to be a total band box. Like I'm sure they didn't do wind studies of the Field of Dreams game to see how the park would play and all of that. But for one game, it doesn't matter so much. Well, and I like the idea of using it as an opportunity to, you know, there's expense to getting stuff sort of up to snuff, right? And making sure that you can play there. So if you're going to spend that money, like spend it in such a way that it benefits the community and, or, you know,

sort of restores a place that has historical significance that has fallen into disrepair instead of just building a bunch of fields, you know, for, for no purpose. It's like you said, like use the money you would use in those moments to renovate a Negro Leagues park that has fallen into disrepair and can get use in the rest, you know, get used the rest of the year when MLB isn't in town and has, you know, meaning to a lot of people and could serve as a, an entry point to folks who are less familiar with those sort of chapters of baseball history, learning about them. So I think that there's an opportunity to make it cool, not just on that day, but in communities in the longer term. So I

hope that they take advantage of that. And also, who maintains the corn now? That's a good question. I wouldn't want it to be like the Olympics where you build a venue for one thing and then it just stands there for the rest of the year. But there are already a lot of ballparks in this country and in other countries. So I'm sure you could find some pretty interesting places. And maybe you could find some weird off-the-wall ones too. Like we went through a phase on this podcast where people sent us the strangest ballparks they'd ever seen with the weirdest dimensions. And again, like you don't want to make a mockery of it if it is an actual major league game

that counts and not an exhibition, which is part of why this was so fun. But still, yeah, let's mix it up. Let's vary things a bit. Right. how that broke down. But of course, teams tend not to want to surrender their home dates. So that's a consideration too. Yes, they are quite protective of that. Yeah. We got another question about this from Richard who said, the Field of Dreams game was novel, but in my opinion, maybe the worst movie to game adaptation they could have done. Personally, I'd prefer the Bull Durham game where every team is required to field the oldest catcher on their 40, minimum 35, and start their hardest throwing pitcher under 21, or the league of their own game where MLB restarts the women's baseball league, or the natural game where you got to bat some dude you found on the street second, any other great movie game ideas. To be honest, usually the more

fun the ideas, the worse the ideas, but I'd love to hear what you think. And yeah, he's suggesting that we have themed games here that are actually related to the content of the movie as opposed to the setting, which is not exactly what this was. This wasn't a game with only ghost runners. And I do mean ghost runners and not zombie runners. So they didn't play like they played in Field of Dreams. They played in the place where they played in Field of Dreams. And that's something that not as many baseball movies have. Like, you got to give it to Field of Dreams for that at all, that they built the ballpark in the corn. and a lot of other good baseball movies don't have such distinctive settings even if they have more distinctive action they could play a baseball game at the coliseum ben yeah imagine that i don't think it's up to major league standards i saw this email and it made me laugh because doesn't i mean it doesn't find its way onto the field in any sort of tangible way during the game, but we do all kinds of movie-themed nights at ballparks now. Oh, yeah.

We already do this. I think that the takeaway from this experience was less that a particular movie is necessarily required so much as an interesting setting, and that the game is flexible in that way and it can lend itself to a lot of different kinds of places and look really neat when it does. And so while I think there are a lot of really good baseball movies that could sort of lend themselves as a theme night, I don't know that we need to lean that far into it. I think our takeaway here is

to be open-minded to where we play baseball and less focused on particular moments of sort of baseball media pastiche. Yeah. One thing that came out of this game was that we had another round of the play catch or have a catch debate. And Kevin Costner was asked about that probably for the umpteenth time in his life. And he is a play catch person, but he was forced to say have a catch in the movie. And he said it was like nails on a chalkboard for him. This one, I don't mind so much. This is not like the batting around debate where I have a strong stance on this, where I think one side is right and one side is wrong. This for me, I'm a play catch person too, but I understand that this is a regional thing,

and some people from some places say play catch, and some people say have a catch, and both sides understand each other, and it's perfectly fine. Some people say soda. Some people say pop. Some people say kitty corner. Some people say catty corner.

I call them roly-poly bugs. Other people call them pill bugs right so like there's just we have different words in different places i don't think we have to say one is right and one is wrong simply that they indicate a complex and varied landscape of language yes yeah america is a tapestry and we all say things slightly differently which way do you say it though? I say play catch. Okay.

I say have a catch when I'm trying to annoy people. It really does annoy people. It really does. It really does in a way that growing up in Seattle, I had the idea that we were sort of accentless as a people, right? And I have come to understand that that is inaccurate right that we we say things in a particular way and and friends and and so forth from other parts of the country will look at me and be like what so but we say play we say play catch i say soda i say kitty corner what are other yeah i'm with you on all of those so far we're from

opposite sides of the country. Yeah. So I don't know. I think that there are, I'm sure that there are people who say, do you want to have a catch? And that's fine. Yep. As long as the person that they want to play catch with understands what they're saying. And can decide not to get annoyed.

Yes. Right. Did you want to talk a little bit about baseball movies while we're on the subject and before we move on here i want to talk about so we're not we're not breaking new ground here i know their entire their entire podcast devoted to grading on the 2080 scale particular baseball movies i know ellen dare and eric guild i think it's guild sorry eric if it's gildy guiled anyway you eric guy do uh take me into thegame. So they have a whole podcast about that. But I was during my Twitter hiatus inspired to contemplate this question because you, Ben, you got a tweet about it. And then we got a tweet about it, trying to come up with the sort of categories, right? What are the tools by which we would evaluate baseball movies? And I came up with a couple,

and I'm worried that three of them are actually the same. Okay. So I want to run them by you, and then you tell me if some of these strike you as insufficiently distinct from one another. And then I have a teeny tiny fun rant about Twilight, but that's going to come after this. So this is what strikes me.

So there's sort of accuracy of the baseball on the field, right? How baseball is actually played. And this is going to encompass any number of things, right? That the rules function in the way that they actually do in baseball. That the people playing, like, look like they know what they're doing, that they assume the aesthetic of a baseball player, that you look at it and you're like, that looks like baseball to me. So there's that part. And then I think separate from that, but sort of related is accuracy of baseball from a statistical and historical perspective. So obviously when you

are dealing with fiction, there might be some variation from this. But even within that world, you might establish some ground rules, right, that you would that you would use stats in a in a correct way that they would describe the action on the field or describe historical action between characters in a way that makes sense that you would within the limits and bounds of sort of whatever story you're telling, that you would portray baseball's history in an accurate way without gross sort of deviation in a way that isn't necessary to the plot. And I think that those are distinct from one another. Yes. But I worry that my third category is maybe just reacting to both of those being bad. category is maybe just reacting to both of those being bad but i'm calling it the wait what test which is basically what inspires every email about baseball movies that you and i can't where someone is watching and they are a reasonably well-informed baseball fan or in the case of our listeners an incredibly well-informed baseball fan and they are struck immediately by something being out of place, right?

That they are watching Tom and Jerry for reasons that still no one has been able to sort of explain to me with any kind of persuasion despite all of the many emails we got about it. And you're sitting there and you're like, wait, what? That's not how. And then that might be an overarching category. But I do think that the feeling of immersion in a story and not being taken out by minor inaccuracies is perhaps separate. Perhaps. I'm open to critique on that score.

Yeah. It seems like it might be sort of a point on the same scale, I guess. Like if it's particularly egregious, it leaps out at you like that. You don't necessarily need podcast hosts who are obsessed with these things to break it down for you, but anyone can see maybe it's the same, but it's a matter of degrees. So I do think your first two categories are definitely distinct from one another. And then I'm trying to capture a separate but related thing in my third category, which I'm calling baseball vibes. And by that, I mean, unless a movie, even when a movie is specifically and truly a baseball movie.

And I don't mean that in the definition that we have previously outlined on this podcast, which is that baseball happens in it, or it is mentioned and thus becomes a baseball movie, which is a definition that I endorse. But let's take the subcategory of baseball movie that is real baseball movie, where it is concerned with baseball as its primary subject in some important way. I think that even within those, it's like you're working with a two-hour movie and you're going to

hopefully, from your perspective as a filmmaker or an actor, you're hopefully creating a piece of art that is engaging to not only baseball fans, but people who are perhaps less familiar with the sport. And so within the context of that, you might cut corners a little bit. You might underexplain something. You might speed up action on the field. You might have to engage in any kind of narrative device that serves the plot and flow of the movie, but is perhaps slightly less precise. But you can still capture the vibe, right? I think this is one of the great strengths of moneyball as a movie because there are important deviations from like baseball as it happened that season in oakland but i do think that moneyball captures the vibe of moneyball even though we having read the book

and and having been familiar with that season can point to moments and be like well that's not right how that happened right like that those aren't the guys that were the most important to this you failed to mention like some of the most important guys, but I think the vibe of it is, is the right vibe. And so even though we know better, we are okay with the sort of change or exclusion because it fits, right? You're like, yeah, Brad Pitt is Billy P. Sure. Yeah. Someone was tweeting in that thread that I was tagged in some other possible categories. And a lot of them were just categories that could apply to any movie, it seemed to me, like ability to tug at the heartstrings. Well, that's not a baseball movie thing.

That's a movie thing. Or how well the movie has or will likely hold up. Well, that's just a general movie thing. So it would be good if baseball movies did those things, but also any movie. And so I think most things would apply. If it's a good movie, then it should be just a good movie in addition to a good baseball movie. And so I think most of the categories would be generally applicable. They'd be kind of universal. You could apply them to any movie. But I wonder if one might be grading

whether the baseball is actually indispensable to the movie. Oh, yeah. I don't know how many movies that would apply to. Like, could you imagine this movie transported to another sport or to not another sport entirely? Maybe it's set in an office or something. Maybe it's set in a school. Would it work without the baseball, which is kind of the opposite of the way that we

often talk about baseball movies, which is just, is there any slight hint of baseball in it? This is going to the opposite extreme and saying, no, it wouldn't work without the baseball. Could you have Bull Durham without the baseball? Like, I guess you could have a movie with similar themes and similar characters who are maybe involved in some other occupation. You would have to throw out the whole thing and rewrite it from scratch, which is maybe a measure of just how integral to the movie

baseball is. Like in some, obviously there are degrees here where sometimes there's one baseball scene. Sometimes it's about a baseball team. Sometimes every scene takes place at a ballpark. So maybe that is one possible thing that you could grade baseball movies on. Just how baseball are they? Do they have to be baseball i like that very much because i think that like i think that money there is a version of moneyball about like the nba right i don't know i don't know what teams it involves i'm sorry i'm sorry or maybe it's like the big short or something like maybe it's just a finance movie right which is its own kind of bummer right there's a transferability there.

But yeah, I do think that that is an important category to grade it veteran to hang around that I don't necessarily think other sports have the structure to accommodate, at least to that degree. leagues than every other sport but like there is something about the minor league structure that facilitates that kind of persistence that i think would be hard to replicate in another sport although potentially like you could i don't know you could do it about actors and then it would be depressing in its own way right you probably wouldn't get an impassioned speech about the dh but you might who knows maybe they're baseball fans so i think that that's a really good one. Can I do my Twilight rant now? Or do you have other categories? Oh, no, go ahead. So I know that the baseball of Twilight has already been analyzed.

It has been analyzed at great depth on this very podcast. You and Jeff talked to Bill Rowe, who was the baseball advisor for Twilight, about those baseball scene, right? The actual vampire baseball scene in that movie and there's so much to unpack in that scene that i think a small thing gets overlooked in twilight i'm here to take issue with the way that they talk about bella's mom's new husband's minor league career ben i'm here to take issue with it okay are you ready yes so i'm not a huge fan of this film series and i have not read the books so perhaps in the books this is addressed with greater accuracy i don't know like i don't know if she's actually a big baseball fan

or not but i will say in the beginning of the movie bella lives in phoenix arizona famously a baseball place i can attest famously a baseball place, I can attest. Famously a baseball place. And she moves because her mom and her mom's new husband want to go on the road. And you're like, okay. And I don't think we know what he does right away. And then later, she has a phone conversation with her mother where she is told, I asked how it's going. And her mom says it's going well and she says you know spring

training and then she talks about how they're in jacksonville okay so ben here's the thing this book was released in 2005 this movie was released in 2008 in those years the team that played in jacksonville was a dod affiliate. The Dodgers famously conducted their spring training in Arizona. Right. So why are they going to Jacksonville for anything related to spring training? They do their minor league spring training in Arizona too. They play complex level ball. So that's confusing.

Then she says that they're looking for a house to rent if things go well. And it's like, but if you're in the place where there's spring training, why are you looking for a house to rent if things go well and it's like but if you're in the place where there's spring training why are you looking for a house there why do you want to permanently be situated in jacksonville presumably this this fellow wants to make it to the majors in which case no no baseball to be had for him in jacksonville and here's the other damning part and this might be just like an interpretive thing. Earlier in the movie, several characters come together, Bella's father's home, to watch the first Mariners game of the season. And they have a bunch of beers. They got Mariners shirts on. They're drinking Rainier.

That scene happens before the references to the spring training in Jacksonville. Oh, boy. And so now maybe what they're referencing is they're going to watch the first spring training game? Maybe. Maybe. But it seems like they're playing fast and loose with affiliates and time. And so I just would like everyone to consider that these are not very good movies. And one of their failings is that the baseball does not make any sense.

Yeah, that seems like a slight continuity error there potentially. I spent time finding out which affiliates play in jacksonville for this why did i do that i mean it was friday you know we were done publishing what else was i going to do but be mad about a movie that i've seen like three times and don't really care that much about but i would just encourage everyone to to look at it and say that i don't know if the vampire and werewolf thing is real. If these kinds of details are getting goofed, it might not be real. Yeah. And my standard for realism when it comes to baseball movies, it's sort of similar to my

standard for statistical acumen on baseball broadcasts, which is just like, it just has to be some minimum level of good. You don't have to give me the nerd cast, the saber cast, the stat cast broadcast every single time. That's nice. Sometimes it would be great if it were always an option. But as long as you're not feeding me misinformation or misleading information, I'm fine with it. Just don't tell me that so-and-so is two for three against someone and that that means something serious. so-and-so is two for three against someone and that that means something serious. Or to go back to a recent email of ours that someone has reverse splits that season and that therefore that means something significant too.

And that's sort of my standard when it comes to baseball movies too. I guess like if it doesn't leap out at me that something is horribly wrong. Now, of course, we go way deeper than your typical casual viewer would because this is just one of our things. And baseball is our area of expertise in theory. But as long as I'm watching and I'm not thinking that person has never thrown a ball before in his life, you don't have to necessarily be a big leaguer or look like you could step onto a big league field right now. But just don't make it look like someone just taught you to.

Throw a baseball. Before the director said action. Like look semi-athletic. Just look semi-practiced. So that's basically. My standard. If it's even better. And they get it down to the last detail.

Great. But as long as it's not so. Obviously glaringly terrible. That it's detracting from my experience, if I'm sort of half paying attention, I'm fine with it. Right. And I imagine that this level of frustration that I'm experiencing is unusual, right? People aren't going to think to themselves themselves why would you be doing spring training in jacksonville and why would you move from arizona to the why would you and you're not

going to spend time looking up the affiliate as an aside like now that jacksonville team is an affiliate of the miami marlins who famously also do not do their spring training in Jacksonville. So I get it. I know that like there is a level at which, you know, it could be worse. Like we could be doctors or lawyers. That has to be so much more frustrating because there are just so many more shows based on those professions and films and all sorts of stuff. So you sit there and you're like, oh, that's not how due process works at all. And your heart's not even on that side of your body or whatever like you know we we have it good on a

relative basis but also that's not where the dodgers do spring training they wouldn't have had to move at all yeah it's gotten to the point where we're not exactly in a boom time for baseball movies and so i'm inclined to be even more forgiving because when I see baseball, I think, oh, that's cool. I like baseball. That's nice. And so I'll go a little easier on you. I know it doesn't seem like it if you listen to our seven segments on Tom and Jerry, but if it's an actual baseball movie and not a non-baseball movie that for some strange reason has a baseball scene that was mangled, then I'll give you a slight pass because, hey, I applaud people making movies about baseball or related to baseball. Yeah. I mean, we're excited about that and we support it. We think it's great.

We hope that you continue to make movies about baseball. We mostly just once again will say, our fees would be reasonable, so you should just call us and we will help you by saying, hey, did you know that the Dodgers, they do their spring training in Arizona? And you'd go, oh, well, that's great. They don't even have to move. Perfect. All right. I've got a few email questions here that are unrelated to baseball movies, although this one is semi-related to what we were talking about with the Field of Dreams game, which was our inability to tell whether those beef boy blasts were actually impressive or not. Trevor says a few weeks ago, Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh hit a mammoth home run at T-Mobile Park. T-Mobile Park. As a part of the replay package, the EMS broadcast showed the graphic that I'm sure we're all familiar with by now, displaying that Raleigh's home run would be a home run in 30 of 30 ballparks. The very next batter, Luis Torrens, also hit a home run. His was markedly

less thunderous. If my memory serves me correctly, the same graphic was used to show that Torrens' home run would have been so in only five of the 30 ballparks. I was delighted by the aesthetic of both homers, and I've been thinking about this since I'm a teacher on summer break, so this is a responsible way to spend time. Which is more fun, a dinger that's a dinger everywhere or one that could only exist in one place? What about a home run that would go out in 15 of 30 ballparks? My guess would be that for most people, this would be a reverse bell curve of enjoyment with the least and most likely home runs providing the most enjoyment with home run in 17 out of 30 ballparks occurrences feeling rather meh. Yeah, I think that that is the right

distribution. I think that having the sense that, wow, that one was a no doubter is satisfying because those tend to be home runs that are loud. They have that sound, right? They give you that feeling in your chest where you're like, whoa. And then I think that provided you are not rooting for the team whose pitcher has just given up one of these home runs because then it can be very frustrating. I think that home runs hit that would not be a home run in any other ballpark are fun and interesting. We just spent time talking about the variety of places where you can play baseball.

I think that we both view the diversity of layouts to be one of the sports strengths, even though it is a very strange quirk that the fields are different. It is a profoundly weird thing, and we should acknowledge that every single time we talk about it but it is a really cool thing i think and so the idea that you know if that poor pitcher had been pitching anywhere but let's pick up let's pick one at random yankee stadium right they go they were pitching anywhere else that's not a home run. You might sit there and kind of marvel at it and think that it's cool and weird and neat. But I think the ones that are like in a lot of places, that's a home run. You're like, all right, well, that doesn't look very normal, sort of typical in a boring sort of way. So, yeah, they could have been like Port St. Lucie.

We're in Port St. Lucie where spring training happens. They didn't even pick a spring training city. I wonder if you are the only person on Earth who's been mad about this particular aspect of the Twilight movies. And the degree to which I am mad about it, the difference between how mad I am about it

and how much I otherwise care about this franchise is what really makes it... If you like it it it's fine like it's fine but this is not this one isn't for me but this is for me anyway anyway trevor ended his question by saying that he was curious about whether our enjoyment of home runs correspond to the home run in x out of 30 graphics and I don't think it does that closely for me generally. If I were rooting for a team and I wanted to look up a home run that my pitcher had

just allowed, then kind of paradoxically, I guess I would want it to have been a no doubter so that I would feel a little bit better about it. Like at least it wasn't a cheapie, even though from an analytical perspective, I suppose you would rather have your pitcher allow cheapies because that might mean that they're less likely to allow home runs in the future. But still, it would be a little less annoying to know that, all right, well, at least this wasn't just a product of the park. It wasn't luck. He actually got us. They won fair and square. But that's really the only situation in which i would actually pay close attention to this unless i were trying to forecast how some player might do

in a different ballpark for instance or if we're talking about a playoff game or something and it really actually matters and i'm breaking it down on that level then yeah but otherwise i don't think it matters that much like i'd rather see a weird looking one like the Gallo home run from the other day where it was 48 degree launch angle and it didn't look like it should be out. And I didn't even bother to look and see, hey, does StatCast say that that would have been out of other ballparks or was that just a product of Yankee Stadium? The eye test was enough for me. That was weird. So I like home runs that go at unusual combinations of angles and speeds. So sometimes you'll just see John Carl Stanton hit a home run, for instance, and you just know that probably no one else could have hit a home run at that angle because no one else would have hit it hard enough for it to clear the fence before it fell. And so weird trajectories are much more dear to me than either no doubters or barely all doubters, whatever you would call those. I guess those things might correspond at times, but it's not really a graphic that I look at a ton of times. Sometimes I'll look at the StatCast baseball savant leaderboard for expected home runs just to confirm that confirm that say Shohei Otani to pick a name at random is not only leading the major leagues in home runs, but also in expected home runs. So it's not as if he

has been just a product of his park, even though Angel Stadium is a pretty favorable home run park for lefties. So there are occasional times when I'll look at it just for analytical reasons, but on a game to game, home run to home run basis, I'm typically not checking it out. Yeah. It's not something that I spend a ton of time being like, oh, I gotta go look that up. I mean, I guess I look it up every time if somebody leaves the ballpark, you know, or hits the batter side. Like there are ones where you're like, wow, how hard did that go? But generally, if it's doing that, you've already answered your question. I still sort of think that they should have removed the fences from the Field of Dreams game.

Although, having seen eight home runs and having seen the splendor of the ball just landing in the grass and the corn and everyone just getting to enjoy it plopping down there and disappearing. In a way, that changed my mind, although I still think it would be fun for the outfielders to have to go on a scavenger hunt. It's just there'd probably be too many inside the park home runs because the balls would be hard to find. Yeah, I think that that's right. And then they might get distracted trying to eat more of the corn and then realizing that this corn isn't sweet corn, this corn is for feed. And then they'd have to think about how we do agriculture in the United States and that might distract them. So really, the way that they did it is perhaps for the best. I was at the White Sox Tigers game on July 2nd, where Jake Berger made his big league debut and got his first career hit.

It would have been a pop up to center, but Daz Cameron lost it in the sky. Berger got another hit later in the game. And I would ask if you were Jake Berger, which ball So would you want to keep the first official hit even if it was a cheapie or would you rather have the first one that was designated as my first official hit. I mean, I'd ask for both. Yeah, why not? Because why not? But whether or not it ought to have been your first hit, it is what is going to go down in the record books as your first hit. And so I think you would want that one. And then you might tell a story when someone's asking you about like, well, what happened when you're you could say, well, and you should have seen the one I hit later in the game. And then you'll point to the other ball on your mantle and they'll be like, that's you have a lot of these. But I think that that would be the way that I would do it. Yeah, I think when you make your major league debut, you're happy to have any hit.

Yeah, I just want to be on the board. It's a special moment. I guess it would be better if you hit a no doubter and everyone checked the stat cast and it said out of 30 of 30 ballparks and wow what an entrance that would be but I think you take the blooper too yeah it's perfectly fine with getting on base and having your first hit and it's a special moment and a lot of hits are cheapies and I think people love them all equally because they count at least towards some stats the same although these days like you know obviously people are being evaluated now based on

the quality of the contact even more so than the outcome of the play at least by front offices if not by fans or media members so certainly there's something to be said for the first deserved hit, the first one with a high expected batting average. But, you a position player the answer is going to be no right like you're not going to discount a hit off a bad reliever who gets dfa'd the next day you know you just don't you're gonna sit there and say yeah i have 3 000 hits and they all counted the same because that's how they all count so i i think that you i appreciate wanting to take pride in sort of a job well done and a ball well hit but i also think we should have the the sort of understanding and humility to acknowledge that they end up counting the same and you get some lucky ones in there and you get some good hard hit balls taken away from you and at the end of the day you sit there and

say i have 3 000 hits or i i got my first hit like you wouldn't go to the end of the day, you sit there and say, I have 3000 hits or I got my first hit. Like you wouldn't go to the ballpark the next day and be like, I only have one hit. They'd be like, no, you have two. So yeah. Insert the Kevin Costner,

Bull Durham quote about how you get to 300 with one extra hit a week. So Dennis says, I was hoping you could tell me why we're still using 3.1 plate appearances and one inning pitched per team game as the minimum qualifier for rate stats, despite games being much shorter under the COVID rules because of double headers being shorter and more common and shorter extra inning games. It also seems meaningless to me when broadcasts or articles or tweets use per game stats to measure year by year trends, which include 2020 and 2021. For example, this year, the Mets have pitched 8.42 innings per game this year versus 9.02 in 2019. In 2020, the average team pitched 8.6 innings per game. In prior years, I don't think that number ever fell below 8.9. There's also a bigger disparity than before between the teams playing the fewest and the most innings per game,

which is a separate issue of statistical integrity that nobody seems interested in. I know innings pitch is a weird stat to use because of home teams not needing last licks when leading, but I can't find the actual average innings played per game. And that sort of points to the problem and the reason why we keep defaulting to these historical standards, I think, which is that we're all accustomed to them. And the stat sites are set up to display things this way. And we don't even know if these COVID conditions will be permanent and whether we'll just revert to good old nine inning games and endless extra inning games and no zombie runners. So I think there's been a hesitation to totally revamp these things. But yeah, I mean, I think the same thing every time I see a per game stat, it's just a mess. It's hardly the most pressing problem about 2020 and 2021. But from a baseball statistical perspective,

I mean, I have already done and will do many more articles in the future where I just omit 2020 entirely from whatever research, whatever graph I am currently doing. And even 2021 is subject to some of those pitfalls there. So yeah, I mean, ideally you would do per inning instead of per game or per nine innings or instead of per game or something that could just be consistent from year to year, regardless of how many innings are actually played. But inertia is a powerful disincentive. Yeah. And I think that considering that we are hoping we will move on from 2020 and that we will eventually move on from the seven inning double header rule and all sorts of stuff

that there's just this hope that we will go back to normal even though normal is as you've pointed out flawed in its own way um but it is very strange it's just a strange thing you know and people get mad because guys aren't on the leaderboards. And I'm like, I'm sorry. Depending on the point you're trying to make, it may not matter. Right. But if it's something where you're going out to a couple decibel points, then it might actually matter. And so you do kind of have to go the extra mile and maybe do some exporting and some sorting in Excel. And it's an extra step that no one wants

to do. But if we want to keep things consistent, then yeah, you got to do it, unfortunately. And I guess there's a larger conversation to be had about if and when things return to quote unquote normal, whether there's still some adjustment that should be made, especially with the ERA qualifier, which is something that had been talked about for years even before, things got even weirder. And Sam was on that beat five years ago. He wrote about that for Baseball Perspectives about how we need to change the minimum innings threshold. And as he noted, there is a nice kind of cute sort of symmetry to one inning per game in the season. It's nice.

do one inning per game in the season. It's nice, but he suggested, I think, that we just lower the minimum to 130 innings, which at least at that time just so happened to change things enough that it would roughly match the historical number of qualifiers during eras where pitchers pitch more innings. So that's the kind of thing where, yeah, if you do want to do comparisons across eras, you do actually have to change things because there just aren't that many pitchers who qualify anymore. The 3.1 plate appearances per game, the batting title qualifier, that works more or less as well as it used to, I suppose, aside from the COVID stuff. But yeah, the pitcher thing, that needs some work. Yeah, for sure. All right.

Just as we were recording, bad news about Jacob deGrom. I know. I'm happy about that. Shut down from throwing for another two weeks, and then he has to have imaging after that, which means that the earliest he could conceivably return is mid-September, which also means that his season may be over, depending on how things go for the Mets and how his next round of imaging goes. So I guess my early season anxiety about Jacob deGrom proved to be warranted, but that doesn't make me feel much better

because I'd rather have been wrong about that and have him be healthy. Yeah, it's just a real shame. And I don't know, we started out thinking he would break records, make history. And now I just would like to see him back on the field at all. Yeah, yeah. At least we still have Shohei. I don't want to jinx anything. I can't believe you're saying the words out loud.

I know. I'm sorry. I should say undisclosed two-way player and let everyone else come to their conclusions. I should say undisclosed two-way player and let everyone else come to their conclusions. But I did want to just salute his performance on Thursday, which was also pretty special, even though it was overshadowed a bit. Understandably so by the Field of Dreams game. He went up against maybe the second best lineup in baseball and held it to two runs over six innings with six strikeouts. to two runs over six innings with six strikeouts. He has not been at his best at the plate lately, but he's been pitching really well

with just really pinpoint control, great efficiency. He's using his cutter more. After the game, he said, I still haven't hit my potential yet. I think I have room to still get better going forward as a pitcher in particular. And in this game, he also doubled and walked at the plate and he had the much-valued face-to-face showdown with Vladimir Guerrero Jr., his closest competitor for the ALMVP award, although maybe not all that close a competitor at this point. he's having is that he was actually able to go head to head. And normally, if you had the two

contenders for that award facing each other, unless it was a year where a pitcher was having such an extraordinary year that he might be contending for the MVP award, usually you would mean by that that the two teams were facing each other, but the players were not actually directly combating each other. Whereas in this case, we got the three plate appearances of Shohei versus Vlad Jr. And I don't know who won exactly. Vlad walked and he singled a ground ball and he struck out. So, well, I guess if you do that every day, you'd be the best batter in baseball. So probably he won that showdown, I guess you could say.

Although Otani had the better day at the plate than Vlad, although Vlad was not pitching to him. And also, he had those solid six innings. So I guess he wins overall. But head to head, Vlad certainly held his own. Yeah, it was a very fun game. And I don't know. i don't really have much more to say about it other than i keep just being in awe of him i got very nervous when he fell uh slipped on the mound but he was fine he was fine because he's a lot of close calls which once it's all over and hopefully he's had a full healthy season i will allow myself to remember those close calls and marvel at the fact that none of them proved to be catastrophic. But, you know, he had that collision at home plate earlier in the year and he's been hit by multiple pitches and had some starts pushback. So a little thing here or there could have gone a little bit differently and really could have sabotaged my favorite season of all time but fortunately that has not happened yet and i will not dwell

on that any further let's say bring any bad energy into the universe we just have six weeks or so to go yes and i will say i don't know if it will be a long-term thing but it's sure nice to see joe adele playing kind of well oh yeah because he's been better You know, he had just like A very rough and at times Quite Twitter forward failing Last year And it's been going a lot better since he was Recalled

And then we have Brandon Marsh at the center And so we would like to see Mike Trout out there But suddenly that Angels outfield Is more interesting than it was So that's nice too. Yeah. We Detmers too. The Angels youth movement.

It's coming along. And Trout's calf, what's happening there? It's taking forever. Calf shouldn't take this long. I know it does with Josh Donaldson sometimes, but really come back, Mike. I like to pretend that it's a literal calf that's giving him trouble and it keeps getting away. It's a literal calf that's giving him trouble and it keeps getting away.

It keeps getting out of its corral and he comes to the ballpark every day and he's like, it's not going to happen today. Scamp got away again. I hope they don't shut him down at some point, which has been bandied about and thus far they have said, no, they're not doing it and he's still trying to come back. But even if the angels are totally out of it and there's no pressing reason for him to return, I hope he does just because I want the wars. And I also just miss Mike Trout. Yeah. And I want to see him. or for the teams just to get back on the field for however long just to demonstrate that he can do

that that he's not permanently incapacitated somehow by this calf would be nice so and also it it doesn't seem like the sort of thing i mean maybe i shouldn't say this because he's been out so long already and so much longer than expected but like you wouldn't expect that he could aggravate the calf in a way that would endanger his 2022 or anything. So worst case, he comes back and has some setback. He has a whole off season to heal from that. But really, it's taken so long already that maybe I shouldn't take that for granted. Yeah, I would hate to speculate, but it does seem to be one of the more persistent ones in recent memory. So I don't know. It's not the best.

the more persistent ones in recent memory. So I don't know. It's not the best. All right. So we can end the day and the week with a stat blaster. Actually, perhaps two. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Deistoplast. Okay, we got this question about a week ago from Jonathan who said, Edward Olivares of the Royals has been optioned either up from AAA or down to AAA nine times this season,

which has been an endless source of frustration for Royals fans since he's raked in Omaha and we want him to get extended playing time over some of the other outfield options the team has. My question is, what is the record for the most times called up or sent down in a single season? My instinct tells me it would be a relief pitcher who holds this record, but nothing would surprise me because baseball. So I posed this question to Lucas Pasteleris of Baseball Perspectives, and it's kind of tough to research this one because the data sources that

actually tell you whether a player was called up or sent down, it's a little bit different from trades, for instance, or signings. And so he went back and was able to easily go back to 2009, which is, I suppose, when BP had easily accessible records from MLB on this. And I think in this case, that's okay, because for one thing, it will allow us to put Edward Olivares and his season into perspective, but also because this kind of thing,

unfortunately, has become much more common in recent years. So if you were looking for the record, I would guess that it has probably happened during this time period. And that's just kind of a pervasive problem where you have teams that are shuffling pitchers in particular, just on and off the end of their roster. And so something that Gerald Schiffman has covered at Baseball Perspectives, and there's been some movement to hopefully curtailing this kind of thing by just making the option period

longer so that if you have to send someone down, then they have to stay down there longer, which would maybe dissuade you from sending down a player. Because a lot of times these days, it's not even like you deserve the demotion or you did something wrong. In many cases, someone will pitch a really good game and then they'll just be shipped out the next day just because you want a fresh arm. And you have this whole rotating cast of AAA pitchers who are semi-interchangeable from a performance standpoint. And then, unfortunately, you just get these guys who get stuck on the shuttle all season. And I guess it beats not making the majors at all.

But you can imagine that it would be tough to perform under those circumstances. And of course, you're losing your major league salary whenever you get sent down and you're going back to your AAA pay. And Joshian wrote about this earlier this year, and he proposed some potential solutions. Like maybe once you call someone up, then you just have to pay them the major league minimum for the rest of the season, for instance. Although I guess you could say, well, then maybe teams might even be more reluctant to promote those players. So whatever you do, teams will try to find some way to nickel and dime you and find some way around it. Anyway, I guess some consolation to Edward Olivares is that other players have had it far worse than he has. So that's something. So Lucas looked up the number of combined options and recalls. So just the number of times that someone was either called up or sent down to the minors and then just combined those two numbers.

And he found that there are 25 players who have had at least 15 combined options or recalls in a single season. And again, this is only dating back to 2009. The record is Eduardo Paredes in 2018 with the Angels, not to be confused with Edward Paredes, who I think was with the Dodgers at that very same time, which was pretty confusing. But Eduardo Paredes, 22, 22 combined options or recalls in that single 2018 season, which just has to be tough. I mean, what a roller coaster ride. The travel alone must be a total pain, but also at a certain point, it just must be like the thrill of getting the call must wear off because you know it's just not going to last long at that point. You're coming and going all season long. So bad news for Pettis there.

Although I guess his 2018 was better than his 2019 when he was out with Tommy John surgery. So that would be worse. Hopefully that wasn't because he was so worn out from being optioned constantly the previous season, but you'd think that would take some sort of toll. And I sent that to Jonathan and he pointed out some sad news on the Paredes front. He sported a 12.71 ERA for the Generales de Durango of the Mexican League before being released back in June. before being released back in June. So he was still pitching professionally as of this year, but things not going a whole lot better for him in the Mexican league either. So there are a bunch of guys with numbers in this region.

And actually Yankees reliever, Albert Abreu is making a run at Paredes' record. He is up to 19 this season. So he still has a shot. He only needs three more combined options or recalls. So not necessarily a record that he would want to break, but he's pretty close. And then you've got Silvino Bracco, 2018 Diamondbacks at 18. 2019 Casey Sadler, 18.

That was with the Dodgers and the Rays. 2019 Rays Austin Pruitt also 18 times Maybe the Rays are among the worst Offenders when it comes to this kind of thing Wouldn't surprise me and 2018 Orioles Donnie Hart Also 18 times and

Then you've also got some guys Climbing the list this year Taylor Jones who is actually a First baseman outfielder with the Astros this year, he is up to 16, as is Andrew Young, a second baseman for the Diamondbacks, and Johan Oviedo, a pitcher for the Cardinals, and Kyle McGowan of the Nationals, reliever, and Jacob Webb of the Diamondbacks. He's up to 15. So quite a number of guys who have gone through this thing this year. And maybe in some cases, this has been exacerbated by COVID absences and needing to

recall someone to take those spots. But this problem doesn't seem to be getting a whole lot better. So I feel bad for Olivares, but he is not even close to the top of the list. Jonathan is right, though. His suspicion is correct that this is mostly an occupational hazard for relievers. Of those top 25 names that Lucas sent, all but four were pitchers, and 18 of the 25, as Lucas defined it, were relievers. There are any number of issues that we have highlighted with minor league realignment in the past, but I imagine that one of the benefits is if you have triple a if you have triple a teams closer to their major league parent of organizations well maybe it's worse here's what i'm trying to say in your estimation

is there a correlation between proximity of the triple a affiliate to the parent club and how many times their guys get optioned? Because if they're far, far away, it seems like it would be a little more onerous, but if they're Seattle to Tacoma, that I-5 traffic will get you, but it's not that far. The Angels AAA affiliate,

the Salt Lake Bees, that's like a 10-11 hour drive from there to Anaheim. I wonder if your experience of being recalled is influenced in some measurable way by how much time you have to spend in the car getting there. Yeah. One would think, or if you can fly instead of taking a bus or a car or some other type of transportation. And I guess you might be more liable to be recalled frequently if you can be summoned on short notice. So that might be a mixed blessing too, where, hey, at least it's not

a long car ride. But on the other hand, if they need someone now, well, here I am. I'm Johnny on the spot. I'm close at hand, so they'll call me. But I'm sure as long as you're in AAA, you want to get that call no matter how far it is and no matter how many times you have already made that journey in that single season. But still, it's tough. And we talked on an old episode to Oliver Drake during that memorable season when he was traded six times or whatever it was, or released and picked up by other teams and ended up pitching for six major league teams in the same season, I think it was. And it was clear even from that, that it took a toll on him and his family and you have to make all sorts of living arrangements and teams will help with that to some extent,

and especially if you're already in the organization. But still, these are the little things that you don't think about that much when you just see the agate type, to use an old term, when you see that so-and-so was recalled or optioned? You don't think of all the hassle that went into that. Moving sucks. I think about nothing but the hassle. Okay. I think about that every single time.

I think about it. I would go so far as to say that even crosstown trades would be disorienting in a way that would throw me off to some tiny degree for at least a month. Because you're used to driving one way to work and then you got to drive a different way and you have a different exit and you probably miss that exit a couple of times and have to loop back around and someone gets in an accident and then you're like five minutes late. and I have to loop back around and someone gets in an accident and then you're like five minutes late. And you're just, we're creatures of habit. And I think tiny bits of grain and sand in the machine can really throw you. So I think about nothing but that. I would hate to be traded. I would feel, I would, you know, every year at the deadline,

we had this with Scherzer, right? Where you're like, are they going to waive a no trade clause? This guy has 10 and 5 rights. Will he consent to a trade? And I think that I would say no every time. I'd be like, no. And they'd be like, you're going to a team where you could play in the World Series. And I'd be like, I'll think about it.

But I don't know, man. I hate to move. Do you hate moving so much that if you were in the minors and you got the call and your manager says, great news, you get to go to the big club and you say, eh, no thanks. No, because then your circumstances are changing because all of a sudden you can afford to pay someone else to help you move. Yes, that's a good point. Total game changer.

Once you get past a certain point in life, like pizza and beer isn't enough. It's just worth it for you and your friends and your lower back if you are at all able to just hire someone to help you move stuff. The hassle of having to move is probably counteracted by the anti-hassle of not having a roommate or three or four roommates in some cases. All right. having a roommate or three or four roommates in some cases. So, all right. And the last one here, this is inspired by a question from Xander, who emailed us a couple days ago to say, I wanted to note what seems like an anomaly in some of the NL division races from July 21st through August 6th on every day in which the Brewers and Reds both

played, the teams had the same result, a 13 game streak. Similarly, since July 25th on every day in which the Giants and Dodgers have both played, the teams had the same result, a 13-game streak. Similarly, since July 25th, on every day in which the Giants and Dodgers have both played, excluding head-to-head matchups, both teams had the same result for an active 10-game streak, which is something that I have noticed too, because every now and then we'll see that the Dodgers won and I'll think, okay, it's happening. The Dodgers are making up some ground. Now they're going to eat into that division lead. And then, nope, inevitably, the Gi it's happening. The Dodgers are making up some ground. Now they're going to eat into that division lead. And then nope, inevitably the Giants won too. And that lead, if anything, seems to be getting bigger. Now it's at five games as we speak here on Friday afternoon.

And hey, they just extended Brandon Crawford. That's cool. Xander's question continues. While the fact that the streaks overlapped would suggest that they are somewhat common, I would guess from intuition that such stretches are fairly rare. Is it possible to check the longest such streak of matching results for two teams in the same division? What if we only consider streaks for the top two teams in a division or teams over 500 as a proxy for contending teams after the all-star break? If there are any similarly long stretches of matching results either of you can recall, I'd be curious to hear about those as well. of matching results either of you can recall. I'd be curious to hear about those as well. And I don't recall any specific stretches, but I do recall the frustration that went with this at times when I was a fan. And granted, when I was a fan, I was a Yankees fan. And so generally, the Yankees were not trying to catch up to anyone because they were winning already. But

can I be an obnoxious gloating Yankees fan if I'm no longer a Yankees fan? Can I gloat about past Yankees fandom? I've renounced it to some extent. So I don't know if I can still claim that or whether I am now immune because it no longer applies to me. But I acknowledge it's obnoxious. So I do remember that sentiment though, where if you were looking up at another team and you won and it was at a late enough point in the season

when you were scoreboard watching, nothing worse than like eking out the victory and thinking, all right, this is it. We're going to chip away at this lead. And then finding out that that other team won too. And especially if that goes on for days and days and you feel like we're holding up our end of the bargain here, someone else has to beat these guys or else if they just win out for the rest of the season, then even if we win out, we will never catch up to them and that would be bad. So that's frustrating as is if you are a team that is trying to catch up to multiple teams and those teams are playing each other, I found that frustrating too. Because no matter what happens, there's one team that you are not gaining ground on.

Of course, there's automatically one team that you are gaining ground on. So it goes both ways. Yeah. I think that when you're in that situation, there's just nothing more satisfying than playing the team directly in front of you. It has really high stakes, obviously, but if I were a Dodgers fan, I would want them to play no one but the giants the rest of the way. Like just cause then even if it doesn't work out,

it's cause you just didn't win, but you did it. You, you were able to be active. You were participating, you controlled your own destiny. I think that when you have to sit there and scoreboard watch, it's very dispiriting, like you said, because you just want, you're like, I'm doing everything I can, but the one thing I need to be able to do, the schedule won't allow me to do, and that's not my fault. Yeah, and this is something I noticed today, kind of a milestone. The Giants and the Dodgers

have almost exactly the same playoff odds. They are both locks to make the playoffs, essentially. Giants at 99.5%, Dodgers at 99.4%. But they are now also just about dead even in division odds. And for the longest time, I mean, Van Graaff's playoff odds has been the biggest believer in the Dodgers. No matter how good and successful the Giants have been, just because the Dodgers' preseason projections and their rest of the season projections have been and are so strong, the Fangraphs-Pleophods have been believers. They've never abandoned the Dodgers until today.

I guess today is the day, and it could flip back, of course. But as I look at this on Friday afternoon, Giants, with a 49.3 percent chance to win the NL West Dodgers forty nine point one. So even though the playoff odds still see the Dodgers as a six fifteen rest of season winning percentage team and the Giants at five ten, which is probably a bigger difference than there actually is, I would guess. But even so, because there just aren't all that many games left and they have to make up five of them, which is not nothing. So the math seems to work out to where that's essentially a dead heat. Oh, boy.

And then there are the poor Padres. Oh, yeah. Still clinging to a tiny percentage there. Losing to the Diamondbacks. Something has gone wrong in your day. Yes. Sorry, D-backs, but it's just been the desert has had restorative powers for other teams. So returning to Xander's question, I directed this one to frequent StatBlast consultant, Ryan Nelson, who got an answer for me.

He says, was pretty tough. I had to dust off my linear algebra to do some 3D matrices. Sounds complicated. And usually he gives me incredibly thorough and prompt answers and he doesn't even tell me how he did it necessarily. It's just, it's easy. But in this case, he actually had to flex a little. He had to dust off some old math to get this done. So Ryan writes, some constraints to begin. As requested in the question, the streak is defined as the number of consecutive days where the game results of both teams are the same, given that they both played. We're off on a particular day. The streak continues. If there was a double header, as long as one of the game results match the other team's result, the streak continued.

Otherwise, it ended. For example, win-loss and win continues the streak. Win-loss and win-loss continues the streak. Win-win and loss does not continue the streak. If we go back far enough into the 20th century, ties continue the streak. If we go back far enough into the 20th century, ties continue the streak. And he says, I counted streak length by season days if both teams were off, but some teams in MLB played. That counted as a day in the streak. If no teams played that day, the day does not count.

I think those are all the qualifiers required. So to get to the heart of the question, this is not that rare. Since 1900, there have been nearly 1,000 streaks of greater than 15 days. They were much more common in the first half of the 20th century due to the higher amount of double headers, ties, and off days, all of which help continue streaks. If we look since 1969, when division play first began, there have been 274 times where any two teams in MLB had a streak of greater than 15 days. This has happened 117 times between teams in the same league and 29 teams between teams in the same division. Here are the longest streaks with different qualifiers

in the tables below. So the longest overall streak since 1900 is the 1907 White Sox and Phillies. That's 31 days, nine exact matches. The longest same league streak since 1900 is the 1902 Braves, the Bean Eaters, and the Reds. That's 26 days and two exact matches. You can see why this is so much easier 100 years ago. why this is so much easier 100 years ago, and then longest same league streak since 1969, the 2011 Cubs and Phillies who went 24 days, 17 exact matches, and the longest same division streak since 1969, the 2001 Diamondbacks and Giants, 22 days, 17 exact matches. This also answers the question of post-All-Star break division chases.

On the first day of the streak, the Diamondbacks were in first and the Giants were in third, but on the second day of the streak, the Giants passed the Dodgers for second place, and no standings held until the end of the season. The Giants spent 22 straight days between one and a half games and two games back of

the Diamondbacks and finished the season two behind. That must have been maddening. The Giants won six of their last seven, but so did the Diamondbacks to hold them off. The streak seems longer than that, but from September 11th through 16th, there were no MLB games for obvious reasons. This was 2001, as I remind you. And so those games did not count toward the streak. But imagine that you end the season on a heater like that and you have just a tiny margin separating you from the first place team. And day in and day out, they match you win for win. That must have absolutely driven people batty. 22 days between one and a half and two games back and you finish two games back even though you win six

of your last seven like usually you say oh you control your destiny i guess that's when they play each other but you say you know you control the factors under your control and you just trust that someone else will play spoiler for you and take down the other team and that just did not happen in that case yeah gosh that had to have been wildly frustrating. And Ryan writes, one last oddity in 2020, the Cardinals held four simultaneous 17 game streaks with four different teams on the same dates, July 29th through August 15th with the Dodgers, Mets, Braves, and Padres. In this time, they went one and two.

That's 16 straight days. That's COVID for you. Remember these 2020 Cardinals and how they just did not play baseball for very long stretches of time? Yeah, I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown that the season would get canceled. I wish I could forget, Ben. Yes. So that happened. So thanks, as always, to Ryan.

And in this case, thanks for his linear algebra and his 3D matrices. And thanks to Xander for the question. And as usual, I will put the data sources for both of these stat blasts on the show page. I link to many things on the show page, and I have no idea whether anyone has ever sought out or clicked a link on the show page. And you know what? If you have, let me know because I'd feel good about the time that I invest in that. If you haven't, please don't tell me because I will feel bad. Partly I do it for me just to kind of catalog the things that I was looking at as we were saying these things or just in the odd event.

Sometimes I will remember that we talked about something and I will be trying to find an article that we referenced or something we talked about and it's handy for me to have it on the show page. I don't even know if people know what I mean when I say it's on the show page. That means you can go to fangraphs.com and there's a blog post for every episode of the podcast and it has a list of links. And also, at least in many podcatchers, if you're using Pocket Cast, for instance, which I use, then you can just look at your phone screen right now and you can see all those links very neatly arrayed right under the thing where you click play. So that's all there for you. And if you've never availed yourself of that, be aware that if you're ever wondering about, huh, I want

to hear more about that thing that they talked about, or I wonder what the source for that was. Very often it is actually linked there if you care to find it. Yes. I would say that I think sometimes people don't look, Ben, because sometimes we get emails and I'm like, you know, but that isn't every email we get so i think it's a valuable resource for folks i i know i benefit from it i often use it to find things that i might otherwise have trouble uh tracking down so um i appreciate you doing it if nothing else that's good as long as one other person in the world is getting something out of it my time is not entirely wasted no No, no. Jeremy Frank of at MLB Random Stats on Twitter just sent me his latest tweet about MLB's win probability added leaders. Shohei is up to plus 6.03. That's 4.04 as a hitter, 1.99 as a pitcher.

The next closest guy, according to this tweet, is Jorge Polanco at plus 3.6. Wow. So Otani is like getting close to doubling the next closest guy when it comes to win probability added. He's pretty good, Nick. Pretty good. Pretty good. All right.

On that note, we will leave you. All right. One more stat note for you. As some of you may recall a few weeks ago, I think it was on an email show leading up to the trade deadline, I theorized that catchers probably get moved at midseason or traded between teams less often than players at other positions just because, well, there's a lot of extra hassle they have to do if they change teams at midseason. And I mentioned that the suppose maybe it might not be quite as steep because you have so much more information that you can consult scouting reports and video and stat cast, etc. Regardless, it's tougher for a catcher to change teams than it is for a player at another position who is not part of a battery, and his changing teams doesn't directly affect any other player in the way that a catcher changing teams does.

So one of our listeners and Facebook group members, Joseph Hilton, or Joseph Hilton, H-Y-L-T-O-N, got interested in this. And we corresponded a bit in the Facebook group and we kind of came up with one way to check this. And it does kind of check out. I'll put this data online too. But Joseph writes, I grabbed each player's primary position and filtered for players who started at least 81 games in a season across all positions. And he looked at various time periods, but it seems somewhat consistent. And so over the period from 1986 to 2020, he found that as a percentage, left fielders are traded most often. Short stops are traded least often, about half as often as left fielders. And then

catchers are just above short stops. So they are the position that is traded second least frequently. Now, this was just one pass at the problem. There are probably multiple ways that one could look at this, but perhaps it lends some support to my hypothesis. And even though this year's trade deadline was historically busy, there weren't a ton of catchers changing teams, right? Jan Gomes? I'm sure there were others who aren't coming to mind. But thanks to Joseph for doing the legwork there, even though I don't think this one required any linear algebra or 3D matrices. 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.

Anthony Hawthorne, Patrick Bertolino, Kyle Wojcik, Andrew Hawes, and Sue W. 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 as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week. You're gonna miss your girl. I don't hear the morning laughter. So I've been, now you're gone. I can't see what you're after.

You're gonna miss your girl. I don't hear the morning laughter. So I've been, now you're gone.