Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1734: Win Some, Lose Some

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on a recent observation about a baseball-related line in Twilight, then banter about petards, Ben’s latest trip to see Shohei Ohtani at Yankee Stadium, Tyler Gilbert’s improbable no-hitter, the playoff hopes of the Padres, Reds, and Giants (and reshuffling in the NL East and AL East), the lows […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1734 of Effectively Wild, a Fanagraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fanagraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. How are you? I wouldn't say that I've been hoisted on my own petard. That's too strong. I'm on a stepstool adjacent to my petard.

Uh-huh. What is a petard? Who knows? No one knows. Isn't it like a thing that you carry into battle? You hoist things on it? I don't know. Why do I have- It's some sort of small bomb, apparently, made of a metal or wooden box filled with

powder used to blast down a door or to make a hole in a wall. Wow. It's also alternatively a kind of firework that explodes with a sharp report. I think that I was envisioning that it was like a lance of some kind and that you'd be hoisted that way, but this implies- You've proved my theory that no one knows what a petard is, except that it's something you can be hoisted by or on. Yeah, but now being hoisted by your own petard

sounds much more violent than what I had in mind. But anyway, a couple of our listeners have pointed out that, well, they don't know that I misremembered, but they pointed out that, in fact, Ben, the Dodgers, they played spring training games in Florida until 2008. I thought they had moved to the desert much earlier than that. Now, they never played spring training games in Jacksonville. So I don't think that we can credit the Twilight folks

with having an intimate knowledge of this situation. But I must acknowledge my own misremembrance and assure those folks listening who might say, well, now we'll never retain Ben and Meg's services for baseball verification. Yeah, you blew it. Should you hire us as consulting producers, I will do, well, really more than two minutes of research on the subject and avoid anyone being hoisted by their petard or standing on a stepstool next to it. But I feel it is important, especially when one has been sassy, to acknowledge some failings in the research process. So to our listeners who very graciously, I might add, noted that while still impugning the sort of baseball knowledge of Twilight, I have to acknowledge my mistakes. So here I am, adjacent to my card.

to my part right so what was it they said that they were training somewhere close to jacksonville right so it while it's more defensible that they suggested that the dodgers were training in florida not arizona it is now even harder to understand why the player would be in jacksonville three hours away from where they would actually be training because dodgerville was in vero beach and right not jacksonville so i think that there was just a breakdown in the process more generally. But at the time that both the book was written and the film was being produced, it was technically correct to suggest that their spring training took place in Florida, although incorrect to suggest that it took place in Jacksonville, where it has never taken place so far as I know. But like I said, not quite as wrong as I had suggested, just wrong in a different way. So here we are.

All right. Well, you know, there goes our aura of infallibility. But as we said when you screwed up an intro recently, we have to acknowledge our mistakes. Yeah. And yeah, it's especially important to acknowledge our mistakes when and yeah it's especially important to acknowledge our mistakes when we are criticizing other people's mistakes because our whole thing is that if you make the slightest error in something involving baseball we'll be all over you or we can help you avoid making such an error so if we make an error while we are critiquing

errors then we must be up front about that yeah and I will say, I did know that they had once been in Florida, but I thought, I had it in my head that they had moved in like 2004. I thought it was earlier. So I goofed. Here I am having goofed. And so I will admit my goof. Yep. It's like when the Pope screws up sometimes, but it's not an ex cathedra statement. Like that's when it's infallible when he says something ex cathedra. This was not that. This was just not an ex cathedra podcast. It was just off the cuff.

So that's that. But thanks to everyone for writing in about that. And again, doing it so graciously. You're all just such pals. But I felt like I should acknowledge the pals and uh in case anyone's out there thinking like i'm like she doesn't know what she's talking about sometimes i i do air but i do try to acknowledge the airs and i've learned what a petard is so really i think this entire process is probably worth it i think that you learn from your mistakes you learn

when the dodgers move and you learn what a petard is. It's like a small explosive. It's like you'd be setting it off and then it rockets you into the sky. It sounds like it was medieval or Renaissance era C4 or something. It's like if you had to blow up a door or whatever, then use a petard. When I took physics in high school, we had to build pretty large trebuchets as part of physics. Because when you go to public school and they're like, let's build siege weapons to learn about how things fly through the air, but no petards. Because an explosive, that would have been too far. That would have been too much. But something that can hurl a projectile at the building where you attend high school, that's fine. Speaking of projectiles being hurled, thanks for the segue.

You're welcome. On Monday, the Angels were in town making up a game that was rained out earlier this year. And Jesse and I went to the game because we felt like Shohei's playing the Beef Boys. You can't miss that. And we had gone, as listeners may recall, earlier in the year when the Angels were in town, and we happened to see Shohei Otani's worst start and worst game ever. So we thought that can't be our lasting memory from this great, impressive season. So we've got to go again. And we weren't sure that we were going to go again

because we weren't sure if Shohei was going to play because the Angels, because of this makeup, they had to fly across the country, play a game in New York, and then leave again. And I figured with the short turnaround and with Otani scheduled to pitch Wednesday, maybe they'd give him a day off or something.com and trying to find the lineup. And finally, about 5.30, it was posted and he was leading off. And so I snagged some tickets quickly. And unlike the last time when it was our anniversary and we splurged for two-way Otani, we learned our lesson. And this time we got cheap tickets or what qualifies as cheap tickets for Garrett Cole versus Shohei Otani. And we just dashed up there and we were sitting in the upper deck, which I like those seats. I like sitting behind home plate in the highest tier. I don't like it as much as I did at the old Yankee Stadium,

where the tier reserve section was much closer to the field. Now it is pushed back a bit, as many modern ballparks are, unfortunately. But it's still a good view of the whole landscape laid out below you. And even the beef boys look small from that height or smaller, at least. And that was, I think, the highlight for me was in this game, you had Joey Gallo in left, fresh off of his Lindsay Adler photo of him doing the De Niro face and the Italian hand gestures, which went viral. De Niro face and the Italian hand gestures, which went viral. So he's in left, Judge is in right. And then you have Jonathan Davis in center. And I spoke recently about seeing Brett Gardner running in from the outfield flanked by Gallo and Judge and looking like they were going to

start swinging him like a toddler between them. In this case, Jonathan Davis, who is listed at 5'8", and that might be a baseball 5'8". I'm not sure if that's a legitimate 5'8". It's hard to tell next to the Beef Boys. But every time I would look up, I would see this giant in left, this giant in right, and then a 12-year-old who had somehow sneaked onto the field and donned a Yankees uniform. Between those two guys, he looked so tiny and he made a great catch. So good for him. But every time I would survey the field, I'd be like, who is that very small person out in center field? And it's not that he's so tiny. It's just that the others are so large. The lineup for that game, which wasn't quite as beefy as it could have been because some of the Yankees

were and are still on the IL. But even so, you had LeMayhew leading off, who is not as wide as some of the other Yankees, but is quite tall. And then you had Judge, and then you had Gallo, and then you had Stanton, and then you had Voight. There's probably a stat blast in the biggest size differential between half of a lineup and the other half of a lineup because then you had Rugnett Odor, Kyle Higashioka, who is not tiny but is not huge. Then you had Jonathan Davis batting eighth and Andrew Velasquez batting ninth. It's normal size people who are small for major leaguers juxtaposed with the beefiest of beef boys and that was great fun this is like when i watch the nba and i'm like wow you know is steph curry that tall and then you see him next to a normal person you're like yes it's just everyone right wildly larger yeah and in this game shohei went oh for four now he did hit a ball very hard so hard that Garrett Cole thought it was gone and a lot of people thought it was gone he hit it 109 miles per hour but at a 45

degree angle so it still got to the track and it had that sound but it did not leave the park so a hit list game for Otani so now in the two games that I have seen him in person this year, he has a zero OPS and a 95 ERA. So are we sure this guy's good? Because when I go see him, not so great, really. So I've happened to pick a couple of the worst possible times to see Otani. And if I had gone to see him in the other couple games he played against the Yankees, I would have seen him homer. But no, I picked poorly.

I mean, this is the risk. This is the risk that you always run. But at least you saw him hit the ball hard, right? Like he was manifesting some of his underlying skills that make the big moments really sing. You just didn't see them actualized. But, you know, really, most people don't. Like he's been incredible i continue to think that he will be the al mvp but like most people who have seen otani play in person this

year have not seen his best games because you know that's just how baseball works so i'm glad you didn't get rained on yeah there's that at least it was much cooler than the last time and much drier and you did get to see see Joey Gallo hit a big home run. You know, I just now I feel so happy for him whenever he does something like that, because he has admitted to feeling and being made to feel insecure on a relative basis. You know, he thinks of himself as the Brett Gardner in this situation. And so now I'm like, oh, good for you, Joey. Standing next to Jonathanathan davis has

to help yeah i would imagine that that's a nice boon it really does seem like he was just always fated to play for the incas like he's just joey gallo like he's fitted so well there like it already seems like everyone loves him and he embraces his identity and everything. And like, you'd think with that name that he would be from this area. Like my wife was asking, like, where is he from? The Bronx? Or no, he's from Nevada. Oh, OK. Well, that doesn't make as much sense as you would think.

But still, it seems like he's found a home here. And he said as much, I think, in a post-game Zoom where he was like, yeah, I always thought it would be nice to play here. But now I'm playing here and people are carrying Italian flags to the game and rooting for me already helps that he's hitting these monster home runs from time to time too. But between the combination of Yankee Stadium's dimensions and his name, it just is like, oh yeah, he's a Yankee. Of course he would be a Yankee. How did it take this long? I think that it is just so sweet of you ben to not

associate italians with nevada i don't really i guess we are uh we are uh famous scoundrels in state of nevada at various points so you know yes that but but yes he does seem if if one could sort of drop central casting for a yankees player it does seem like joey gallo would come on down from from central casting yeah so we have not yet talked about the tyler gilbert no hitter which i was actually moved to write about i saw that a no hitter guy really that one was just so improbable in every way that like part of it for me, why I don't care that much about no hitters is that, you know, sometimes it's skill and someone was pitching incredibly well. And sometimes it's largely luck and defense, and it's more of a

team accomplishment than an individual accomplishment as we treat it. And so I kind of discount the accomplishments at times. And you could definitely do that with this Tyler Gilbert no-hitter, but it just swung so far over into the totally improbable end of the spectrum that I completely enjoyed it for just how far-fetched it was that this would happen. Probably could have been a candidate for a meet a major leaguer segment if everyone hadn't met him through this no-hitter already. But he was the kind of player we tend to talk about in that segment because who knew Tyler Gilbert? He's a 27-year-old who just made his major league debut with the Diamondbacks this year. Former sixth-round Phillies pick who was then on the Dodgers, never actually pitched for the Dodgers because of the pandemic, on the Dodgers, never actually pitched for the Dodgers because of the pandemic, and then was plucked away from the Dodgers by the Diamondbacks in the minor league phase of the rule five draft, the AAA portion. So all the Dodgers had to do to keep him was just put him on the AAA roster.

They didn't do that. And the Diamondbacks snagged him. And this was his fourth major league game, but his first major league start. And so he joined a very exclusive club of pitchers who have pitched no hitters in their first major league start. Technically, it's four guys, at least in what used to be defined as the major leagues. It's two previous pitchers in the AL or NL, the immortal Bumpus Jones in 1892, and the also immortal Bobo Holloman in 1953, which like Howard Gilbert really kind of falling short in the name department. If you're not Bumpus or Bobo,

you should not be allowed to do this, I don't think. But this was improbable in so many ways. And that was kind of what I wrote about, just counting the ways in which this was exquisitely unlikely. And first is just the fact that it's Tyler Gilbert, who is still never really a ranked prospect in even any individual system, and took this long to get his first major league start for a reason, although he's pitched pretty well in the minors lately. But you had that, you had the fact that he's going up against the Padres, who have not been all that was hoped for them but still a top 10 team by batting average this year and he's in Chase Field which is a park that really inflates hit totals more than almost any other park. in this game, which was the great thing. And the thing that I sort of explored in the piece was that he gave up so many balls that were hit hard and were right at people. And he acknowledged as much. He said it was one of those games where they were just

hitting right at my fielders. And the Diamondbacks, not a great defensive team, as you would expect. So you would not expect them to be the club that is coming up with all kinds of great fielding performances here. So it was just so unlikely. And like, there were maybe six balls hit 100 miles per hour or more, I think it was. And there were 10 balls that were defined as hard hit by MLB. That's 95 miles per hour plus or more and a couple more that were extremely close to that. So I looked on Baseball Savant and in terms of the difference between his actual batting average allowed, which was zero, and the expected batting average allowed based on the batted ball angle and velocity and sometimes the speed of the hitter, which was 243 in this game, which is basically like the league batting average. So this was like, based on the batted balls he allowed, you would have expected this to be just another start, but no, it was a no hitter. And it was the biggest gap between expected batting average and actual batting average allowed of any start in the stat cast era that went as deep as this one.

He faced 28 hitters. So no other pitcher in those years had faced so many hitters and had such a big gap between actual and expected results. And granted, like expected batting average doesn't take into account spray angle. So sometimes it'll seem to kind of overestimate the likelihood that a ball is going to be a hit. But even so, it was just so improbable in so many ways. And I know that this is the year of the no-hitter, but it had been almost three months since the previous solo no-hitter, at least.

And of course, the batting average has climbed up as the weather has gotten warmer, as sticky stuff has been banned. So it had been a while. So Tyler Gilbert broke the streak and also set the record for most no-hitters in a single season in the modern era. And no one in the world saw that coming. And his family was there, and his girlfriend was there, and his girlfriend's parents were there. And so you got the great crowd reactions. It was just joyous.

So as improbable as it was, I really just reveled in the improbability of it all. I remain a sucker for crying baseball dad. I'm a sucker for it, Ben. And there were tears. There were moments of trying to hold back the tears. There was succumbing to the tears. There were getting down to the field to say hi. It was just, it was really quite lovely all around.

And I don't know if you know this, Ben, but this Diamondbacks season has not gone well. Not well, no. It's been pretty bad. And so I think that in years like that, when a player can give his teammates something to feel excited about and give fans something to feel excited about, it's really lovely, however improbable it ends up being. So it was good. It felt nice. Yeahable it ends up being so it was good it felt it felt nice yeah it really did it was good story just a nice feel good story and one of those you can't predict baseball kind of emblematic of the sport as a whole and just how variable it is and batted ball results and it's so fickle and you never really know what is going to happen from game

to game. I included a quote at the top of my piece, which I've enjoyed and have been trying to look for a place to use, which is from the former outfielder Ralph Garr, who said in 1971, when you hit the ball good, that's talent. When nobody is able to catch it, that's luck, which is true. So you need both of those things for something like this to happen i don't want to suggest that he had no talent here clearly there was some talent involved as well but the padres were really crushing the ball just not in the right place and it was a five strikeout three walk game so not really impressive peripherals yeah things not going great for the Padres lately.

I mean, they righted the ship in the following game and Fernando Tatis Jr. came back playing right field and hit a couple home runs, which he seems to do every time he comes off the aisle. He immediately just has some signature game, which maybe they should put him on the aisle even more often because every time he comes back, it's with a homer or a multi-hit game of some sort. And he seems to have taken to the outfield just fine. But the Reds are really putting some pressure on them. And it's just a game and a half margin as we speak now in the NL wildcard race. And there's a big difference in strength of schedule. According to the Fangraphs playoff odds, the Padres have the hardest strength of schedule over the rest of the season. Their opponents have a projected strength of a 539 winning percentage and the Reds have the easiest projected strength of schedule at 464 that's a pretty big gap and meanwhile the Padres have

reached signing Jake Arrieta levels of desperation yeah you know I keep expecting to like turn on a Giants game and be like oh now I see them to be overmatched right which suggests to like turn on a Giants game and be like, oh, now I see them to be overmatched. Right. Which suggests to me that on some level, you know, we talked a couple episodes ago about how nice it is, like how much substance there is to their record. Right. This is not a team that is like dramatically over its skis. And I think we can talk about how they will stack up versus the other playoff teams when the time comes. And there might be some vulnerabilities there.

I don't think that they're the strongest team in the field necessarily, but like, they're a real, you know, they're like a real good team. Like they're a good team and they have, they've made themselves better. You know,

Chris Bryant looks, he looks great as a, as a giant. There's the rhyming thing. He looks good in the uniform. He hit two home runs last night, but I keep expecting to turn it on and be like, Oh, there's the rhyming thing he looks good in the uniform he hit two home runs last night but i keep expecting to turn it on and be like oh there's there's the hole right there's the vulnerability like this is where you know smaug stands up and like shows the the one scale that's that's not in

the right spot and um i don't have the experience of watching them even even in the game where like gaussman didn't go, the most recent one I watched, he didn't go as deep as you might hope, and it ended up being fine. Part of that is because the Mets are a mess. What a mess the Mets are, Ben. Should we talk about the messy Mets?

I don't think we have to talk about them any more than just to say that they sure are a mess. Did you know that Atlanta's in first place in the NL East? I did know that, yeah. How about that? Yeah, how about that? Yeah, it took a while to get there. I know a lot of people always thought they would end up there, but didn't think it would take them until mid-August to get there.

And I don't know if they'll end up there, but they are there now. Yeah, they are there now. They're there now. Anyway, what a weird little bit of, what a weird time to be in baseball. It's nice, but it's sure strange. And the Yankees catching up with the Red Sox and the AL East. All sorts of teams making moves both backward and forward. I meant to mention when I was at the Yankees game, my tolerance for yelling from the stands is very low. I think it's lower than it used to be pre-pandemic just because it's been so long since I've been around people and been at baseball games instead of watching them from the comfort of my couch. And so especially sitting in the upper deck, you don't need to yell at the players. They cannot hear you.

There is no conceivable way. You can't even fool yourself into thinking that they might be able to hear you from that distance. Like when you're close, you might think they could because if it were a normal setting and you were that distance from them, then the person would be able to hear you. But there is so much ambient noise at a ballpark that they can't hear you. And so even if you are sitting behind home plate yelling dinger very loudly in a way that sounds like a racial slur, they still cannot hear you in the moment.

And so from the upper deck, they definitely can't. And we were sitting next to this guy who I think was on a date with this woman. And the yelling seemed sort of performative to me. It was like he was kind of trying to show his baseball passion or knowledge in a way that perhaps he hoped would impress her. Although it would have the opposite effect on me if I were the other party on that date. But the whole idea of like calling balls and strikes from the upper deck, just like feeling that you can do a better job than the umpires. I know that they're not perfect.

And we were at least sitting roughly centered behind home plate. So you could kind of tell left or right, but you still can't tell up or down at all. And so he just felt it necessary to call whether he thought that the ball was a ball or a strike after almost every pitch, seemingly. And there were a lot of loud encouragements of Yankees pitchers telling them that they only needed one more strike, for instance, or that they only needed one more out just in case they lost track of what the count was or how many outs there were. Just so much yelling from so, so far away. just in case they lost track of what the count was or how many outs there were. Just so much yelling from so, so far away. And it was almost like he would start out yelling, and then in the middle of the yell,

realize that he's just yelling into the void and that no one can hear him. And then he would trail off a little. The volume level, the decibel level would drop a little as it went on to the point where he was almost sheepish by the time the yell finished. But then another yell would soon commence. So I seem to have had bad luck lately sitting next to yellers. But maybe it's not bad luck. Maybe it's just you're likely to sit next to a yeller wherever you sit. I've just been in my privileged position in the press box.

I have lost touch with the masses, with the common people. So now I'm back out there man of the people again and i don't like the people at least not all of them there are certainly individuals who are trying to heckle specific players and the purpose of their heckling is to impart information to a player or a coach or an umpire and they hope that they hear it and often they hope that they then feel bad about themselves that seems to be there's very little positive heckling you know it's not like you you sit there with a tone that is a mismatch to what you're saying and go you're doing a great job like that that doesn't that's not normally a thing but most of the performance

isn't for the players or the umps or the the coaching staff at all it's for your fellow fan and uh i just don't feel like i know strangers well enough to know what would really you know make them happy you know what makes them say she's great like i hope she's back again the next time i i here. And so I just don't have the confidence in being able to gauge that among strangers enough to heckle. I also just think professionally it's sort of a – that's dicey. It's really dicey to be a heckler when you're in the industry because what if you get on camera? what if you get on camera? I mean, I would hope that neither of us would ever say anything where we would be really embarrassed after the fact

because we've heard someone's feelings or been nasty, but you never know. No dinger. Well, right. I mean, and those don't feel like words that sound alike, but then you say them out loud in quick succession, and you're like, maybe they should change the name of that mascot. Maybe so, which would not have occurred to me previously.

No. Right. But when you heard that clip, you thought, oh, well, I wonder if people were confused. Yeah. The first one, I was like, oh, no. Yeah. But then the second one, when he's waving, and I don't remember who I saw on Twitter who noted this, but the lack of reaction from the people around him was the strongest evidence

for me that like he had not revealed himself to be a monster in a public place because you you would hope that someone would be like excuse me sir we're having trying to have a civilization here like he can't be doing that in public or in private really but anyway what i was going to say was i just lack confidence in public places this is also part of why if I were a ball player, I don't think that I would bat flip. Not because I, as Meg, a person who is not a ball player, have an objection to bat flips.

I think flip away if you want. But I would just feel certain I had gotten it wrong and that I was flipping on a ball that was very much going to die at the warning track. Really, I just stem like a tiny mouse in a teacup. I guess. I don't know. I'm just afraid of everything around me. Plus, it can change over the course of a game.

Sometimes you start and you're confident and everyone's having a good time and then the tide turns in the game and suddenly the team is losing. It can be hoisted on a small explosive. Exactly. You will be on a petard. That's probably also not a good word to yell out in public now that i'm saying it i heard that one on the d trade on the

way back but i was like oh that's that could go fast in a mishearing direction um but the players again can't hear you but your fellow fans can and so you might inadvertently volunteer to become the object of their consternation and frustration if things go the other way. If Otani suddenly is hitting bombs out, suddenly you're like the guy who's been heckling and it's like, why don't you just sit down, sir? In my experience of sports fans in New York, that's exactly how they say it, really polite famously. Yeah. Yeah. I've never been a heckler. I'm just not wired that way, really. Even when I was a fan, I would just suffer in silence, but you can do it in a clever way, I think. Now, this guy, in his defense, he was not heckling in a mean-spirited way,

but he also wasn't really showing any cleverness in his heckles. So if you're going to be that loud and you're going to monopolize the attention of everyone around you periodically, then have something interesting to say, at least make us laugh a little. And I was not getting that from my roommate, but yeah, there are heckles that can be done well as long as it is uh not saying anything that could be mistaken or or actually is something that would be extremely offensive or just uh making anyone feel bad about themselves because i don't know what the point of that is especially if you're heckling your own players which sometimes happen and perplexes me deeply and always has but yes so that's just not something you experience when you're on the couch watching Shohei Otani.

So it's different, but it's good that I get exposed to these things, I suppose. Grumpkin doesn't heckle. Well, she does actually, but not because of baseball, just because someone's making noise out in the hall. But we talked a little bit about the Padres and a little bit about the Giants. Let me just mention another NL West team here, the Rockies, because we got a question about the Rockies just this week and someone else had emailed us about this earlier in the season. But this is a question from Ryan who says, it has been one of my most fun things to track all season. Going into games on August 16th, the Rockies are 38-21. That's a 644 winning percentage at home and 14-45 on the road. That is a 237 winning percentage. This represents a difference in winning percentage of 407 between

their home and road games. Over a full season, that has to be a record, right? And then he asks, why is this happening? Course field altitude seems to be a factor, but why to this extent and this specific team? And the split is actually bigger than that now because they have played an additional home game since then and won it. So as we speak here on Tuesday afternoon, 39 and 21 at home, that's a 650 winning percentage, 14 and 45 on the road. That's a 237 winning percentage. So basically, they've played like the best team in baseball at home and the worst team in baseball on the road. And Lucas Apostolaris of Baseball Prospectus actually unsolicited sent me the list of the biggest splits ever this morning, saving me the trouble of asking him to do that.

And it is right now the largest and would be the largest by a wide margin. Now, I'm excluding 2020 here just because short season, you had some pretty extreme home road splits. Although this would still be bigger than any of those. Although this would still be bigger than any of those. It would be nice if we could just exclude 2020 from everything just as easily as I exclude it from spreadsheets when I'm doing baseball analysis. But I'm going to get used to that. There was just an XKCD comment about that, about how weird those two years are or this year and last year were in any sort of statistical analysis and also in many other ways. But right now, 413 is the difference in home and away winning percentage. The previous largest one in a full season, and this was before 162 difference You had the 1902 A's At 339 1949

Red Sox at 338 1987 Twins 333 1996 Rockies At 333 And then a few more Above 300 I won't go through all of them But I'll put up the list on the show page As I always do and thanks to everyone who

Wrote in to say yes I do read the show page and click the links. It may have just been the only like 30 people who do that of all of our listeners all wrote in to tell me that, but still made me feel good. But the biggest differences in home roads, but are in this direction toward being better at home than on the road, which makes sense because most teams are better at home. So the biggest difference in the other direction is the 94 Cubs, 198, and that's a shortened season, of course, or 1908 Pirates, 182, 98 Royals, 168. That's being better on the road than at home. But the bigger difference is in the other direction, but none can compare to the 2020 run Rockies at 413 so far.

And as for an explanation of why this is happening, I got nothing for you. But it sure is weird and historic and strange. So you were right to notice it and ask us about it. We've maybe contemplated this question before. If you're a fan, you'd be happy with a team winning more at home than on the road, just because you want to be able to see your guys win in person, right? Yeah. I think we did talk about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I think you'd rather have, well, obviously, if you have to choose one extreme split or another, you'd rather have them win at home. But I think you'd rather have them win at home even than just be evenly distributed. Yeah. If you're in that area, you'd get to see more wins.

I wonder if you were a fan of a playoff team. So we will accept that there is a bound to how bad they are in any setting because they're a playoff team. So perhaps the difference wouldn't be pronounced enough for you to really notice. But I wonder if you were a fan of a playoff team that was like a good team, you know, you're a good team and you just happen to win less at home than you do on the road. Would your sense of confidence going into the postseason be disproportionately affected by just not having seen it up close? Is it like you with Otani? You're convinced he's just bad now. I no longer believe in him. Yeah, you're going to stop watching Angels games, which is

going to be bad for their ratings, Ben. Yes. I might be one of the only people watching at this point. But yeah, I don't know. I guess it depends on how many games you're actually going to. If you're not going all that often, then it might not make that much of a difference in your perception of the team. But it is weird. The Rockies definitely have a history of extreme road splits and home road splits and have been better at home than on the road historically. I remember Jeff Sullivan writing about this years ago. Many others have written about the Coors Field hangover effect, where if you're on the road after having been playing at Coors, maybe because the ball moves differently, breaks a little less, you have some adjustment period,

and the Rockies have made some efforts or Rockies players have made some efforts to try to counteract that or to take batting practice in a certain way that might help them acclimate to the lower altitude. And so you might expect that the Rockies might have some advantage relative to other teams potentially when they're at home, but would definitely be at a disadvantage when they're on the road. So there is a repeated pattern. Like if you had asked me what team is most likely to have an extreme home road split, I would have said Rockies. So I'm not surprised that the Rockies have a 237 winning percentage on the road because not a great team to begin with. And then you have the hangover effect. The weird part is that they have a 650 winning percentage at home. And that part I can't really explain except to say that they've only played, what, 60 home games. So it's just not a ton and some weird stuff happens. So this is just one of those weird things.

I doubt there is really anything to it. there is really anything to it but unless they really have a reversal of fortunes over the next six weeks or so they may very well end up with the most extreme season of all time which is so funny because they've been so bland so many yeah yeah although you know what they've been pretty decent lately it's like they're certainly being they're being better spoilers than I anticipated them being. Yeah, they are not quite in like the Tigers way, which we talked about where the Tigers have just kind of legitimately gotten good or better, at least over time. But the Rockies, like they had a 346 winning percentage in April, a 393 winning percentage in May, then 519 in June, 500 in July, 500 so far in August. They've been in above 500 teams since mid-May or so, which I did not see coming. No.

Can't necessarily explain that either. I don't know. Maybe they held on to Trevor's story and everyone because they thought they were going to make a run at this thing. I don't think that's going to happen. But 53 and 66, it's not so bad for the 2021 Rockies. It's better than I would have expected in this division. Yeah, it's certainly better than I expected. If for no other reason, then they seem pretty happy to make angry a lot of people who work for them. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't make me feel better about their future necessarily or their management,

but at least it hasn't been quite as horrible to watch this season. So that's something. And did you see the news about the Field of Dreams adaptation coming to Peacock, courtesy of Michael Schur? I just like, we have so many stories we could tell. Or I thought we did. Put it that way. I thought that we as human beings were like lousy with stories.

I was like, oh, we got all sorts of tales to tell. But maybe we don't. Yeah, maybe not. Maybe we only have a couple of stories. I am skeptical of that. I think we actually have a lot of stories. And we seem to just really want to tell a couple of them over and over again. And I suggest we open our hearts to new characters, you know? sequels or something because like on the one hand i generally don't think that the new thing is going to be so bad that it somehow ruins the old thing now there are some examples like rise of skywalker for instance for me at least where what happens to that movie actually retroactively detracts from

previous movies and like makes me like them less that's very rare though generally it's like if it's bad okay fine it's bad but it doesn't ruin the thing that already existed and that i liked but there is an opportunity cost for sure where it's hey what could this person this network have been devoting these resources to instead of the story that we've already seen and sometimes sometimes it's good to have a remake because you could you know retain something some part of the appeal of the original and correct something that maybe didn't age well or some oversight of that thing like for instance not having any black players in the cornfield in

field of dreams for instance but you're right like you do sort of wonder you know how much of this is just oh it's recognizable ip and if you're going to commit to something and try to break through in the peak tv wave of scripted stuff then it has to be something people know and if you're a field of dreams hater and we know that there are many of you out there like this is your nightmare i mean this whole last few years here where you had like the 30th anniversary celebrations and tributes and then you have the Field of Dreams game. And now you have a new Field of Dreams TV series coming. Like we're in peak Field of Dreams again here suddenly.

I don't know how that happened, but Field of Dreams is back in a big way. I just, you know, my favorite thing that I've seen lately was Mare. It was Mare of Easttown. And we're getting more Mare, and we don't need more Mare. But that's not the purpose of this conversation. The point that I'm going to make is that I was surprised by Mare. I didn't know exactly what to expect from Mare, despite it being a well-trod genre.

It was a new story. And that accent. Yes. So we could tell new stories there's so many stories in baseball that haven't been told i mean we're we're having this moment collectively where we're thinking about and engaging with and sort of for for a lot of white fans especially coming up to speed on like the the history of black baseball in the united states like aren't there stories other stories that we could. Yeah.

I heard Joel Anderson say that on hang up and listen, where instead of retelling this story and maybe putting some black players in it this time, maybe there's a different story you could tell about black baseball. That's just entirely original. So I don't know. I don't know what to think about this because on the one hand, I like Michael Schur. I like Michael Schur quite a lot.

And I've seen every episode of every series he's made. And I have enjoyed all of those series to varying degrees. And Fire Joe Morgan was a formative site for me. And the podcast, which he co-hosts with Joe Pesnanski, is one of my favorite podcasts. I was just listening to him and Joe talk about the Field of Dreams game too, because they both attended it. And so on the one hand, Michael Schur plus baseball, I'm in. I'm obviously going to watch this and I don't think it'll be bad. And I have thought before about what it would be like if Michael Schur made a baseball show. I may have even asked him about that. I don't know if I asked him or I

definitely heard him be asked about it, but he's been on Effectively Wild and I've interviewed him for The Ringer and I've always thought that might be fun because he knows and loves baseball and he makes good TV. And so a union of those things would be great in theory. And I assume he has a plan here. I assume he has an idea for why he would want to bring this back because he could make just about anything he wants to at this point, given his history. And he generally has not adapted things. He has told original stories. So if he is doing this, then I assume he has some reason why he wants to bring it back

and why he thinks it would be worth telling in this way. And we don't know, like, is it an adaptation of the same story? Is it a retelling? Is it some other angle? Is it some continuation of that story? We don't really have any details about that yet.

So I'm reserving judgment. Normally, if you told me Mike Schur is making a baseball show, I would be a hundred percent in. Now I'm only like, I don't know, 70% in or something because I have faith in him. And yet, I would rather see him make a baseball show that is not filled with dreams. But maybe he'll surprise me. I'm sure he will.

Put Gene Smart in a baseball show. Oh, that'd be fun. Yes. Yeah, put Gene Smart in anything. It seems to be better but yeah it's interesting because you have this and you also have the league of their own series which i am looking forward to too and and nick offerman i think is playing the tom hanks role in oh really yeah okay that makes me more interested yeah and also interesting because I know Nick Offerman has a lot of thoughts about Field of Dreams, too, as a former farming person himself.

Sure, yeah. I've heard him express those thoughts on Mike Schur's podcast. And obviously, he is a good friend of Mike Schur and has worked with him before. So I wonder if he'll somehow finagle his way into both of these projects because he loves baseball, too. But yeah, you have a league of their own. And then Disney Plus, I believe, is also working on a TV version of The Sandlot. So this is a boom time for like 80s and 90s baseball movies being ported to TV. And yeah, I'd rather have an original baseball story, but it's probably tough to get those made these days. We saw what happened to poor pitch RIP.

Yeah, resurrect pitch. Check it out. But yeah, I guess it's just like, hey, if you're going to make a baseball thing, it has to be a proven commodity. It has to be something that people have heard of and that has some nostalgia or sentimentality attached to it. Well, maybe people need to adopt our understanding of what it means to make a baseball show and have the baseball be like in the background of the show, right? A pennant on a kid's wall. in the background of the show, right? A pennant on a kid's wall. But I just, and, you know, people I'm sure were like,

Meg hates superheroes and Star Wars. And I just think that it's fine. Like, it's all fine. Some of the stories are really good and compelling and entertaining. But there are lots of kinds of stories that can be good and compelling and entertaining. And we can try to tell more of them is all I'm saying we can just be open to new stories because then you're like wow I've never

seen that story before and I've gotten to engage with characters who are new and fresh it's fun so I guess my point is tell different kinds of stories and if you're gonna resurrect a baseball show make it pitch and put Gene Smart in it. Sounds good to me.

I wanted to mention that Carter Stewart made his NPP debut the other day. Remember Carter Stewart? I do remember Carter Stewart. draft selected by Atlanta and they didn't sign him because of some previous injury or purported injury was like a skateboard injury or something. And they were supposedly worried about his wrist. And so they didn't end up signing him and he ended up going to Japan and he's been pitching professionally there for a while, but he just made his Japanese Major League debut. And he pitched very well, actually, in his first game. I think he threw five no-hit innings, actually, for SoftBank. And it was an interesting game. Someone posted the box score in the Facebook group because

it was a nothing-nothing game between SoftBank and Nippon Ham. And I think SoftBank, led by Carter Stewart, pitched nine no-hit innings. It was like six guys combined on nine no-hit innings. And then the game ended because they don't do Zombie Runner over there. And I think they used to play to 11, but I think because of COVID, they just call it after nine and it's just a tie. It's a 0-0 tie and life goes on and no one is terribly upset about that, I assume, or at least not more upset about that than I am about the zombie runner. So it's okay. Normalize ties. They can happen. I mean, I'd rather just play to completion and just see who wins, but I would rather have a tie than to change the rules in the middle of the game. Anyway, that wasn't my main point.

The point is that Carter Stewart has debuted and pitched well, and he is trying to show that this is a viable route where he can either have himself a nice career in NPB or he can pitch well. And when he is posted, presumably come back over to MLB if he wants to do that. And people have been wondering whether Kumar Rocker might do something similar because he is in sort of a similar boat, at least on paper, in that not eighth overall pick, but 10th overall pick, didn't sign with the Mets because of a concern about an injury, which we discussed. And he, like Carter Stewart, is repped by Scott Boris. And I don't know if

this is likely that Rocker will go over there. It seems to be unlikely at this point. I was reading Jim Allen, the writer who covers Japanese baseball, was writing about this at his site. And he said, according to a couple sources, that Boris didn't actually want Carter Stewart to go to NPB. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I haven't heard that. I don't know the ins and outs of it, but that's what Jim reported, that he reluctantly agreed to that

because the family was thinking about switching agents because he was opposed to that, but that SoftBank had a relationship with Stewart through a scout, and so that was what he wanted to do. And so Jim doubted that Boris would want to do this for Rocker and that Boris is all about sort of reforming MLB and getting players more money stateside. And I guess this could be one way to put pressure on MLB in some way if you have draftees who don't sign going to international leagues.

But he seems to doubt that Rocker will do that or want to do that or that Boris would want him to do that. So I don't know that this will happen, but Stewart is showing now that it is potentially a viable route. He is now in the majors in Japan and he's still just 21 years old and he's pitching well and making better money than you make in the minor leagues in the States. That's for sure. So it is an option. Right. And one that, you know, it takes not everyone's going to want to be that far away from their family.

Not everyone's going to want to adjust to living abroad. And, you know, that might be easier for some folks than for others. It might be really exciting for some people or really intimidating for other people. But yeah, it does seem like it opens. I don't know that it is likely to change the dynamic of the draft all that profoundly, not only for the reasons that I just said, but because, you know, the amount of time you have to wait to really be able to sign wherever you want is not small, right? I almost wonder if this is something that would be more appealing to a position player where you're less worried about blowing out potentially.

But I do think that it opens a little crack where there's at least an alternative for the right kind of player who's open to a new experience. And so, yeah, I think that that's a good thing generally. And, you know, I also think that it hopefully kind of shifts the way that players on an individual basis and their representatives and the rest of us think about the leagues that they're going to play. And like, I don't want us to think of NPB or the KBO as just a useful instrument, right? In changing things in MLB, like, you know, these are, you know, high performance leagues

too. So anyway, it's just an interesting alternative. If you're a young person and you're like open to new experiences, I imagine it could be really cool and exciting to get to go live abroad and experience a new country. And, you know, like you said, make much better money than you necessarily would stateside and feel like you have agency in your life in a way that I imagine is hard to come by when you're trying to climb through the minor leagues. non-waiver acquisition deadline, normally July 31st, is because of the Olympic break pushed back this year to August 31st, which would give Rocker a full year of international service time for the cost of a couple of months of his time. So stay tuned. So I guess he'll have to pick some sort of destination soon, right?

Or I guess he doesn't have to. I mean, he could just train on his own. There are lots of great facilities and Boris Corp has its own, right? So he could just stay in shape and work with various technologies and send teams his pitch profile and all of that. And I'm sure he could get a good deal when he's able to do that. But if you're competitive, I assume you'd rather be playing somewhere unless you're worried about injury risk. Yeah, I think that that's right. All right. So I also wanted to mention something I've been thinking about in relation to Otani potentially

opening the door for future two-way players. And we've talked a little bit about whether that will happen. Doesn't seem like it'll happen on a huge scale, but that it might happen at least for some select players who seem to have the skills to do that, that they might be allowed to at least fail before they are shunted off into either pitching or hitting, that they might get know exactly what it is, but he just always appealed to me. I took a liking to him when he was with the Blue Jays initially and had some big seasons there and just the sweet swing. It was just always such a joy to watch him hit. And he was a great, great two-way player in college to the point that there's an award called the John Ulrud Award, as one would expect, or I guess technically it's the John Ulrud Two-Way Player of the Year Award.

And it's a college baseball award that's given to the best two-way player of the season since, I think, 2010. Spencer Schwellenbach won with Nebraska this year, and he was drafted by Atlanta. And I've always wondered, like, what would happen if someone like Ulrud were coming along today, now that Otani has shown that this is viable, could he do it? Johnny has shown that this is viable. Could he do it? And Ulrud was like college ace and college slugger and really seemed like he could have been a viable two-way player. When he got into pro ball, that was just over right away, basically.

And granted, he went directly to the big leagues, skipped the minors and hit well right away, which may have made it more difficult to do both. But I was looking up like why that decision was made or how or when it was made, and it seems to have been made right away. And I found this article in the Syracuse Herald Journal, March 25th, 1990. I will link to this because it's kind of a lengthy one too, and it's interesting. But the Blue Jays, after drafting him in the 1989 draft, they just decided, nope, you're a hitter now. And that was it basically.

And he did have the brain hemorrhage in college, I think after his sophomore year, which sidelined him for a while. That was why he famously wore a batting helmet all the time for the rest of his career. And that derailed him for a bit and maybe made it less likely that he would play two ways. But he did come back and play two ways, I believe, after that. So he still had the ability to do that. And yet when they were trying to figure out what to do with him, basically right away, they closed the book on the two-way potential. You know, it's hard to say that they were wrong because he ended up being a great hitter and a nearer Hall of Fame level position player. So, you know, it's not really that much of a missed opportunity.

But reading from this article now, I'm quoting, one thing's for sure, Olerud will not see any action on the pitcher's mound. Toronto made the decision in the fall after watching Olerud perform in the instructional league. I knew sooner or later I'd have to give one of the two up, Olerud said. I was expecting it, but hoping to postpone it as long as I could. Oh, I still dream about doing both every now and then, he added. But Toronto said concentrate on one and become the best I can be instead of splitting myself up and being average at both.

And so obviously it worked out. But the fact that he was saying, I know or I knew that I'd have to give it up, that it was inevitable. I wonder whether that much might be different now, where if you had someone like Ulrud come along who could play at such a high level on both sides of the ball, the door might not be closed, that they might not know that they would have to give it up, and that a team that drafted them might say, well, let's wait and see. As the Rays have done with some of their guys and hasn't worked out phenomenally well thus far, but the fact that you have anyone at least willing to entertain it is, I think, a step in the right direction. Because as much as I love watching John Elrood as a hitter

and as great as he was, who knows? Maybe he could have pitched pretty well too. So I'd like to see someone get a chance, at least if they have the ability. Yeah. And you would think that, I mean, it's not surprising to me that a team like Tampa is one of the teams that's seemingly the most willing to entertain this as a potentiality. But in a time when we're trying to extract as much value, just to put it in the grossest analytical terms possible, out of guys, it seems like it's worth trying, right? it seems like it's worth trying, right? Especially at the early stages of their career to see what they might be able to do if you allow them to do both things. Because it's not like it's,

I just struggled to believe that it would really end up delaying their development on one side or the other to such a significant degree that it's not worth trying for a little while. But yeah, it's too bad that he was just like, this is an inevitability. I know that there's no way that they're going to let me do this. Yeah. And that was 30 plus years ago.

And he had just recently given it up and he was still lamenting the loss of his pitcher side and hoping to get in touch with him and see what he thinks of Otani and whether this has made him wonder whether things would go any differently for him today. But his college stats were just unbelievable. I will link to this ESPN article about it from a few years ago, but he hit 434 with 33 homers at Washington State. And he also had a 26 and four record as a pitcher. So he was just awesome. And he's like, you know, Otani-esque dimensions, I guess, like maybe not quite as strapping as Otani. He's listed at 6'5", 200. Otani is listed at 6'4", 210, but he's bigger than 210 for sure. But you know, he had the size,

he was more willowy, but looks like he could have been a pitcher. So I think potentially he could have done it. And he wasn't the only one. There are other guys like Dave Winfield was a good two-way player, if they had all gotten a shot, some of them would have made it. Some of them would have been able to contribute, even if it was just in a part-time role. So I think it would have been nice. And I would like to think that if Allroot were drafted by the Blue Jays today, that they would say, well, we won't write him off based on how he looked in instructs this fall, like not long after he recovered from a brain hemorrhage. Like, yeah, let's see before we cut off that route. And I can see why potentially it could hold back your development. And certainly it's like greater fatigue and injury risk and all of that. Although when people say like, well, Otani would undoubtedly be doing better as a hitter if you weren't pitching, maybe not. Like, yeah, it'd be hard to do that much better than he is doing currently for one thing. But also, like, he seems to feel like his fullest self-actualized self when he is doing both things.

And it seems like he feeds off that to some extent. I'm psychoanalyzing here. psychoanalyzing here but he has talked i think about how he enjoys hitting like on days that he pitches and he's just like so locked in on everything because he's participating in every way that it's possible to participate and if he were just hitting he would also be playing the field and that would be some injury risk and some fatigue risk and so is he forgoing practice because he has to throw a bullpen session or something? Or is it just that he is basically devoting his entire life to baseball, which it seems like he is doing, and not every player would be willing to do that. And so for some players, there would be an

opportunity cost there. With Otani, I'm not sure there is because it seems like he is just so dialed into baseball and so devoted that he is just going to make sure that he is practicing as much as he thinks he should, even if it's tough to squeeze everything in. Right. I mean, I'm sure that there absolutely comes a point where it is to the player's benefit to concentrate on one versus the other. I think that we just maybe organizationally assume that we know where that point is more firmly than we tend to. I think that, and this is probably true in a lot of contexts, not just in baseball, tend to underestimate the adaptability of people. And so I think that, you know, given it a go for guys who have shown, who have demonstrated a real aptitude for both

sides at some point, it's not like you want every guy to be like, hey, have you ever thought about pitching? Let's see how that goes. You know, like that's not, I think that there's a fairly small population for which this makes sense. But for's not, I think that there's a fairly small population for which this makes sense. But for that population, I think that giving them a little more runway than we've seen historically in cases where the player is amenable to it, they really have shown that they have talent on both sides

and are sort of comfortable with that distribution of workload. Like, let's see how it goes. I think, see how that goes. Because, you goes because you can always throw them on the mound later. You can always just be like, you just go back onto the mound, right? You can just do that. You can just do it. So try new stuff.

Write new stories. Yeah, right. I was thinking of that too. It's probably harder to come back to it after some number of years where you were not devoting any time or attention to that. So yeah, see up front whether there's anything there. And then, of course, there are players who will wash out on one end of things and then they'll say, okay, I'm a pitcher now. I'm a position player because it's a last ditch attempt to stay

in there. But I do like just the movement toward positionless baseball kind of, at least on the position player side. I don't like it as much on the pitcher side when it just turns into interchangeable faceless relievers instead of the starter actually going into the game and giving you a storyline to hold on to throughout the game. So that's not so much fun. But on the other end of things, where it's hitters and position players, defenders being encouraged to play more positions, that's a lot of fun. If it's, hey, Fernando Tatis Jr., we think he'll be healthier, safer in the outfield. Sure,

we'll just move Fernando Tatis Jr. to the outfield in the middle of the season, which there is very little precedent for a mid-season move from shortstop to centerfield or right field, as Mike Petriello detailed the other day. But he's athletic. He can handle it. I don't know that it necessarily minimizes his injury risk all that much. But if you think that it does, then clearly he has the skills to handle that. He's been capable of going back when he is playing infield, going back on balls. That or just, sure, Chris Bryant, play all over the place. Dodgers, Chris Taylor, why not play there and also play there? That's partly out of need because you have so many pitchers in the bullpen that there's no room on the bench anymore.

And so if you're going to be on a bench, you have to play a bunch of positions. But I think it is also just kind of tearing down the archetypes a little bit and saying, yeah, you don't necessarily have to look exactly like this to hit in that lineup spot or to play that position. And things change and positioning changes. And so you have to adapt with those things. And so the same could potentially be true of at least some elite two-way players where now that Otani has proven, okay, it can be done. And yes, he is a unicorn and he's an outlier in all sorts of ways, but it's not physically impossible to do it at his level. And if it can be done at his level, then presumably it could be done at his level, then presumably it could be

done at a more modest level where it might still be worth doing, even if you don't have someone who's almost the best at both things. Still, you might be good enough at both things to make it worthwhile. So yeah, just saying the modern John Ulrud, I think, would probably be a two-way player at least longer than the actual John Ul'Rourke got to be. Yeah. And there are going to be some guys who, you know, the routine of committing to one versus the other is to their benefit. And there are going to be other guys who thrive with the flexibility. And I think that if we have learned anything from sort of recent trends in player development, it is that customizing a plan to the player is almost always going to be a better course than assuming that they're sort of one size fits all. And so, you know, some sizes

might go two ways. That doesn't make sense as an expression, but I think you know what I mean. Yeah. And sometimes players can reinvent themselves at late stages of their career, like Joey Fado seems to have done. I don't know how exactly this has happened, but it seems as if he has just kind of consciously decided that he is going to be a power hitter now. Not that he wasn't a power hitter before, but it seems like he could have been an even bigger power hitter. There was an article Tom Verducci just wrote about the new approach of Votto. When it's time to hit, he stands tall in the box. He pumps his hands as soon as the pitcher starts his delivery.

As the pitch is released, Votto has lifted his front leg so that the knee is waist high. The pumping of the hands and lifting of the leg have created stored energy. It gets unleashed as the front foot lands in order. The hips, torso, and hands unwind in a synchronized, if violent, ballet. The hands finish high. The ball is airborne. And the ball is very often airborne these days off of Joey Votto's bat. Since he came back from his injury and turned into a monster, he's hitting a ton of fly balls. Now it's like classic kind of fly ball revolution launch angle type of change, it seems like, at age 37. And a lot of those dramatic changes that players make, I think it's easier to make those changes

if you have some skills. So like Justin Turner, for instance, he did the launch angle fly ball loft thing, but he also had good bat to ball skills. Before that, he wasn't hitting for power power but he always had pretty good contact ability so I think you need some baseline of skill and obviously Joey Votto had a high baseline but he seemingly has just decided he's going to be a fly ball hitter now and he's going to be a power hitter and it always makes me wonder what if he had decided to do that sooner like on the one hand much like Ulrud you say, how much better could his career

have turned out? How much better could Vado's career have turned out realistically? But if at 37, he can make this change and suddenly he's this good again, does that mean that if he had done this at 30, he would have been even better than the probably Hall of Fame hitter he is? Or did he have to do this now in order for it to work as well and maybe this just like because of the skills he had before maybe those skills suited his approach to the game at the time i always wonder about that like the what if of a late career metamorphosis like should it have happened sooner could he have been even better somehow no he couldn't have been because we weren't rude about him before that was what made

the difference i mean we weren't rude we were we were mournful we weren't right we hadn't used our powers yet and so no it couldn't have happened anytime but now because we we had no reason to be sad about joey vada before and then we were sad publicly and the baseball gods were like fine well you know here we go i do love that our power seems to be lifting the curse more so than imposing the curse that's a nice power to have yeah although you keep talking about certain people potentially getting injured in a way that i worry is testing yes you know i think that there's a there's a lot of greek mythology about about testing testing the will of the gods. And yet here we are.

Still lucky so far. But who's to say that the next time won't be the last time, Ben? It's also funny because what we were talking about when we were lamenting the decline of Vado is that it seemed as if he had superpowers that he could just reinvent himself and that he had such an intelligent cerebral analytical approach to the game that he would be able to compensate for declining skills as he aged and so i was extra demoralized that that didn't seem to be the case and yet i suppose i spoke too soon because that has turned out to exactly be the case and he has just decided to reinvent himself and it has worked spectacularly i do think Votto has pushed himself across the Hall of Fame line just with this season.

I mean, I might have voted for him previously, but I think now he has sort of separated himself from the pack. Like Joshian just wrote about that where entering the season, he was in this group of like almost Hall of Fame first baseman, like Mark McGuire, Todd Helton, Keith Hernandez, John Ulrood, Will Clark, Jake Beckley, like all these guys who were right around 60 war and some of them might still get in, but haven't gotten in yet. And now not only is he having a very good season now, but he's also made it more likely that he'll go on and that he will add to his counting stats and add to his war

total over the next couple of years. So I think someone like him, maybe also someone like Buster Posey, who has been rejuvenated and also seemed to be kind of on that borderline, I think they have catapulted themselves across it this year. And I mean, Posey already had the postseason credentials. Votto doesn't really because the Reds have hardly ever made the playoffs while he has been on them. So if his rejuvenation were something that pushed them past the Padres and into a deep playoff run, that might help too. It's much more fun to enjoy his personality when he is also playing like a superstar. He's always been a fun guy to listen to and to follow. But nice that the stats are matching the person again. Yeah, for sure. All right.

That's all I got. All right. I meant to mention earlier a bit of news about a player Meg had mentioned recently, Tiago Vieira, the former Mariners and White Sox pitcher. Meg mentioned his name when we were talking about players whose highlights to performance ratio was high, who weren't great overall, but had some individual moments that were pretty impressive. So Tiago Vieira, who is now the closer for the Yomiuri Giants, threw the fastest pitch ever recorded in Japan on Friday night. He threw a pitch 166 kilometers per hour. That's a 103.1 mile per hour pitch. And that actually breaks Shohei Otani's record of 165 kilometers per hour,

which had been equaled earlier this season by Robert Corniel. So Tiago Vieira, yet another highlight. Although these days he's actually pitching well too. And before I go, I just want to read you a message from Michael Eisen, who is a listener and Patreon supporter, and also just essentially submitted a stat blast. Not only is he financially supporting the podcast, but he is providing us with content too. This was in response to something I mentioned recently about how the Braves has had an 18-game streak of alternating wins and losses, which was an all-time record.

And I was talking about how the probability is actually more in favor of a winning streak or a losing streak than an alternating streak. And so Michael did some work on this, and he found, going back to 1903, that for any length of games n between 2 and 17, the most common specific sequence of wins and losses is n losses followed by n wins. This is as expected given that team win probabilities are never exactly 500, but it's still pretty interesting to see. So he's saying any sequence, any number of games between 2 and 17, the most likely outcome is that you win all the games or you lose all the games. Then he writes second, and again, this is mathematically expected, but I still think people will find it pretty interesting. As you look at longer and longer streaks,

the frequency of streaks of all wins or all losses compared to streaks of alternating wins and losses goes up and up. So for a sequence of six games, there are 1.55 times more all wins or all losses than there are alternating wins or losses. But for eight games, it's 2.1 times as many. For 10 games, it's 3.1. For 12 games, it's five times. For 14 games, it's 10.6. And for 16 game sequences, you are 37 times more likely to have all losses or all wins

than you are to have alternating wins and losses. Now, this is interesting too. He says, in looking at these data, I got interested in the question of what is the shortest sequence of wins and losses that is unique in baseball history? And he finds that the answer is 15 games. Specifically, there are no win-loss sequences of 14 games in baseball history that are unique, but there are 12 15-game sequences that are unique. And here's a fun fact. Two of the 12 unique 15-game win-loss sequences in baseball history began on the same day, June 26th, 1996, Atlanta and Cleveland. And just to complete the story, I next looked at what is the longest shared streak, a bit like the thing

you were talking about in a recent episode involving teams matching each other with wins and losses on the same day, except now not requiring them to be the same day or even the same season. So just what is the longest sequence of wins and losses that has been repeated? And the answer is 36 games. Brooklyn in 1875, Pittsburgh in 1890. They had the same sequence of wins and losses, mostly losses, almost entirely losses in their case, over 36 games. The modern record is a 35-game sequence

shared by the 97 Phillies and the 2011 Marlins. I will spare you reading out all of those W's and L's. He also looks up the lowest number of games in which there is a streak that has never been observed. So this is basically like Scorigami looking for a final score that hasn't happened. This is how many games do you need to go up to to find a sequence of wins and losses that has not occurred. And the answer is 15. There is one win-loss sequence of 15 games that has not yet occurred. So if you notice that the team that you are following goes win-win, loss-loss, loss-win, win-loss, win-loss, loss-loss, win-win, loss.

Congratulations, you have witnessed a sequence of 15 games that has never happened. So thanks to Michael. He sent his GitHub notebook along. So I will link to that on the show page as usual. 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. Joan Verbon, Ruddy, Lucas Allen Dawson, John McMillan, and Ellis Farson.

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 podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook dot com slash group slash Effectively Wild. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance and we will be back with another episode

a little later this week. Talk to you then. If we were playing cards, you'd be the one to deal We'd play with loaded dice and fix a roulette wheel You'd pick them at the races like I've never seen And then you'd make me pay off like a slot machine. Head you win, tails I lose.

Head you win, tails I lose. Bad news.