Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1750: The Gift of the Maggi

Episode Date: September 25, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Cardinals being unbeatable, the Giants setting a record for outperforming PECOTA, the Orioles’ and Diamondbacks’ race to MLB’s worst record, the White Sox and Yankees also having identical records (and the vagaries of unbalanced schedules and divisional assignments), the saga of Drew Maggi’s call-up and demotion and […]

Hey everyone, just a quick note before we get started today, I wanted to apologize in advance for some audio issues on my end in this episode. Not sure exactly what happened, I was recording a different podcast on a different computer shortly before we started this one, and I switched my mic over to my regular computer, and unbeknownst to me, some gremlins got in there and evidently did something to the sound, so that I sound somewhat more muffled and distorted than usual. It seems there was some sort of interference, perhaps. When I discovered this audio issue after the episode, I unplugged my mic and plugged it back in, and that time-honored tech support recommendation worked. So I can't recall this happening before. I don't think it'll happen again. And it's listenable and intelligible, and I've heard worse-sounding podcasts, but we try to go easy on your ears around here, so I just wanted to warn you in advance

and I hope and think that you will still enjoy the episode if you usually do. So I will be back with Meg sounding a little less like myself in just a second. I'm the phantom of my own opera I perform all the parts And I think of you, sweetheart I'm even the audience, and I can't help thinking

We were going to have a circus in the bar Hello and welcome to episode 1750 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm alright, how are you? I'm not as good as the Cardinals, but I'm otherwise fine. Who is? No one is. Did we? Look.

Allow me first to say, I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in devil magic. I think those are narratives that help people understand and explain their lives and phenomena. So, you know, it's not for me, but I appreciate how it is for others. I will say, for a thing I don't believe in, I'm sure forced to think about it often. You know, they sure do make me think about it and say, do I still think that's not true? You know, I still have to like engage with that with a frequency that I am often shocked by. I did not see this coming.

The Cardinals, not just the very long winning streak that they are currently on, at least as we speak, but just generally the whole resurgence that they have had. I kind of wrote the Cardinals off at some point this season. They were kind of an afterthought. We were all talking about the Padres. That was seemingly set for months of the season, that the Padres were going to be the team that won one of those wild cards, and then the Reds were surging, and then the Cardinals kind of came out of nowhere, slow and steady until

recently when it's been the opposite of that it has been winning at a furious pace but yeah it seems like a lot of people are like here we go again oh it's the Cardinals and they're gonna win the World Series and no one wants that it seems like everyone's still sort of sick of the Cardinals even though they haven't like won a World Series in the last few years or anything. But they've just made the playoffs and been a winning team, or at least a kind of competitive team so consistently that I guess they're not exciting.

But hey, they've earned it, and some other teams have kind of collapsed, and they're still standing. Their September Nadir had their playoff odds at 2.8% on September 7th. We had them at 2.8%. And they are now at 99.3%. Yeah.

What happened there? I guess we've talked about Adam Wainwright and how great he has been. And then I guess the bullpen, which was an issue earlier in the year, and they were walking everyone and wild pitching everyone and having run score and hit by pitches and all sorts of nonsense and that has stopped the bullpen's been better and then they've been a solid defensive team all along which is easy to overlook but it's still sort of shocking that this has happened I guess it's good players playing well like Paul Goldschmidt has been on a streak himself. Yeah. And as you said, they have that good defense, which as Jay

Jaffe wrote this week for Fangraphs and as Kevin touched on in his piece on this phenomenon, like has helped, you know, guys like Lester and Happ. And I got to say, we're all excited about John Lester and poor Jay Happ is being just as mediocre. And no one's talking about we're all excited about Jon Lester. And poor J-Hap is being just as mediocre. And no one's talking about him at all. But, you know, that defense has helped those guys to achieve some results that have, you know, outstripped what they were doing earlier in the season, even though they aren't really pitching all that much better themselves. And, yeah, it's just a thing that is – it was is, uh, it was lurking and now it is here and

we must confront it. And it's really a shame that it's not an even year because I probably could get a thousand words out of, you know, whether, you know, even your or devil magic were stronger. Like I, I'd like to engage in some false rigor around that question, but, uh, the calendar didn't quite cooperate with me. Yeah. Tyrone Neal's been good all year and kevin wrote about edmundo sosa who has sort of replaced paul de young and has not only been a good fielder but has hit as well so yeah credit to the cardinals while the padres are a tire fire and while the reds have come up short a bunch there have the

cardinals been just biding their time and winning every game so yep we're going to see some Cardinals in the playoffs it looks like they are surprising but not as surprising as the surprising team of the season and that is how I wanted to lead off here just by noting that our friend and recent guest Rob Maines of Baseball Prospectus reported the other day that the Giants are now the biggest Pakoda over-performers of all time. Wow. So, yeah, Pakoda projected them for 74 wins this year. We're recording on Friday.

They have 99 and counting. So they have outperformed their Pakoda projection by 25 games, and that puts them at the top of the list. And Pocota has been generating team projections since 2003, so we're almost up to 20 years of projections at this point. And yeah, they have now surpassed the 2012 A's, were the previous leader, at 24 games over their projections. And then legendarily the 2015 Royals exceeding by 22 wins and the 2012 orioles another team that caused a lot of discussion 21 wins those royals and orioles teams for a whole period there were kind of repeated over performers a lot of a's on the

list which is not surprising at the 2012 a's at 24 wins 2018 A's at 21 wins 2019 A's at 20 wins so the A's have surprised us a lot and then you have some Royals teams the 2003 Royals another sort of surprisingly decent team 19 wins 2004 Dodgers 19 wins 2005 White Sox worked out well for them 19 wins 2011 Diamondbacks 19 wins that was the team that had a negative run differential I think and then the 2018 Red Sox who were great of course 19 wins and the 2019 Twins 19 wins so the Giants take their place at the top of this list and unlike some of those teams that were like run differential over performers as well the giants are just good which kind of makes them more confounding but i didn't know that 25 wins

was the most or that these giants were the most but that feels fitting because they are basically the story of the season at least as far as team centric stories go I just appreciate that a bunch of relative olds out here doing great, living their best lives. It's really very exciting. Mostly still younger than we are, which is disconcerting. We don't have to dwell on that part, Ben. It's Friday.

I have a seltzer and a beer open right now, so I am saying let us lean into the things we like and not the things that make us sad. Although I guess I might have Harper in my future. So true old over here. This is something that has been occurring to me more and more lately as I think, oh, that guy's old. And then I think, oh, wait. Are you mixing the seltzer and the beer? Are you chasing one with the other? Which goes first? Well, it's just, you know, it's important to hydrate because I live in the desert.

And so you got to hydrate and I have a seltzer for that purpose. And then, you know, sometimes, as I've said before, when we record our Friday show, if the rest of my schedule allows, we'll have a little beer with our recording. It's nice because I enjoy talking to you. It sends me into the weekend on a high note. It's great. But you're not double fisting the beverages. It's just, it's one after the other. Yeah. I see. Okay. By the way, I have to just correct what I said there. The 2011 Diamondbacks were not the team that overperformed their run differential. I was thinking of the 2007 Diamondbacks who famously were outscored, had a Pythagorean record of 79-83 and ended up winning 90 games in the NLS. But the 2011 Diamondbacks, that was a good team. They went 94-68 and they had the run differential of at least an't know whether they will win the West or not. We're still speculating about that. That has been, I think, the weirdest part of the whole division race is just the way that these teams win every day both winning so often and yet the Dodgers barely gaining ground and I know it's been frustrating for our pal Craig Goldstein Dodgers fan who's like

tweeting daily about just the experience of watching the Giants and seeing them somehow pull out win after win after win while rooting for them to lose it has been a very strange but also wonderful season I'm worried that they are like uh that we're gonna get a netflix doc about um a true crime murder and it will be these two teams conspiring to kill craig and i don't know what he ever did to them you know like uh i guess that the giants are really mad about that uh the pakota projection they had, but leave poor Craig alone. Be decisive in one direction so he can rest. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Dubuque of Baseball Perspectives just wrote an article about the Giants projection, basically looking at like how it missed. And as he noted, like you wouldn't really want a projection system to have pegged the Giants correctly this year, because if you did, and if you were able to find one that anticipated this it probably would be wrong about every other team i don't know if there's any way to like hit this outlier and also project everyone else because it's a real bunch of factors

conspiring here it is like old players being better than they've ever been or as good as they've ever been which is good as they've ever been which is not really something that a projection system will ever project and then it's good health or at least relative good health compared to say the Padres or the Dodgers rotations the Giants have mostly had their rotation intact and then some of the guys who've gotten hurt in that lineup like their replacements were just as good if not better And then the bullpen has kind of outperformed its peripherals, which is kind of a common theme in a lot of the Pocota overperforming teams. It's like either you have a great bullpen or you have a bullpen that seems to be outperforming. to say that it missed this because every projection system missed this and almost every human missed this as well and i know our human opinions are informed by projection systems these days but still no one and nothing saw this coming so that's kind of cool it is kind of cool yeah it's it's

just nice to be surprised by stuff it's nice to be pleasantly surprised by stuff we are often surprised by things and then we feel sad about it but sometimes you're pleasantly surprised by stuff we are often surprised by things and then we feel sad about it but sometimes you're pleasantly surprised by things and it results in great baseball and you get to be stoked for uh for a team coming together you know and for a bunch of guys who like were kind of scrap heap dudes in other places and are now key contributors like that's always exciting like jay wrote about lamont Wade Jr. today, and I'm invested in Lamont Wade Jr. because he's getting a shot and making the most of it.

That's great. Super cool. I was talking to Brian Bannister the other day for another article that I'm working on, not actually about the Giants, but I did ask him about the Giants, and he was talking about how fun it's been, as you might imagine. I'm sure it has been. And he said it's been a really good collaborative effort. Bannister, by the way, is the director of pitching for the Giants. He said very intelligent, working behind the scenes, et cetera, et cetera. They've given us full leeway to keep developing these guys in interesting ways, even at the big league level. So you combine all that. That is why we've outperformed projections. And he said, there's still so many inefficiencies in the game of baseball.

And if you're just willing to exploit some of them, then you just keep getting a leg up on other organizations. So it is still somewhat mysterious. And I hope there is a documentary that it is about the Giants someday that explains how this happened exactly. But we've talked about how they just have a huge coaching staff and it seems like that has helped them unlock some things but as patrick noted in

his article like that can't just be it like it seems like there's more going on here and i don't know if brian was alluding to any of that but it is a weird and wonderful mystery so it's good that we have these teams that confound us in fun ways every now and then. We want Pocota and other projection systems to miss sometimes. Yep, we sure do. I wanted to mention a couple teams that have identical records as we record here going into Friday's games. Did you know that the Orioles and the Diamondbacks still have identical records? I thought the race to the bottom was over.

I thought the Orioles had sealed this thing up back in August when they barely won a game that month, but they've been a bit better in September. And these teams head into Friday with identical 49 and 104 records. So this is the race for the worst record in baseball and for the number one pick in the 2022 amateur draft. The Orioles are projected for 52.4 wins, according to Fangraphs. The Diamondbacks for 52.9. So if we do the rounding, it seems like Fangraphs playoff odds think that the Orioles are going to end up being the worst, but it's going to be close here. The Orioles have the Rangers, the Red Sox, and the Jays the rest of the way. And the D- close here the Orioles have the Rangers the Red Sox and the

Jays the rest of the way and the D-backs have the Dodgers the Giants and the Rockies so each of them playing two good teams and two not so good teams I think the thing that is the most striking to me about their their seasons relative to one another like I have seen I have seen more live Diamondbacks baseball this year than any other team. Yeah. Because, you know, I sure know how to swap out a weird chaos ball team that's a lot of fun for one that is, you know, the Diamondbacks. And so on the one hand, they are more sort of front of mind for me

just by virtue of where I live. But the Oriolesoles who are also just like a really bad pretty really bad baseball team although you know they have individual contributors who are fun and interesting like they have been weirdly important in the AL East race and the AL sort of playoff picture just because of their ability to play spoiler and sort of play a couple of teams that are trying to you know get in or or widen the gap pretty hard and beat the yankees sometimes yeah like they just really are flummoxing some of those teams on very rare occasion and so even though yes they are absolutely just like both

god-awful squads and i'm sure that their fans are quite ready to be done with the season of baseball their relative impact is quite disparate despite matching records so I don't know that's just a a wacky thing as someone who when I was actively a fan rooted for a team that was often a basement dweller I gotta say and I'd be curious if this is something that uh you can sort of harken back to and ever remember a time when the Yankees were bad. But I didn't enjoy... Being a spoiler was not something that gave me a ton of satisfaction. That was not a sufficient trade to my mind when I was actively rooting.

I was like, no, it would be nice to just be in a position to potentially be spoiled. That would be better. I don't imagine that orioles fans are taking much comfort from the fact that they are able to stymie the teams above them i mean some maybe a little because you know i'm sure they're pretty sick of the yankees at this point but um but i don't i imagine it's cold comfort yeah i always thought that too didn't personally experience it that much but it's like like the last refuge of the incompetent or something.

It's like, it's almost mean spirited or spiteful. It's like, well, we can't have a good season. You can't either. So I get why, like if you're the players,

you might take pride in playing well against a good team, but for fans, it's like, if all you have to root for is rooting for other teams to suffer and ill will towards them I mean not that like the Orioles front office has given the Orioles fans much to root for so I guess you take what you can get and as you said there's some individual bright spots there and things on the horizon but yeah i mean the orioles obviously set out to be worse this season than the diamondbacks did and they have played worse they have a run differential

negative 273 the diamondbacks a mere negative 218 which is second worst but still not as bad do you ever hear a stat and you're like yeah that matches up with my lived experience i gotta say that matches my lived experience the diamondbacks i don't know if i saw the diamondbacks win in person even one time this year and i went to like a fair number of games yeah so the orioles have the best farm system though baseball so that's something and maybe they'll get a number one pick to add to that we will see the next couple weeks we decide that. The other two teams that I wanted to talk about that have identical records, the Yankees and the White Sox

have the same record right now. The White Sox, 86 and 67, and have just clinched the AL Central. The Yankees, 86 and 67, and are fighting for their playoff lives here. They're a game ahead of the Blue Jays as we speak and heading into this weekend series with the Red Sox. And think of the difference in perceptions with these two teams.

And Joe Sheehan pointed this out in his newsletter recently. But you have the White Sox who are just kind of cruising. And I know that they have not played particularly well of late, but they haven't really had to for a long time. The Twins just, you know, their season was derailed immediately and none of those other teams was ever that credible a threat. So the White Sox have just kind of danced to the end here without a whole lot of pressure. And the Yankees have had pressure on them the entire time. And they've gone from they can't win to they can't lose back to they can't win. And here they are, I guess, still below where you would have expected them to be. And you have Tony Russo, who I imagine will be a candidate for AL Manager of the Year.

constantly called for to be fired. And I don't know if he will or not, or whether he should or not, but that difference in perception, like if the Yankees were in the AL Central and it was just a cakewalk, no one would really be thinking about that. So sometimes, as Joe noted, this could potentially influence awards races. Like 2012, Miguel Cabrera won the MVP award, probably mostly because he won the Triple Crown, but also the Tigers were a playoff team that year and the Angels were not. But the Angels had a better record than the Tigers did that year. And as Joe noted, it is somewhat silly, at least seemingly to us, to decide MVP races based on a player's teammates but it's even sillier to decide based on not just the teammates but like what division you're in and what direct competitors are doing because that's definitely not directly under a single player's control but it is striking just with the schedule being

unbalanced and just some teams being in this division or that division i mean even the cardinals we were just talking about they they're 84-69 as we speak. The Braves are 80-71. So put the Cardinals in the NL East, and they're a first-place team. I mean, you can play this little game every year, but this year I think it's maybe more striking than usual. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean, I'm sympathetic to the instinct to, like, look to, when you have very close cases, you have to look to something, right? You need some sort of tiebreaker. And so I can imagine, I mean, this conversation, which feels weird to reference now, but this came up last year with Bowers Cy Young, right? Where people were noting sort of the relative ease of schedule that he faced because it was just central teams versus central teams. So you had two of the weaker divisions in baseball as the grist for his mill.

And so I understand looking to that when you're like, a lot of these guys are really good and they're sort of close. And we want to acknowledge that war is not so precise that a half win of difference isn't enough to make you feel like really, really confident that one is dramatically better than the other. But the team stuff is where people really lose me because we just really need to rename the award. It would solve all of our problems.

We'd never have dumb discourse ever again. Yeah, unless your problem is that you need to write a column about something in late September, which is a problem for a lot of people. Yeah, but then you got Juan Soto and Juan Soto's like, I'll help you out. Don't worry. I'm here to save the day. Yeah, sometimes the best player conversation or the most outstanding player or whatever we're talking about, that would be interesting, too. of creating the perception of competitive balance. Baseball's three-divisional structure is in itself a subsidy to many of its smaller markets, which are clustered in the central divisions. Not that that keeps those teams from complaining about having to compete with the Yankees and Dodgers, but I digress.

Playoff expansion, inevitable for 2022, will make it that much less likely that the competitiveness of your division determines your playoff fate. It also weakens the argument of any team left out. The 1980 Orioles and 1993 Giants, with their 100 wins, Right. Schedules work as they did in the NL in the 1980s when teams are all competing for the same playoff berth. That hasn't been the case since 1995. And in most years since, there's been a big gap between the hardest and easiest slates in the league. In some seasons, it's easy enough to warp the wildcard races. In 2018, you probably remember this, the Mariners went 89-73 against the third toughest schedule in baseball. Cleveland went 91-71 against the easiest. I don baseball. Cleveland went 91-71 against the easiest.

I don't need to tell you which one made the playoffs. In 2016, five of the seven most difficult schedules in baseball were played by AL East teams. It's three of the toughest four and four of the toughest seven in 2021. Perfect fairness isn't possible. We're not going to get single table systems with perfectly balanced schedules like in European soccer. What we can get is a more fair system that advances baseball to what should be a primary goal, ensuring that the best teams qualify for the postseason.

Right, because then you get a better postseason field too, right? That too, yeah. You get teams that are more evenly matched with one another and can really sort of meet on a level playing field. You don't get a lot of weird early – I mean, they're not early exits because it's normally the worst team you know ducking out but you don't have a a team that has like a particularly easy run of it just because they happen to be playing like you know cleveland or whatever i mean just to name a time when cleveland kept winning you know this is joe So, yeah, I think that it also makes for more dynamic and compelling playoffs because you have teams that really ought to be there

that are the sort of best of the best. All right. Last thing I wanted to bring up before we do some emails, I wanted to relate the sort of heartbreaking story. I don't know if it's that far, but this may be sort of sad. The story of Twins Major Leaguer, I think, Drew Maggi.

So, Drew Maggi was a heartwarming story over the past weekend, and I saw that he had been called up by the Twins, and I was looking forward to doing a Meet a Major Leaguer segment, because he is 32 years old, and as we have already discussed, that's just ancient, just decrepit over the hill. Yeah. So he would have been the second oldest player to debut this year, who was not already a player in an international major league for years. major league for years.

Mickey Janus, our guest, the Orioles knuckleballer, was the oldest. But then there was Drew Maggi, who had been bouncing around the minors for 11 seasons, and he finally got the call. So he was on the Twins taxi squad, and they called him up for this past weekend series against the Blue Jays. And I think it was Rob Refsnyder was hurt. He had an elbow thing. And then Angleton Simmons couldn't travel to Toronto because of a visa issue. And so that opened up an opportunity for Drew cozy inside. And then he did not get into a game. And the Twins optioned him again. And now he's back in the minors again.

And I can't believe that this happened. I feel for him now. I don't know whether it's worse that he got called up at all or not. I guess he was getting a raise in those days when he was on the big league roster but that is probably small consolation here so he was called up I guess it was September 18th and then he was optioned September 21st having not gotten into any of those games and I'll just read you some of the quotes here this is from a Phil Miller Star Tribune article from September 18th when he was called up and everyone was happy about it and he was doing press conferences and

everything. So first of all, the twins, manager Rocco Baldelli and coach Tommy Watkins, they kind of played a prank on him, which in retrospect seems kind of cruel. Yeah. It's your standards, you know, camouflaging the call up for a guy, right? Like they called him into their office and they were like, hey, what were you doing last night? And he said he was at the hotel bar and he felt like he had done something wrong. And then they sprang it on him. Well, you're a big leaguer now. And so, of course, he felt great and it was wonderful. And he said it changes

life and it means everything to me 11 years of hard work and lots of ups and downs through my personal life and baseball i've been crying all day it's crazy to think about it yeah just so sad in retrospect and he was drafted by the pirates in the 15th round in 2010. He's an infielder. He's played a bunch of positions, right-handed hitter, and he's gone from the Pirates to the Dodgers system. He was in the Angels system. He was in Cleveland system, and he's been in the Twins system for the past few years.

And this year, in addition to being on the twins taxi squad he was at triple a with saint paul and he hit pretty decently had some power and played multiple positions and everything and so he's going on in the story about just what a wonderful day it was and he quit almost you know 20 times he thought of stopping and something would always happen to keep him going. And his parents are unbelievable and they've always supported him. And he would have given up a long time ago if not for that. And he called his dad to give him the news. And then he was breaking down and his mom was crying and everyone was crying.

And then he called each of his five brothers and started calling them and then he told his friends and then he was getting hundreds of texts and calls from old teammates and his mom's called him 1500 times and it goes on and on about what a wonderful joyous occasion it was and then he didn't get into a game i don't understand how they could not get him into a game. Like, it's the twins. Right. They're not playing for anything. Yeah.

Like, I guess just based on the scores, they were fairly competitive games. There was not a blowout that would have been an obvious opportunity. But just let the guy get a pinch hit at bat or something. Like, you're out of it if you're going to call him up. I mean, that's the thing. Like I know, you know, it's not little league. It's not like, hey, everyone gets into a game and you all get to participate. I get that.

It's the major leagues like he hadn't gotten the call for 11 years. It's tough to get to that point. But if after that protracted weight and all the ups and downs, you are going to give him that call. I feel like you're just morally obligated to let him get into a game, right? I haven't seen quotes. Maybe there were explanations or something, but that's just tough to get there after all that

and then not to get into a game. I don't know if there's still time potentially. I was just going to ask because he has to be down for 10 days right I guess so but then how does that work with the triple a season being basically right yeah so now he's just on the taxi squad so right right I don't know if if there's any different rule or if he could replace someone with an injury or something but they must have known that there was a limited window because Simmons was just like on the restricted list for that single series because of the visa issue and so if they knew that that window was going to close then how do you not get him into a game at some point I don't understand yeah I feel like you

know when you have a season like they've had like these are the moments that helped to sort of get you out of the morass of underperforming relative to expectation it's like well yeah we didn't achieve what we meant to but like we have these small moments that remind us how much we love the game and what it means to people and what a slog it can be but how you can still be triumphant in the midst of that slog and in its face even when you want to quit like he is a perfect metaphor for their entire dumb season. I can't believe he didn't get one at bat. Like just one.

Yeah, I know. It's really this other MLB.com article. He said he has been inspired by Sam Wise from Lord of the Rings. Oh my God. Who's always telling Frodo he just has to keep going. Just keep going. That's been his motto this whole time. I mean, Sam eventually got there.

He got to go to the Grey Havens and everything, so I hope that that will happen for Drew, that he will get in at bat this year or some year. But it calls up the question, I suppose, of what is a big leaguer, what is a major leaguer. This is, I leaguer? What is a major leaguer? This is, I guess, not officially a meet a major leaguer segment, but maybe we should just say it was because he was in the big leagues. And Baldelli, when Baldelli gave him the news, he said, congrats, you're a big leaguer.

In this other article at the end, Drew Maggi says, I'm just glad I can say that I was a big leaguer. It feels really good. And there is this term for this phantom ballplayer, right, which is a player who is called up and is on the big league roster but never gets into a game. And there are a few of these guys every year. Really, there have been a few just this year. I believe Stephen Fuentes with the nationals was called up in april and then optioned without ever getting into a game cory bird with the marlins was called up in july and then dfa'd later in july never got into a game and another who i thought

and hoped we might get to do a meter major leaguer segment about was cleveland catcher gian paul gonzalez who was called up on august 31st and then was optioned i think on september 2nd and he never got into a game but he was like the ultimate emergency catcher he's a 25 year old who was called up from high a straight to the pick leagues and was not even hitting great in high a or anything but there was just a real need because i think wilson ramos was hurt done for the year and then ryan lavarnway who he discussed and gavin collins they were both in covid protocols and so they were like we need someone to be our backup or emergency catcher here

and so they called up gene paul gonzalez from high a and then he never got into a game either. But it's sort of a sad classification just to get that close and then never officially get into a game. But it seems to count as being in the big leagues. If you get the call up, you are a big leaguer, at least for those days, even if history doesn't really remember you as such. You have the uniform right like you you're you're gonna have a thing to frame and put in your office yeah uh that has service time yeah you're a big leaker like come on it's not like we we don't we don't look at uh you know we don't look at at rookie starters who uh who make the roster on opening day and don't start for a couple days we're like well they're not a big leader until their first start like we mark their start as

an occasion because it's an occasion but like them being on the roster is an occasion too like you got the uniform you have a number you had a number officially that was yours yes, we noticed that you were a big leaguer briefly, Drew Maggi, and don't feel too bad. I'm sure he feels pretty bad. I would feel pretty bad, especially all those like congratulatory texts and everything. And then people like expecting to see him and then not seeing him. But hopefully the twins will do the right thing and somehow get him into a game here. It just seems incumbent upon them if you're going to get his hopes up that way. Yeah. Let the man get into a game, even if it is already official that he is a major leaguer. It would be nice still to at least give him the moonlight, Graham. Just at least that. I agree. I think that there's an ill that needs to be rectified here.

Good that we're talking about it. Can I bring up another? Sure. Can I bring up a thing before we get to some emails? Just because I can't let this go. Ben, did you watch the Phillies game last night? No. What wild thing happened in this Phillies game?

They trailed by six and then they won by six. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And you might think to yourself like what's that about like aaron nola was their starter last night and typically you know you're not giving up six runs if you're nola so you might think oh like was that late no uh he had a five run second which was keyed by a couple of things we don't have to get into it and then and then

and they were playing the pirates like that's another important thing to know here. They're playing the Pittsburgh Pirates, who are not good. So they were down 6-0 going into the bottom of the third and then scored five runs. And then did another three in the sixth and two in the seventh and two in the eighth. And won 12th to sixth. And I'm just here to say,

this is the chaos energy we need in the postseason this is what unites the the phillies and the mariners as teams that really ought to play in that wild card and i'm not saying that they should advance past that and really the phillies best hope is to win the division like they can't i don't even know that they can win the wild card and even get into the wildcard anymore. I think it would be too hard for them. The gap is too wide, but they could maybe try to win the division.

It needs to happen, Ben. It won't, but I would like it to because it would just be excruciating, but in a fun way, I don't know. I'm learning a lot about myself. It's easier to pull this off, I suppose, against the Pirates or the cubs sure yeah against the playoff team because when you fall behind a playoff team it's tough to make up all that ground

against playoff pitching staffs and good bullpens and when you have your best pitchers who are pitching a disproportionate number of those innings so if they were doing this in the playoffs they might just fall behind and not come back which wouldn't be quite as funnings. So if they were doing this in the playoffs, they might just fall behind and not come back, which wouldn't be quite as fun. But I agree. If they could replicate this in the postseason, I would want that energy too. It's just like good chaos ball. Give us chaos ball. Speaking of chaos ball, let us talk about Rays Jays again, because the saga has continued and we got a couple of emails about about it so let's read this one from nathan who says i enjoyed your discussion about the blue jays raise card scandal i immediately thought about an episode of the brady bunch because who wouldn't as i'm sure you

remember greg and marcia brady attended westdale high in the run-up to the big game against local rival fairview mar Marsha is approached by Fairview quarterback Jerry Rogers. Jerry quickly has Marsha starry-eyed. However, Jerry has an ulterior motive. Jerry doesn't actually have an interest in Marsha. What he really wants is to steal Greg's playbook before the big game. Eventually, Jerry gains access to the Brady house, and Bobby Brady witnesses Jerry's first failed attempt to steal the playbook once word gets back to Greg he hatches a scheme to trick Jerry Rogers

Operation Wipeout Greg makes a new playbook however this one is filled with fake plays the boys plant the playbook and allow Jerry Rogers a second attempt to steal it Marsha is crestfallen and Greg is elated that he has undermined Jerry Rogers his attempt to gain an unfair advantage before the big game.

Meanwhile, Mike Brady overhears this discussion and explains to Greg that he has stooped to Jerry's level and that it would only be fair for him to phone Jerry and tell him what happened. This would ensure the big Westdale-Fairview game would be played fair and square. Greg phones Jerry and tells him what has happened, but Jerry doesn't believe Greg and Fairview prepares for the game with the fake playbook. In the end, Westdale won the big game because Fairview was anticipating all of the wrong things. Jerry really blew it. He ruined his team's chances to beat Westdale, and he blew his chance with Marsha Brady. Getting back to the Rays and Jays, how do we know that the card Kevin Kiermaier picked up was a real scouting report. Maybe this was Toronto's attempt to gain a slight advantage. After all, aren't front offices always looking for new ways to gain another small advantage?

The plot thickens. And we got a similar email that did not reference a Brady Bunch episode, but had sort of the same idea from Pete, who says, I'm writing to propose an alternate theory to the entire Cardgate incident, that it was actually a conspiracy whereby the Blue Jays intended for the card to fall into the raised hands, and it is likely filled with disinformation. Meg had two key insights. One, these card wristbands never fail in this specific way in football.

And two, if your opponent did come into possession of one of these precious cards, you would want to downplay the significance of the data. Think about it. The first time anyone has ever known a card to just fall out of a wristband just happened to come, not in a football game, but in a non-contact play during a baseball game, which just happened to be between two division rivals and possible playoff opponents, and it just happened to occur at the very tail end of the regular season.

On top of that, the card just happened to come from the weaker of the two teams, the team that would be looking for every kind of small edge they could find in a short playoff series. Further, the receiving team just happened to be one of the most analytical teams in baseball, a team that would absolutely devote resources to devouring the information contained on the card at a time when those resources would have to be diverted from other critical activities like advanced scouting. The Jays' reaction, oh no, we lost the worst possible card, whatever shall we do, is exactly what you would expect if they were trying hard to sell the importance of the card to their opponent. If anything, I think they laid it on a bit too thick.

It made me instantly suspicious and likely made the Rays suspicious too. Having said that, if the Rays are spending time on internal debates about whether they can leave the information on the card in the first place, then that is also a win for the Jays suspicious too. Having said that, if the Rays are spending time on internal debates about whether they can glee the information on the card in the first place, then that is also a win for the Jays. All in all, this seems like a brilliant bit

of baseball subterfuge, not by the Rays, but by the Jays. The best move for the Rays would probably be to burn the card, pretend it never existed, spend zero additional time

thinking about it, and just trust their own processes and work product heading into the playoffs. So, do you buy it the conspiracy corner that the card was a plant i worry that what i'm gonna say is going to just make people who think this is a sort of reverse conspiracy say aha well that's just proof of their commitment to the bit but i mean they did plunk kevin kiermeier in the back. Yes, they did. I guess it really depends what kind of chicanery you find them capable of

because I could see this as a plausible bit of subterfuge. I don't think it happened, to be clear. On the last episode, I did express my delight at this particular scandal, and my delight remains. I feel like I should say, just for the sake of people with children that like he probably he should give him the card back like finders keepers is not a thing we live in a society like we are not children so you know like uh we we believe in in people like giving stuff back when it's found and its owner is clear but anyhow i mean not like it's a family photo or anything to like

reference a silly tweet but um you know you should probably give it back although he doesn't have to and i understand them being fussed about it i don't think though that they that they would say hey uh we know how they'll really believe it is if we if we engage in the bit of weird emotional venting that is dinging a guy in the back because he did something that we find displeasing, right? Like that is going to help you sell it, right? That's going to say, no, we're very angry. We find ourselves to be furious.

Like that helps to sell the bit, but you kind of have to be, you're going from being sneaky to being, I'm going to sell the bit but you kind of have to be you're going from being sneaky to being I'm gonna do a swear and because if that's if that's what's going on here if you want Kevin Kiermaier and the Rays to be like oh we gotta examine this in great detail and tease apart the the strategy of the Blue Jays and and poor Kevin K kiermeier just by virtue of being there and happening to be the one that has to take take one in the back for helping you to inadvertently can continue your conspiracy i just don't think carson would be capable of such a thing so i mean like uh sneaky

sure sure but not yeah he is a noted sneak. Sneaker. Yeah, I love the idea. I love the conspiracy of this being an Operation Fortitude style way to feed misinformation to your opponent before a big confrontation. I don't buy it, but I like it. It's creative. It's funny, the last time we talked about this, one of the reasons why we enjoyed this so much is that oh it's it's low stakes right no one's getting hurt like we said like it doesn't seem like this is going to graduate into a beanball war or anything and that's exactly what happened so ryan bruckey you know muted my enjoyment of this whole yeah by uh by plunking kiermeier in

the back it was in the back it wasn't in some extremely dangerous spot, but I like this when it didn't rise to that level and it was just silliness and nonsense and Kevin Kiermaier trying to justify his actions and then the other team having their feathers ruffled but not actually rising to the level of plunking a player. And I'm sort of surprised that that happened because it seemed like Charlie Montoyo and Kevin Cash had smoothed things over and they met and Montoyo said it's agua under the bridge. But evidently his players or one player did not agree. So Montoyo was suspended. Baraki was suspended, rightfully so so at least in his case but that was interesting because the manager sort of sent the signal that hey this is over and we're not mad but then the player sent the

opposite signal so i don't know whether the clubhouse sentiment related to kiermeier's stumbling and babbling explanation or just the initial apparently they like they sent the bat boy over to ask for the card back and they were like nope so i get why you might be miffed about that well and then p walker like went went wild trying to stand up for his guy that's like come on man we know what's going on here like you're engaged in a silly bit of business don't make it worse by insulting our collective intelligence that he didn't mean to plunk him of course he meant to plunk him he they were down by like six runs late in the game like if you're gonna do it that's the strategic moment you deploy that and not undermine your team's chances of winning

which again we're not in favor of but like walker was so mad and it was like pete chill come on we all know what's going on here dude yeah yeah the real legacy of that series which was almost overlooked because we were talking about the card gate was shane baz debuting yeah looking pretty great and we talked about the potential for him to debut and maybe make an impact in the playoffs with Eric not long ago. But then he showed up and he pitched as well as advertised. I mean, he shut down one of the best lineups in the game and he got gift a lot because of that nasty rising fastball and slider.

And he just looked great. And probably any other team than the Rays would have called him up even sooner but they just had so much pitching even after losing a lot of pitching to injuries anyway they brought him up in time to make an impact in the playoffs and based on how he pitched in that game and he is slated to start again on Sunday so we'll see how he did but I'd probably have about as much confidence in Shane Paz one start into his major league career as like almost anyone on that staff other than I guess McClanahan to take the ball. And I know with the Rays, everyone's role is pretty amorphous and nebulous to begin with. But that's a weapon that a lot of teams did not want the Rays to have because they're hard enough to hit and to beat and to add one of the best pitching prospects in baseball and have him look that good, which was not a surprise given how he dominated in the minors.

That's sort of scary. So love it when a prospect comes up and next thing you know, he's pitching important playoff innings and it seems like that's probably going to happen. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. So yeah, I don't know i those rays man some things are surprised yeah some some things this year have been surprising and then there are the race yep and wonderfront goes back now too yeah oh no okay here is a question from nat who wants to know about a game where the washed up would face the unready. So he says, who do you think would win a seven game series? An average team of AAA players or a team of former MLB players who last played in 2019 or earlier?

For example, your Daniel Descalso's, Aaron Altair's, etc. Let's assume we give the ex-MLBers a month to get the pitchers stretched out. On the one hand, the AAAers are in shape and have youth and health on their side. On the other hand, the ex-MLBers have proven big league skills, while a good

portion of any AAA team won't make the majors. Oh man. Hmm. Hmm. portion of any triple a team won't make the majors oh man it's tough i don't know if the is this presupposing that the former mlb players are all like marginal major leaguers well yeah that was going to be part of my question and like you know like how old are they yeah i mean i guess like last played in 2019 or earlier he's saying so so they're recent right just uh not current season but a couple seasons ago yeah i guess it sort of depends on like you said like how how much of a major leaguer were they we'll concede that they are major leaguers having spent part of this episode saying that you just have to get up there and be in the dugout for it to happen but like

did you have a long career were you like a guy who was sufficiently talented to remain in the majors for the duration of that career or were you sort of an up and down guy if you were last in the big leagues in 2019 have you say been playing um internationally since then and so seeing like you know like good baseball reps in the meantime i think that there's i'm assuming you you haven't been playing that's part of the spirit of the question well then if you haven't been playing i'm i'm kind of inclined to take the AAA guess, question mark. I don't feel super confident, but I feel a little confident. Yeah, I think I would agree.

I mean, the examples that he gave, he's making it sound like we're not talking name brand big leaguers here. I mean, if we're talking like Daniel Descalso and Aaron Altair, like those guys were probably AAA quality players in 2019. I mean, no offense to them, but like Aaron Altair had a 300 OPS in 66 big league plate appearances. Daniel Descalso had a 521 OPS in 194 plate appearances in those seasons, I'm saying. So if that's who we're talking about, like they may not have been better than AAA players that year. So, and your average AAA team is probably going to have a couple guys like Daniel Descaso and Aaron Altair, right? Like a couple of guys who were in the big leagues a couple years ago so i think if we're talking about that caliber of former mlb player then it's a pretty easy call that you take the people who have been

getting the reps and staying in shape and everything so to make it a more interesting question i guess you've got to pull from a higher tier of talent in the big league so what if we're talking about like average mlb players, let's say, but they haven't played in a couple of years? Maybe that makes it more interesting because like if we're talking about replacement level big leaguers, you know, that's not much different from your typical AAA player, even without the long layoff. So let's say we have average-ish big league players. I mean, it's basically a question of like how quickly do your skills degrade right yeah i don't know i don't know that i have a lot more to say than because i'm sitting there um just thinking about how hard it is to uh hit a fastball under normal

circumstances with regular reps right or or ben god, God forbid, a breaking ball, right? Like just very hard to do those things with normal reps. And then if you've been like in, you know, like, you know, you're still in shape, like you go to the gym and you lift a little bit, but you're not like in a cage every day and you're not pitching often. I just think that whatever advantage you may have enjoyed at the conclusion of the 2019 season, let's just assume that these are guys who are playing then because you had been a big leaguer

and you had played against that level of competition and will be generous and assume that you did so such that you were not an up and down guy. You were like on a big league roster playing, you know, fairly fairly regularly at least in a bench role i do think that the skill degradation you would experience from having not done baseball in that intervening time would be sufficient to erode whatever advantage you would have had from having been an actual big leaguer prior to that yeah i think once you stop playing i think that the tail off is pretty rapid probably like it's certainly if you were to compare someone the same age or some multiverse scenario where one version of the player keeps

playing at the same age and the other stops playing like you're gonna fall off pretty quickly and maybe you could get some of that back if as as he says, you get a month to just kind of get up to game speed again. But I think use it or lose it to some degree, like it's going to go away. So I think even if you're talking about average-ish players, if they haven't been doing anything for two years, and again, like we're assuming they're at the tail end of their career here and advanced stages to begin with. Yeah. Yeah.

And anything up to like average-ish major leaguers as of two or three seasons ago, I think I'm going to go with AAA here. Yeah, I think that I am too. But I would enjoy seeing it. It would be fun. I wonder if they would find it fun. I wonder if you would have a fair amount of confidence. You're like, I've been a big leaguer. I've played against real big league players,

and so we're going to wipe the floor with these young pups, and then you'd get in there and be like, never mind. Right. I guess the counter argument here is that it's not uncommon necessarily to see former major leaguers come back. Right. And make the big leagues after some extended layoff. I mean, like the Joe Bimal scenario, he has not been back in the big leagues, but he hadn't played for a few years at all, or at least professionally. And then he came back and pitched pretty well, at least in AA this year.

It sort of ran out of steam when he got to AAA, I guess. But there are cases, and maybe usually in those cases, the player has been playing somewhere, has been overseas or something. But there are cases of players who will just stop playing and then they'll get the itch again and then they'll manage to get back to that level and maybe not at a super advanced stage, but it can be done, which means that maybe you retain some of that inherent talent that you had and can regain, whereas the AAA player never had it and doesn't have it now so i could go either way but i'm still gonna go with uh the fresh over the rusty right i mean and like this is part of

why i asked like have they been playing overseas like because they're you know we're lousy is too strong but we're you know uh we have several guys uh who went overseas and played and then came back to the majors and have been productive big leaguers upon their return. And so having to spend some time away does not necessarily mean that your career is over or that you can't continue to compete at that level. It's just if you start being at home, then it's different because then you get to enjoy being at home. You get to do all your home stuff and you're probably not going to be doing all your baseball stuff anymore. All right, here is two related questions or very similar questions about the same scenario.

So Kurt says, I have a proposal for solving the extra innings issue. Any game that lasts longer than 11 innings would be suspended. At the end of the season, games that have no relevance to getting in the playoffs would be formally declared a tie. Ties could still be factored into playoff seeding. All relevant suspended games would have to be completed in a marathon sprint at the end

of the season. These suspended games could be played back-to-back at a neutral location, or you could make teams zip around the nation, mad, mad, mad, mad world style. Think of teams having to play multiple, high, one, two, or three run games with a playoff berth on the line. Anyone leading after a whole inning wins. All of these teams would be on the bubble anyway, so there would be some cosmic justice to the exercise.

This would lead to great television, innovative strategies, and place a spike into the head of the zombie runner. I'm sure the players would hate this more than extra innings, but it would be fun. And Timothy, Patreon supporter says, I dislike both the all-star game and the zombie runner rule. So I've been imagining a way to solve them both.

First, let all tie games go into the 10th with no zombie runners, but if they're still tied after that, suspend them. Then instead of the all-star game, assemble all the affected teams in one place and finish all the games in one epic day starting at say 7 a.m the turnaround between games wouldn't have to be long because any one of them would do little damage to the field and most players would

have time to warm up during the other games the schedule could theoretically let most teams play their games in relatively quick succession with the better teams getting more favorable arrangements perhaps we'd have to do it again at the end of the season, but we could skip the ties that wouldn't affect the standings, so same idea as Kurt there, and the ones that did might have huge implications for the playoffs. That would be high-stakes baseball and, not stupid, a win-win. How crazy a dream is this? P.S. I might be somewhat influenced in this idea by the annual Marvin Rotblat Day at Carleton College, where students play an inning of softball for each year the college has existed. Oh, my God.

155 and counting. Oh, my God. So, yeah, same sort of concept here, basically. After 10 innings or 11 innings or whatever, you suspend the tied games and then you only make them up if you need to and you do it at the end of the season or maybe you do it during the all-star break and at the end of the season and then you just all bang them out in quick succession and everyone goes to the same place and you just pick up where you left off and play an inning or two until it's over but it's all just compressed into a single day instead of having to do the zombie runner.

Here's a question for you. I wonder if we can find this quickly. How many extra innings games, that's hard to say, do teams play on average every year? Oh. How many is it for for a team like what team has played the most the most right good question because attempt to look that up while you're attempting to look that up let me let me say why i wonder about that because and i i suspect that the answer to this

is going to be it doesn't end up mattering all that much because i would imagine that most teams don't play all that many extra innings games regardless of format right and so whether it's you know that they have a double header a seven inning double header game go into extras or a regulation game go into extras and so i suspect it doesn't matter but here's why i asked the question i'm not indifferent to the idea or the fact that like teams records, I'm going to say a thing that is so obvious. But I think it's it's important to consider with this question that like teams make decisions, particularly around the trade deadline, based on where they are in the standings. And so I could envision a scenario where a team that is not a very good team or a very bad team, but like a competitive team that might be say in a wild card race

would make decisions around the deadline that are predicated on them being in a particular spot in the standings and wanting to get better so that they might go to the postseason. And so not having their games that are extra innings games decided. I mean, the all-star thing would work in this scenario. But if you're waiting until the end of the year to be like, does this matter for the playoffs?

It's like, well, maybe you've missed the window when it mattered to the playoffs because maybe if you have uh you know if you have five extra innings games uh early in the going and you win all of them then you're like oh we're gonna we're gonna add that bat and then we're gonna go go get them you know like let's go tiger um and i imagine that that doesn't really happen but maybe it does you know like the giants and the dodgers famously not very far apart right now right i mean they were going to be busy at the deadline anyway because they were in a tight division race but do you see what i mean like i think that having information about where you stand is useful when you're playing like a competitive thing where we rank people. That is a good point. Yes.

And the players would hate this. Oh, hate it. Yes, indeed, they would. And I think it would be kind of fun to watch. I mean, obviously, I'm in favor of getting rid of the zombie runner rule, however that is necessary. And I'm okay with ties. Again, like I continue to say, it's okay to just finish the games the way that we always did. But if we are somehow looking for a solution to that non-problem as far as I was concerned,

then I would rather just suspend them and have them be tied and that'd be fine. But this would be interesting at least for that game i mean it would cause all sorts of scheduling havoc oh my god we're talking about the eve of the playoffs here and everyone would have to cluster in the same place presumably and oh it would be an absolute mess and and then you would have some teams whose seasons was essentially over, but they'd have to show up anyway just because the team they were playing had some playoff implications there. So, yeah, players would probably revolt in this scenario,

but it would be kind of fun, I guess, just a succession of extra innings, just one team plays, then the other team plays, and we're just sitting there watching. So it would fun could never happen will never happen no players will hate it mlb would hate it but i wouldn't hate it how would we sequence them right because you'd have some teams that had multiple contests to finish up right like you'd have a couple where it's like okay we gotta i mean that would make it that would make it fun like watching the strategy that they um deploy for those moments i think would be would be really fun because then wouldn't you just get here's what would happen though like if you have you you're the dodgers and uh it's the all-star break and so you famously are going to get to rest

because it's a break and you have three extra innings games. Don't you just throw your starters for like an inning? And then it's like, congratulations for your extra innings experience. You get to face Max Scherzer. I mean, he wasn't on the Dodgers at that point, but you know what I'm saying. Like, don't you just throw your starters? You'd have really weird strategy or really obvious strategy,

depending, I guess. So that actually could be quite fun. Maybe I'm on board now. By the way, we were wondering on average how many extra innings games teams have played this year. The average number is 15 or 15.1 ranging from the Angels and Pirates on the low end with eight apiece to the Twins at 23. So pretty wide range there, but 15 on average, although obviously most of those would not go past 10 or 11 innings. So you would only have a few that you would have to make up, if that many, in this wild marathon make-up day.

Let's maybe do one or two more here. This is from Emily, Patreon supporter, who says, I saw a tweet regarding the Cardinals come from behind win to extend their hot streak to 12 games. And the post said that the Cardinals, quote, refused to lose. Well, how different would baseball be if the losing team had to consent to accept the loss? After every inning, the losing team would have the option to accept the loss. If they refuse to lose, they play one more inning. They accept. The game ends. What do you think? this option exists i mean not the refusing to lose you have to you do have to like be done at some point because we go we play to a score but um i mean you always have the option to lose right

because you can concede at any point to lose right so you always have that choice and no one ever chooses that no they don't even though they could but if you had this system yeah we have pride in human feeling yeah it'd be it'd be codified though probably and so it would be more acceptable to accept that you lose and so right maybe if they had this then you would see some teams uh just accept that they lost instead of putting in a position player pitcher or something in a blowout but the refusing to lose part is interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think that the answer would be that you would not do it very often because at a certain point, depleting your own team by continuing to play would be, well, first you'd have the instances.

I assume you have instances where you get blown out early and you're down by a lot of runs and you'd be like yes please let's be done because the odds that we're going to be able to come back from this without completely like messing up our roster for the the remainder is like really low so we're gonna say we gotta get out of here and then you know you don't want other teams to behave in a annoying way to you when you're in a position to win. I think that you would have an understanding amongst each other

that you have to be done at a certain point, but for one-run games, then I think the calculus changes because you could convince yourself, well, we only need one more inning. We're going to get those two runs and we're going to out of here and so i think that when the margins get tight depending on where that game sort of stacks up in terms of its importance in the standings then you might get people who decide to get a little frisky yeah i think for the most part this does come back to the how different would baseball be not that different a lot of games would look similar. But yeah, like, I mean, what about for must-win games?

What about elimination games? Do you ever concede the World Series Game 7? Or do you refuse to lose forever? There would be all sorts of unwritten rules. It's like a social contract kind of thing. As you said, you wouldn't want other teams to be pests to you. And so you would not want to be pests to them. But if Kevin Kiermaier keeps the card, then there would be some teams that sometimes that would just refuse to lose.

And then there would be like an analytical calculus to it. I suppose like if you're down by one run or something, yeah, you might as well keep going. But then at what point do you stop? Because do you need that win? Are you going to cost yourself in future games because you're depleting your pitching staff here and you're hurting your future odds? You're contributing to injury risk. injury risk and if you're a team that doesn't need the win so much if you're out of it or if you have already locked up your division then why keep going i guess and jeopardize your health and availability and effectiveness in the future but it'd be tough because then you're accepting that

you're losing and your fans have to say yeah they chose to lose because they could have refused to lose. Right. I think that we like to think that we would engage with these things rationally and that we as observers and as fans would say, no, we understand. The human body has limits. You can't play forever. We don't want guys to get injured. We don't want them to be completely useless for the next game

where presumably you could also refuse to lose, but you might have a better chance of just being on the side that doesn't have to entertain that question. And we like to think that we would do all of those things. But then I look at Twitter and I'm like, no, we would not. Yep. Yeah. Imagine the press conference questions. Oh, my gosh. Why didn't you refuse to lose yeah it would be wild you'd just be it would be it would be madness so yeah i think that it's probably best that people have to go home like you know i sometimes work more than i should ben and it would be good to have someone be like no you must be done now yeah there is a limit. You have to observe the limit. Yes, I think we're better off with the way we are where you don't have a choice about it.

Either you are the better team that day or the luckier team or whatever, the team that scored more or you lose. So, yeah, refusing to lose, that kind of undermines the whole concept and the whole purpose of being there. If you have lost, but you can veto the loss. So there would be some interesting analytical questions there, but I don't think it would actually improve the spectator experience in any way. I don't think it would either. And I think that we would get so grumpy. I would like to see someone try to propose this to Rob Manfred, though. You could really play spoiler in this scenario.

Right. Oh, gosh. If you refuse to lose. I mean, that's the other thing. Not only are you jeopardizing your own staff and your own players' health and availability and schedule, but then you're jeopardizing your opponents, too, because you can keep them there as long as you want. And then at one point, like what if you push it so far that the other team says, fine, then we refuse to win because we want to get this game over with. And so maybe you start throwing some meatballs or something like what if you can just outlast the other team's will to compete? Because at a certain point, if you push them far enough, maybe they forfeit.

Right. Or maybe they just let you win so that they can go home and get some sleep. Right. If you were – like you could put together a team of just a bunch of like hard asses who just really refuse to lose and they don't care about any criticism that they're going to get, and they will just refuse to lose indefinitely, and they will win because other teams will say, hey, we got to get on with the rest of the season here. And I guess you could really derail the entire season. Scheduling would become an issue. You're going to miss your window to make it to your next team that you have to play. You're going to miss your window to make it to your next team that you have to play.

You will never know when the game will end or when the game will begin because this other team that refuses to lose will just be ruining it for everyone and just wearing down the other team's willingness to win. Yeah, it would be a disaster. It would just be a total mess. Everyone would be exhausted. You'd have some real petty, gritty, mean guys gumming up the system for everybody. You need rules to save yourself from yourself sometimes. It would be like the Simpsons episode, the Homer they follow when Homer's a boxer, but he can just get punched indefinitely without ever being knocked out. but he can just get punched indefinitely without ever being knocked out.

And so he ends up being successful because he just tires everyone out and eventually they realize they can't knock him out. So it would be that sort of idea. But that was not a very fun spectator experience either. So, yeah, this would be bad is what we're saying. Is the conceit of that bit that he's like dumb and so he can just get hit a bunch and it doesn't like affect his brain? Like what is the conceit of that bit that he's like dumb and so he can just get hit a bunch and it doesn't like affect his brain like what is the conceit of the bit yeah pretty much he has like i think it's like a layer of fluid around his brain is thicker than usual so he he can withstand the blows to the head there could be long-term damage there but yeah the opponents

like everyone just exhaust themselves and uh then he pushes them down on the canvas because they're just done. So that's what you would have to do. Yikes. That seems not the best. But here we are. Okay. Last question. This is from Peter.

Just a random question. I regularly ask myself this when I see a catcher setting up in a certain way. For example, dropping on a knee, glove outside the zone, and low. Is there no way that the batter can see this out of the corner of his eye and infer information on pitch location? This might be a really basic question. I have never played baseball myself. I live in Europe. Only a few of us do. So I don't have a feel for what you can see at the plate. Maybe it's just physically impossible, or maybe the risk of taking your eyes off the pitcher is too high. But often the plate. Maybe it's just physically impossible or maybe the risk of taking your eyes off the pitcher is too high. But often the catcher makes it so clear with his glove

where he is expecting the pitch that it makes me wonder if this isn't a skill batter should try to develop. Oh, guys definitely peak. Oh, yeah, they do. Guys definitely peak and people get mad about it. And then it's like, but your guys also peek and just have better signs. I mean, some of it is a sign thing. And then some of it is like he said, like where a catcher is setting up as an indication of where the pitch is meant to go. But guys peek. Oh, guys peek.

In fact, if you go into watching a game knowing that like guys peek, you can't unsee it once you've seen it, right? You can't unnotice the peek and this is something that the peeking gets policed right because if you are obviously peeking yeah and you will get called out it's you know the whole purpose of unwritten rules often is just to discourage behavior that might hurt your team so something like peeking if you see someone peek well you might drill them or you might at least say something to them because it is advantageous to them if they're able to

peek. But yeah, it definitely goes on. I mean, it's maybe harder than you think. The catcher's a bit behind you. So you can't necessarily see it out of your peripheral vision without actively turning to look. Maybe you could get a glimpse here or there, or you could pretend you're looking somewhere else and you just so happen to see it. But like you kind of have to actively look and that can be obvious and that could get you in some trouble. But it does happen for sure. And I wrote something which I'll link to years ago at Baseball Perspectives

because I had noticed that the catcher Eric Kratz in one situation he had like pounded his glove inside and then hopped out to the outside corner so he kind of like made it sound as if he was setting up inside then he got the pitch and called for the pitch outside and there was a called strike outside and the batter was like kind of seemingly upset about it maybe maybe it was the call or maybe it was that he had been duped but i talked to kratz about it and he said yeah that goes on like especially if there's a runner on second which in that case there was and maybe he thought that he was telegraphing location or something and then you try to mess with the hitter's head but yeah you can sometimes hear the catcher if not see them because he's shuffling around a bit back there and you know you kind of

have a sense of where someone is in your space or the general vicinity and you can use that to your advantage like our conspiracy theory with kevin kiermeier in the card you could make some noise in one location as if that's where you're setting up, and then you can stealthily just hop to some other location. So there's definitely some gamesmanship that goes on there. Well, and wasn't there a whole... I was about to say kerfuffle, and now I know that some of our listeners

have noted my affection for that word. Wasn't there some dust-up between Tatis and Bauer earlier in the season? Yeah, that was about peaking. Where, yeah, where like he was, Tatis was peaking and then he had home runs and then Bauer was mad and then he had more home runs and it was some silly bit of nonsense. Remember when those were Bauer concerns? What a time.

So, yeah, I think that there there's like kind of an understanding that you should try to be subtle which i find to be an interesting dynamic in this equation because it's like this is too strong what i'm about to say is too strong because it is not nearly as valuable it does not happen as often and it's less accurate, right? Like because of the reasons that you just said, but it's sort of like hitter framing, right? Where it's like the subtlety is what allows it to be something that nets you an advantage. And if you're obvious about it, you're going to get grief in a way that sort of is a problem for you later.

So you got to be smooth. It's not really like framing but in that respect it's sort of similar yeah it's sort of like sign stealing i guess yeah it's it's i mean it's in some cases literally like yes right and you know some catchers uh they won't put the glove where their target is going to be exactly there are ways. But yeah, this is definitely kind of that hidden inside game that goes on that may be visible to us sometimes, but not always. All right. So

I'll just leave you with this note we just got from another Ben, Patreon supporter, who says, as I write this, we are 20 hours away from the Australian Rules football grand final. I recall you were both amused by the Aussie football father-son rule in relation to the draft. So I thought you'd find this other bit of information interesting. The only players to receive a premiership medal, the equivalent of a World Series ring,

are the 22 players who make up the winning team on grand final day. That is, a player may play every single game throughout the home and away season, the regular season, play in the first three rounds of the finals, the playoffs or postseason, win the Brownlow medal, that's the MVP, and win the Coleman medal, that's the leading goal kicker. But if he gets injured and cannot play in the grand final, he will not receive a premiership medal if his team wins. I thought you'd find this interesting.

I still have no idea who is eligible for a World Series ring, but it seems they hand those out like candy, also known as lollies. But that is true because I was just thinking this the other day because I'm writing something about Yusmero Petit and I noticed that he has the 2014 World Series ring. Of course, he made a major contribution to that Giants team, but Baseball Reference does not recognize him as a 2012 World Series winner. And I asked Kenny Jacklin why that is. And Kenny said it's because you have to play in the playoffs for that team to get the little banner on B-Ref that says

you were in that World Series or won that World Series. Sure. And Petit, he just made one start for the 2012 Giants in September and it wasn't even a very good start, but he got a World Series ring. I read for his four and twothirds innings in that game that the giants lost so he made like next to no contribution to that team but he was technically on that team and he got a world series ring so yeah in baseball they give them out pretty liberally yeah and apparently aussie rules football no you have to be like playing in that game when you win, or else it doesn't count. You're out. That's tough.

Wow. I mean, I like that the approach that teams take to rings is to be pretty liberal with them because it is a long season, and small contributions over time can really add up, and I think it's a nice way to acknowledge the people who, even if they weren't on the field, when you're getting ready to hoist the trophy, are instrumental to your ability to get there and then to succeed once you are. And so I think it's a nice thing that teams tend to hand them out. And that's good.

Why is football so mean? Why is your football so mean? You should have nicer football, I think. Yeah, that would just not work in baseball because not all the players get into each game to begin with. I guess they get into the series at some point, but yeah, that's rough. That's intense. I think you should all get the medal. I think you should all get the medal i think that you should i think that you should rebel you should you should fight back all right well we can end there okay here i am back to sounding like my usual self again sorry again about the audio issues on my track today also i meant to mention earlier when we talked about the orioles and diamondbacks who both lost their

games on friday so they still have identical records and the Yankees and White Sox won their respective games so they still have identical records too and the Giants won their hundredth game but this week it was announced that Orioles manager Brandon Hyde and Diamondbacks manager Tori Lovello will both be back next season so impressive job retainment by both of them meanwhile you've got Chase Tingler reading about how he's lost the clubhouse and his job is in danger. Brandon Hyde, Tori Lovello, they're set. They'll be back. Not saying they shouldn't be back or that they are responsible for how bad their teams have been this season.

Not saying that at all. But, you know, when it's late September and you're still struggling to win your 50th game of the season, that can be bad for your job security. Or, geez, just for your desire to do the job. But Brandon and Tori are coming back for more, and we hope that you will keep coming back for more of us. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and help keep the podcast ad-free and get themselves access to some perks.

Ben Anon, David Kimball Stanley, Nick, Kip Krabiel, and the Puchinski family. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcastfancast.com or via the Patreon messaging system

if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will, believe it or not, be back with one more episode before the end of this week on Saturday, so we will talk to you want. I do refuse. Find somebody else to use. I do refuse. Cause I refuse to come along. Oh, I do refuse. I do refuse. Oh, you've got nothing to lose. I do refuse. Find somebody else to use. I do refuse. Cause I refuse to come along