Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1807: The Principle of the Thing

Episode Date: February 5, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest lockout stalemate and how to decide where to lay blame, a changing of the umpirial guard in which Joe West (finally) leaves and John Libka enters, and whether there could be an MLB equivalent of the NFL’s current tanking scandal, then answer listener emails about watching […]

🎵 I will know that you will feel the shame. I will know that you will feel the shame. Hello and welcome to episode 1807 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Do you think we could request the assistance of a federal mediator to give us some topics for a baseball podcast, potentially?

Because if they're not going to be mediating anytime soon, maybe they could pitch in and help us out here. Not the greatest lockout news this week or today as we record on Friday afternoon. And we don't have to spend the whole episode lamenting the lockout news, but we could spend a few minutes maybe lamenting the lockout news. Yeah. I mean, it feels as if we should. I mean, it feels as if we should. You know, here we were sitting, having a conversation with our friend Dan Zimborski about cautious optimism and the potential of things resolving in an expedient fashion in a manner that is fair and satisfying to both sides. And then as we were recording, the news dropped that MLB would not be offering a counterproposal to the

MLBPA's most recent and that they would be seeking the aid of a federal mediator in what I think a lot of people see as a PR tactic. So yeah. Yeah, it's not great. There are, I suppose, some legitimate uses for a federal mediator. But in this case, it seems like, well, if you want to expedite the negotiations, you could maybe make a counteroffer. You could maybe budge a bit more from some of your deeply entrenched positions or entertain the possibility of discussing some things that you ruled off limits before the negotiations, if you can call them that, started. Or maybe you could meet more frequently. All of these seem like viable options. So sometimes you bring in a federal mediator and just having someone else in the room, a neutral party, can help move things along. Sometimes it could help get certain parties together. If one side is not being reasonable, then maybe the mediator could tell them that. So there are legitimate applications for this type of intervention. It didn't really work so well in the 94-95 situation. Didn't seem to spur any progress there. And now, just because MLB's other movements don't really seem to be all that good faith or don't give a lot of indication that they are urgently trying to resolve this situation, putting out the call to the federal mediator when it seems like if anyone is impeding progress here, it's probably the owners. That does sort of seem like, hey, they want to say, hey, look, we're trying, we're welcoming in this mediator, and the players association

is rejecting it, and therefore they are the ones who are standing in the way of progress. Right. And I think that when we look at the proposals and counter proposals that have sort of gone back and forth, limited though they have been, around core economic issues, the players have offered concessions from their original positions, right? They have not met the sort of position of ownership, right? They have not conceded their positions, but they have made conciliatory gestures toward trying to resolve some of the big issues like the bonus pool and free agency. And that has not been met with a similar gesture on the ownership side. And so the idea that they have exhausted all possible avenues and require the assistance of a mediator just doesn't seem to comport with reality.

And I think that the players are right to view this as a stall tactic. I know that there has been, you know, in Evan Drelick's piece about this for The Athletic, there were sort of competing views on who the stall necessarily benefits because on the one hand, if you're an owner and you just assume that at some point the union will crack and concede, then delaying is to your benefit. But I wonder if they have an accurate understanding of sort of the player's resolve, because the closer we get to spring training,

and then to actual games, the closer we are to real revenue being lost, that obviously impacts the players too. But it impacts, you know, these ownership groups more immediately, right? Because they make money in spring training, and the players don't. And presumably puts them in the position of being able to say, you know, we want to play baseball and ownership's keeping us locked out. You wanted opening day? Well, we wanted it too, but here we are because of the actions of ownership. So I'll be very curious to see how that plays from a PR perspective. I'm conscious of the fact that I have curated a very particular view of baseball Twitter. And so I never want to assume that this is playing with the average fan the way I see it playing with the fans I choose to follow and also my colleagues in the media who I

think are exhausted by this whole situation and kind of skeptical of the moves of ownership here. But it does seem as if when one side is able to say, you know, we have submitted counter proposals, we stand ready to negotiate, we're at the table, and the other side is like, but we need help getting there, that, you know, one is probably more persuasive than the other. So I don't know, man. And admittedly, the players are trying to regain some ground here. They're trying to get more than they got in the recent CBAs where it seems like they lost ground and they're probably trying to reclaim more than they can actually reclaim in a single round of bargaining.

And they probably know that, that they weren't going to get everything they wanted, but they staked out a stronger position than they have previously. And they're trying to get back some of what they've lost. And it's pretty clear that they have lost it because you can see just the percentage of revenue declining and payroll stagnating or declining. And so I'm sure they thought, we'll set these ambitious targets and we won't get all the way there in one round of bargaining. But the owners just really seem to have dug in their heels and said, yeah, we probably got the better of you in those previous rounds and we're not going keep the upper hand even if that leads to this game of chicken now where games are getting endangered and just reading the lead of the ap piece you just sent me before we started recording by ronald blum it starts locked out players rejected major league baseball's request for federal mediators to enter stalled labor negotiations a move that pretty much

eliminated any chance for an on-time start to spring training and increased the work stoppages threat to opening day. So, you know, whether you frame it as the players rejecting that request is what eliminated that chance, or it's MLB not making a counteroffer eliminated that chance. Maybe it's some combination of both, but we have a deadlock here. And it does seem like the parties will be in the same state next week as well. They'll both be in Florida. There's an owner's meeting. Maybe at that owner's meeting, some sort of progress will be made.

And it sounds like Rob Manfred may make some public comments, which is always just a joy. And maybe the Players Association will respond to those comments. So I guess the positive interpretation is that, hey, they'll be talking. They'll be in the same general region next week. Maybe there will be a break in the deadlock. And then the pessimistic interpretation is that there will just be a lot of public sniping back and forth and not a lot of actual progress. But we are getting to the point now where pitchers and catchers would be just about ready to report.

And we're nowhere close to anything, it seems like. It seems like the only thing they all agree on is that they're all pro-universal DH, which is ironic because that's the thing that baseball fans cannot agree on. Right. Yeah, I guess it's, you know, it is an indication of how bad things are that the idea that like, hey, they're going to be in the same state is like viewed as positive progress in some way, I suppose. think that it's important for media members to think really carefully about how they frame this stuff because I think our general understanding of of how labor negotiations work and what the obligations are under something like collective bargaining are just not very good in the general population and I will fully admit I'm sure you know much more about that process in a in a real way than I do having gone through it and And so I think that it's meaningful and important for us to be really thoughtful about where we're placing blame and responsibility in moments like this. Because yes, I'm sure that the decision on the union's part to not engage in mediation

is playing a role in the sort of negotiations not proceeding in a particular direction. But like, the lockout is ownership initiated right and the the last time there was a proposal sent it was sent by the players association so you know like you didn't have siblings growing up but i did and it's their it's their turn you know that's how these things work when you get in a fight with your sibling and your parents sit you down and they they kind of have a conversation with you it's it's their turn so i do think that it's incumbent upon us as media members to try our very best to sort of identify responsibility in the particular instances and moments that it you know comes up and that doesn't mean that everything that the

union does is perfect and everything that the league does is is evil and misguided right there are going to be moments where where both sides are engaged in chicanery i'm sure but i think that you should wait for chicanery to happen before you kind of muddy the waters right i'm just mixing a bunch of different metaphors here but like you know i don't think that we've been we've been afraid in the past to to point out the moments when, say't work for us and we think it's it's doing a disservice to those players and i think we'll continue to do that but you gotta you know it's an owner initiated lockout like that's just like the fundamental fact is that one so and of course they're not going to lift the lockout now because if they resume bargaining under the old cba and they try to proceed toward opening day they're not going to give the players the option to strike right they're just not going

to do that it would you know they've they've doubled down on this course of action whether we think it's strategically necessary or advisable or not so i don't know it's friday i'm drinking um i'm drinking a spin drift which is generally a you know it's not that it's too fancy a seltzer, Ben. It's just that, like, I'm insulted by the price of this seltzer. I find it to be concerning that seltzer could be this expensive just because they put a little bit of juice in it. But, you know, it's been a not great week in terms of the baseball negotiation news. So I thought I'd let myself have a treat. And I just wish in moments like this that some thought were given on the ownership side, which again is the one that seems disinclined to make concessions in this moment,

that in addition to the game that you are supposedly stewards of and the players' lives and their families, there's an entire ecosystem of people whose livelihoods might depend on there being a baseball season. I don't know, man. Go figure your shit out. It is okay for you to not extract the maximum possible profit in service of giving a fair deal to the players and getting games going again.

I don't view that, at least in this moment, as a both sides problem and as someone who would like to be able to continue to buy not just expensive seltzer but any seltzer at all i humbly request that they get their act together and go back to the table and and figure out a way to get this done in a way that is fair and reasonable and that is going to require them giving up some stuff because the balance is not equal right now. So anyway, I have gone from editorializing about a kind of nothing burger of an AP piece

to giving you my opinion on Spindrift and then asking the owners to get their acts together. But it's a Friday show. Sometimes we're a little looser on Fridays. Yeah, I am guzzling green mint tea as I usually am. So maybe I'm in a more serene mood. I'm not hopped up on seltzer. Yeah, raspberry lime.

It's a very sassy flavor. But I share your sympathies there. And, you know, I think we tend to strike a pro player tone or stance more often on this podcast. But at least speaking for myself, I'd like to think that that's not because of any ideological alignment where I've kind of concluded which side that I'm going to support before I hear the facts or the details, but that I'm approaching these things in as objective a way as I can. Of course, no one can really be objective about anything. And yes, I have been a member of a union myself, although

I am not now because when I was promoted to a role that had a managerial component, I had to leave the union, which I was sorry to do, but I was in it for a while and got to be part of it when the bargaining was going on and developed some appreciation for that process. But just generally, I try to take each situation as it comes. And I don't really like belonging to things or being part of a particular tribe that I just support without really evaluating each case on the merits. I try to do those things. And so I don't know if I would say I'm inherently pro-player because it's the millionaires or the not even millionaires versus the billionaires or that sort of thing. But, you know, I don't always want to belong to things.

Like I'm not registered for a political party. I'm a registered independent, which is partly so I get fewer robocalls and texts. You get fewer robocalls and texts as an independent? I think I do. I think so. Well, you live in New York. Judging by my wife, who is not an independent and seems to get many more than I do. Wow. But that's partly just because, hey, I want to take each candidate and race as they come, sort of. And that means that, yeah, I can't vote in primaries. And sometimes I wish I could, I guess. But, you know, in practice, do I find myself voting for one particular party over the other? Yes, I do. And people can probably guess which one and I won't get into all the reasons right now. But that's a case of evaluating that party's priorities, you know, not because I was brought up to vote for that party

and that's just what I do. And I'm someone who does that regardless of the circumstances, but I'm trying to evaluate the positions and the messages and the candidates and come to a conclusion. And so that leads me more often to one side. And that is also kind of the case when it comes to players versus owners. I've tried to do the research. I've tried to read some of the history of labor negotiations in baseball. And I've tried to follow these current negotiations and see which side is being more fair or trying to work more toward a solution. And it seems to me that that is much more of the players than the owners currently. And so that is at least why I am tending to strike that stance right now.

And if things were reversed and the owners suddenly made a ton of concessions and said, let's get this thing going and the players were the ones suddenly being unreasonable, then I would hope that I would be able to make that point as well and not be bound by an affiliation to either side. So trying to just call it as I see it. And that's just the way that I see it. And I guess that we have seen it lately, at least. Yeah, I think that you want to, you know, we're data people. That sounds terrible.

I don't like that at all. That sentence sounds bad. That sounds like I like weird tweets or something. But, you know, I think that we are people who appreciate a robust case being made for something, right? Both because we find it to be more persuasive and because we kind of like to get into the nitty gritty of information and find that to be sort of enjoyable in its own right. And so, yes, I think that we have to um take these things as they come and i think that there are definitely instances where i have felt like i wish that the

union had done that differently for whatever the reason may be but i think that in this particular moment the onus is is much more on on one side than the other and i think that the players are doing a pretty good job of articulating to average fans sort of what the stakes are for this you know our our friend emma bachelory pointed out on twitter before we started recording this is the first cba that we've really had the first lockout that we've had where social media has been a component right and so right now as we're recording max Max Scherzer and Mitch Hanager and James Paxton and Paul Seawald, which I will allow for the sliding scale of impact on these names, right? But those guys are on Twitter right now

articulating what the stakes are as they understand it. It's getting players paid earlier. It's making sure that they can realize more of their value and not be subject to service time manipulation. It's eliminating tanking and trying to restore some amount of meaningful sort of will to win within each franchise so that it is not possible for a team to be content with whatever share of you know revenue sharing and national tv money and the sports book they put in their ballpark is to kind of get by right and i think that you know they're again like i don't want to assume that the entire baseball community cares about the game in

quite the same way i do or views the player ownership interaction the same way i do but i think that that's a compelling case right to? To say, we want to get young guys who don't make as much as veterans paid more. We want teams to want to win. We want the best players on the field as soon as they're ready to be, you know, on a major league diamond. Those are the goals of the union.

And I think that that's pretty compelling. And I guess now ownership should talk about loving the DH. That's not going to win them every fan either. I don't know. I'm a little all over the place, but it's been a frustrating week. So I hope folks will forgive me. Yeah, and I think the players' positions there, it's not necessarily that they have the best interests of baseball in mind

or that it's a noble ideal. I mean, they're trying to get theirs just like the owners are trying to get theirs. But I think the players getting theirs arguably aligns with the best interests of the fans more so than the owners do. So if the players are trying to get owners to spend more and be more competitive, well, that's something that's good for fans, I think. It also happens to be good for players. But I think that if you're a fan and you're just evaluating not only the

fairness of the positions, but hey, is baseball going to be better with the player's vision of the sport or the owner's vision of the sport, then I'd have to say that the former is maybe more compelling. So, all right. I do have some emails and some stat blasts. A couple other quick non-lockout related bits of news. I got a press release about a changing of the guard with umpires. So five umpires out, five umpires in. There are five long-serving MLB umpires who are retiring, all of whom have been in the league for 25 years or more. Field and Colbreth, Kerwin Danley, Jerry Davis, Brian Gorman, and of course, Joe West. He is finally riding off into the sunset, possibly literally, and we will not see Cowboy Joe behind the plate or on a major league field anymore, at least not in his umpiring capacity.

So end of an era for him. him. And then we have five new younger umpires coming in, Ryan Adedon, Sean Barber, John Libka, Ben May, and Roberto Ortiz. And I just wanted to mention this. So Dan Lee was the first African American crew chief in MLB history, so he was a bit of a trailblazer. Roberto Ortiz is the first Puerto Rican-born full-time major league ump, so he's a little bit of a trailblazer. But Joe West, that's the end of an era, obviously certainly left his mark and his stamp on the game. Since 1976, he has been a major league umpire. He has been more of a constant than any of the players over that period, probably any of the owners. I mean, Joe West has just been there for better or worse. It's been a bit of both.

Everyone knew Joe West. He was a character. That was not always a good thing. He would often author ump shows. He certainly put himself in the spotlight more than most would have. And if you go by the old rubric of if you know the umpire's names, then they're messing up somehow. Well, maybe we knew his name because he'd been around forever, but also he considered himself the main attraction at certain times. But he was on the field for a lot of history and played a part in it. And I just wanted to, in addition to saluting him and the other umps who are going away and having some enjoyable retirement, hopefully where no one will be yelling at them about calls, wanted to celebrate the promotion of John Libka, who has come up on the podcast before. Episode 1692, we talked about John Libka because at the time he had been singled out by the Umpire Scorecards Twitter account and website as having a nearly perfect game, an umpire perfect game, which is something that I've written about and tracked before. I think that score was slightly revised, but even so, he has been the most accurate umpire, just like he's been a part-time

ump kind of coming up from AAA to MLB and back again. But if you go by umpscorecards.com's leaderboards for 2021, he was the most accurate umpire of all the umpires, and he was very high in consistency as well. And I think on that episode, I went back to 2008 and looked at umps with at least 4,000 pitches called, and he was at the top as well. So this seems to be an overdue promotion for Libka, at least when it comes to accuracy. And he's only 34 years old. So the incoming umps are all in their 30s or maybe 40. And the outgoing umps are significantly older than that. And there has been some research that has shown that younger umps tend to be more accurate than older umps, not necessarily because of their age, but because of when they came up

and not having the preconceived notions of what the zone is or being able to define their own zone. The younger umps have been only part of baseball since post-Quest Tech, post-PitchFX, post the zone evaluation system where they get feedback from MLB about pitch tracking technology after every game, on every call. And so the younger umpires tend to conform more closely to the rulebook definition of the zone than the older umpires. And so they tend to be more accurate and more consistent compared to the older umps. And so if that's your ideal, that you want it to be consistent and match the rulebook, then generally it's a good thing. And of course, we might just be a few years away or who knows, maybe less from robo zones because we're going to have robot umps in some AAA parks this season, which is quite a leap.

AAA West, right? Yeah, I think so. So I don't know how long John Lipka will actually be able to make calls on Boston Strikes in the big leagues, but looking forward to his work behind the plate because he has been the best on record. Yeah, it seems like an area where, you know, there is benefit, I would imagine, to be gained from experience, but you also want, I think a changing of the guard there is probably useful. And you do want, you want to strike the right balance between seniority and sort of demonstrated merit. And hopefully we can celebrate their promotion and be excited for them and then never have to think about their names ever again. And the only other thing I wanted to mention, football has been in the news for, well, many reasons this week, but some bad reasons.

There is the Brian Flores lawsuit, right, where he is alleging and providing some evidence of discrimination when it comes to hiring. And this is an issue that we talked not long ago to Shakia Taylor about on this podcast about the baseball context and about the underrepresentation of some racial groups and leadership positions on the field or in the front office. And certainly the same sort of thing has been going on seemingly in the NFL for a long time, and that's all coming to a head in this lawsuit. But another allegation that has come to light in this suit, though, is related to tanking. And Brian Flores was the Dolphins' head coach, and part of this is the contention that the Dolphins' owner had offered to pay Flores

a $100,000 bonus for every loss. And then there was a subsequent allegation that the same thing had been happening with the Cleveland Browns, that Hugh Jackson, who lost 31 of 32 games as head coach for the Browns during the 2016 and 2017 seasons, had also had some similar arrangement with the Browns owner at the time. And it's odd. It seems like Jackson kind of confirmed that or lent some credence to that and then maybe walked it back a bit. But all of this is kind of coming to light, coming to a head here with multiple teams now. And this seems like one of those situations where something bad is happening in another sport that maybe baseball can skate by and not have the same issue, but I don't know for sure. And that's what I was wondering, because we talk about tanking problems

in baseball, right? But it's kind of a different type of tanking problem, I think. Generally, it's not trying to lose the actual games that you're playing. it's trying to put a less than competitive team on the field at times. Right. The order of operations is different, right? Yeah. You try to lose before the game starts. Exactly.

Yeah. You want to be taking an L before you've ever taken the field. That's what we're aiming for. Yeah. So I sort of doubt that you'd have exactly this arrangement. And again, this hasn't been proven yet, but certainly a lot of smoke. And it is not implausible that something like this could have been happening in the NFL or in the NBA for that matter, because there's a lot of incentive to tank for the pick because a high draft pick, that can mean everything that can turn your franchise around in the NFL or even in the NBA where you have a draft lottery which you don't in the NFL which seems wild that that hasn't happened but there's a lot of incentive to do this because you can get a high pick who can just step

in the very subsequent season and be your franchise player for however many years and one player if you get a great quarterback, that really changes the direction of your franchise more so than getting one star in baseball. And in baseball, you can't even count on getting a star necessarily. And the difference between the number one pick and the number two or three, I mean, there definitely is a difference historically speaking there, but even the number one is not a slam dunk to mix sports metaphors. So I think there's less incentive to do that in baseball. I think the incentives for tanking come from being able to trade away all of your veterans and stockpile rookies and inexpensive players, lower payroll, and just sort of set your

sights on a different time horizon from the currently contending teams. So there's a big advantage to doing that, but it's not one that's realized right away. And I don't think it's one that's primarily realized through the draft picks, at least in the current CBA. Maybe in earlier CBAs, there was more incentive to do that. But in baseball, A, you have many more games. So I guess you'd have to pay your manager a lot less per game or you'd end up spending a fortune. And also, I don't know that a baseball manager, do you think a baseball manager could throw games as effectively as a football manager or even a basketball manager? manager and I know they're not called managers in the sports but like you know there's so much strategy that goes into that and calling plays and actually like lining players up and deciding

the course of events more so than in baseball where you can certainly have an impact and you can make pitching changes or pinch hitters or that sort of thing but often it's like largely out of the manager's hands so like even if you were to come up with some suspiciously bad batting order or something like right that's hardly a guarantee that you're gonna lose that game like it might cost you a couple wins over the course of a season maybe if you have like a totally backward batting order but otherwise i feel like it's maybe tough for an mlb manager to do that even if you wanted to and i don't think there's nearly the same incentive to right i agree that i think particularly like in in in the year of our lord 2020 like the incentives have shifted i think that when we think about what is sort of holding teams back from fully embracing competitiveness wow

that's a real passive voice way of framing that, isn't it? So when we think about the incentives and sort of the factors that enable teams to decide that they're not going to try very hard to win, those sometimes are about tanking and sometimes are about accruing a high draft pick. But often they are facilitated by, as we've talked about a lot lately, like other revenue streams that are available to teams. So there's that component of it. But in terms of how easy it would be to do, I think it is harder. And I think the ways that you could do it that would seem the most effective would also be really brazen, right?

Like you'd have to make disastrously bad like pitching decisions in order to to really try to put your thumb on the scale and i i think that if for no other reason than mlb is also trying to get in the gambling business and i'm sure that the nfl got a very um panicked and stern call from their official gambling partners when this part of the story broke but i think that you would get some feedback from the league office pretty quickly which is a funny thing right it's it's a funny thing because like we said like teams tank teams take steps back teams say we're not in a competitive phase right now and is it morally different if you're if you say that in spring training so that everybody knows what to expect versus what the Dolphins may have done where they weren't explicitly in a rebuild and folks might have had expectations that they would try to win?

I don't know. That's a sticky, thorny kind of question. Sticky and thorny. Terrible plant. kind of question sticky and thorny terrible yeah i think in a way it's worse maybe to inflict it on the players on the field at that time just because yeah i mean it's not great either way but if you're at least letting the players give their all and not putting them in more of a position to lose i mean again it's like the gm tanking versus the head coach tanking versus the players tanking. No one is saying that the players were paid to lose or were trying to lose. But

if the coach is calling less than advantageous plays in the moment, that seems cruel in a different way to me than just putting less able players on the field and saying you guys aren't great but we will let you do your best out there as opposed to like a combination of both where maybe you don't have great players and then also you're actively sabotaging those players in real time yeah i completely agree and like not for nothing not that guys can't get hurt and hurt very badly in baseball but it strikes me as a particularly callous disregard for football where the risk of catastrophic injury is just so high. These guys are in a car accident once a week,

and that's their job is to just be in a car wreck once a week in terms of the toll that it takes on their bodies. So I think I find it distasteful no matter the context. I think you're right that there is an appreciable difference between sort of being forthright with it and and clearly allowing the players you have to perform to the best of their ability while picking those players because their best might be appreciably worse than other people's and taking guys who have one understanding of what their project is and putting them in a position to lose without them knowing so that you can win more hopefully the following year like i that does strike me as um particularly distasteful although i'm not really a fan of it regardless so i don't

know i think between the ability to resist huge financial incentives and the courage to probably risk his career to bring this lawsuit to try to make things better for other coaches who might come after him, seems like a pretty impressive guy. All right. Let's try to speed through some emails here because we got some good ones. Michael says, Michael is a Patreon supporter. says, Michael is a Patreon supporter, as an annual MLB at Bat subscriber, I find it frustrating that as the season winds down, I need a cable subscription to watch live playoff

games. I suppose I could sign up for a live TV package for a month, Hulu live TV, YouTube TV, etc. But I would much rather pay some additional MLB at Bat fee to watch the playoffs live, especially since some live TV packages only give you half the channels needed to watch all the games.

Do you think MLB would ever allow this? I believe that Bat gives you access to all the games sometime after they have completed, but isolating myself from all baseball news for this period is, well, next to impossible. And this is a dilemma I face every October too. I don't know how you handle this, but I still haven't cut the cord, which is ridiculous. Really? I mean, I have a bunch of streaming services and I am just paying through the nose for no reason. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You have all the streaming services and you have cable?

Yeah. I mean, I'm not paying for every streaming service that I have access to. We do have some family sharing events that are happening here, but I have access to. We do have some family sharing that are happening here. But I have kept cable and really shouldn't and keep meaning to cancel it. And a large part of why I don't is just because it's such a hassle. Every October it rolls around

and I want to and have to watch a bunch of baseball games. And it's just easy to do that when I have a cable subscription. But other than that, I just use it so rarely these days, like maybe to watch The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, but that's on Hulu the next day anyway. And every now and then there's maybe some breaking news or some speech or press conference or something, but you can always just kind of follow that online or on

Twitter. So really it's ridiculous. I mean mean, I used to have multiple cable boxes. I don't anymore. I've cut down there at least. But I've got to get rid of the last one at this point. It is just nuts that I haven't yet. And really, baseball is a large part of why I don't because I don't even watch many other sporting events. I mean, occasionally someone will want to watch one at my house, but for the most part,

not so much. So I have every reason to stop subscribing and then I'll have to figure out what to do. So there are various other solutions, right? I mean, there is that kind of janky MLB way where you can watch it like without commentary, which might not be the worst thing sometimes, but you get all kinds of odd camera angles really weird angles that way it's not ideal but i don't know what you do i know a lot of people do youtube tv or hulu live or there are also times where i will just stream it through my cable provider which i can do like when we do our patreon live streams sometimes i can just access one of those

again, because I'm already subscribing to cable. But it would be nice if just having my usual way of watching MLB games continued to watch during the playoffs. But I guess that's why you get huge broadcast deals, right? That other people get to carry those games and you have to watch those channels to watch them or at least subscribe to one of these other solutions well i have hulu live with like i have hulu with live tv i wish the commercials would go away they're really annoying should be able to not see commercials for things you already pay for that's another thought i have anyway just because my regular sports consumption in other parts of the years is enough to justify just having that as an option.

Although Hulu Live does not get all of the channels that MLB playoff games are broadcast on. Because it doesn't get MLB Network currently. So, you know, sometimes that means you have a friend who has the unblacked out MLB TV. And some of it means that you just like as a hypothetical solution to that problem. And then another hypothetical solution is to do like a month of overlap with YouTube TV because I think they do get MLB network. If you want to keep things on the up and up. This is making me want to evaluate all the streaming services I pay for. I also don't pay for all of mine i mean like some of them allow you to have a family plan in a yeah in a legal way

and those are the only ones truly that's it those are the only ones that have them yeah and i get my cable tv through the same provider that gives me my internet and also threw in a landline for free. I feel so old. They'd love to give you those landlines, don't they? All right, I guess. I'll take a landline if it's not going to cost me anything extra. Has anyone ever called you on it? Very rarely. If I do like a radio interview or something, I'll give them the landline because maybe it'll sound a little bit better.

Sure, sure. No, I mean, i get spam calls on it i'm sure i don't even have the ringer turned on so i wouldn't know if someone did call me but very few people have the number anyway it's just inertia that i haven't gotten rid of that yet and maybe this october will be the impetus for me to do that or maybe even before then of course that is contingent on actually having baseball games to watch. So hopefully that would be a good problem to have. All right. Kevin, Patreon

supporter, says, forgive me for using your episode as a help column. That's what we're here for, to help sometimes. But I have a serious life dilemma and could use your guidance. I'm a soon to be parent and Yankees fan living in New York City, but I'm married to a lovely Red Sox fan.

Do I have a moral or ethical obligation to not put my thumb on the scale when it comes to our child's fandom? Am I obligated to at least consider exposing our child to a more neutral team like the Mets or another sport altogether? The Brooklyn Cyclones are a realistic alternative and they're closer than both Yankee Stadium and Citi Field. Sadly, the Staten Island Yankees are no more. Surely it's better for our child that they do not grow up a Red Sox fan living in New York City. What's the right thing to

do here? And particularly for Ben, do you have plans to foster sports fandom with your child, or will you take more of a wait-and-see approach to gauge their interest? Well, as the non-parent on this podcast i feel like i should go first because clearly my opinion is the best informed one well as a parent of a four-month-old yeah i have a much more informed yeah but you know you got you've got a

at least four months ahead start although i've been an aunt for quite a while so like that maybe that counts here too i think that my general opinion on sports fandom and kids is that like children should be exposed to all kinds of things just to see what they end up liking and the answer to that might be very different than what you like and the answer to that also might change over time and they might not be into baseball when they're young and get into it later they might think baseball super keen when they're a little kid and then like later they're like i love fortnite i'm gonna stream and then then you have to be amped about that for them so i think that letting kids experience a lot of different things and find what they find compelling themselves whether it's sports

or anything else is probably just a good way to go because kids will surprise you and like all kinds of stuff and provided it's not harmful stuff like that seems cool yeah so there's that part of it i think you should raise uh your kid to be a raise fan no i i think that like take take your kid to a yankees red sox game is that a good parenting decision like is that kind to a Yankees-Red Sox game, is that a good parenting decision? Is that kind to a child? Is that exposing them to good stuff? Maybe the Mets are the best option. That seems like heartbreak.

Yeah, a neutral team that you both root against probably. Yeah. I don't know. It's tough. I see what Kevin's saying about, do you want this kid to feel like they're growing up in enemy territory or would that be a good learning experience? Would it toughen them up to have to endure Yankees fans' taunts? I don't know. But I didn't have that experience of growing up behind

enemy lines fandom-wise, so I can't testify to that, but it doesn't seem like it would be great I think you'd rather have that sense of belonging but then does that make things tough at home because you're married to a Red Sox fan and then you feel like it's an unequal partnership in some way I'm probably gonna skirt this issue because I'm not a fan of any particular team anymore, and neither is my wife. She's a Shohei Otani fan, and Sloan has spent some time staring at my Shohei Otani giveaway pillow from an Angels game last year that a listener sent me, and she seems taken with him already. But other than liking Otani, I don't know. I would assume that this is the kind of thing where I wouldn't necessarily set out to indoctrinate the kid as a Yankees fan, just in the interest of harmony at home, maybe. But you kind of will win this thing by default, probably, just because the Yankees are here and the Red Sox are there. And so if you're going to take the kid to games, then it's going to be Yankees games, at least more often than Red Sox games.

And so probably naturally you will just develop an affection for Yankees, which is what happened to me because I live fairly near Yankee Stadium and the Yankees were good at the time. And so I became a Yankees fan for a while. So I would think just letting it take its course. fan for a while so i would think just letting it take its course i mean like i don't know if if you're watching a lot of yankees games at home i don't think it needs to have like an equal time rule necessarily where one person's watching yankees and another parent is watching red socks and and you have to send the kid back and forth between the rooms to get exposed to the two. I don't know. Maybe just try to teach the kid to love baseball one way or another and then let the child decide. Yeah. I don't know if it's possible to take your thumb off the scale entirely just because

the parents have affiliations with teams and they're going to be following those teams and talking about those teams and watching those teams more often than others. So it might just happen, but I haven't really had that experience yet of figuring out how much I want to try to mold my daughter in my own image and how much I want her to let her find her own interests. I mean, I will have to spend a lot of time with her and teach her things. So it'd be nice if she enjoyed things that I also enjoy, I think. And probably just from an ego perspective, it would be cool to feel like I made a mini me who liked the things that I liked also. But I also don't want to limit her by just only exposing her to things that I already like. So I'd say just take its course, except for the

fact that most kids probably do come to fandom through the lens of a particular team, not just the sport in general. So just in the interest of hooking them, getting them into it young, maybe it is wise to start with one team or another. I think that as long as your understanding of what it means for the kid to be a fan is pretty broad and allows for them to sort of like what they like within it, then just expose them to both and see what's what. I will say that raising a Red Sox fan in New York doesn't sound like it would go well. Life is hard enough on its own. We don't have to create challenges for children. We seem to stumble into them just fine without our assistance so there's that piece

of it but i don't know like take the kid to to a game and like see what what sticks i remember we took my niece to a mariners game and they were playing the rockies and she had a great time because she like got to eat a hot dog and also have candy and play on the play structure. And then she was wearing a hat in the same color scheme as mine. And she said, our hats are the same. That's silly. Because she was a little kid. And then I don't remember who it was.

I think it was Charlie Blackman hit a home run. And Willa cried out in excitement for the home run. Because when you're a little kid, home runs are exciting. You don't care who hit them. And so, you know, if they demonstrate enthusiasm for the thing, I think that build on that and then kind of see where it goes or just raise the kid to be an Otani fan. have a version of fandom that is less about a team and is more about individual players and, you know, particular guys who you like and enjoy watching. And that can be a more neutral kind of experience because it doesn't have to be a Yankee or a Red Sox. You know, they still got to change all these sex because it's it jams me up. But that would be an approach to it, right? I'm sure that

Sloan will mostly think that Showa Yotani's cool and whatever else goes on with baseball might be secondary to that, and that'd be fine. Yeah. The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry complicates it. If you were fans of two teams that were not rivals, this would be pretty simple. You could potentially be a fan of both, especially if they were in different leagues. It's hard to be a fan of the Yankees and the Red Sox. I mean, I'm all for rooting for your team without necessarily hating another, but with those two teams in particular, it's hard to be the why not both meme person. You kind of have to pick a side probably, but I don't know if it were like yankees and mets i'd say hey you can like both they can coexist it's okay i know a lot of people

feel differently about that but i would be fine with rooting for both you have an al team and an nl team in this case it's complicated but yeah i would say just let things take their course maybe and let your son or daughter just pick their affiliation or decide not to have one entirely. That's okay, too. Yeah, it's fine to, you know, just enjoy things, enjoy different things, enjoy some things, and then move on from them. We can just be flexible. All right. Question from Andrew, Patreon supporter.

As a Brit, where we have zero sports culture of halls of fame, and I think this applies across Europe, why is it there is so much emphasis slash discussion slash other stuff about it and who gets in? People here still enjoy discussing the best of different eras, but we have zero of the rituals, let alone a soccer Cooperstown of any kind. soccer Cooperstown of any kind. The supplement to this is that I have to listen to quite a few NFL press conferences for employment purposes, not voluntarily, and the abject way they appear to bow before the sport and say what an honor it is to play seems to point to me that U.S. sports culture demand the athletes venerate their sport in a way that, again, is pretty alien to my British Euro sensibilities. Maybe the Hall feeds this. I find it all the more bizarre in the NFL where they grovel before something that gradually turns their brains into goo, but that's another story. This is also more of an observation slash topic than a question, but it may prompt a conversation.

So yeah, just briefly, I am not aware of that mindset of not having or caring about halls of fame because it is such a big deal in baseball. And I think it was Joe Posnanski pointed out recently that he's always thought it was a cool thing about baseball that baseball fans take the Hall of Fame so seriously and that, you know, other sports have their things and baseball has the Hall of Fame and other sports obviously have Halls of Fame too, but people don't pay nearly as much attention to it and it's not considered maybe quite as precious an honor and it doesn't lead to as much debate and joy and celebration when someone does get in or rancor when someone doesn't get in and joe is saying that as of now he's not sure that it actually is a good thing that this is so important for baseball because the conversation has become so tiresome.

And as for why it is, I mean, it's just it's been around for a while now. So that's probably part of it. And baseball fans just really love stats and arguing about who's the best. And the stats have maybe changed a little less in some respects than other sports have. Stats have maybe changed a little less in some respects than other sports have. And it is just considered so special that it does cause a great stir. And yeah, I'm not sure it is a great thing at this point. In many years, it has been good to have the Hall of Fame to talk about, have some subject that people actually care about when no games are going on.

But in recent years, even when there's a lockout and there's nothing else to discuss, the Hall of Fame has not been a topic that has brought a lot of happiness to most people, probably. Why is it so contentious? Are we just overly precious with history in baseball? Is that it? which is which is good i mean we like history it's one of the big selling points of baseball is that it has a lot of history and it's rich history and you can tell the story of the country and its people through baseball in a way i mean that is a feature not a bug but in recent years just because of the character clause and all of that. It has become kind of a mess. And I don't know the exact sequence of events, but I think, you know,

the NFL used to have a character clause in its Hall of Fame as well. And then I think maybe Lawrence Taylor's candidacy was the precipitating event where he ran afoul of the character clause, but everyone wanted Lawrence Taylor in, so they just sort of jettisoned the character clause, and now there isn't one, really. And I certainly see the argument for not having one in Baseball's Hall of Fame as well, and just divorcing the conversation entirely from character. We don't need to revisit that whole discussion. But yeah, I think it is tied up with the veneration of history and the nostalgia and the roots and the myth at this point, I suppose you could say, of the American pastime

and all of that. And so it's not just you're a great baseball player and so you're in the hall. It actually means something about your morals and your character. Yeah, I suppose that that's true i mean i guess the other halls are you know they have they have their way around this which is just to vote on stats and they go from there's a lot less sort of surprise and contention about who's going to get in so there's that piece of it and i think that you're right there's something about the veneration of the history generally that requires the individuals who are going to be woven into its fabric in like a meaningful way and have a plaque on the wall but i don't think that it has to be quite like this but i think that if we're going to have a hall of fame discourse that is more about

an appreciation for particular rich careers and and the sport as it as it's played then we probably have to get rid of the plaques. I think the presence of the plaques really throws people for a loop because you're by definition so limited in what you can say about a person on their plaque. Even if we wanted to, even if we thought it was the right use of the plaques to try to take on the entirety of Curt Schilling,

to say, he gets a plaque, to try to take on the entirety of Curt Schilling, right? To say, he gets a plaque, but we're going to tell the whole story right here. You're never going to be able to do that on that little tiny plaque with the complexity that it requires to do it justice, both for his sake and for the broader game's sake to try to confront some of the ugliness that followed his career.

So I think the plaques really hold us back. It's like teeth. Yeah, the plaques hold us back, or just the instructions about what you're supposed to consider could hold us back. Just the idea that it's more than whether you were a good baseball player or just the idea that you're venerating the baseball part without accounting for the other parts as well. So yeah, I think

historically it has not been a bad thing that baseball fans really, really care about the Hall of Fame. It's a good thing and it does help us revisit history and it does keep bringing these names up and allowing us to revisit and appreciate some of these great players and events in baseball history. But in recent years, it really has kind of run off the rails for some ways that are justified and in some ways that reflect positive changes, I think. But it has really just kind of become this morass and it has not made me happier over recent off-seasons, I think. So in that sense, I guess I envy other sports or other countries where Halls of Fame are not necessarily a tradition. All right, question from Devin P. I just listened to your segment on

episode 1805 about Cheho Itani being announced as the cover athlete for the upcoming MLB The Show. While fame is most likely the greatest factor in a player making the cover, that player having a particularly amazing season also is a factor. This made me wonder what the circumstances would have to be for a previously middling veteran role player to make the cover. How good a season would that player have to have in a single year, let's say in Fangraph's War, to actually make the cover of MLB The Show the next? I'm a Yankees fan, so the example I

thought of is, what if Kyle Higashioka next season had a 10-F-4 season out of nowhere at age 32? Would that one incredible season out of nowhere be enough to erase all of his previous mediocrity and lack of fame for him to make the 2023 MLB The Show cover? Oh, what a fun question. Sorry, it's a lot more fun than the hall of fame one that's not a knock on the hall of fame one i'm just sick to death to talk about the hall of fame it's a great question that this is a good question too we have such good listeners i think that the answer to this kind of depends and and higashioka might be a an interesting case for us to think about i think that fans would love the idea of like the make good season, you know, really just incredible transcendent, perhaps MVP level season from a guy, you know, from one of the guys who absent that season, we would be to remember him, but because of this one year,

we're going to always have him as a weird fun fact floating around our brain. I think people would be super into that. That's it. I think that the amount of recruit war you need to have in order to actually make it onto the cover of the game probably depends on which team you're on and whether that team has postseason success because if you're a yankee and you're a random yankee and you put up 10 wins out of nowhere like i think they'd be like that's cool we'll put you on because there's a huge built-in audience

within the game for you and so they don't really have to make the case quite as much as they might otherwise but like if it's a if it's a marlin you know then i think you have to have like that season and like a big post-season moment or something but i think the general concept would be something that people find compelling because one of the tricky things about being a fan is that you assume that really good players will be good forever and so I think people would be forgiving of the idea that this guy's only going to get this one shot, whereas Otani's going to be good for years and years. So he can give up a year on the cover because when is Kyle Higashioka going to have another 10-win season?

What would he have? 10 wins out of him would be... I would watch every game he played if he were on pace for a 10-win season and not like the first week of the season but if i looked up in june and and and kyle higashioka was on on track for like 10 wins i'd be like i guess i'm watching the yankees a lot more now right yeah i mean i guess the precedent is aaron judge who made the cover of mlb the show 18 after a single season, right? He had his huge breakout 2017 where he won Rookie of the Year and he was second in MVP voting and set the rookie home run record and all of that was a huge start, but only a single season. And he had been a prospect,

not a huge prospect. I mean, physically huge prospect, certainly. And, you know, a big prospect also, not like a number one guy, but he was on people's radar, but still exceeded expectations and surprised people with And so he was an enormous star physically and statistically. And so that was how he ended up there. And he was not the middling veteran who came out of nowhere with a great season. He debuted as a great player just right out of the gate. So that led to some hype. So if you had someone who suppressed his own hype by being boring for several seasons and then had the out of nowhere season that would be a tougher sell i mean in a way it's a more remarkable story if someone does that but the main consideration is going to be how many copies of this game are you going to sell because this person is on the cover and with otani i mean arguably face of baseball at least this past season

and you can have your special cool manga themed cover for him as well and there's international appeal and he was famous even before he really made the most of his abilities in mlb and so there are all kind of reasons to have him there and the only reason not to is that he's on the angels and didn't make the playoffs right but i think it would be tough for a higashioka like character to do it on any other team but the inky's but i think you would have to do it in some unprecedented way i mean it's not just that otani was the most valuable player in baseball last year, but he did it in a way that no one else can do and hadn't done in ages and ages. And so he was a singular player. If he had just been a really good hitter or a really good pitcher, I don't know that that would have done it on his team and in his situation. So I think you'd have to have like the best season ever or something, or you'd have to set some prominent record to do it.

You couldn't just have a very valuable year. You'd have to set some famous record or be a very compelling and charismatic personality or make news off the field in some way as well, or you'd have to be a Yankee. So I think there's a limited set of circumstances where it could happen. It couldn't just be your standard seven or eight war season, which might be good enough for you to win an MVP, but I think it would probably have to be more than that, or you just wouldn't be a household name. Yeah, you'd have to be the starting pitcher

who wins the World Series for that team or something. You'd have to be the starting pitcher who wins the world series for that team or something you'd have to set a record you'd have to be it would take more than just i think superlative regular season achievement and you know you're more likely to do all of those things if you have a really incredible season obviously but i do think it would take a little bit more unless you're a yankee or you know i think a red sock How much does the cover athlete really impact sales? I don't know, but I'm sure that they've studied that. So I'd like to see the data. All right.

I've got two more here for the stat blast. Joe says, caveat, I'm a catcher. And so is my friend who asked me my opinion on this. We've both seen probably a million pitches in our lifetime. We've both played through college. We've both coached for years and we think think we know the answer but don't know why. In a game, my buddy Julian or Julian caught a foul tip bunt straight back into his glove. No vertical movement.

Julian or Julian thought the batter should have been out. Instinctually, so do I. The umpire thought differently. We looked online and couldn't find a definitive answer. What say you? And this is one of those weird ones, but I think I have come up with the answer. Just looking at the rulebook, which is normally your territory, but I did a search here and the rulebook defines a foul tip. I feel like I'm the person who's like Merriam-Webster defines X as. But here's a foul tip. I feel like I'm the person who's like, Merriam-Webster defines X as, but here's a foul

tip. A batted ball that goes sharp and direct from the bat to the catcher and is legally caught. It is not a foul tip unless caught, and any foul tip that is caught is a strike and the ball is in play. So according to my reading of this, if it went sharp and direct from the bat to the catcher, which it sounds as if it did, then going by the rulebook, I think it would be treated like any other foul tip, and the batter should not have been out unless he had two strikes on him,

and I don't believe he did because Joe posted this in the Facebook group as well and specified that. So that is my reading of the rule. on him and I don't believe he did because Joe posted this in the Facebook group as well and specified that so that is my reading of the rule foul tips are sort of strange but yeah I think that's the way it is there's uh nothing in the rule book about you know it has to be above head height or something it doesn't get that specific but sharp and direct it sounds like that's what this was so I think the umpire called this correctly. Yeah, that sounds like a reasonable interpretation to me.

I think there should be more visuals in the rulebook. Yeah, that's a good idea. I think that this is the sort of thing that would benefit from a visual. Now, I think that one could kind of get out of control with something like that. And of course, poorly designed graphics might make things more complicated,

but we'll rely a lot on visual imagination for understanding these things. And I think that we would benefit from a couple of little diagrams. Yeah, sure. Anyway, that's my thought on that. I'm so glad you're reading the rule book. I'm just so happy when people read the rule book.

I have friends, you know, and like I can be fun at parties, but I really like it when people engage with the rule book. I just think it tells us interesting stuff. Yeah, I think so, too. All right. And then this question is from Patreon supporter who goes by Now I Only Want to Triumph. be.com lockout icon minutes before opening day 2022 whenever opening day 2022 ends up being how long would it take until we were able to determine who was who assuming that they'd be forced to wear identical names and numbers and that their heights and weights are all the same

as well the only differentiation would be their skills wait but those are related yeah we've answered a version of this i think with mike trout Mike Trout, where it was like, if Mike Trout were disguised as someone else, how long would it take for us to figure out that it was like Mike Trout? He and Hunter Renfro switch places. Like, how long would it take? Or like, what if we weighed him down with coins? Or he ate a lot of meat? You know, we've tried to hob hobble mike trout in a lot of different ways over the years which was a really weird human instinct that we all we didn't choose

what if mike trout had a calf injury that kept him out for almost the entire season because that just seemed like too much of a stretch yeah well can uh well okay so let's let's take the spirit of the the question in the spirit in which it's given. So we would know right away. We'd be able to limit it right away because presumably you still identify them as playing on teams that you know. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing comes down to how much do we get to know?

They don't look like themselves, but do we know what teams they're on? Do they have the same mechanics even though they have like generic numbers and biographical details are their faces i guess they're they're also they're like mannequins out there they're like the mlb field vision yeah right so i guess they have no identifying characteristics because if they had their usual deliveries and swings and batting stances, then you'd be able to tell. And if you force them all to have some generic mechanics, then that would change their performance in a way that would obscure them as well. So if we just assume that, I don't know, we have some kind of face blindness for baseball that just prevents us from knowing who they are, but we only know

the results and we have all the stats, I guess, not just the slash lines or the standard box score stats, but we have the stat cast stuff too. Because if we have that, then we could make some designations, right? I mean, you can tell that this guy who runs really fast is not Yadier Molina right right well and it would be very useful on the pitching side if we have all the underlying data because presumably we know what guys have thrown in the past and so some of the pitch usage stuff might be illuminating and how pitches move and how hard they are thrown might help us to bucket some guys so that would be useful.

On the hitting side, you'd have a sense of handedness, obviously. And I guess that if they all look exactly the same, you can't necessarily tell which ones are hitting and then where they're going in the field. All right? Because you have weird face blindness. Right. So that might make things complicated,

but you'd at least be able to see batter handedness and that would help. I mean, I think it would take a while. Yeah. There are some stats that stabilize quickly. And so things like swing rates and strikeout rates, I mean, you start to see play discipline stats, and you can probably identify at least some attributes and traits fairly quickly. I'm not going to say you'd have 100% certainty, but if you had an entire season, certainly you'd be able to recognize the outliers pretty rapidly.

There are some players who are just generic in a lot of ways, and so I don't know that a single season would be enough to tell. And something like BABIP, for instance, I mean, you're just not going to get enough of a sample even in a full season to be able to identify with any certainty who's who or who's not who. But I think you could do a decent job. If I had to pick a number out of thin air. I'd say with a high probability, you could identify like 70% of players after a full season or something just because like if you have their pitch stats and their spin rates and pitch types and velocities and then you also have their exit speeds and their sprint speeds and all of that i think you know there's not a ton of separation in some of those stats but i think yeah something like three quarters of players assuming of course that you have some baseline i mean there are some players who've never played in the big leagues before and so you're not going to have anything to go on and you can maybe know that they're not holdover players but and you're going to get like

injured guys wrong probably. It would probably be difficult to differentiate between, say, an injured player, like a previously good injured player and a previously bad, still bad player. And you'd get the breakouts wrong because you'd be so reliant on there being some amount of consistency year to year

in both the level of production and its particular shape i don't know that i think it would be 70 but i think that over the course of an entire season you'd get a majority of the of the population right or at least that you'd be able to feel confident about but it would be a lot less fun it would be such a strange way to watch baseball i mean like that's an obvious thing to say but like imagine how odd it would be you watch a half inning of baseball and you've seen a couple of guys at bat and then the half inning turns over and those same guys go back out onto the field and you're like who were you Did you just do a thing?

I mean, I guess, no, that's not quite right. You would get some hints because at least within an inning because whoever was at the plate last and then maybe whoever was on deck would need a second to get their stuff. And if they were a catcher, they might have to put on gear. So you'd get some subtle hints, but I don't think in a way that would allow you

to keep track inning to inning and certainly not game to game that would be i think that we should have players we can see who have human faces is maybe what i think i can support that position yeah and and that can be whatever shape and size they are because that's that is a cool thing about the sport also all the different kinds of of bodies that can play it and do it at a high level. That's one of its coolest things. We'd be missing out on that. All right. Let's close with a stat blast.

They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting data, Okay, this is really an assortment of stat blasts. This one was submitted by a Patreon supporter, Michael. I did none of the work here. I'm just going to read Michael's research. He writes, Your conversation about trade trees inspired me to look at dinger trees, which should be pretty self-explanatory, but in case it's not,

it's player A homers off player B, who homers off player C, who homers off, etc., etc. So he went back using RetroSheet to 1900 for regular seasons only, and he looked for the longest Dinger Trees. And it turns out, and I haven't verified any of this, but I will trust Michael. He's a discerning sort. He supports the podcast on Patreon, so I don't doubt his comput Whitehill, and then Firpo Marbury homered off of Sam Gray, and then Bill Dietrich homered off of Tom Foley. So that is more than 60 years and 18 steps. That is a long and complicated tree. And of course, you know, there's not perfect play-by-play data for early years, so you would be missing some of that information. But that's a long tree. Now, the longest tree in terms of time elapsed starts at the same place, but it goes further. So it starts with Sam Gray homering off of Earl White Hill and then Firpo Marbury off of Sam Gray, etc., etc. But it goes via a different path to David Ross homering off of Mark Grace on September 2, 2002. So 1928 to 2002, there was a Dinger

Tree. Now the longest active Dinger Tree, if we have a home run that happened in 2021 and trace it as far back as we can, we get all the way back to 1991. So I will read this sequence here. the way back to 1991. So I will read this sequence here. September 22nd, 1991, Ramon Martinez off of Tom Glavin, then Pete Shurik off of Ramon Martinez, Rick Reed off of Pete Shurik, Robert Person off of Rick Reed, A.J. Burnett off of Robert Person, Jake Arrieta off of A.J. Burnett, Williams-Astadillo off of Jake Arrieta, and then famously, Jermaine Mercedes off of Williams-Astadillo off of Jake Arrieta, and then famously, your mean Mercedes off of Williams-Astadillo. That's right. So that homer, which caused the whole unwritten rules flap. That's right. That is the longest active dinger tree.

So this is fun. And Michael determined that 19% of all home runs hit in MLB history were hit off of someone who had already hit a home run in their career, which is, I guess, a fun fact. And one thing I wondered, you know, I guess the universal DH endangers dinger trees because you're going to have fewer pitchers hitting home runs. Not that many of them hit home runs these days, but at least some do. However, position player pitching is still at its peak. And unless that changes, and there could be some rules changes that might suppress position player pitching, but that could keep the Dinger tree alive, even in the universal DH era. So thank you to Michael for this concept of the dinger tree inspired by trade trees which we talked about last week so that was fun another one here that was

prompted by a recent discussion of ours so luis wrote in to say that he enjoyed our discussion of jack grainy and his three and two Jack nickname on episode 1803. That is the Cleveland player turned broadcaster who is now receiving the Ford Frick Award from the Hall of Fame. And he turned himself from a wild pitcher into an extremely disciplined hitter whose whole value was tied up and just taking a lot of pitches and working a lot of walks. And so Luis said, who is today's three and two guy? And would that have a positive or negative connotation? What would be the best possible signature count today? Knowing what we know, I think a three one count as a signature count would speak pretty well of your approach that you can take strikes as well

as balls, but aren't too passive at the plate. A three two hitter like Jack today would tell you that, yeah, he wears out pitchers with balls and foul balls, but also that whatever damage he does, Yeah. I mean, that'd be the most advantageous if you're constantly getting into 3-0 counts. You probably have the best outcomes. So I guess that's something. I don't think there's as much value in working counts these days because even if you tire out the old soup bone of the pitcher that you're facing. They bring in a new soup bone. Yeah, right. There will be a fresh bone ready to come in from the bullpen. So I think there's maybe still some value to that.

And there's still some value in the familiarity effect. And there tends to be a bigger times through the order penalty if you have seen more pitches off of that pitcher in an earlier plate appearance. So there's still something to it. But I'm not sure that grinding out plate appearances is quite as valuable as it once was when pitchers were expected to pitch complete games. But related question from Kyle, Patreon supporter, episode 1803's mention of the nickname 3-2 Jack got me thinking that's a pretty cool nickname. And we often bemoan the decline of cool baseball nicknames. So if you were going to assign that nickname to a current player, who would it be? Some candidates, Kyle says, Juan Soto led all MLB hitters with 140 3-2 counts in 2021 and was really good in those plate appearances, posting a 276-607-500 slash line, the highest OPS for any player, to reach 3-2 100 times.

I especially like him as a candidate because 3-2-1 has a punny element to it. The active career leader in 3-2 counts, as you almost certainly guessed, is Joey Votto with 1,568. Votto goes full in about 19% of all plate appearances. Finally, assuming I did the search right, among players with at least 2,500 career plate appearances, the active leader in percentage of plate appearances that go 3-2 is Miguel Sano with 21.1%. Soto, Aaron Judge, and Joey Gallo all have slightly higher percentages, but fewer than 2,500 career plate appearances. So what do you think? Can we pass down the three and two moniker to someone from this list?

And I said, those are all reasonable choices, but I don't think they're quite right because I think those hitters are all too good. Their value is not dependent on working full counts they all hit titanic home runs too I mean when you think of Soto you definitely do think of the plate discipline but he also has a ton of power and when you think of you know Gallo certainly or Sano or Judge it's like yeah the tape measure shots right I mean they are well-rounded offensive players. They don't necessarily all hit for average, but they can do more than just work a walk. Whereas Jack Graney, I guess he had some speed, but at the plate, he was pretty much a one-tool player. He had great plate discipline and patience and could work walks,

but that was all he had going for him he was a career 250 354 342 hitter so he had a higher career on base percentage than slugging percentage which is partly because he played a lot of his career in the dead ball era but also he just did not have a lot of pop did not hit for high averages by the standards of the day all he could do is work walks so i think you need someone who is good at working walks and that's their whole thing, which I don't think applies to Soto or Votto who are just really great all-around hitters. So I don't know if I have a perfect answer here. I would welcome submissions and suggestions, but I did look on Baseball Savant just since 2008, minimum 3,000 pitches. And I just looked for hitters who

had the highest percentage of the pitchers they faced come in 3-2 counts. And Soto is at the top, and Acuna is up there, Reese Hoskins. And number seven is Brandon Belt, decent choice, I think. But number eight is Roberto Perez, which I didn't expect but roberto perez you don't maybe think of his plate discipline all that much because you don't think of him as a hitter at all right you think of him as a good gold glove catcher but he is patient he's still a bad hitter but his career line is 206 297 360 so 360. So it's not a good on-base percentage, but given that he hits 206 and in recent years has hit a lot lower than that, I mean, having a mid-250s or high-290s OBP when you're hitting in the low 200s or mid-100s, you're still working a fair amount

of walks, even though pitchers don't really have to be afraid of you so in that sense you know he's seeing many more three two counts than you would expect him to given his overall offensive productivity but he's still a terrible hitter whereas Jack Graney was like a league average hitter so that's still kind of a knock on him. So I don't know that I have a perfect answer here. Robbie Grossman comes to mind, except that he hits for a lot of power. He hit 23 homers this year. Prior to that, he was someone who worked walks and didn't hit for much power and does see a fair amount of 3-2 count, so someone like that, I think. But I welcome write-in votes for the new 3-2 Jack, someone who is a decent hitter but not a great hitter, and almost all of his value is tied up in seeing a lot of 3-2 pitches and work and walks. Yeah, it's just the baseline thump of a major leaguer now is so much higher.

Right, that's the problem yeah that it does make it hard to find a perfect comp uh because the game is just really different than it was then but yeah i think that we can like prez is a good option that's that's certainly closer i think to the spirit of yeah of uh of days past than like juan soto where it's just like oh you mean like the best hitter in the league yeah are you trying to identify the best hitter in the league because we have other names that we have for those guys so no definitive answer there write in and let us know yeah all right please give us the thing to talk about why don't you last thing i do have an answer to this one this was a question submitted by Miranda, who says,

I stumbled on this article from 2010 about the Pareto principle applying pretty well to baseball, specifically the 2009 MLB season. I was just curious if it still holds up for today's game. So the Pareto principle, Pareto principle, I've seen it pronounced multiple ways, So the Pareto principle, Pareto principle, I've seen it pronounced multiple ways, but it's this idea that often about 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. And it's not a hard and fast rule. It doesn't apply to every field, but it is sometimes called the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few, or it has even fancier names than that, the principle of factor sparsity. But it was named after an Italian economist, and this dates back to the

late 19th century. And the idea is that often, I guess the original formulation of this was that about 80% of the land in Italy was owned by about 20% of the population. And this is kind of a handy rule that applies to various other things. And so Miranda linked to a 2010 Beyond the Box score post by Jeff Zimmerman, who now writes for Rotographs. And Jeff examined whether this applied. And Jeff examined whether this applied. I guess this originally came up maybe at the Freakonomics blog and was inspired by a book called Stumbling on Winds by David Barry and Martin Schmidt. And they found that approximately 80% of the winds appeared to be produced by 20% of the players. And so Jeff was examining whether that was true. And he found that in the 2009 season, it generally worked fairly well, that it was like 84% of the war was produced by the top 15% of the players or something like that. And so it kind of applied to baseball. And I was curious, as was Miranda, about whether this would still

apply. And I think it has become less applicable over time and that that actually pertains to maybe some of the sources of dissatisfaction with the labor market that is causing the sandstill that we were talking about at the beginning of the episode. So what I did is I went to the Fangraphs Combined War Leaderboard, and I exported it for various years. Didn't look at every year, but I looked at 10-year increments, basically. And first I went all the way back to 1921, and I found that if you look at the top 20% of players that year by war, they produced about 76% of the total war. Then I fast forwarded all the way to the start of the expansion era, 1961. That year,

it was 79% of the war produced by the top 20% of players. 1971, it was 82% of the war Then I went to 82 because 81 was a strike shortened year In 82 it was 79.7 so about 80% of the war again 1991 same neighborhood 83.1 2001 84.3 And then as I mentioned in 2009 it was also right around 84%. Now, 2011, it got up to 86.3%. 2019, the last full season before the pandemic shortened season, it was up to 87.3%. And 2021, most recent year, it was up to 87.8%.

I don't know for sure that that's a record because I didn't check every single year, but I think it probably is. It certainly was a record among all of the years that I did check. And I think that makes sense because you have more and more players every year, right? So when I was looking at 1921, there were like 492 players when I exported the combined war leaderboards. I was looking at the top 98 of 492. This past season, 1,508 players. And I was looking at the top 302 out of 1,508. And I think it makes sense because as we have discussed, more and more players are appearing every year and also a higher percentage of those players are making the league minimum when they're in the major leagues and are just in these interchangeable roles where they're just in the back of the bullpen and they're shuffling back and forth from the big leagues to AAA and maybe they're just replacement players or they don't have much time to accrue value. And so I think there's this long tail now of MLB players who are not producing a lot of value because A, they're maybe not great and B, they're not getting much playing time. And so if you look at the top players, they're now accounting for, if you round up, about 90% of the value, whereas historically speaking, it was 80% if you round to the nearest 10. So I think that reflects the actual changes in the way

that players are being used these days, which also has some bearing on what players are asking for here and trying to raise the league minimum salary and get players paid earlier in their career, etc. Just because more of the playing time has shifted, as Travis Sochik and others have shown, has shifted toward players in these kind of interchangeable paid the league minimum roles. It is more imperative that the Players Association try to get those players paid. So I think that is reflected in the fact that MLB no longer seems to map on to the Pareto principle very well. to be compensated as they go through the arbitration process and the impact of the minimum salary increases i would point you to some of the good work that ben clements has done in the last little bit he looked at what the pre-art bonus pools would mean for players what the minimum salary increases would mean for players and then also looked at the impact of well he looked at

sort of what we can expect players who go through both the regular arbitration process and then the super two process can expect in terms of compensation and how shifting the populations that are subject to those processes might shift things around in terms of how much players are comped overall. So I would point you to those things because I think that they are useful to putting specific context to this circumstance in the context of the labor negotiations so yeah there you go that's my plug all right well thanks for all the questions this week everyone we could not do these podcasts without you we really appreciate it it's nice to get such a and it's nice to get such a wide variety of things to talk about i didn't mean to knock the hall of fame question

i i really didn't it a perfectly good and interesting question. So sorry, pals, if you felt like I was too harsh on that one. Happy to have questions at all, let alone such good ones. How lucky are we? Very lucky. And that will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively

wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and help us stay ad-free while also getting themselves access to perks such as monthly bonus episodes and membership in the Effectively Wild Patreon Discord group. Today's thanks go to Jeff Smith, Adrian Pineda, Kyle Wojcik, Dan Laidman, and our pal Jordan Schusterman of Obsessbuttous Family Barbecue.

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You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance today and this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week. Out of as long as I can I'm trying not to lose my mind But I've been losing all the time