Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1825: Boom, Ghosted

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about new details about Freddie Freeman and Kris Bryant’s contracts, Stat Blast about players not touching the ball, and then (18:59) bring on Effectively Wild listener and Patreon supporter Kevin Brotzman to discuss being an Orioles fan and season-ticket holder and answer listener emails about whether Goodhart’s law will […]

Hey, what's the matter? Is someone calling me today? I'm a space case, no self-warfare in a big city. I'm a square, got my mind wrapped up in Superman's chains. And I'm fighting my ghosts again. Yeah, I'm fighting my ghosts again. Oh, I'm fighting my ghost again Oh, I'm fighting my ghost again But my ghost... Hello and welcome to episode 1825 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Riley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing well. A little relieved to reach the end of an eventful week. Doing well. A little relieved to reach the end of an eventful week. Apologies to Tyler Anderson and Luke Voigt, but there haven't been any additional huge moves that we have to discuss today. Although we did get a few tidbits about deals that we already discussed. Apparently, a significant chunk of Freddie Freeman's contract with the Dodgers is deferred over 2028 through 2040, which is not unusual for the Dodgers, but evidently brings the real value of the deal down to about $140 million, which is basically what the Braves were reported to have offered him over five years instead of six. So makes it even more curious, really. So it makes it even more curious, really. We talked about that a little last time with the different tax rates in Georgia and California and how he ended up not really making much more money than he would have by taking that Braves deal. Seems like, if anything buster only feature about it in which Freeman is not quoted, but Chipper Jones is extensively quoted in other sources. And it really sounds like this was not what Freeman set out to do or necessarily wanted to happen. And things just played out this way. Yeah. I mean, well, I guess we should say like Chipper Jones also works for

the praise. Yes, he does. he does right you know there's that to consider i mean i think that freeman had been pretty clear from the jump that he wanted six years i know that the deferral kind of complicates how we interpret that but it sounds like he wanted six and atlanta never offered him that and no they didn't really reach out that extensively over the off season prior to the lockout or even in the days following it. So I don't know, man, like he's, he gets to decide where he wants to go. And if feeling like he was, you know, in demand was important to him, and he felt badly about not being offered that six year, and he felt like he should have been maybe treated differently. Like, I can't begrudge him that I

don't know, like, yeah, the whole tick whole TikTok of this is like not super interesting to me. I think it's interesting from the Braves perspective because like you had this franchise icon and you had to make a decision about whether you wanted to retain him. I think the fact that they did not try to do that more aggressively before they knew for sure they could trade for Matt Olsen is weird. Yeah. One thing in that story, it sounds like that deal came together incredibly quickly. Yes. They just kind of cut off talks with Freeman, and then suddenly Anthopolis just texted Billy Beans, like, what do we have to give you for Matt Olson? And then that came together

very quickly, and then the extension came together even more quickly. So yeah, And then the extension came together even more quickly. So yeah, no one knew that it was going to work out that way. It's just like the sixth year, it seems like it was mostly a principal thing, maybe. I mean, he felt like he deserved a sixth year. I than he would have with the five-year offer he had on the table. But as we discussed previously, it all worked out fine from a lot of perspectives. The Braves got a great first baseman. Freddie Freeman got a good deal and gets to go to a good team near his hometown. So it all worked out okay. It's not a disaster or anything. But it just doesn't seem like either party really saw things playing out this way, like right up until the moment when it actually happened.

Yeah, it is fascinating in that respect. But yeah, what a weird bit of business. And the other detail that came to light. So according to Patrick Saunders, Denver Post beat writer for the Rockies, Chris Bryant's contract does not contain an opt-out clause. It does, as was previously reported, contain a no-trade clause. So Chris Bryant cannot opt out of the Rockies, and the Rockies cannot opt out of Chris Bryant. I would imagine that everyone who signs a contract probably plans to be there, but sometimes those plans go awry. But it will be tough for each side to extricate themselves from the situation. Hopefully, the need won't arise.

Also, there was a press conference, I guess, and he was introduced, and he was asked whether the Rockies could contend for the playoffs. And he says, of course. And he noted, I have never been on a losing team in my big league career, which is debatable because he was on the 2021 Cubs and that was a losing team. In fairness to him, I guess they were only three games under 500 when they actually traded him. Right. And he didn't finish the year with them. Yeah. So he could say, well, maybe we would have been a winning team if I had been there all year and they hadn't traded everyone. So I guess that kind of counts. But what else is he going to say? I mean, when you ask the new acquisition, can this team contend? Well, yeah, of course, they're going to say that. And maybe they actually believe it. how maybe winning or being on the best team would not be the number one item on our wish list or our top criterion when deciding where to go.

And we don't know how Bryant values that. But I didn't note yesterday that, I mean, he already kind of had the best possible outcome for winning, right? I mean, he won a World Series, the most exciting World Series that he possibly could have won. He was 24 years old. He won an MVP that year. He broke the Cubs curse. He even got an assist on the World Series ending play. So I don't know whether that means he feels like, well, I checked off that box and now I can just go where I want to play and where I make money and where I'm happy, or whether that gives you a taste for winning and it's like, oh, this is just what it's going to be like from now on. And I want to recapture that high. But there's no way that you can top that probably, to win a World Series

for the Cubs after forever and do it as a star player with the organization you came up with. I mean, even if he had gone somewhere, if he had gone to some other team that was more likely to win a World Series over the life of the Steel, I don't know that the thrill of that could compare to the first time for him. So that makes it even less essential in my mind. Again, don't know whether he thinks of it that way, but that's how I would be thinking of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of the – he is such an interesting sort of case in that regard, because I would imagine that if you were to sort of chart the trajectory of, you know, how much you care about being able to win versus not in a in a good player's career, that the longer you're in the league without having won, the more winning matters to you, right? Like, I bet this is such a sad example. But I bet if you had asked like 2015 Felix Hernandez, does winning matter to you? He would have been like, yes, I would very much like to win, right? And he had such a bright

start to his career, both in terms of the personal accolades that he accrued and the success of his team. And so I wonder for him if you know he's not going to say in the press conference we're not going to win like that you know he's not going to say that but he might be kind of clear-eyed about what the road is to the rockies contending and be sort of at peace with that being a bit more winding than it might have been if he had gone to other teams because of that early career success, both, as I said, personally, and then within the context of the Cubs. So I don't know. He's an interesting test case. Like, I imagine that it is perhaps for some players a very strong motivator. And I would imagine for

all players presented with relatively equal deals that it might be a really compelling tiebreaker. But I think that if you are being offered a bunch of money from a club that is so-so versus so-so money from a club that is excellent, you are quite understandably going to prioritize your own security and financial future and that of your family over the immediacy of a ring. Because I also think that baseball players probably understand that like the the tide it's changed right and teams get better whether that will be true of the rockies i mean who is to say but you know that things can kind of shift around and that especially with an expanded playoff field that your odds of getting back to the postseason are appreciably different than they

were even a couple of weeks ago. Again, maybe not for Colorado right now, but like in general. And so I don't know, it'll be interesting to see how that calculus kind of shifts over time. Yeah. We also got a Boris quote out of the press conference because he was asked what other teams were in the running for Bryant. And Boris said, when I go to a wedding, I don't talk about the bridesmaids. So he would not reveal what other teams were bidding on Bryant, if any. That one makes more sense than the typical Boris quote. I get it. Yeah, it's very straightforward. And so then, of course, what I want to know is like, what do you talk about at a wedding, Scott? I bet it's baseball. Like I'm sure that he talked about, he probably talks about opt-outs and 10 and 2 rights and

all sorts of stuff. Okay. So we are doing an email show today and we're about to be joined by an Effectively Wild listener and Patreon supporter, Kevin Bratzman, who has been one of our highest tier supporters for a while now and thus has qualified to join us for an email episode, which is always fun. So just one thing before we bring him on, I wanted to do a quick pre-email stat blast. OBS Plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Dastablast. This is prompted in part by my rant the other day about people calling the automatic runner, which we have called the zombie runner, the ghost runner. And as we have established,

it should not be called a ghost runner. I will not repeat the rant here, but I have seen other people take up that clarion call in recent days. So if we're stuck with this thing, then I hope we can all agree on zombie runner instead. But there is a question that we got about a real ghost player. And this comes from Max, who says, I'm slowly coming to grips with the fact that I will never play professional baseball, much like one of my favorite scenes from the West Wing where Donna challenges Sam and Josh's expectation that they could. It'll take his assistant Donna five minutes. It'll take Josh half that time. Really? Maybe a little longer because the Mets lost last night and he'll need to focus. Just throw strikes. I don't understand why that can't happen. You have a three-run lead.

Just throw strikes. I mean, my God. Honestly. Yes. You want to see the wires? I'll tell you something else. In a situation with a runner on first who's a threat to score and a batter at the plate who's going to be intentionally passed, why not just pitch out four times? Makes me nutsy.

What are the wires? The latest on the standoff in Iowa, the final recommendation from the debate commission, and Richie to the AMA, which just ended a few minutes ago. Give me the AMA. And you have senior staff. You know, there comes a day in every man's life, and it's a hard day, but there comes a day when he realizes he's never going to play professional baseball.

You're just having that day today? Yes, I am. You understand you're going to be walking the guy anyway. You're going to be throwing four balls. Why not just... Pitch up. Yeah, why not just, you know, to catch the runner. But I was wondering what I could do if I were a fill-in now and kind

of acknowledge that I probably shouldn't swing. What is the longest stretch of anyone's career in which they've had at-bats where they haven't had to swing? So strikeouts or walks or hit by pitches. And I don't know if it's possible to find out, but what about also considering appearances where a ball was

not hit to them? Essentially, a ghost player. So a legitimate ghost player who makes next to no impact on the game, or at least would make the same impact that you or I could if we just sort of stood there in theory. And I think we may have gotten this question before, at least about how long players in the field have gone without having a ball hit to them. But I don't know if we ever answered it in a satisfactory way. So I brought this to frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson, and this is one of the more computationally intensive StatBlasts that he has managed to do.

But he got an answer and he got his query down to run in hours instead of days as it was initially. hours instead of days as it was initially. And we have an answer here. So the longest that anyone has ever gone without having a ball hit to them. So he measured the streak by consecutive player events, as he called them, the player had without, quote unquote, interacting with the ball. So a player event would be a plate appearance on offense and a defensive batter faced on defense, an opportunity, some reason for you to touch the ball. So on offense, this means not putting the ball into play. So a walk, a strikeout, a drop third strike, or a hit by pitch, which is interacting with the ball, obviously, but this is what a normal person could do if you just stood there. And in theory, that could still happen.

And it wouldn't change any of the longest streaks anyway. On defense, this means completely avoiding the ball. So you can't catch it. You can't throw it. No relay throws. Just complete avoidance of the ball. It's the opposite of that saying that people say, oh, the ball finds you out there. This is the ball not finding you out there. This is the ball not finding you out there. So the longest streak by that metric of not touching the ball on defense or offense is Corey Snyder for Cleveland in 1987. And he went

100 consecutive player events or ghost events in his case, spanning three different games and 17 innings. So no one has ever done this for two full games in a row, which sort of surprised Ryan and maybe me a little bit too. But Snyder played left field and right field during those games, and he just could have sat down or gone back to the dugout because he was not needed out there. And after that, it's Sam Hilliard of the Rockies, who came in second just in 2019, actually. He had 84 events and 15 innings.

Third is Eddie Williams, who was actually a teammate of Corey Snyder. Same team, same year, 81 events with Cleveland in 1987. And Ryan Zimmerman for the Nats in 2012, he also had 81 events over 17 innings. And all of those guys took 0-4s as well. So Corey Snyder, for instance, was 0-5 with five strikeouts and a walk during those innings, those games, when he was not touching the ball in the field either. And that was, by the way, August 19th, 1987 through August 21st, 1987, if you want to look up the game logs when Corey Snyder didn't do anything. I believe he was pinch hit for maybe before the end of the third game. They wanted to get someone in there who would actually do

something. Those are the records for just defense too. If we take out the offensive requirement of not touching the ball, those are still the longest number of defensive plays or innings that someone went without having the ball get to them. I think it was 94 defensive batters faced that Snyder was standing out there without having a ball touch his person in any meaningful way. I did ask Ryan about the record for just offense, so being at the plate but not putting the ball in play. How many consecutive plate appearances can you go? In that case, the record is Daniel Cabrera, who was an American League pitcher, and from June of 2007 to May of 2009, he had a streak of 15 plate appearances where he went 0 for 14 with 14 strikeouts and

one walk. Bring on the universal DH, thank you. And the record for an actual hitter is Mark McGuire, August 8th through 10th, 1999. He went 13 plate appearances without putting the ball in play. He hit a deep fly in a home run, and then he went walk, intentional walk, walk, strikeout, intentional walk, strikeout, walk, walk, strikeout, walk, strikeout, intentional walk, strikeout, walk, walk, strikeout, walk, strikeout, strikeout, strikeout. And then after that, he doubled and homered. Ryan noted, given that there are about 38 plate appearances in an average game, plus four plate appearances for the average hitter, a typical player has 42 opportunities in a

given game to do something, to put the ball in play or have the ball put in play toward them and about 2 000 players have had a streak of 42 or longer in their career but doing it twice in a row is essentially impossible and it hasn't happened which is kind of weird but you basically have to be an outfielder or a third baseman to to have a chance at this record because obviously if you're you know a shortstop or you're a first baseman, the ball is going to find you at certain positions. A catcher, of course. Right.

Don't know how a catcher could not touch the ball out there. So yeah. At least not and keep their job for very long. Yeah, right. So you have to be a corner outfielder or possibly a third baseman. You have fewer balls hit to you. And that's how it happened. And curiously, the 87 team that Snyder and Williams were on,

they had the lowest or second lowest strikeout rate by their pitching staff because I wondered, well, maybe they just struck out a ton of guys and didn't have a lot of balls put in play against them. But no, they actually had more than almost any other team. But it just so happened that Corey Snyder just could have not shown up For work for those days So I think we've been asked that before And people have wondered about that

Because they have wondered how much they would embarrass themselves If they were to suit up And if you got really lucky You absolutely could stand out there for a game And not touch the ball And also not touch it at the plate But that wouldn't be that weird to do it for a single game. It has happened thousands of times.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you to Ryan for running the numbers on that. And thanks to Max for the question. And now we can bring on our guest to tackle some additional emails. All right.

Well, we are joined now by Fangraphs and Effectively Wild listener Kevin Brotzman. He is also a Patreon supporter. And for a couple months, he has been at the Mike Trout tier of Patreon support, the highest level, which entitles him to join us on the podcast. And so he has. Kevin, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So I think this is my traditional first question every time we have a Patreon supporter on the podcast, which is, A, how did you find Effectively Wild? And B, what got into you that you would support us at such a high tier to remember how I found the podcast. I believe it was because I'm a Baltimore Orioles fan, and I found you during the season previews.

Oh, okay. So I'm trying to remember. 2016 might have still been Britt Giroli. Yeah, that confirms my sense that there are people who find us through the season previews, and I guess that will maybe not be happening this year because we're not going whole hog with the team-by-team previews. But that's good because I always wonder what people think when they find us through the team previews, and then suddenly we're talking about weird hypotheticals the next time out. This is not what was advertised on the box, but evidently we hooked you somehow. Yes, you certainly did. And I had some

familiarity with Sam through some of his writing beforehand. So once I started listening, kind of wondered what had taken me so long. And similarly, I was a big fan of Jeff Sullivan back to his Lookout landing days. So I think I came in at the very tail end of Sam's first turn as co-host and was delighted when Jeff came on board and certainly become a big fan of yours and Meg's as well. And as far as what would possess me to be a Mike Trout level donor, some of it, again, I've been listening for almost six years now. This kind of seems like back dues to me.

Kind of seems like back dues to me. But also my kind and generous wife, Janet, gave me a subscription for a few months for a Christmas gift. Yeah, I like that. I wish that more people would give the gift of Effectively Wild for the holidays. Seems like a great gift idea to me. Yeah, I mean, holidays, birthdays. Arbor Day. Underrated gift day, Arbor Day.

You know, could be giving gifts on Arbor Day. That's how you found your way to the podcast. But what is your baseball origin story? I was going to say, just to jump in, you informed us before we started recording that you are an Orioles season ticket holder. And I would feel better about the fact that you have listened to us for so long, if not for the fact that clearly your loyalties are very difficult to dislodge because you are still an Oriole season ticket holder.

And if they haven't lost you yet, then I don't know what we could do. We could publish dead air for an hour and you might still listen. So I don't know how flattered to be. Well, hopefully neither you nor the Orioles trade Trey Mancini. That would be a tough pill to swallow. Yeah. So I am, I think a few years older than both of you and elder millennial i'll be turning 40 in august but yeah i wasn't a big sports fan as a kid it was really i was about 10 years old i just remember getting hooked in 1993 and you know

the orioles i don't know if you remember i mean they are my hometown team obviously they were a competitive team in the mid 90s but that year they were kind of up and down had a 10 game winning streak at one point during the summer and ended up fading and finishing in third but obviously with Cal Ripken in town, he was a big draw. But that also means that my first full season as a fan, full season in scare quotes, was 1994. So yeah, that didn't end well. And again, I don't know what that says about me if I'm a glutton for punishment. But this will be my 10th season as a season ticket holder so i did at least get some you know some spoils for that you know i was able to be there in 2014 when they clinched the east Division for the first time since 1997

and was there for both of the round one games against Detroit when they beat Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander back to back. And then I don't think there was an ALCS that year. I don't remember that happening. In the leaner years that have come subsequently, have you contemplated not renewing? Did the thought cross your mind? Was your breaking point 46 wins and they just managed to clear it in 2018? Or is it that you just like going to the ballpark and regardless of whether you're going

to see a good game or at least a good team in your Orioles uniforms? Yeah, I mean, that's a big part of it. Camden Yards obviously is a beautiful stadium, even 30 years in, they've kept it up well. So it's nice to get the fresh air. But also, so I have a 29 game plan. That's sort of the partials, the mid-tier plan. And my sister has the other ticket. So now that we're both adults and working, and I have a son of my own, it's a really good chance to get to see her a couple times a week during the summer and spend some time together. So, you know, there's kind of that family pull to it. Yeah, I understand that.

You know, it almost has to get better, I say, as I learn that Adley Rutschman is out for the next two or three weeks with a sore elbow. Yeah, I mean, you can get fresh air for free, but maybe not the companionship and the day at the ballpark and seeing your sister. So that's something. And when things get good again, then you will know that you've stuck with them, I guess, when they totally bottomed out. And there are things to look forward to. Yeah, I don't know if there are any bonus points for longevity or for not front running, but I guess it fits my sensibilities. You brought up Rutchman.

I'm curious if in this period you have found yourself drawn to prospects in a way that you perhaps might not have been when the big league club was putting a more competitive squad on the field. There is, you know, obviously some draw to that. I went to see Grayson Rodriguez's first start in Bowie last year with Rutschman catching at AA. And and you know that that was a wild atmosphere fans were bringing in empty gas cans and again i will emphasize that they were empty but you know the base socks encouraged uh fans to to do that they kind of rolled with the punches. And it was a really exciting atmosphere. Obviously, I read fan graphs, prospect rankings

for the Orioles, paying close attention earlier this year. But I do have a long memory. And there's something about having a mythical prospect uh catcher that rings a little familiar yes so you know i've got that guarded optimism and matt weeders i think you know just we're down i understand that catching is tough but you know I think a lot of people don't realize in hindsight, you know, what a good result it was for him to be, you know, an all-star and a gold glover and to have a 10-year career that he did. We're all going to be paying for that Pocota projection for years. So because we have an Orioles fan on here, I have two things to bring up before we get to some emails. So one, I don't know whether you saw Ken Rosenthal's latest notes column or some of the other rumors that have been circulating about a Carl's Correa connection to the Orioles.

Have you even entertained the idea? Are you getting your hopes up even in the slightest? Let me just read from Ken here. Are you getting your hopes up even in the slightest? Let me just read from Ken here. The 2012 draft was most notable for the Astros' selection of Carlos Correa over Byron Buxton and others with the number one pick. Mike Elias, the Astros' amateur scouting director then, was the driving force behind the Correa pick. And now that Elias is the Orioles' GM, it stands to reason he would have interest in Correa, the top remaining free agent.

Elias seemed to dismiss the idea on Monday, telling reporters it was unlikely the rebuilding Orioles would offer any free agent a multi-year contract. But Correa, according to a source with knowledge of the Orioles' thinking, might be an exception if his price dropped to a level the club deemed appropriate. I don't know what that level would be. It could be $10 million. It might be far too low for this to ever happen, but I can kind of squint and sort of see it. It's extremely unlikely, but if they were to do it, it would be less confusing to me than, say, the Rocky signing Chris Bryant. should be good again if all goes well at some point when Carl Screa is not too far gone and advanced in age and in his next contract. So he's young enough that he could be a cornerstone player for them. I feel bad even raising your hopes in the slightest degree if I am. So please don't. But I wonder if you have a reaction as an Orioles fan who has been starved for big additions lately. Yeah, I feel like those rumors have been out there on a smaller scale for a couple weeks. Some of the Orioles fans and writers that I follow

on Twitter have been keying into a Spanish language reporter. I believe the name's Raul Ramos. I don't have it off the top of my head. But this is somebody with a blue checkmark for all that may be worth who's been distributing these Correa rumors for a few weeks. And, well, we know he would certainly fit a hole. And, well, we know he would certainly fit a hole. But like you said, I believe I heard the other day that the last multi-year contract the Orioles signed a free agent to was Alex Cobb. You know, once again, we know how that worked out.

And that was one of Dan Duquette's last deals. So believe me, I don't think it's possible for me to get my hopes up too much uh because you know that's a perfectly normal off-season trajectory let's see they've picked up rubnetto door uh jordan lyles uh chris owings robinson charinos and you know carlos Chris Owings, Robinson Chirinos, and Carlos Correa. Sure. Just to round it out. Yeah. Birds of a feather. Yep. And the other one that I wanted to get your reaction on, I guess you probably remember the Ryan Flaherty era of the Orioles.

And maybe that coincided with the beginning of your time as a season ticket holder, roughly. So here is a tweet from Orioles beat writer for MLB.com, Joe Trezza, former Orioles previewer on Effectively Wild. Buck Showalter said today, Friday, One reason Ryan Flaherty made the Orioles as a Rule 5 pick in 2012 was because he brought two monkeys to a camp talent show that spring. The monkeys threw batting practice, and the Orioles were later fined by the health department, Showalter said. Now there were a few more details provided by Stephanie Apstein who says, Buck Showalter says, as part of a talent show one year with the Orioles,

Ryan Flaherty brought a pair of Monkees who threw and took batting practice. Showalter says that's part of why he made the team. Quote, that took guts. The quote continues, it was the damnedest thing I'd ever seen. We got a call from the Humane Society and from the health department. And Stephanie says, I pushed back on this a little bit. First of all, the monkeys both threw and took BP? Buck says, yes, one threw, one hit. So not two-way monkeys.

Also, shouldn't Flaherty have been disqualified? What was his talent? Buck, quote, there were other parts of the presentation. He declined to elaborate. Well, I had seen the Trezza tweet, not the supplementary information from Stephanie stephanie apstein and i always had the sense because if you look at ryan flaherty's stats i mean he was kind of a super sub guy a little pop but you know he you know was never really a productive player i think we used to say kind of tongue in cheek that he was Buck's mascot. And yeah, so that certainly fills out the picture a little bit. That tracks, yeah. Sometimes you hear like, oh, this guy must have

compromising photos of the manager. That's how he's holding onto his roster spot. But no, maybe he just brought two monkeys to a talent show in spring training. Yeah, the mind boggles to imagine what else. Did he have a who's on first routine with the monkeys? Did they maybe pantomime some Beatles music? The other question, I guess, is how much better have the recent Orioles been than the monkeys themselves? What is their value over replacement batting practice monkey? It can't be that high. I don't know. If only I had seen the 1990s film classic Ed,

which I believe was Matt LeBlanc and a baseball-playing monkey. Yes. I mean, the post-I-might-have-a-career- career after Friends Matt LeBlanc era which took a little while to get off and running I wondered like were there other animals in the menagerie? Was it just two monkeys or were there other does he have like a wildlife refuge that we need to be worried is going to be built into a Netflix series?

Like what are we talking about here? Yeah, need to know more. This is a prime opportunity for someone to do an oral history of some sort. Just every answer prompts many new questions. Yeah, it's one of those things that makes you wonder how they kept this buttoned up for a decade. Yeah. Yeah, right. You'd think baseball writers are pretty desperate during spring training. I mean, I haven't checked the archives to see if this was reported at the time and somehow lost to history. But you'd think that this would have been one of those, you know, little local color spring training stories, feel good players in the best shape of his life and also brought monkeys that pitched and hit batting practice, but evidently not. Anyway, glad it came to light. Maybe it's one of those things where you just have to wait 10 years. It's too sensitive for it to come out more quickly than that. So now the time is

right. Yeah. If there were health department sanctions involved, yeah, maybe there was a legal embargo. Could be. Well, now that we've established that and talked a little bit about your podcast fandom and Orioles fandom, and we wish you the best and better days ahead with or without Carlos Correa, but maybe we can answer

a few emails here, and you have not seen them in advance. You did not request emails ahead of time. So very courageous of you. And I'll start with one by William. And William, I believe, is a PhD student in political science. So Meg, some of this may be familiar to you.

Oh, no, the stakes are high. William says, given that it seems very likely there will be a pre-arbitration bonus pool tied to war in the upcoming CBA, this is before we knew that in fact there is, I have been thinking about the problem posed by Goodhart's Law. Charles Goodhart is an economist and central banker who argued that once a particular measurement becomes a policy target, it ceases to be a useful metric. In economics, this refers to issues with measuring the strength of the economy based on particular statistical aggregates. For example, the unemployment rate. In a vacuum, this rate is useful because it provides information on changes in the labor force, etc., but it can be highly problematic when the rate itself becomes the focus of policy, as government bureaucracies and politicians begin to have incentives to either distort the underlying numbers, or they may alter policies to maximize the metric at the expense of the

underlying concept the metric is intended to describe, like creating a large number of low-paying jobs rather than focusing on improving working conditions. Although statistics are an important measure of player quality in baseball, to date they have always been one step removed from being targets that the players themselves are trying to maximize, aside from record chases. Arbitration and free agency rewards players with good statistics, but not for performance in only one statistic, and not in a way that is directly calculated in relation to any statistic or group of statistics. The pre-arbitration bonus pool changes this. Here, a group of players are directly

rewarded for maximizing one particular target, albeit an aggregated one, in a way that is calculable in real time. As a result, players who are pool eligible have an incentive to try to maximize their war as a goal of their behavior rather than their war being simply a description of their trying to win games by playing well. We don't know the exact contours of how this version of war will be calculated, but assuming it is broadly similar to B-Ref or Fangraph's war, are there any ways for players to change their behavior to deliberately maximize their war that is suboptimal from a team perspective, i.e. trying to win games?

I think this question, players maximizing war, has been discussed, but I'm not sure it has in this particular context, which is soon to become a reality. So is there a way for players who knew that they are being paid directly related to their war to inflate their war in some way that would not actually reflect their contributions to the team? their contributions to the team? Well, I don't know that I would describe it as inflate their war in a way that doesn't benefit the team. Some of this is going to depend a great deal on the details of the war metric they use, because the thing that jumps out to me is something that might, I mean, it'll help the team and it'll be good for the player in theory, but it might not be in line with some fans' preferred aesthetic, is that if they use a fit-based war,

there's even more incentive to strike a lot of guys out if you're a pitcher in this, right? That's the one that jumps out to me. Now, I don't think that this changes the value calculus of that behavior all that much. I think that given the way that the game has trended in recent years, that pitchers are already incentivized to strike a bunch of guys out. That is the way that we have leaned into player dev. But if they use a version of war that is akin to our FIP-based

version of war, then you have potentially additional incentive to strike out as many guys as you can because you are going to do better by that metric in that way. But I don't know if it changes things all that much. I don't think that it decouples the incentives for the player from what benefits the team, but it might result in a furthering of a version of baseball that some people find to be kind of boring because it leads to fewer balls in play yeah and there's the possibility that this formula could be tampered with somehow i mean i think that's one reason why public facing sites like fan crafts don't really

want to be responsible for this sort of thing is like who wants to actually control players salaries and have anyone question whether you are somehow cooking the books. So presumably that could not be the case. Hopefully, if this is a joint, transparently developed metric that MLB and the union works on together and they agree beforehand on how are we going to reward this, what is going to go into it, what are the inputs, you can't change it at least until after the season, let's say. So hopefully it's not something that could be manipulated that way. And I think it does help that it's war.

It's not like, I don't know, sacrifice bunts or something, right? Where like you'd be incentivized to sacrifice bunts because you'd be paid for that. And meanwhile, that might actually be hurting your team. War, in theory, I mean, it's designed to be something that actually does reflect and measure your value to a team. So I think if the stat is working correctly, then the higher your war, the more that you're helping, in theory, at least. and i guess there are some ways potentially you know i mean maybe something like moving a runner over let's say where situationally i guess it could help or like you know there's a runner on third and you're trying to hit a sack fly and maybe with war like

it's not taking into account the context and the fact that you're trying to get that runner in and it's just another out potentially. I mean, maybe you could account for that too, but something like that where you're giving yourself up to advance a runner or score a runner. Whereas if you're just thinking of war, you might just say, well, I want to maximize my chances of getting a hit here because that's all I'm going to be credited with in war or certain formulations of war. There are some advanced stats that have taken into account, say, advancing runners. But if you had a version that didn't, then you could just say, no, I'm out for myself. I'm going to maximize my own chances of

doing something that will inflate my war here as opposed to scoring the winning run in this game. That's an extreme example that comes to my mind. And the questioner, William, suggested maybe something about positioning, like players might be reluctant to move away from a premium defensive position because they could lose war. Now, that could help. I mean, if you are way better relative to the average person at the position that you're moving to, maybe it all equalizes in the end. But, you know, if you were asked to move because it was better for the team, but you thought that it might hurt your war in some way, then that could be a sticking point.

Or he said, could players become more aggressive or more passive on the base pass to try to maximize their base running war? I don't know. Maybe in that case, it would either be helping or hurting the team in a way that was commensurate with your war. But I could think of some limited cases, but because it's war and not just some single isolated stat that might not correlate as closely to your value to the team i don't think it's as big a concern yeah one thought that i had is given that they've talked about banning the shift or you know somehow limiting it in some way you know i wonder how that's going to play into things you know you might have players getting those extra you know five or five or 10 base hits a year. But, you know, so I guess maybe, you know, that's a benefit to pull heavy hitters. It's like that's already your skill set and you're already doing that. So it's not something conscious that you are changing about your approach potentially. But yeah, it's kind of tough. Maybe something about like pitcher usage or not wanting to go deeper into games because you might, you know, face opposing hitters a third time or fourth time and you know that it's going to hurt your stats even if like you want to soak up some innings because your bullpen needs a rest that day, something like that.

You know, any little case where maybe your personal stats might not align with the team's. But I don't know. It's not my primary fear about this pool and tying it to war. I think aside from the possibility that it could be manipulated in some way, I think what Meg said about just emphasizing certain traits that are highly valued and might not actually be fan-friendly would be a concern for me. All right. Question from Kyan. Is it time to start calling it the 40-person roster instead of 40-man roster. It's more inclusive toward those who are non-binary or identify as they slash them pronouns and women and trans women who could eventually play in the league.

So 40-person roster. And I thought this was interesting because I kind of have made more of a conscious effort to watch my pronouns when I'm talking about baseball, especially now as more and more positions that used to be exclusively the province of men, long overdue, but are not as much anymore. And this has come up just casually as I'm writing about baseball at times without even thinking about it. Like at The Ringer, we have a great copy desk. So everything I write not only goes through an initial edit, but then also a fact check and a copy edit, which is not the case for a lot of media outlets out there anymore. And I'm very grateful for it. And our copy editors, our desk is always thinking about how is language

evolving and how can we avoid certain sayings, certain phrases that we all take for granted but might have some etymology we're not aware of or might have some implication that you might not think of. And how can you be more thoughtful and respectful about those things? And I remember that I was writing a big feature about pitcher deception last year, And there were a couple notes in there. One was that I just kind of unthinkingly referred to Yuzmira Petit as a workhorse, right? Which I guess it's questionable whether a reliever can be a workhorse, but if anyone can, it's Yuzmira Petit. But the desk pointed out, hey, we're just trying to avoid that kind of language when we talk about players and athletes these days, which is something that I was aware of. And it just, you know, as I was writing and words were coming out, it just slipped in there. But the idea is, hey, let's not like dehumanize the athletes, you know, let's not refer to them as livestock. Like, I'm not trying to make that implication. I'm not necessarily thinking of them that way, but it's when we talk about players as assets and that kind of language,

we have tried to avoid that more and more in recent years. But also in that piece, I think I said something about how pitcher deception is something that has long baffled baseball men, something like that, like the saying baseball men or baseball man, which is something that you hear all the time for basically like a baseball lifer, you know, someone who's been in the game their whole life. Oh, that's a good baseball man, right? And I never really thought that deeply about that. But of course, that does kind of carry the implication that like, you have to be a man to be a baseball lifer or at least there's an expectation that you would be. And, you know, being a baseball woman would not be the same thing.

And I think we changed that to baseball person or something, which, you know, sounded odd to me at first because it's not like ingrained in the baseball lexicon in the same way. Yeah. But it is probably better to use that term and that word. So when we're talking about 40-man roster, 40-person roster, obviously it would be an adjustment. I mean, you'd have to catch yourself many times just because we're all so used to saying 40-man. times just because we're all so used to saying 40 man. But aside from that, I don't have any objection to just being as inclusive as you can be in general. And that has happened in other sports. I remember just last year, the International Cricket Council, I read, changed batsmen to the more gender neutral batter, which was already the standard in baseball, but other things along those lines could change. Yeah, I think there's a precedent for it. I mean, we've just recently, you know,

Major League Baseball itself changed from the disabled list to the injured list. Exactly, right. Yeah, I think most of us have adapted to that. And I think there are some options for it, whether you say 40-person roster or 26-person roster. You could also maybe just say player. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think it doesn't seem like something that we are necessarily thinking of as having a ton of urgency now. But I think the benefit of sort of anticipatory language changes like this is that it removes the onus from players who might not be men to agitate for that change, right? And I imagine that when, I mean, I candidly don't know, I can't speak to like how every player in affiliated ball right now sort of understands their gender identity. I think it'd probably be naive for us to assume that there's uniformity there, right? But I imagine that when

we have sort of the first player either come out in that way or the first woman in affiliated ball, that person's going to have so much pressure already on them, right? They're going to have so many boxes they have to check. There's going to be so much scrutiny and surveillance of their performance and how they carry themselves and how they conduct themselves on the field. And I think that if we can sort of pave the way in advance so that this is one less thing that that person has to do or that they have to do in isolation before there's a cohort of other players who fit whatever the demographic criteria is, that we can just make things a little bit easier. And that's a worthwhile thing, I think, especially, Ben, for the reasons you've brought up,

which is that in other places across the game, including on the field in coaching roles, we're seeing, you know, who can occupy those positions change in a long overdue way. So I would want to think about, I like the idea of 40 player because I think that it is a more, it's sort of identifies the most relevant demographic criteria about the person who's going to be on that roster, which so that things are just a little bit easier when the people who are occupying previously unoccupied or at least not publicly occupied demographics assert themselves. So yeah, I kind of like it. Yeah. And I don't think that most people, when they use this language, are trying to be exclusionary or anything. It's not like when I was writing baseball man in that draft, I was like,

you know, suggesting that I think you should have to be a man to be in baseball. It's just one of those things you don't even think about that stems from the way that that has worked traditionally and maybe reinforces that conception. I don't know. I mean, if you're someone who is trying to break into the game and you're hearing baseball man and 40-man roster constantly, is that something that

makes it seem more daunting to you? I'm not saying it's the biggest obstacle, obviously. This is not the biggest problem. It's not the hugest crime that people commit with language or anything like that. It's not the biggest thing that is in the path of people who are not men who are trying to make it in baseball. There are all sorts of more serious and harder to root out institutional obstacles there. But maybe it's a start. Maybe it, maybe it's something that you just you hear that growing up and maybe it just kind of subtly gives you the sense that like, oh, I'm not as welcome here or something or I'm going against the conscious of that myself. And the only downside is that you have to catch yourself and say, oh, no, I'm not going to say that anymore. Or I'm used to saying it that way. I'm going to make this slight little tweak. But that's not a big deal.

It's not a huge hardship. So I guess the question is now in the Rachel Balkovitz era, do we need to start saying personager instead of manager? I'm kidding, of course, about that. That is not where that word comes from. Oh, Ben, you trickster. I looked up the etymology of that word, and evidently it comes from an Italian verb, maneggiare, which is like to handle. Yes.

Evidently, originally, it was to handle horses, which brings us right back to workhorse, I guess. So a manager is a horse handler in a way. So now where does the bullpen fit into this? Oh, boy. Arm barn. Yes. Exactly. Ben, I don't remember from that piece, what did you end up going with as an alternative to workhorse?

That's a good question. Do you recall? I do not. See, the fact that you don't remember is part of what I think is a bolstering argument here. We just move on from these things. Sometimes you slip up and as long as you're like, oh yeah, sorry about that, we'll move on. I think most other people do too. There's such accusations of fussiness that I don't know that are supported in my real life.

Question from Mike. Fans like to brag about their team's World Series titles, especially when trash-talking fans of different teams. But is it fair for fans to claim titles won before they were born? If you're a 21-year-old Yankees fan, is it fair to gloat about 27 titles, If you're a 21-year-old Yankees fan, is it fair to gloat about 27 titles, or can you really only count the 2009 win? I know fan arguments can be kind of dumb, but I've always had this question. I'm a Brewersly, although too long ago for you to remember it. But this is an interesting question because, of course, I grew up as a Yankees fan and Yankees fans are known for saying count the rings. But most of those rings were a long time ago, depending on how old you were. And so I guess the idea of claiming your team's titles is sort of silly to begin with or gloating about them. It's not as if you, the fan, contribute to those, whether you were alive or not yet alive.

It's not as if you were out there on the field making those titles happen, although maybe you were showing your support in some way. in some way. So maybe it's no sillier to claim titles that were won before you were there to see them than it is ones that happened in your lifetime. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I see it as baseball in particular is a sport that is very drawn up in its own history. Everything that came before, the players and the traditions, you know, I think it's a nice thing. Like you mentioned, I, you know, may not have even been walking when the Orioles last won the World Series in 1983. But, you know, there's still some pride in knowing you know hey my team and baltimore whether you know this or not has a bit of a reputation for provincialism you know it's kind of you know we're stuck in between washington dc and you know philadelphia and new york and

Washington, D.C. and, you know, Philadelphia and New York. And, you know, it's a lot of, you know, inferiority complex. And, you know, it can be a feather in your cap to say, OK, well, we had those, you know, almost two decades there. You know, the Earl Weaver years that our team was the best in all of baseball. The Orioles way. That's right. Pitching defense and three-run homers is a very tough formula to crack. I'm so torn on this because on the one hand, the ring thing, particularly for the Yankees fans,

is wildly annoying. But also, if we say, no, no, you're not able to lay claim to and hearken back to this legacy, then we give rise to a different kind of annoying Yankees fan, the underdog Yankees fan, the sad Yankees fan, the we haven't won anything Yankees fan. And I submit, sorry, Yankees fans, the we haven't won anything Yankees fan. And I submit, sorry, Yankees fans, many of you are lovely,

and all fan bases have their bits of nonsense and have the capacity to be awful. So this is not unique to Yankees fans. Don't you all fret. This is not targeted. But I think that the whiny Yankees fan is arguably the worst kind of Yankees fan than the self-aggrandizing Yankees fan. I mean, I haven't had to deal with it in division in the same way that you have, Kevin. So your perspective on this is probably better informed than mine. But I have had the

experience of being a Mariners fan working in New York and told in literally 2010, I can't believe you guys won in 95. I was like, didn't you just win a World Series? Like, what are we doing here? So I don't know. I think that maybe the solution is to tell Yankees fans that they can't speak at all for a while while we sort things out. Just while we're figuring it out, you guys, just while we're getting to the bottom of this baseball mystery, we should just ask them to sit quietly.

Yeah, I guess this question is no more relevant to you than it is to Mike the Brewer's fan, Meg Sattler. with being a part of a fan base that experiences temporary joy at being really dominant and then uses that to be obnoxious as hell to other people for like a while and then your quarterback ends up playing in Denver and you're like really hoisted on your own petard at that point so I don't know if that's super relevant to this conversation but I remember when the Cubs won the World Series I was like you don't have to be like we were and they were like no we will be though yeah or say the red socks sure that that took a real turn right yeah i mean at least yankees fans in theory are balanced out by having to root for the giants or the jets right like you have some potential equilibrium and like the

nix is its own that's its own separate bit of nonsense so like you you maybe have some countervailing forces that help to level you if you're a red sox fan it's like oh no you're just really experiencing a lot of championships in your city and or region in quick succession across multiple sports what hope what hope do you have for modesty, for humility? Very little, I would imagine. We're going to get emails about this. Earlier that it's sort of silly to claim credit, but I guess that's inherent in fandom.

I mean, if you're not taking some pride in your team winning a World Series, then what's the point? Why are you rooting for them? So the idea of gloating over another fan base, yes, it's silly. I guess all fandom is sort of silly in a way, but also it can be very rewarding. And in moderation, it can be a lot of fun. And the gloating and the trash talking can be a lot of fun. So I think that if you are a fan, you should claim all of the titles that you could convincingly claim. And if you are trying to gloat over someone, then they should then retaliate and respond and say, well, that was before you were born.

Like, it's sad that you're still claiming that. Right. And that can be part are going back and forth with to say, like, that shouldn't count or that was ancient history, right? And maybe they can use a different era and a different set of years to make a point that favors their team. So, yeah, it is all very silly, but fandom is just kind of tribalism that hopefully plays out in a fun, nonviolent, low stakes way. Although that is not always the case fan base that has not won as much, then yeah, you get the underdog thing. You get other qualities. You're more sympathetic. You're more likable.

Whatever it is, you can come back and say, oh, you bought your championships. I mean, whatever. Like people know the script and the playbook here. So yeah, go for it. But also be prepared to be taken down a peg. And mostly don't be a dick yeah that too that'd be right and you know like we are often given the invitation for escalation in fandom we're given the invitation to become worse and we can we can decline it politely even and say no we

shall we shall simply have a good time and feel some feelings and have camaraderie and then go about our day. All right. Question from Jacob. My brother and I are lifelong A's fans, but we simply cannot bring ourselves to root for the A's this year for a number of obvious reasons. The roster teardown, the terrible owner, the constant threats to leave Oakland and more. We are not yet ready to give up the A's for good, and we also don't want to sit out the 2022 season entirely. Can you tell us who we should root for instead that would most replicate the things that we have enjoyed about following the A's, the cool underdog vibe, while also providing us with baseball we can enjoy? And we get a fair number of questions in this genre of just like, I'm done with my team. Maybe it's like a Red Sox fan who's upset about Mookie Betts, or it's a Cubs fan who's upset about the Ricketts or whatever it is, and they just feel like they can't support that team anymore. And I do understand that sentiment. At the same time,

understand that sentiment at the same time i try to caution them you might find some things not to like about the other franchises too like they will all break your heart and disappoint you in some way and they are all owned by billionaires who maybe have some unsavory stuff in their past i mean most of them at some point will employ a player you have reason to dislike. They're not all cute and cuddly. And so if you switch loyalties because you don't like the current ownership group or you don't like something that team did and you gravitate toward another team, well, you might be playing musical chairs and it might just be having to switch from one to another. So I am not suggesting that you should just support the team that you grew up rooting for that you happen to live near just

you know for the rest of your life if it is not bringing you happiness anymore but i'm also saying the grass might be greener but the reality might not actually but if you're an A's fan I mean I guess Kevin you know you've stuck with the Orioles during their teardown right and you have found things to enjoy about that even if it's just going to the ballpark if you're an A's fan I would say you know at least they haven't completely tanked in the way that some teams have I mean they haven't bottomed out nearly as deep down as the Orioles have in recent years, let's say. So there are things to enjoy about the A's, even if it's not ownership, but the fact that they are just constantly threatening to leave and trying to extract sweetheart deals on a ballpark out of the city, et cetera, I can see why that would be tough

to root for. So I don't know. I mean, you could root for former A's players. If you like Matt Chapman and Matt Olson, you can root for them in their new duds. Or I guess, is there an A's-like team, a team that has some A's-like vibe that they could transfer their loyalties to? Well, I will say that obviously, kind of keeping my interest in baseball as my team loses 110 games a year uh presents some challenge and uh one of the nice perks of season ticket ownership with the orioles is an mlb tv membership that's complimentary. And I don't know if that's a league-wide thing. It may be.

But when I'm sitting at home on nights when I don't have tickets, I do not always have it in me to watch three hours of Ramon Urias and DJ Stewart and any number of other fungible players so I have taken a liking to the Brewers in recent years and you know that seems like a nice sort of compromise that they're in the National League they are you know again I feel like you get that kind of underdog vibe that you know they're never the uh highest payroll team in the biggest Market you know if you care about those sort of things and you know they're also they tend to have a lot of fun likable guys to watch fun, likable guys to watch. And they just added Andrew McCutcheon.

So that, again, bodes well for the future. So that would just be my suggestion. It's been a little disappointing that they haven't been able to make a deeper postseason run in recent years. But I'm sort of an auxiliary Brewers fan, I guess you could say at this point. I think the Brewers are a really good National League option. And I know this is going to be hard to hear, but should just root for the Mariners. They should just root for the Mariners. I mean, it's not as if it doesn't solve the gnarly ownership stuff

because, gosh, have the Mariners had some gnarly ownership stuff in the last couple of years or at least senior executive stuff. But I would say, like, you know, if you can stomach keeping it in division, you could root for the upstart Mariners and all of their exciting young prospects who are either in the majors or soon to be in the majors. You can get excited about Jesse Winker and his long, long neck. You know, you got that long neck out there in the outfield. They signed the reigning AL Cy Young winner.

Those Mariners did. A move that I definitely remembered before yesterday. So, you know, if you can deal with the division rival aspect of it, you could root for this team to finally break their playoff drought and make a little bit of a run. Think about it this way. If you're an A's fan, let me speak to you. I know that you probably don't care for the Mariners as a division rival, but I bet you like the Astros

less. So you could be rooting for Seattle to win the division and unseat Houston. And maybe that's satisfying to you in a little bit of a spoilery way. But yeah, I when you when you look at the potential playoff field in both the al and the nl there's a lot of recent playoff appearance here and i realize that anyone's playoff appearance is going to be more recent than seattle's but like it's just they might be the only ones who qualify apart from i guess like you could also root for the Angels. You could root for the Angels and decide that you're just really in on Otani and Trout. But if what you are looking for is an unobjectionable owner, I don't think, like you said, Ben, there are drawbacks to all of them. But of the three teams that we have just named, the Brewers, the Mariners, and the Angels. I do think that Milwaukee's ownership group is probably the least irritating of all of those. I don't know.

But, yeah. I was going to say this. I mean, what you just said about ownership would not necessarily apply, but would it be heresy to just jump to the Giants and stay within the Bay Area? I don't know. How do people feel about the Bay Area rivalry? Right. I know there's like the Bay Bridge series or the Battle of the Bay or the BART series or whatever,

but I feel like there's not as much animosity in that as there is in other intra-city rivalries. Like, it seems like they're kind of okay with each other. Maybe that's a misread out here from the East Coast. I don't know. But if you want just

like that vibe of going to A's games and kind of that laid back atmosphere, then you would get that with the Giants. And if they're in the Bay Area, then they still get to go see the team regularly. And I don't know if they're underdogs in the same way that the A's are, but they are kind of underdogs in that division. I know that's odd to say because they just won that division and won 107 games, and yet the Dodgers are just such a juggernaut and the Padres are really good too

that I feel like there's still a lot of skepticism about the Giants. Can they do it again? Can they keep this up? So I think there's still a bit of underdog to them. There certainly was before last year. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

This is a question from William, Patreon supporter. So with the universal DH now in effect, is this going to hurt our ability to standardize stats across eras? I recall that someone had used pitcher batting as a tool to compare hitters from different eras. What will the elimination of pitcher batting as a tool to compare hitters from different eras. What will the elimination of pitcher batting do to those stats? And he is referring there to something that I've said before about how we can use the level of pitcher offense to kind of track the level, the caliber of competition in the league as a whole. of competition in the league as a whole. And I think I've made this comp before because I'm kind of an astronomy nerd, but I think of pitcher batting as a standard candle, which in astronomy,

one way that you can measure the distances to things is via various celestial objects that are known as standard candles. And the nice thing about them is that they have a known luminosity, you know how bright they are. And so depending on how bright they appear to you, you can determine how far away they actually are. And then you can use those to measure the distance to other things and figure out the distance to even more distant objects in this cosmic distance ladder. So that's how I kind of think of pitcher batting.

It's just this constant, basically, because pitchers are not really recruited for their offensive abilities. And maybe that's become even more true in recent years, but they don't train for that. They're not selected for that. And so if you think that that's kind of constant, probably not totally constant because pitchers have gotten bigger and stronger and more athletic and everything, but they are not improving at the same rate as the rest of the league. So that's my one lament maybe about losing pitcher hitting is that we have lost that way to track the better level of play in the league. But aside from that, do you see it as a problem statistically speaking?

statistically speaking i mean you maybe have to make some adjustments here and there to account for the fact that pitchers are not eating up some plate appearances every year yeah i guess like it does at the margins affect how al we might think about al pitchers performance relative to nl but i don't know it doesn't strike me as like a super meaningful problem. I don't know. Ben, what do you, I think it's fine. I think it's fine is what I think I'm coming away from this with. Like we will have some mental adjustment, I guess, for guys saying like, oh, now all of a sudden you have to face real hitters in those spots relative to the starter, but it's not so, so many plate appearances, you know, like after, and especially with starters

going less deep into games, like the, the number of actual pitcher plate appearances that NL teams are seeing was probably, I would imagine on a decline over the years. Right. So I think it's probably fine. I mean, that's definitely in there, but I don't think it's going to alter the way that we think about a guy. It's not like we're going to go, oh, we thought he was really excellent, but it turns out he was just feasting on bad NL starters. I don't think that there are guys where that's really the thing that's tipping their performance one way or the other.

Yeah, it was a very low percentage of overall plate appearances, even in the National League in recent years. And pitchers were so bad at batting that it did disproportionately drag averages down just because they were striking out close to half the time lately. But I don't think it makes a huge difference in the overall numbers.

I think you do have to adjust, like if you want to track the progress of certain things over time. I believe that last year, for example, the strikeout rate, I mean, it made sense to, if you were going to compare the strikeout rate in 2021 with the strikeout rate in 2020, then because generally from year to year, we're talking about a small change one way or another league wide, it made sense to compare the non-pitcher strikeout rate. And if you did that, I think you found that there actually wasn't, I mean, last year was the first time in like 15 years that the league wide strikeout rate did not increase.

And part of that was because of the lack of sticky stuff and the fact that strikeout rate went down after that was banned. But also, I think even if you compared position players to position players one year over the next, if you factor in the sticky stuff, it didn't increase because otherwise you might have thought, well, that's just because, you know, or like in 2020, for instance, when you implement the universal DH, you might think, oh, well, the strikeout rate streak will stop because now pitchers won't be hitting. So you do have to make slight adjustments for that kind of thing when you're calibrating year to year.

But otherwise, I don't think it actually matters that much. But you might see a little boost of batting average or other rate stats, and you just have to be mindful of that, but not necessarily more so than other changes that are constantly affecting offense. I mean, ballparks coming in and out of circulation or the ball itself changing. It's just constantly shifting and evolving and there are all sorts of factors that you need to adjust for. So just add this to the list. Yeah. That's kind of going into what I was thinking about this question, which is that sort of the context of baseball is always changing you know if you go from the color line being broken to you know the expansion era to you know lowering the mound in the uh late 1960s is you

know i i know that a lot of baseball at a glance seems unchanging, but there's always a different, there are always different context clues. And we do have advanced statistics to adjust for eras, to adjust for leagues and ballparks and smarter people than you and me will figure it out. You know, smarter people than you and me will figure it out. Yeah. And another thing to be aware of maybe, and Russell Carlton just wrote this this week, he found that the DH penalty, which is something we've discussed before, the idea that hitters generally perform worse when they are DHing than when they are playing the field. And you see the same sort of thing with pinch hitters and the pinch hit penalty. And the idea has always been, well, they're just not ready. They're not primed. They're not warmed up. They're trying to come in cold. And there needs to be a little adjustment period. And this is, you know, partly maybe just the fact that you're not seeing the pitcher multiple times in that game. But I don't think it's just that times through the order effect. And there's been some speculation that, well, maybe it's the fact that when you DH, maybe you're more likely to be nursing some sort of injury or you're tired and you're DHing because you're getting a day off. And so maybe that accounts for it, but it does seem to be a pretty real effect.

But what Russell found this week actually is that it doesn't seem to apply so much to players who spend the majority of their time at DH. Like if you DH three quarters of the time and a quarter of the time you play the field, it doesn't seem like you do suffer a DH penalty. Whereas if it's reversed and you're playing the field three quarters of the time and DHing a quarter of the time, then you do hit worse when you're DHing. And I guess there could be a number of explanations for that, but one might be that you just get acclimated to DHing and you know how to keep yourself in the game and take some swings in the cage between at-bats or whatever you have to do, and you just get used to it. And as Russell pointed out, that may account for some of the difference in the American League's performance relative to the National League in interleague play over the past couple of decades.

Because even though the National League did have DHs in interleague games, they were often players who were not regularly DHing and were just pressed into service. not regularly DHing and were just pressed into service, whereas the AL would be more likely to have your Nelson Cruises and your David Ortiz is who not only would be dedicated DHs and would be good hitters, but also would be used to the job and not suffer a penalty relative to their typical performance. So that doesn't account for all of the interleague play league difference, but there might be a bit of that there. So if you are comparing interleague performance going forward, you might have to keep that in mind. But will anyone care about interleague play anymore? Probably not, right? I mean, it seems like it's just archaic at this point. Who cares about AL versus NL? There's just no distinction between them anymore. Yeah, particularly when we're going to go to having a schedule where everybody plays

every team. Yes. The mystery of it all seems like it's going to be diminished in any number of ways, right? Right. Okay. Well, that'll do it. And Kevin, I was remiss in not asking before if you want to share anything about yourself and what you do,

aside from suffer through Orioles games. But if you want to tell us anything on your way out or plug anything or places where people can find you if they want to find you, and if you want them to find you, then please do. Well, I'm on Twitter at Brotz13, B-R--o-t-z 13 i don't know that i'm very active there as a poster but smart smart guy yeah i still read twitter way too much that's the thing yeah but yeah maybe some baseball content there a little bit of uh pro wrestling you know i'm in that venn diagram interlap with seemingly so many people yes yeah i am a uh an avid baseball card collector you know that's been kind of a big part of my love language with the sport and you know probably how kind of the the statistics of it all hooked me you know looking at at card backs um even before i was

a fan you know i had family members that you know kind of gave me those same cards from the 80s that I think everyone has, you know, closets and lockers full of. So I did do blogging for a number of years. So that stuff is still online if you want to look for it. You know, for instance, I completed the 1965 Tops baseball card set oh wow you know that was something that was in in large part through the generosity of other collectors you know it was just i was you know writing about it and kind of in the vein of um like the one paper clip thing it was you know hey if anybody has any cards from this set that they don't necessarily need like you know kind of make me an offer and you know it kind of picked up some momentum over the years and I think I'd say probably within five years it's a 598 card set i was able to complete and obviously some of them have a lot more wear and tear than others you know i wasn't picky about what i got back so you know i've got a

for instance a bob gibson card that looks like it was spindled folded folded, and mutilated. And it might have even been in the spokes of a bicycle at some point, but is still recognizable as a Bob Gibson card. And that's kind of one of my points of pride and fandom. So otherwise, yeah, it's just been a pleasure to talk to both of you and to be a part of Effectively Wild. Yeah. Well, thanks for being here. And thanks to Janet for making it possible for you to be here as well.

And we're glad that you're still listening to and enjoying the show. So thanks. Pleasure having you on. Good to talk to you, Kevin. All right. Thank you, Ben, Meg. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks,, Ben, Meg. Albert Pujols, of course. All still out there, but maybe they won't be by the time you hear from

us again. Maybe the Rockies can sign several of them and make Chris Bryant's dream of contending in 2022 come true. We've been talking this week about teams that are tearing down. Not sure I would bet on the Rockies to be good again before the A's, let's say, who are strip mining their roster right now. I feel like I'd kind of trust them to get back into contention before the Rockies get there. Not that either is in an enviable position right now. Also, shout out to new Cubs addition Seiya Suzuki, who will be wearing number 27 with his new team. And when asked why, he said, Mike Trout looked into the camera and said, I love you. Don't we all? You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon, as Kevin does,

by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and pledging some monthly or yearly amount to help keep us going and help us stay ad-free while getting yourself access to extras. The following five listeners have done so as well. Walker J. Gunning, Billy Z., Michael Mancini, Francis Higgins, and Alec. And they and other supporters can of course get access to the Effectively Wild Patreon Discord group, monthly bonus episodes with me and Meg, and many other extras. Everyone, not just Patreon supporters, 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 podcast.fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance today and this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. We will start some Division previews next week, so we will be back to talk to you

very soon. God made myself He's the ghost I'll make He's the ghost I'll make myself God made myself He's the ghost I'll make He's my ghost Peace My God