Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1835: Junk in the Plunk

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about NPB phenom Roki Sasaki’s 19-strikeout perfect game for the Chiba Lotte Marines, the historic crop of prospect debuts in the first week of this MLB season, the unprecedented career-starting hot streak of (and long-term outlook for) Cleveland’s Steven Kwan, A’s catcher Sean Murphy’s butt photogenically taking one for […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1835 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. nocturnal, at least semi-nocturnal, than I was on Saturday night into Sunday morning when I was still awake at 3.30 or so a.m. Eastern time and Roki Sasaki was going for his perfect game. Roki Sasaki, the phenom NPB pitcher for the Chibolote Marines. I became aware that he was pitching a perfect game a couple of innings before it was over, and I was able to tune in and catch a feed for the end. And man, that was one of the most impressive game, the first in NPB in 28 years since 1994. He struck out 19 batters, which tied the NPB record.

And he struck out 13 consecutive batters, which not only broke the NPB record, which was nine in a row, but shattered it. I mean, that's kind of incredible to break that record and then surpass it by four strikeouts. Yeah. The record in MLB is 10. So he went way beyond that. And for those who don't know Sasaki, he's 20 years old. And he is, if not the best pitcher in Japan, maybe the second best pitcher in Japan. He debuted last year, and he's been basically incredible since then.

But he was just unhittable in this game. His fastball was averaging maybe just a tick under 100 miles per hour, so he was hitting 100 or over 100. He basically threw fastballs and splitters almost exclusively to get through this game and he was still throwing absolute seeds in the ninth inning. Like he struck out the last batter on three pitches, just perfectly located. And it was just wild, like 13 strikeouts in a row. And this is a league where the strikeout rate is a little bit lower on the whole. It's not like dramatically lower, but it's, you know, 20% instead of say 23%, which over the course of 27 batters is not much. That's like less than a strikeout expected. But still, to strike out 13 consecutive batters in Japan, that is unbelievable. Yeah.

The team he was facing is no slouch either. The Oryx Buffaloes, they actually won the Pacific League Championship last year. I don't think they're a great offensive team, but I think they had the second lowest strikeout rate of any NPB team last year, and they entered this game with a 16% strikeout game for the highest game score in a nine inning game since integration and his catcher that day was an 18 year old teenage catcher like in his seventh career game so just unbelievable all around i really enjoyed watching that and there's something special about a perfect game you know we've been down on no hitters on this podcast maybe a bit historically, but when you haven't had a perfect game in almost 30 years and I could watch that live, ton of fun. And I've been reading about him and hearing about him and seeing the stats and seeing clips and highlights, but it was a lot of fun to watch that live. recommend being awake at 3.30 in the morning wherever you are. But if it just so happens that you're on the other side of the world from someone who is really talented and is throwing a perfect game, it can all work out really well for you. Yeah, I have not obviously gotten to

see a lot of this. My main exposure to him is that he is currently on the international players tab of the board, where the assessment from Eric Langenhagen, this is a fun blurb overall. And while Eric does not find him to be like a one-one favorite, although maybe after throwing a perfect game, his assessment would change. He does have him as sort of a typical top three or five pick where he part of the domestic amateur draft. So clearly a guy who is a lot of fun for the Japanese audience and in his own right now and is likely to be someone whose name we say in a big league context at some point. Probably, yeah. I would have to think he'd be at the top of that list now if he were in the draft because teams would be salivating over this guy. And it'll be several years probably until we're talking about him as an MLP possibility.

If then, I mean, assuming he even wants to do that. Which I have no idea. Right. He's 20 and the rules now, at least as currently constituted, if there's no international draft, mean that he would not make a lot of money if he came over before 25, much like Otani. And, you know, he could request to be posted before then, but there's no guarantee. Anyway, it could be quite a long time before we see him in MLB if we ever do, but I think we can appreciate that performance regardless. We don't necessarily have to say,

imagine if he were in MLB, just where he is right now, he is unbelievable. And it was a lot of fun to watch also because I don't watch a lot of npb broadcasts in whole i see clips and highlights but to watch that live there were a couple things that stood out first was that he was throwing between innings like on the sidelines like in foul territory you know he's eight innings deep into a perfect game and he's approaching the hundred pitch mark and he's throwing the 100 pitch mark and he's throwing like he's tossing he's like warming up and it wasn't an especially long half inning I don't think it wasn't like he was trying to stay warm I think that is just fairly common over there and

that would obviously never happen here and I'm not going to say that we do it right or they do it right it's not as if MLB teams have figured out how to keep pitchers healthy or anything. So maybe they're onto something. I don't know. Historically, maybe they have overworked pitchers as pitchers were overworked here, but that was just not something you would ever see here. So that was notable. And also, after the game was over, the celebration was somewhat muted, I would say, for a 19-strikeout perfect game that hadn't happened in 30 years with 13 consecutive strikeouts. There wasn't even like a catcher leaps into his arms or vice versa. They were happy, but also there's a tradition where the Marines line up on the baseline after the game and just basically take a bow and kind of thank the fans for watching and participating in the victory, which is something I think they do regularly, not just after historic Extraordinary Games, but that was kind of a cool tradition too, I thought.

Yeah, that is a cool tradition. games but that was a kind of a cool tradition too i thought yeah that is a cool tradition anyway check out roki sasaki if uh any of you has the chance you can of course subscribe and watch those games in npb but just follow along with him like people have called him the next otani which doesn't really make sense to me because he's not a two-way player but he is that kind of talent as a pitcher if not even better like he threw even harder than otani you know as an amateur and so he is just incredibly talented ton of fun but he has breaking balls too like he didn't even need his breaking balls really he was just throwing fastballs and splitters like he has a slider he has a change up like he just he didn't really need them anyway

just kind of incredible probably the best uh player performance I saw since we last spoke. But there are a lot of impressive performances in ML their MLB debuts on or immediately after opening day. And I ran the numbers on that, as did Matt Eddy at Baseball America separately. And it is true. We were onto something there. It is historically notable that we're seeing Witt and Julio Rodriguez and Torkelson and Abrams and on and on and on down to Stephen Kwan. Not that we're down to Stephen Kwan. He should be at the top of that list at this point. I mean, he is a top 100 prospect, Ben. At one site, at least, which is looking good right now.

Looking pretty good. Sometimes we feel smart. Yeah. But there have been 11 Baseball America top 100 guys who have made their MLB debuts so far. I use Baseball America just because it goes back the furthest to 1990, so it gave me the biggest sample. And I also looked at quality and quantity, just kind of combining the ranks as well as the number of top prospects. Anyway, the takeaway is, and I will link to this on the show page if you want to look at all the numbers and graphs, The takeaway is, and I will link to this on the show page if you want to look at all the numbers and graphs, but this has absolutely been by far the biggest year for MLB debuts in the first week of a season, except for 1995. But 1995 is an exception, an outlier, because the previous season was suspended and ended in mid-August.

And so there was no September. Rosters did not expand. And so the prospects who probably would have debuted at the end of the 94 season, there was a big backlog and's unsurpassed. And it could have been better because Riley Green probably would have been yet another one if he hadn't even counting toward that total. Adley Rutschman got hurt, although maybe he would have started in AAA anyway. But it's definitely as notable as it seemed to us. And it's notable also because the trend has been away from that in recent years, fewer guys getting called up early in the season, what with service time manipulation. So the question is, is this some sort of weird blip and it's cyclical and some years more of the top 100 guys are ready right now and some years more of them are further away. So I don't know that this definitely marks the beginning of a long-term trend or suggests

that the new CBA changes that are intended to curtail service time manipulation have worked. Victory, mission accomplished. Probably too soon to say that, but it's an encouraging sign and it's definitely been super exciting to see these guys in action. Well, and I think that we'll need probably not only a couple of years of information to really say, but definitely more than a couple of months because there's being on the opening day roster and then they're staying on the big league roster. So we want to reserve judgment, but it's certainly an encouraging indicator in the early going and the fact that some of these guys are either playing on clubs that have sort of explicitly stated that they view them as part of an opening window of contention or that are performing

super well in the early going. We don't want to get too big for our britches, right? Like, you know, Stephen Kwan's great right now. He could go over 50. We just don't know. But that there is this kind of performance and that they're on the particular clubs that they are, it's just a very encouraging sign. It's exciting when you have young guys who are coming in and forcing everyone to be like, who's that guy? I got to get to know that guy. What's his deal? To have that as the predominant narrative in the first week of the season rather than, well, it sure would be nice to be seeing X. With the exception of O'Neal Cruz, we don't really have a guy right now where

you're looking at the big league roster and saying, well, they're not putting their best 28 on the field. I mean, they wouldn't have 28 on the field at a time. That would be against the rules, but in the ballpark. So it is a welcome departure if only because as we learned in the course of the lockout and as we are seeing in the early going, when you can be excited about baseball players doing baseball stuff, it sure beats having to grouse about things. Yeah. And it's worth noting that

there are 28 player rosters right now. So perhaps a few of these guys would not have made it otherwise. And also you don't have 40 player rosters in September anymore. And so maybe fewer guys debut at the end of the season and will shift toward the beginning of the season but still i think it's a good sign and they didn't adopt the most stringent anti-service time manipulation measures that they could have you know there's no punishment for doing it really it's just an incentive based system where if you bring up certain guys who meet certain criteria and then they go on to finish high in certain awards voting races, then you to get in but if you happen to have a good prospect who's already around and you know this is going to be a tight race and we actually have

a realistic shot now maybe you do bring that player up on opening day instead of waiting a couple months and missing out on that production so i don't know at the very least it's been extremely fun to see all of these players and it's encouraging. So I think Kwon, you know, there's always someone in the beginning of the season who's just totally on fire. Yeah. And you can get unreasonably excited about that player. And then sometimes it turns into Chris Shelton 2006. Right. But how dare you?

No, I don't suggest that that is happening with Pond. Like, I am a believer to a certain extent. Like, I like the skill set, obviously, just because it's different from the norm right now in that he does not strike out. And thus far, as we speak on Tuesday afternoon, he has not even whiffed. I guess technically he swung and kind of offered at one pitch and it looked like it was going to be a whiff and then it was a check swing. So even now, he still has not swung and missed at a pitch.

He has swung at 26 of them, I believe, has not whiffed. He has seen 82 pitches. And of course, he had a five for five game on Sunday. He's been on base constantly. He has reached base 15 times in his first four career games, which surpassed the previous record of 13 times. So unbelievable. And I don't know whether to get unreasonably excited about him like obviously people were excited about him coming into the year after the season he had last year at double a and triple a and you just have to hope that he can make this high contact skill set work because there are a number of players who have that skill set and the question is if it doesn't come with power is always like will this translate will the bat get knocked out of their hands at a certain point will it be like a a Kevin Newman skill set or maybe a David Fletcher? Again, how dare you?

A David Fletcher 2021 skill set where it's like, okay, this is kind of fun and putting the ball in play and everything. But will he actually drive the ball or will he go a whole season without a single barrel like Fletcher did or be the guy who we are waiting for O'Neill Cruz to replace in Pittsburgh in Newman's case. And I don't know, like Kwon, he hit 12 homers in less than a full season last year. He slugged over 500 and that was new for him. And that led to that aggressive fan graphs ranking, right? So is that real? Like he's not a beanpole, like he's not a beanpole like he's not a

tiny guy he's not a big guy either but it's not unreasonable to think that he could have a little pop so i'm excited to see like i don't think he's going to completely collapse or anything i just i don't know whether he's going to be well above average long term or whether he's just good enough to get by and be a decent contributor. Yeah. I mean, look, we definitely don't want to overreact to these things because the guy has had 19 play appearances in the big leagues.

So it's always challenging when you have a prospect who you do genuinely really like and expect good things from, and then they start off like this because you don't want to overreact, but you also have them ranked where they are for a reason, right? Because they are really good, or you expect them to be. So look, I didn't expect that when we wrote his TLDR as Quan doesn't swing and miss that he literally wouldn't have done that yet. Like that is perhaps exceeding expectations but you know he has a 3.3 percent swinging strike rate since entering pro ball which is the second lowest in the entire minor leagues among guys who have at least 650 plate appearances and Madrigal is the only hitter ahead of him and you you love Nick Madrigal. That's the other one, right? The question has always been with him.

Will he be able to drive the ball? I don't care if he does. I hope he does because I want him to be good. But even if he's just who he's been thus far, that's fine and it's fun because it's a different skill set. And we complain about the lack of baseball biodiversity these days and that we want to see different combinations of skills and so kwan and magical like they're giving that to us whether or

not they're stars i think it's still useful and fun to have players like that in the mix yeah and and you know like some of his profile is coming into focus not because of what he's doing but because of other moves the guardians have made right right? So like Quan has the capacity to play a very good center field, but with the Guardians having just extended Myles Straw, you imagine that he's going to be in a corner. So like you have that sort of piece of the puzzle falling into place. But you know, when we were watching and chatting on opening day at Fang graphs like he had an at bat and i don't remember who it was against but he made it was later in the game and he made a mid-flight adjustment to a breaking ball and then hit the fastball in the next pitch and it was just you could see

the mid-flight adjustment and so when you're talking about this guy having an incredibly discerning eye like it's cool to be able to see that stuff in action as he's doing it so do i think that he is going to you know continue to hit 692 the rest of the way i mean no i don't think that i don't think you'll have a 375 wrc plus but i i think that like this is a guy who has an 80 on his hit tool for a reason, at least for us. And so it's really cool to get to see what he can do. And we'll kind of take it as it comes. So I hope I have sounded appropriately measured here because you can't crow about this stuff

too early. Like that way lies madness. And what's the point of being, you know, gauche like that? Anyhow, like the reason this is exciting isn't because we had him stuffed on our hundred. It's because like Stephen Kwan's a really good player and he's shown us that. And it's really cool when those guys blossom at the big league level. And so, you know, I want us to be right, but mostly I want to watch good baseball. And he's part of that right now.

So that's pretty cool. Yep. He is leading the majors in war right now. You know, the stats have stabilized when Stephen Kwan is at the top of the war. That's what we've always said. It's the passing of the baton from Mike Trout to Stephen Kwan. I hope that I sounded like appropriately modest and demure in my assessment there. I'm really something.

Yeah. Unlike that Langenhagen guy who's going around crowing from the rooftops. I'm the one who liked Stephen Kwan. No, he's not. Of course not. I'm sure he hasn't even tweeted about it because he would never. But yeah, that's been a lot of fun to watch and people have already rebranded OBP as Kwan base percentage. I hope that he continues to justify that. So it's like when the season starts, so many things happen that you just don't know what we're gonna be Podcasting about from episode to episode And there's always something fun

So it could be a Stephen Kwan breakout It could be Sean Murphy's butt breakout Just breaking the internet Sean Murphy's bubble butt Just like getting in the way of a pitch And becoming possibly the most Viewed thing that will happen On the Oakland A's this season.

Like this tweet of Sean Murphy sticking his butt out Ned Flanders style and just like brandishing the butt, which then jiggles in kind of like a Newtonian physics kind of way in reaction to the ball. Like that tweet has like 50,000 retweets and like 15,000 quote tweets and 10 million views as we are speaking here the day after it happened. And I'm sure that those totals will continue to improve. So, you know, the A's tore down that roster, but they still retained at least one major attraction, apparently. So I came to know something about myself when this happened, Ben. And, you know, I don't need to make this about me, but not one person tweeted this at me. And it has made me realize that unless farts or poop are involved, no one associates me with baseball butts. Yeah, someone did at you

about Mike Trout's intestinal distress, I saw. Yeah, but not about this. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it is something that I have to sit with and kind of contemplate. It is one of the best moments that the game has ever seen. It was spectacular.

And by it, you know, that it could apply to any number of things. Ambiguous subject. But here I am saying that it was pretty incredible. It made you forget the more incredible thing, which was the final score in that game. Yeah, right. Who knew the a's were capable of scoring 13 runs in this diminished state yeah oh man yeah i love luis patino but

he's hurt again unfortunately just an oblique strain this time anyway yeah just incredible work by sean murphy and really like can you even say that he Incredible twerk by Sean Murphy He like did he make An effort to get out of the way Of this ball could he I mean He's hamstrung by the fact that he has A huge butt and what was he supposed to do And like he

Kind of he pops the butt like After the pitch makes Contact with him He just like sticks it out There for all to see so really it's Tough when the pitch makes contact with him he just like sticks it out there for all to see so really it's tough when the pitch is behind you to get out of the way because you're moving in the opposite direction that you normally would but i just uh you know he leaned into it but really when you have that kind of junk in the trunk like i don't know that he could have actually avoided it if he had tried which is really like an unsung aspect of catchers just in general. Right. Like we praise

catchers all the time. We love catchers. We did a little ode to catchers at the end of our last episode, but all that squatting, I mean, it pays dividends in most cases. Like this is not quite an Anthony Wrecker situation who like has a Facebook group devoted to his butt, but this is close to that point. I'm just watching it again. And the way that I have searched for it on Twitter, I have like simultaneous like butts going. Yeah. I mean, like one of the great things about catchers is, you know, they have powerful thighs and they have delightful hinders. And this was a great example of uh of

those hinders in action it's like amazing because it's like it ricochets off him twice like it it's it's a multi it's a multi-point kind of butt interaction it just goes to show that we have to stop calling it leg day because that's not what it's really about it's about the butt it's about your butt it is kind of like i saw someone comp it to like a Newton's cradle, like the device that, you know, one thing will swing and hit the other thing. And so there's kind of like a reverberation across the cheeks in the way of the contact here. And the camera work, I think, is a big part of this. Yeah, it's definitely aided by the angle for sure. Yeah, like the butt is not in frame when this clip begins.

And suddenly it looms into view as the ball approaches it. And then it comes to occupy almost the entire frame. Just all about the butt. Where the butt is basically all you can see. So just great work by the broadcast team. Great work by the person who made the GIF of this initially. Hopefully you've all seen this and know what we're talking about. If not, we have been discussing Sean Murphy's hindquarters,

and we will link to the GIF for anyone who hasn't seen it, which I would think that anyone who hasn't would want to. So don't deprive yourself. It is quite a butt. It's, you know, if we were in Charlotte's Web, the web would say some butt. Yeah. You just never know what is going to go viral

once the baseball season starts. Excuse you. You never know what you're going to see. As soon as I saw this, I was like, oh, this is all we're going to see for the next week. This is baseball now. You know, he's doing a service to the game, really, because- The butt of baseball. the next week this is baseball now you know it's he's doing a service to the game really because

the butt of baseball yeah we could be talking about many kind of less fun topics when it comes to the a's but instead we get to just appreciate this butt yeah i don't mean that its virality is surprising like once it happened i mean sometimes i'm surprised by like that got 20 000 retweets i don't get it. Like, really? But this, like, you knew it had that potential, obviously. But you just, you didn't know this was going to happen. And so that's why they play the games, as they say. Yeah.

For this to happen, basically. That's what they mean. They play them. They play them for the butts. So there's a lot of other MLB action we could discuss. I guess we could touch on the Phillies come from behind victory over the Mets on Monday. Because was that what prompted you to tweet about being a fan of the NL East and just how demanding and mentally taxing that seems at times? Like this was what we thought the Phillies were going to be coming into this year. This fulfilled all the expectations.

It's like this team is going to hit and this team is going to give back a lot of runs on defense. And they did both in this game. I guess technically the three errors that Alec Boehm made maybe did not lead directly to runs. But Alec Boehm did indeed make three errors and also reach base five times in a game that the Phillies came back to win against the Mets 5-4. Alec Boehm, speaking of viral tweets, he was also caught saying that he was not a huge fan of the playing for the Phillies experience, more or less. People were able to read his lips as he said, I effing hate this place. And he did subsequently apologize after the game. Phillies fans famously forgiving, so I'm sure that they will all give him a pass on that. But rough day for him and rough day for the Phillies that turned into a fun day for the

Phillies. So yeah, we're only a few days into the season, but this is pretty much par for the course. I'm pleased and satisfied with my phillies watching experience so far yeah so i'll say a couple of things here the first of which is thank goodness they won that game because otherwise would have had a much harder time i mean we've all had a hard day at work right we've all sat there and thought to ourselves i hate it here like you know we even when you really like your job you have days like that because you're alive and you know work is work so sometimes it it manifests in less pleasant ways i would like to point out that when the phillies made their signings and i said i had no notes i did acknowledge that for philly fans this would

probably be a very taxing experience but that for the rest of us, it would be delightful. And so far, as you mentioned, they've held true to my prediction. Jay Jaffe is going to write about the Phillies defense for us, not in a way that puts any significance or meaning into a week's worth of defensive metrics, because don't ever do that. Just don't ever do that. But I think that we nerds do sometimes watch the games. And you don't need UZR to tell you that this isn't going great. But as I said to him, like the unstoppable force has met the immovable object when it comes to the Mets, Metzing, and the Phillies defense.

I don't know which of them it is. I thought you were talking about the Sean Murphy clip. Goodness. What about, what about no so this isn't going great for them in in some ways but it's going well in others because they are as you said scoring runs even as they give them up but i do worry for the stress level of of all of the fans of the nl east and And when I tweeted about that, there was a Braves fan who responded to me with a picture of the World Series ring. And look, you get to be sassy when you are a fan of the defending champs, but I've seen the way that some of those games have been closed out in recent days.

And I think that you are inviting disaster, courting it, as you will, when you have had the stressful experience of both Jansen and Smith. So just everybody try to calm down, engage in breathing exercises. Maybe especially Alec Baum, who perhaps could use a change of scenery. That could mean any number of things for him, I suppose. But this is what happens when you assemble a team of DHs, and then you're like, hey, go play the field anyway. It's going to result in some taxing days at work.

But even your worst days at work can result in wins. That's a reality of working too. Yeah. And that game, the five reach base, three error game, doesn't happen a whole lot. And our friend Michael Bauman put out a call on Twitter asking for precedent for that. Like how many times has it happened? And Effectively Wild frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson doing some freelancing here, StatBlasting for others. Yeah. the last to have done it, which I guess checks out. Mauvon did it on April 29th, 1993. He had three errors at first base and also reached base six times, actually.

So this does not happen a lot. It's been almost 30 years and it hadn't happened since 1970 before then. So yeah, you know, we're talking twice in half a century or not even actually. So the Phillies already making history with this kind of game. It has happened most often with short stops five times with third baseman. I guess that makes sense. And, you know, I just look forward to what other feats of unprecedented defense and offense combined the Phillies will treat us to this season. Yeah. And, you know, it's like we got the Phillies being themselves.

We got the Mets being themselves. Within the Mets being themselves, we got them being further themselves because poor Tyjuan Walker has shoulder bursitis and is going to go on the 10-day injured list. So we're all just, you know, we can only ever be ourselves. is going to go on the 10-day injured list. So we're all just, you know, we can only ever be ourselves. Some of us are doomed or blessed to become our parents, but even that's just us being ourselves except older. So we alluded to the pirates and O'Neill Cruz earlier, and it hasn't been a banner week for them

and just for owners in general. They've not covered themselves in glory. I don't know that they often do. But in the annals of Nutting this week, we got an in-depth report from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which took them years and public records requests and litigation from the pirates objecting to this information being revealed. So kudos to them for sticking with this investigation. But they came out with some numbers that basically seemed to show that the Pirates' MLB payroll costs over the past good while. This was a report by Mark Belko of the Post-Gazette.

The Pirates' payrolls at the major league level have basically been covered by their ticket and concession sales. So this stuff just has to be disclosed, has to be reported. The Post-Gazette obtained these records and found that basically the Pirates have covered their spending on Major League players just with ticket sales and sales inside the ballpark, which means that all that extra revenue that they're getting, the revenue sharing and all of the national broadcast money and the band payments and all the rest, that is just seemingly going into Pirates disputed the numbers or at least the characterization and said something about how MLB payroll is not the only expense that a team incurs and that they have to pay coaches and minor leaguers and so forth. Yes, okay, sure, there are other expenses and your front office

and everything, but that kind of pales in comparison to what you're spending on the big league team. And in the Pirates case, that's not a lot. Only Oakland is spending less on its MLB payroll right now. And this just kind of confirms what we all thought, what we all sort of knew. And Rob Maines wrote about this and broke it down further at Baseball Perspectives. So I will link to both of those reports, but it's rare that we actually get the numbers or some portion of the books being opened. And when we do, it generally kind of confirms our sense of things. And that is why teams go to great lengths to make sure that we do not get a look at those numbers very often. So if you're a Pirates fan who is upset about nutting and the way that this team is operated, then this gives you further confirmation and ammunition. Yeah. I think that you shouldn't be able to cover your payroll out of beer sales. That's the snippiest possible way of describing the conclusions here, but it's not that far off. One of the things that is always striking to me when we talk about this, like the impact it has in terms of an organization's ability to retain talent, you know, not just on the field, but in its broader organization, its ability to compete within a division that we have seen in the last several years to be pretty winnable if you're willing to try.

years to be pretty winnable if you're willing to try. We talk about that stuff all the time. We talk about the impact of this as on a fan base that is there supporting its team despite the fact that the ownership doesn't seem to particularly care. I'm always surprised that this kind of stuff doesn't rankle other owners more. I don't mean to cast them as the sympathetic figures here because who gives even one damn about that but it's always surprising to me that like it is sort of an understood cost of doing business presumably from other owners who are spending a great amount of money and trying to win that like that netting just gets to pocket this stuff and like put a bad baseball team on the field and enjoy revenue sharing and like everybody has to go about their business i find

that very bizarre because if i were the dodgers this kind of stuff would piss me off sure like i would be like why are we helping this guy why are we funding whatever you know every billionaire has like a weird hobby they have like a weird thing they like and like we generally support people like in weird stuff but it takes some sort of a nefarious cast when it's a billionaire it's like why are we the dodgers helping so support nutting's whatever habit i don't know what it is i'm not saying it's like you know like uh like dangerous or or or involves hunting people but it's probably something weird so anyway i don't know you're getting the back end of the cold and in the podcast here both in terms of butts and nutting. But it seems to me that while there are things that this most recent CBA seems to have in the very early going preliminary

results have curtailed in terms of bad behavior, the requirement that teams field competitive rosters and actually try seems to be an unfinished project, put it that way. Yes, absolutely. And I don't think we mentioned this last time, but when we were talking about the extensions for Brian Hayes, for Jose Ramirez, those are great and nice to see, and Pirates fans and Guardians fans should be happy about them. But there is also a provision in the new CBA that maybe accounts for that spending, right? In that the burden of

proof now that teams are actually spending enough to justify revenue sharing is higher now. So they actually have to spend a bit more so as not to endanger their continuing to receive revenue sharing, which is good. I guess that's a good rule. If that produces an extension where you keep a homegrown guy around for a little longer, that's nice. But it might not be that these owners are willingly and of their own volition turning over a new leaf so much as that they are just kind of complying with this new measure that puts a little bit of a higher bar in there for them. Right. And as soon as there is a number to manage to, clubs like the Pirates are going to manage exactly to that number

and they will not spend a dollar more than that. So they're going to model out what they have to do in order to try to bob and weave grievances. And I'm sure that whatever number that they have to reach is being facilitated by the hayes extension now you're right to say like pirates fans get to continue to enjoy brian hayes and brian hayes makes some money so in that respect of all their behavior that's like some of the least icky but it isn't purely altruistic by any means yeah and then we were

given an opportunity to talk about the cincinnati Yeah, exactly. We don't even have to leave the division here. And we find another team that is currently nutting, even though it is not owned by Bob Nutting. It is owned by Bob Castellini and his son, Phil, who is the president and COO of the team. He came out firing on Tuesday, first via a radio interview, and then basically doubled down on his comments when he was asked to essentially walk them back a little bit later. He basically said, if you don't like it, lump it. with the fact that the team has torn down after fielding a competitive roster, a playoff contender last year and retaining control over most of those players who got them there and then deciding to divest this offseason. Phil says, well, what are you going to do if you're a fan of the Reds? You don't have any other options in Cincinnati when it comes to major league teams, so suck it. in Cincinnati when it comes to major league teams. So suck it. So you're just going to have to live with. And we have said it doesn't have to be,

you know, if teams are treating you with this attitude and they are not making any effort to win your dollars or win your loyalty, then you can just move on. But Castellini seems to be confident that no one will. And he's probably right that most people will. But usually they don't just come out and say well what are you gonna do root for a different team you're stuck with us and what are you gonna do stab me yeah i just saw your tweet about that too and i mean he said basically like well we're still trying so why are you gonna abandon us like he's he's making it sound as if the Reds ownership group is investing and that it would be a betrayal for the fans to forsake them. But I don't know how you can come to that conclusion given their behavior over

the past several months. I mean, they are not currently making an investment in that major league team. So I, I don't see how he can go out there and say that they are, but I guess he can do so because he doesn't think that he can go out there and say that they are but i guess he can do so because he doesn't think that he's going to drive anyone away yeah so like as a brief excerpt of his remarks here where are you going to go let's start there sell the team to who what would you do with this

team to have it be more profitable to which i would say as a fan why would you care about that like that's not on your list of that's not on your hierarchy of needs as a fan why would you care about that like that's not on your list of that's not on your hierarchy of needs as a fan like as long as the team is solvent enough to field a team like you don't care if it's profitable or not that's not your problem and then it goes on it would be to pick it up and move it somewhere else so be careful what you ask for i mean like there are a number of things here that are objectionable i mean like first first of all, I never know how I feel about answers like this. Because on the one hand, he had an easy out when he was asked about the team. And he could have taken it and made his fan base feel better, right?

He could have talked about how Hunter Green is debuting. Because he gave these remarks on opening day. He could have talked about how Hunter Green was going to debut. He could have talked about Nick Hunter Green was going to debut. He could have talked about Nicola Dolo. He could have, I don't know, tried to make us super invested in Tommy Pham. He didn't do any of those things. And on the one hand, it's like, how are you going to treat your fan base like this? But I sometimes think there's value in there not being artifice in the way that owners talk about this.

Because I think it's useful for fans who are not in the weeds on this stuff quite as much to like be confronted unfortunately with the reality of how ownership thinks about their franchises when you get Kevin Mather coming out and addressing the Rotary Club or whatever and just sort of summing it up laying it out there yeah you never like to be clear like we don't like the part that's being said out loud but sometimes saying the quiet part out loud allows you to sort of put into very stark relief what these guys really think about the part that's being said out loud, but sometimes saying the quiet part out loud allows you to sort of put into very stark relief what these guys really think about the business that they're in, that they think about it as a business at all, for one thing.

But also, Kansas City Royals just sold for a billion dollars, not just, but recently, and they didn't move that team anywhere. I know that relocation is always put out there as this bugaboo for teams, and we have the evolving situation with the A's. I grew up in Seattle. Unless Starbucks is involved, they don't actually move that often. Cincinnati might not have another big league franchise, but the Bengals are good. This isn't a city that is without other sporting options and you're not obligated to root for a team.

It's not a constitutional requirement. It doesn't make you a bad citizen. If you're not getting anything out of that relationship, you don't have to spend your hard earned disposable income on a franchise that is thinking about you this way, right? It would be one thing if they even said, you know, when we think that our position in the division is different, we're going to spend a lot or whatever. And that might be nonsense, but at least it would suggest that there is a scenario under which they would like really meaningfully invest in the team again. But they're not even offering that like go back to selling broccoli

or whatever castellini they should call him broccolini i don't know i'm just rambling at this point but it's just a really lousy way to try to communicate with your fan base when as you said you spent the winter like just dismantling whole parts of this roster you know you could you could at least try to lay out the the roadmap for this team returning to relevance again and they're not even like giving their fan base the respect of doing that like they're not even lying to them sucks yeah the part that maybe he was right about unfortunately is, is the idea that, well, if they sell it to someone else, it wouldn't necessarily be better. I know that the Castellanis are, by MLB owner standards, not among the best-heeled, right? Probably some of the worst-heeled, which is not to suggest that they couldn't afford to spend more on this team.

But you could say, well, it would be an upgrade in that sense. But you could say, well, it would be an upgrade in that sense. But given the behavior of other ownership groups, it's no guarantee that if they were to sell the team that the next owners would be more generous or more benevolent. So I guess he's right about that technically. But everything else, yeah. I mean, there was also an announcement by the Orioles that there had been a huge public investment in Camden Yards, right? Owner John Angelos of the Orioles said that the Maryland state legislature had passed a $1.2 billion measure in public funding from the state of Maryland for the reinvestment in and reimagination of the Camden Yards Sports Complex. And that's kind of incredible too, because what Camden Yards is great and has been around for 30 years now. And sure, maybe I guess it could use some sort of investment from someone, perhaps the Orioles, for instance. But the idea that the Orioles can go out and get $1.2 billion from the state, which, as I understand it, has been running some surpluses and maybe has some money to spend, but this can't be the best way that it could possibly spend it. What have the Orioles done lately to deserve some kind of public funding? I mean, they have not put competitive teams together. They have not

invested in that major league roster. Hopefully they're pulling out of it and things will get good in a few years. But really, you can tank. I mean, that's basically what they've been doing. And you can still somehow extract $1.2 billion in public funds. It's just, it's incredible. And this was happening at the same time that the Buffalo Bills in the NFL are also working their way toward a big potential public stadium deal in Buffalo. And one of the justifications that the assembly majority leader, Crystal Peoples-Stokes, said, and this was a new one, she justified this by saying that it would benefit senior citizens because they will be able to shop in empty supermarkets

when the games are on. So usually you hear some kind of bogus claims about how this is going to revitalize the community and it's going to create so many new jobs and it's going to lead to miraculous profits and it never does. But to say that

they need to invest in this Bills Stadium because senior citizens need to go to the supermarket without a crowd. And if all of the people in Buffalo are watching the Bills play, then they can have a nice empty supermarket to browse in. I mean, I can't even counter that. That's a new one. Have to hand it to her, I think. But people just like sports a lot. And we like sports too. So I get it. But there just seems to be no end to the one-way nature of this relationship where sports teams

and sports owners can just kind of crap all over the community, really. And the community will still be there just offering the handouts when they put out their hints. And, you know, no one wants to lose a sports team. I get it. It brings us joy. Like we want to keep the sports teams there if possible. Like everyone wants that to happen.

But man, like you have to draw the line at a certain point. Yeah. So I'm going to say two things. The first of which is I will admit that my mom has noted that it is easier to grocery shop on sundays when the seahawks are playing than at other times but i imagine that you can achieve that regardless of the state of the stadium like you probably you know because most people even even if the stadium is remodeled or built anew, they're still mostly watching the game from home. It's not like the entire city of Buffalo is in the stadium.

Anyway, that's delightful. Yeah, it isn't that we don't love the sports or want them to stay or spend money on frivolous stuff, but it's like there are real community needs in every city in this country. And I just struggle to believe that we can't spend that money more effectively to help people with whatever the struggle is. I refuse to believe that that $1.2 billion couldn't be better spent helping to house people who face homelessness or feed people who have food insecurity or educate people or fix potholes, whatever the thing is. That money can be used to fulfill needs that are much more obviously communal and pressing, cleaning up a ballpark. I get frustrated because it's like the Orioles, in some respects, their record is relevant here, but I don't want us to tie

deservedness for this stuff to a record. Like I would have a similar problem if they had gotten a bunch of money in 2014 when they had, you know, a 593 winning percentage versus their 2021 season where they really literally just won only 52 games. It was really only 52 games, Ben. That's so bad. But the winningness isn't the point. It's about capacity in the system. And if you are an incredibly wealthy person who owns a sports franchise as at least in part a vanity project, your capacity to bear this stuff is greater than, you know, some of the average folks in the community you're living in who might have needs that can be met by, you know, a community coming together and dispensing public funds. So it's just the way that we get held hostage to these

franchises is really disappointing. And then they're perfectly happy to turn around and impugn the sort of fervor that their fan base has when the attendance is poor. And it just stinks. So we should demand better, and particularly from the Orioles. It's just been 75, 47, 52. We won't count 2020, although they still only won 25 games in the 60-game season. That was good for them.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, boy. What a franchise. What a time. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, the population of Buffalo is only like 280,000 people and the capacity of Highmark Stadium where the Bills play is like 72,000. So that might actually have an appreciable effect on the supermarket congestion in that particular place.

That's a big portion of the population. I'm not saying that that piece of it is untrue. it uh isn't on is untrue i'm just saying i bet if your goal was a peaceful shopping experience for seniors you could probably achieve that same thing through a public program for a lot less money yeah expand the supermarkets instead yeah there you go i'd rather have them try to sell me on the less crowded supermarkets than to sell me on this stadium being a boon to the public funds, etc. So at least I can kind of buy the supermarket thing. I don't know that it's actually that important or a reason to do anything, but it seems more truthful at the very least. So there's that. Anyway, the Nationals owners, the learners are potentially

exploring selling that team. So I'm sure there will be more ownership stories to come. And meanwhile, you have multiple major league ownership groups bidding on soccer franchises. It's just going to show that actually they do kind of like owning sports franchises and it is not leading to biblical losses. So funny how that works. Anyway, just to end on a note that is related to something else fun that happened on the field, I do have a closing stat blast. But also, did you see Brett Phillips pitching for the Rays, which he always makes entertaining in one way or another. And in this case, he made an incredible defensive play. And he's a great

fielder, not normally while playing pitcher. But in this case, he's pitching to the A's in that 13-2 blowout that was overshadowed by Sean Murphy's butt. And Brett Phillips did his best to give the Rays a highlight because Seth Brown, who was batting for the A's, popped up foul over by the A's dugout on the third base side. And Brett Phillips, who pitched the last couple innings of that game, position player pitcher, he dashed over, made an incredible sliding catch. Just like sliding feet first, basically into the dugout almost, if not for the fence there in front. the dugout almost, if not for the fence there in front, and then immediately like leaped up and flashed two fingers to signal two outs, just as if it was, you know, a catch he had made in the outfield. Rarely, if ever, have I seen a player look so underqualified to play a position and then so overqualified to play a position on the same play. Like he throws a little 49

mile per hour looper in there that no self-respecting pitcher would throw other than maybe Zach Krenke. And then he makes an unbelievable play that I'm not sure any non-Ontani pitcher could make, but certainly no pitcher would attempt to make. Just real whiplash on that one. That was a ton of fun. Like I think we're generally kind of over position player pitching just because it has become so common. But this, I mean mean he took his cap off and and doffed it and deservedly so so he is still making position player pitching fun yeah i'm ready to fall back in love with position player pitching i mean i'm kind of surprised

i didn't expect to see it at all this month while rosters are expanded, given that every roster is basically like four guys and then a bunch of pitchers. But I'm ready to feel differently about it again because we aren't going to have pitchers hitting. And so we need a weird thing. So I think that if we're going to see it, it should resemble this, right? It should provide a highlight because often it is just kind of snoozy after being so fun. So this is setting a new standard.

This is the mark that all position player pitching has to aspire to reach for the rest of this season. Troubling that it is set so early, but here we are. So this is what you're all you're all working toward. I'm just going to remember the butt, though. That's all that's really going to. Of course, just the butt.

Sure. And it's a little too early to make anything of this. Actually, it's probably far too early, but there are some indications that maybe the ball has been a bit dead thus far, even relative to like last year. Oh, boy. Yeah. It's time for how's the baseball behaving discourse, which is just a constant of every start of the season. It's like a bad toddler.

We'll follow up on this. Yeah. When there's more data and probably Rob Arthur will write about it at Baseball Perspectives. But I know Jason Collette looked into it and found that the spring training home run rate was down. And it seems like comparing to the same time period in past stat cast seasons, the ball is not flying quite as well. And the home run per contact rate has been down a bit. And I guess that would make some sense if there

were two balls in play, two different models of baseball in play last year. And one of them was the new one that was intended to cut down on the home run rate a little. And I know when we talked to Bradford and Meredith about their research and reporting on this, it wasn't totally clear that there was one older juiced ball and one newer, less juiced ball. and the ball was still quite juiced by historical standards overall, but it might make sense, like, if they just had leftover super-juiced balls and hadn't fully phased in the slightly less-juiced ball, and maybe now they have had time to do that, and you would expect the home run rate to go down a bit. So, again, it's a small sample, and it's maybe not a representative sample.

You haven't even had games in every location yet. And perhaps the weather has been colder than usual. I don't know if that's the case, but that can really affect things. And, of course, you have the compressed spring training as well. So there's all sorts of stuff going on. And sometimes these early season blips turn out to be just that. And there was that weird thing a couple years ago was it i have lost track already where there was like a super low babbit for a little while and then it

rebounded so these things can fluctuate within a season but just letting everyone know that there are maybe some signs early on that there will be fewer home runs hit this year and i don't know whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing, because if we do still see a lot of strikeouts, that would just mean less scoring in general. So unless you bring back contact. And there's only one Stephen Kwan. Yeah, there's only one Stephen Kwan.

And there's only so much he can do, although he is doing his best. But just something to keep an eye on. We always keep an eye on early season rates just to see if anything looks way out of whack and it's often misleading and deceptive. But that is one thing that we've been looking at for several years just because it ping pongs back and forth and you never know where it's going to wind up in any given year or in any given month for that matter. But thus far, seems like might be a bit deader, bit less Homer happy. You know, I said that the ball is like a toddler, but like, I think that a teen might be a better metaphor because it's changing. It's getting to know itself. Its answer to who it is might differ year to year as it grows and thrives and meets new people and has new experiences can be mercurial and sometimes it can go go big and sometimes it can want to stay home yeah and we should also congratulate kelsey whitmore who is

going to become the first woman to play in the independent atlantic league which is pretty exciting i'm looking forward to following her performance there. There have been women who have played in IndieBall prior to this, including Kelsey Whitmore, who has previously pitched for the Sonoma Stompers. And I actually wrote a bit about her in the afterword to the paperback edition of The Only Rules It Has to Work and had her on the Ringer MLB show several years ago to talk about pitch, I think, how she thought pitch portrayed the experience of being a woman in professional baseball, and also to talk about her performance with the Stompers, as well as Stacey Pagno, who was her teammate with the Stompers at the time. But now she has been called up to the Atlantic League, the highest level of indie ball, and she'll be pitching for

the Staten Island Ferryhawks. So she's 23 23 now she was a teenager when she was with the stompers and she's just been one of the most promising women playing baseball worldwide she is a close friend of louisa gauchi who has been on this podcast before and now she is going to be a trailblazer at yet another level and i know that she has said that she is very picky when it comes to where she is asked to play and she always wants to be sure that it's not just some sort of publicity stunt and that it is a legitimate opportunity but she's talented she's played in all sorts of places at all levels of competition and so this is a major step. And there are some good stories.

Howard Magdahl wrote a good story about this for Sports Illustrated, which I will link to. But she's in my neighborhood. Maybe I'll have a chance to go see her pitch sometime. And maybe we can have her on the show at some point. But that would be a cool milestone. We've seen a lot of progress when it comes to women being hired to certain on-field positions or front office positions

in MLB where they haven't been or where they've been scarce before. This is another rung on the ladder for women playing professional baseball, so best of luck to Kelsey. Yeah. Alright, so let me end with a stat blast. Okay, so as we noted last time, the Stat Blast is now presented by baseball reference Stathead.

And we sung the praises of Stathead last time. We won't give you as long a pitch every time, but you all know Stathead, hopefully, by now. It's a very powerful tool where you can look up baseball stats, not just baseball stats. In our personal lives, to satisfy our own curiosity as well as our professional lives, we're constantly running queries to look up when was the last time this happened or who was the last time to do that. And it's got so many different wrinkles to the StatHead tool that I'd encourage everyone to explore. And if you do, if you are a new subscriber to StatHead, use the Effectively Wild coupon code WILD20, the numbers two zero at the end, WILD20, and you can get $20 off the $80 one-year subscription, which seems like a pretty sweet deal for a pretty indispensable tool. So thanks again to StatHead for sponsoring the StatBlast. But this StatBlast is prompted by a listener question from emil

actually it was sent in by a couple of listeners emil and shayam and maybe others but emil asked tim hill has entered back-to-back games to open the season in which his team had not yet allowed a hit then proceeded to lose the no-hit bid to the first batter he faced. Sure did. He sure did. That is Padres reliever Tim Hill, who relieved Hugh Darvish after six no-hit innings. Is that right? I think so, yeah.

Also relieved Sean Minaya, new Padres starter, after, I believe, seven no-hit innings. So not a banner back-to-back days or games for Tim Hill. Innings so not a banner Back-to-back days or games For Tim Hill but Emil asked what's the longest streak of No-hit bids lost by the same pitcher To their first batter He also asked has a pitcher lost Consecutive no-hit bids that were

Closer to completion than The 18 and 21 outs That was the case in those two games So this was actually the part of the Question that I'm a little less interested in But Ryan Nelson Our frequent StatBlast consultant He did the work on this too

And it seemed to us that There wouldn't really be many cases Of this kind of thing happening Because not only is it unlikely That the same pitcher would give up The first hit in a game after No-hit bids in back-to-back games. But also, historically speaking, typically pitchers haven't been pulled from no-hit bids.

And so you look at most of baseball history, if you had a no-hitter going, you were just going to stay in until you finished it off or you gave it up. So there wouldn't even have been all that many opportunities for this to happen. So there wouldn't even have been all that many opportunities for this to happen. But Ryan noted that there has been kind of a close comp to this previously. So on August 13th and 14th of 2004, the Expos right-handed reliever TJ Tucker had something quite a lot like this happen. He came into no-hitters as a reliever in consecutive Expos games and allowed the games first hit both times, but both times it was in the sixth inning. So close, very close. And only T.J. Tucker, Tim Hill, and also Neftali Feliz has ever allowed multiple no-hitters that they didn't start to be broken up in the sixth or later. And weirdly, two of the three times that that happened were in back-to-back games. Tim Hill and TJ Tucker. Yeah, that is odd. So this kind of thing is rare, as you would expect. But I was kind of curious about hitters breaking up no-hitters. And I was thinking about

this the other day because our friend Steve Goldman on his podcast, The Infinite Inning, was telling a story about Ripper Collins, who was a good-hitting first baseman for the Cardinals in the 30s and 40s. And Ripper Collins was a self-styled breaker-upper of no-hitters, so he kind of dubbed himself the All-American Louse, he said, because he had broken up for no-hitters.

So he gave himself basically this reputation as someone who would spoil no-hit attempts. And Steve was sort of skeptical and he kind of looked into whether that was actually true, whether he actually had broken up that many no-hitters. And he wasn't able to do it fully. He was kind of just scanning game logs. And so Ryan Nelson, I asked him to take a more comprehensive look at that, and he did. And there's play-by-play data for more than 95% of Rupert Collins' career. And really, he was not an All-American louse. After all, he never broke up a no-hitter after the seventh inning,

which, you know, I don't know in your mind what qualifies as, like, I broke up a no-hitter. Like, how deep do you have to be into that game to count as, like, I actually spoiled a no-hitter here? Because, like, you know, obviously people are constantly breaking up no-hitter here because like you know obviously people are constantly breaking up no-hitters in the first inning or the second inning so like it has to be deep enough into the game that everyone's kind of aware that a no-hitter is going and if it's not likely it's at least plausible so I don't know what to you is like

the cutoff for yeah I broke up a no-hit attempt there i think that you have to be huh let me think about this briefly i'd say that you have to be at least the second out in the sixth before you can lay claim to it like it needs to be you know we've gotten kind of loosey-goosey with the notifications about no-hitters but i don't think anything before that is something that you could crow about otherwise you know like and if people want to say the seventh i'm comfortable with that that's fine like you need to people need to be nervous people have to be shifting around in their seats in the ballpark the starter has to be someone no one is talking to anymore like that's the territory you need to be in yeah

and like i don't really get well i mean to the extent that i get excited about no hitters at all i don't really start feeling it till like the eighth i mean the odds are still very much against it even at that point so like if i'm in the stands and there's a no hitter going in the seventh and it's lost like i'll be a little bit deflated i'll be like oh you know bummer or that was fun or it would have been nice to see one but i'm not expecting it to happen at that point whereas once you get to the eighth you know even if statistically it's not likely umpires do start to expand their zones late and no hitters as i have written before so you can kind of see it potentially. Eighth to me is like,

if you're going to give yourself a nickname based on your prowess at breaking up no-hitters, like you have to have done it at least once after the seventh. He never did. He did it three times in the seventh, once with no outs, once with one out,

once with two outs. He also broke up three in the sixth sixth only one of which came with two outs so i don't know i mean it's possible that that was more than you'd expect for a career of his length i didn't run the numbers on that but really like unless he was giving this to himself based on like minor league games or something where he happened to do it like if he's talking about major league games i think it's a stretch and everyone just kind of took it at face value and said oh yeah ripper collins he's clutch and he breaks up no hitters because he said that was the case and you couldn't really check these things at that time now you can and i don't know not that notable

i don't think like he was a you know good player hitter, but I don't have complete play-by-play coverage. But he found that the record for most no-hitters broken up in the sixth inning or later is Pete Rose, which when I asked Ryan to do this, I had some misgivings because I thought, well, maybe it'll just be the players who had the most hits. Right, right. And so when he said, yeah, Pete Rose, I was like, oh, okay. So Pete Rose had six in the sixth, four in the seventh, and one in the eighth. hits right right and so when he said yeah pete rose i was like oh all right okay so pete rose

had six in the sixth four in the seventh and one in the eighth but it gets more unpredictable from there it's not just the players who had the most hits so george scott had nine no hitters broken up in the sixth or later three in the sixth four in the seventh two in the ninth which is pretty impressive yeah don kessinger also had nine so did jim gilliam junior gilliam had nine as well two in the sixth five in the seventh two in the eighth and then bobby bonds also did so four way tie for nine and then orlando cambrera ricky henderson David Ortiz, and Vic Power all had eight. The record for most no-hitters broken up in the ninth, that is a tie between Joe Maurer and Horace Clark, who each had three, three no-hitters broken up in the ninth. So I think that counts.

That seems like all American louse if you're breaking up three in the ninth like at that point everyone is super psyched and there's actually a mlb.com video which I will link to on the show page of the three times that Maurer broke up no-hitters in the ninth all with one out I think it was Gavin Floyd was his first victim in 2008 Neftali Feliz actually speaking, speaking of Feliz, he lost his own no-hit bid to Maurer in 2010. And then I think it was Anibal Sanchez in 2013. So I think that Maurer and Horace Clark deserve this reputation. And you can go a little farther if you do the eighth inning or later. It's also three, actually, and it's a tie between several players, including Maurer

and Clark. All three of theirs came in the ninth, but you also had Chris Young, Babe Young, Dan Pasqua, George Hendrick, Jimmy Fox, and Phil Cavaretta. And then the record for the seventh inning or later is seven by Jim Gilliam. Second is sixth by Carl Ustremsky, George Scott, and Dick Allen. So you're seeing some of the same names recur there. I would say that Joe Maurer, Horace Clark have a strong case. Jim Gilliam has a strong case. George Scott has a strong case. All of these guys had, you know, six, seven, eight, nine of these, depending on where you set the innings cutoff. And these were all pretty good players or pretty good hitters, at least in most of these cases, but not the first names you would think of when thinking of who broke up the most hitters. I mean, Horace Clark, he had some good years, but he had an 83 OPS plus for his career and, you know,

5,000 plate appearances, a 10 year career, like you would not suspect that it was Horace Clark. So you're kind of a no hitters broken up above expectation. He's probably going to be up there. So I think those are the guys who most deserve that moniker. And he also, Ryan looked into pitchers who had lost the most no-hit attempts. And he found, and he had to double-check the numbers because it seemed so absurd. But the pitcher who lost the most no-hitters in the sixth inning or later is Nolan Ryan, who, of course, had by far the most successful no-hitters. He also lost the most no-hitters with 44. He had 44 no-hitters in the sixth inning or later, and that doesn't even include his seven successful no-hitters. That's just the no-hit attempts that didn't pan out. So 44 times, even aside from the successful ones he had when going in the last few innings of a game. Second was Randy Johnson with 26, then Don Sutton with 20. So Sutton

is the most by any pitcher who never actually did pitch a no-hitter. And then Gaylord Perry with 18, Sam McDowell with 16, Bob Feller and Steve Carlton with 15, John Lester with 14, and Justin Verlander and Tom Seaver with 13. So not a no-hitter guy, but I'm thinking about no-hitters just because I was watching Sasaki's perfect game attempt. And then this Tim Hill thing happened and the Dave Steeb documentary by John Boyce and about his pursuit of an elusive no-hitter. So between that and Steve's Ripper Collins story, I've kind of had no-hitter so between that and steve's ripper collins story i've kind of had no-hitters on the brain yeah and now i've put it on all of your brains so i will uh link to the sheet with the data as usual and thanks to ryan as always it's funny because i'm sitting there thinking like it has to be like a you know a number over three and And yet, when Tim Hill came in with the second no-hitter on the line,

I was like, oh, this is bad. They shouldn't have him in there. He's going to blow this. Which is, you know, sometimes the lizard brain takes over. And I think the takeaway there, I was like, oh gosh, I'd be so nervous. Yeah, right.

All right. So that'll do it for us. All right, meant to mention that if you're interested in following Frequent Stat Blast consultant Ryan Nelson on Twitter, you can do so. His handle is at RSNelson23. He didn't ask me to plug his Twitter, but hopefully he won't mind. as Meg and I were talking, and Stephen Kwan had another pretty good game, another hit, another walk, and still no whiffs. So the whiffless streak is still alive. It looked like he had whiffed once, but then it was ruled a called strike and a check swing. Questionable. Maybe some friendly scorekeeping there. Thought the game was in Cincinnati.

An intra-Ohio matchup. Anyway, Kwan continues to impress and become a kind of folk hero. He was quoted as saying that when he was younger, every time he struck out, Kwan continues to impress and become a kind of folk hero. He was quoted as saying that when he was younger, every time he struck out, he would want to cry. So he just told himself, I don't like to cry, so I won't strike out. Which reminds me a lot of Nick Madrigal, who has said that he thinks it's one of the most embarrassing things ever to be on a baseball field and to let the pitcher strike you out and then have to walk back to the dugout. So these players had a hatred of strikeouts, an extreme strikeout aversion drilled into them as youths. And here they are today,

still desperately trying to make contact. Not something that every young hitter is taught today, understandably. And while we're talking about players who recently debuted, congrats to Spencer Torkelson of the Tigers for finally getting that first big league hit off of podcast legend Rich Hill, who, as many people pointed out, was originally drafted in 1999, shortly before Spencer Torkelson was born that same year. Also meant to mention the gift that Commissioner Rob Manfred gave to players on opening day. He gave each major league player a pair of headphones, Beats Fit Pro, with a little quote-unquote note of appreciation. A token of his intention to, he said, work together with all players to grow the sport.

He was mostly mocked mercilessly for this. And it is sort of silly. I do like the idea of him giving the players noise-canceling headphones so that they can cancel him out. I guess it's the thought that counts. I'm sure most major leaguers have their own headphones and probably don't think that highly of this gesture. There's a lot of bad blood to make up there, maybe more than a pair of headphones can accomplish. But hey, nice try, Rob. Glad MLB managed to scrounge together enough scratch after those several hard years

that you talked about during the CPA negotiations to afford these headphones for everyone. And lastly, we got a note from listener Ryan in Montreal who says, during the Blue Jays radio broadcast today, I was surprised to hear an ad where Buck Martinez proclaimed Miller Lite to be the official beer of Major League Baseball. And Ryan was somewhat taken aback because, of course, we spoke recently about the fact that MLB has an official beer and an official cerveza, and neither one is Miller Lite. Well, I linked to a couple stories about this on the show page for a recent episode. But yes, MLB further segments its beer sponsorship market to have official sponsors for different countries.

So there's a different official beer of MLB in Canada than there is in the US. It was Miller Lite, then it was Coors Lite for a while, I guess now it's Miller Lite again, which was amusing because for a while there, when it was Miller Lite, Budweiser was the official beer of the Blue Jays, so the only team located in Canada was sponsored by Budweiser, while MLB was sponsored in Canada by Miller Lite. What a tangled web MLB weaves with its sponsors. I'll link to those stories if you'd like to learn more. 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 get themselves access to some perks while helping us stay ad free. Paul Denyer, Justine Liebenson, Alex Wigderman, Totally Not the Scranton Strangler, and George Boff. Thanks to all of you. Perks for Patreon supporters include monthly bonus pods with me and Meg, a couple playoff live streams when we get to that point later in the year, and year-round access to the Patreon Discord group, which has been a big hit lately now that the season has started

and there are game threads and channels for each individual team. A nice community has formed there. There's another nice community on Facebook, in our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can rate and review Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can contact me and Meg via email at podcastandfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod.

You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance, and we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. I want to step on the edge again. I want to step on.