Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1846: One-Night Standings

Episode Date: May 7, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the joys of a pitcher’s duel between Shohei Ohtani and Rich Hill, have a spoiler-free discussion about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness being a baseball movie, examine whether the historically hapless Reds are truly tanking or are just a case of Nutting gone wrong, and talk […]

We'll bop over the galaxies, we'll stroll over to Mars We'll romance on Jupiter, make love among the stars Hey there sister, let's face the universe and earth Hey there sister, let's face the universe and dance Hello and welcome to episode 1846 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Well, I am not someone who has a high degree of confidence in the existence of an afterlife, though I'd certainly like there to be one.

What a start! Is this not how you were expecting me to answer that question? No, but I can't wait to see where it's going. Well, even if the various religions are right and some part of us doesn't just turn to dust, I have no idea what that afterlife might look like. I wouldn't presume to say. But if it exists and if I were there and if I could choose the setting, I think it would be a sunny afternoon at Fenway Park featuring a pitcher's duel between Shohei Otani and Rich Hill. Because that was nirvana for me. That was baseball nirvana.

Both of those guys dealing, matching zeros. Otani was awesome, of course, but Rich Hill was wonderful too, for as long as he lasted. That was just like vintage Otani, vintage Hill, going head to head, the most effectively wild matchup I could conceive of. And it delivered because how often do you think, oh, it's going to be a great pitcher's duel? And then it isn't. Someone doesn't hold up their end of the bargain. Someone gets knocked out early. It turns into a blowout. This was exactly what I wanted it to be. So just a wonderful, thrilling baseball watching experience on Thursday afternoon. And I hope that I get to relive that someday, somehow. Yeah, it did. It had everything you want, right? I mean, not for Red Sox fans. I imagine they came

away. They probably would have wanted to run at some point. Yeah, they probably came away disappointed, feeling like the afternoon was wanting in some respects. But I think that we're probably at the point where you just, you see Otani doing what Otani is doing and to a lesser degree ever, so slightly lesser degree, uh, see what Rich Hill was doing and just look at it and say, we're along for the ride here. What a treat that we get to watch something like this unfold before us. Yeah, it was, it was a pretty pristine experience of baseball it was just uh it was just really great you know when that like splitter is working oh my gosh good grief two of the most aesthetically pleasing pictures to watch when hill has his curveball going and they're both yelling after they release pitches otani was pretty fired up and Hill does that usually. And

then they were just both getting a ton of whiffs, like even on pitches in the zone. And Hill does that thing where he just like torques his whole body around just to get the movement and the speed that he does get on those pitches, which is a ton of speed at this point, but still a lot of movement. But seven shutout innings for Otani, 11 strikeouts, no walks, what, three hits or something. 81 strikes in 99 pitches. 81 strikes. Plus two hits, right? Plus he knocked a ball off the green monster, knocked his own number down off the green monster. Just the best. He hasn't even hit yet really this year. He's been basically a league average hitter or just a tad better, and he is still 18th in combined fan graphs war now just because a little

bit of war from the position player side and more war from the pitching side. So he's been pitching first this year as opposed to last year was maybe more offense first and maybe that'll get equalized at some point but he almost can't help but be very valuable if he is good at even just one of those things if he's just like par in the other one then he's still going to accrue some value there and it's going to add up but this was just both of those guys at the peak of their powers or at least Rich Hill's late career powers obviously a big age differential and a big velocity differential there. So different ways to be effective, but it was a ton of fun. I really appreciate games where you are able to observe the sort of the full range of goodness that a sport can offer. Because I think that one of the things that we both appreciate the most about baseball is,

and one of the things that I think we can sometimes feel is at times a bit wanting in the modern game is just the sheer diversity of ways that one can be good. And that applies in all sorts of ways, right? It applies to the range of bodies that can be good at baseball. And it applies to the approaches that you can take and the different pitches you can throw. And there's just so much that we get to watch and it can, it can all look really different and it can result in the same thing right it can result in a run it can result in an out like it it just offers this potpourri of options and so to

have the contrast and then to be able to really worry about the red sox bullpen for a little while but that's a separate conversation you know it's it's one of those games where you really get a lot of different looks and they're all really fun and engaging. Again, I'm sure that the Red Sox fans listening to this wish that some of them had been a little less fun and a little less engaging on the Angels side, but it's really a very special thing. And I don't know, I think we're pretty lucky to get to watch it. So that part's cool. I just want the baseball boys I care about to do well yeah both doing well in the same game on my screen that was a lot of fun 29 whiffs for otani in that start i believe that is the most by any starter this season so maybe i don't have to die to relive this maybe there is another universe that i could visit where

otani and hill would be facing off at all times and I was thinking about this because I attended a screening for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness earlier this week. Now don't worry, no spoilers. Don't everybody run for the exits here. I will be careful and respectful and not spoil anything other than the fact that

it's about the multiverse and there are multiple universes in the movie. I assume that you all gleaned that from the title and the various trailers. But I'm pleased to report this is a baseball movie. It is not the first Marvel or MCU movie to be a baseball movie. We have talked about some before, but this is a baseball movie in a really fun and entertaining and I think subtle way. in, I think, subtle way. And there's just a one throwaway line in this movie that I feel like is for us, for the baseball people,

and for director Sam Raimi. So without giving anything away about who says this line or who this line is said to, at one point someone visits another universe in the multiverse, right? And someone in that universe is saying, you know who's the best? The 2003 Tigers. That's it. That's the extent of the baseball in the movie as far as I could tell.

But I love that. Just a little nod to baseball. This must be a Sam Raimi thing because Sam Raimi is a baseball fan and a Tigers fan. I know the movie was written by Michael Waldron, but I have to think that Raimi snuck this line in here. Of course the movie was written by Michael Waldron, but I have to think that Ramey snuck this line in here. Of course, he directed For Love of the Game, the Billy Chappell story, but this line, this has to be a Ramey special. And what a better way to telegraph to a baseball fan that you are in another universe than to have someone there be talking about how great the 2003 Tigers were. And this hearkened back to a discussion that we had in an episode last year, last July, episode 1718, which I actually titled MLB in the Multiverse of

Madness. How about that? But we answered a listener email from someone who wondered how we would consume sports differently or how we would watch baseball differently in a multiverse scenario. And we talked about a couple other stories that have multiverses and how people react to those situations. And I think I said, at least, that it would maybe make me less interested in baseball. Like we talked about, well, what would you want to know or not know about your team in the multiverse in these other universes? Or would it remove your interest in your own universe because you know that it's not singular, it's not special, that there's just an infinite variation of teams and seasons taking place in the multiverse? And this was a perfect illustration of that. So in Doctor Strange, in the Marvel multiverse, there is a

universe where the 2003 Tigers are not one of the worst teams of all time, but in fact, one of the best teams of all time. They didn't go 43 and 119. Maybe they went 119 and 43. The character didn't specify, but who knows? Everything you thought you knew was wrong, that the 2003 Tigers, in fact, were a wonderful team. How would that change your conception of baseball when you return to your own universe where the 2003 Tigers were terrible? I guess it would sort of depend on how emotionally invested in the change I was, right? And how sort of foundational to my understanding of the game it was. of the game it was. So like a team's fortunes being dramatically different, unless it, I guess, unless it was the Mariners, which is the team that probably still has the most emotional resonance for me.

I don't know that it would change all that much. I think our conclusion, yeah, on the multiverse question is that it would make us crazy and that we didn't like the idea that it would be destabilizing. But I guess the place where it would make us crazy and that we didn't like the idea that it would be destabilizing. But I guess the place where it would have the potential to make me feel pretty lousy, like I didn't understand baseball, like I was experiencing it in a fundamentally different way than everyone around me is that, you know, there are things that we like collectively

recall that are important to the way that we talk about the game now even when they are like many many years removed and that i don't know if a particular record falls into that category although gosh that team was so bad so bad that team was so bad but like you know in a world where like nelson cruz makes a crucial catch in in the outfield in the playoffs. Like I would be like, but he didn't do that. And we all make fun of that team a lot of the time. So I don't know, like it would be a really, I could see it not mattering and mostly just being confusing, sort of like quietly disorienting.

Like, you know, the one time I traveled to London, I felt very disoriented there, even though the, you know, the one time I traveled to London, I felt very disoriented there, even though the people speak English because it was like it was cloudy and everyone spoke English, but it sounded different. And so it felt like Seattle, but it really obviously wasn't. And there was the similarity is what made it disorienting because of when the similarity broke down and I was expecting one thing and then like almost walking into traffic by looking the wrong way, you know, instead. So I don't know. I'm trying to orient myself in disorientation. That's a weird way of phrasing that. Yeah.

Well, as people might suspect, not everything goes smoothly in the multiverse. And I imagine that would not go so smoothly for you if you were to return from a scenario where the 2003 Tigers were a great team. Yeah, people think I didn't know baseball. They'd be like, bad news, Mag. Don't know if I could get as invested in my little dinky universe knowing that all the others were out there, that every possible record had probably been achieved by the 2003 Tigers. But I love the idea that Sam Raimi is working through whatever lingering feelings he has about that team by just sneaking this line in. I questioned, I was like, did I actually hear that? Because it's just like in the background.

It's not like an important line. Someone's just sort of saying it in the background, in the side. in the background, in the side. And so I did do a Twitter search and it looks like a few people have picked up on that and said, like, I was the only one laughing in the theater when I heard that line. That line is like, that's very much, that's very targeted. That is a niche line. And I hope someone asks Rami about it, but I enjoyed that very much. And I think it provides an excellent segue here because you know what team started 3-22, the 2003 Tigers? You know what other team has started 3-22? The 2022 Reds. Yeah, I was going to say, is it the Cincinnati Reds? three this season, probably. So you can just pretend that you exist there instead. But we have talked about the Reds recently. I don't want to pile on here because all of their opponents are piling on them plenty as it is. If anything, I wanted to defend the Reds slightly. But first,

I will share some numbers about how truly terrible the Reds are, which you did, I think, on our last episode, but they got blown out and lost a couple more games. It's gotten worse. Somehow it has gotten worse. Well, Jason Stark devoted much of his most recent column at The Athletic to just the historic nature of the Reds' slow start. That is underselling it to call it a slow start. This is not a slow start. Wait a minute. I'm sorry.

A slow start is like a one for 20. Like, that's a slow start. Well, they did a one for 20. That's a slow start. Well, they did go one for 20 in terms of winning games. I mean as a batter at the plate. That's a slow start. They're engaged in a fundamentally different project at Woodhazard. Yes. They are tied with the 2003 Tigers for the worst start to a season. The 88 Orioles were two and 23. So there's a lot of 88 Orioles, 2003 Tigers on this list. Of course, they are, yes, they are one for their last 21. They are one in 20 in their last 20 games. And also, they haven't won two in a row. I guess that's not surprising because they've won two games. But they are winless in games when they score in the top of the first.

They have won zero games when trailing at any point, so they haven't had a comeback yet. They are 14.5 games out of first place. Again, we are recording here on Friday afternoon. These numbers may have gotten worse by the time you hear this. But that is also historically significant. worse by the time you hear this, but that is also historically significant. The most games behind 25 games into a season by an NL team since 1901 is 15 and a half by the 1907 Cardinals. Any MLB team, it's again the 88 Orioles. They were also 15 and a half back after 25 games. Their rotation has an 8.91 ERA, Jasonason pointed out which is very dismaying like i was looking at

hunter green's era which is 8.71 that's like that's par for the course that's like average for the red rotation at this point yeah turns out if you can throw really hard but fastball sheet matters maybe yeah i don't know and it's not as if they've been getting unlucky exactly, at least in terms of the results on the field. I mean, maybe a little bit, but they have been outscored by 87 runs already. And the only team that was outscored more than that in their first 25 games, the 2010 Pirates, who were at minus 89. The 1936 Browns were also at minus 87. So, yeah, it's bad. It's really, really bad.

However, I will defend them to this extent. So Jeff Passan had a two-tweet thread after their most recent loss. And here's what Jeff said. The Cincinnati Reds are now 3-22. They have scored an NL-worst 79 runs. If they doubled that, it would still be fewer runs than they've allowed 166. Their 6.90 team ERA is a full two runs worse than the next worst team. Not nice at all.

This is tanking at its absolute ugliest. And then he continued to add insult to insult. The Reds have only a 16.5% chance at the number one overall pick in 2023 because of the new draft lottery. Even worse, teams cannot receive lottery picks in three straight seasons. So if Cincinnati doesn't try to win by 2025, the earliest it picks is seventh. So not disputing that the Reds are historically terrible, not disputing that Red's ownership sucks, that they did tear down what was a competitive roster last season and then rubbed it in by saying,

where are you going to go? But is this tanking at its absolute ugliest? Does this have anything to do with draft picks? This to me kind of comes back to the tanking versus banking slash nothing conversation. I don't think this is tanking at its absolute ugliest. The results have been as ugly as they possibly could be. I think we've seen uglier instances of tanking. I think you could say that the Astros were tanking harder than this. You could probably say that the Orioles have been tanking harder than this. I don't think this is the most glaring example of tanking, even if the results have been glaring. And I don't think it has anything to do with draft picks either. I don't know if Jeff was suggesting that they were trying to tank for draft picks, but I think we are past the era of teams trying to do that or that playing a major role in their considerations, which is why we came up with that term, or you

came up with nutting. I tried to keep it cleaner with my suggestion, but yours has deservedly caught on, much to your dismay, it seems. But what we were trying to get at there is the distinction between trying to be worse in order to gain draft picks and being bad because you can just bank your money that you get from revenue sharing and national broadcast deals and all the other revenue sources that teams have these days so that they don't have to depend on putting a competitive roster on the field and actually drawing fans. This is that more in my mind. This is whatever the Reds said and Nick Kroll said about having to bring the payroll in line with revenue.

You know, whatever he said to justify whatever mandate I'm sure he was given by ownership. This is a little different to me. And no one anticipated this, right? I mean, no one was saying, oh, the Reds, they're the worst team of all time. They are going to start two and twenty three or three and twenty two. Sorry, I don't want to make them even worse than they are. I thought they were just kind of a run of the mill bad team. Right. I didn't want to make them even worse than they are. I thought they were just kind of a run-of-the-mill bad team, right? I didn't think they would be a contender or anything, but this is way beyond what I expected or what I think anyone expected, no? Yeah, I mean, I don't know

if I really put it in terms of a specific record, it is definitely somewhat worse than what I was expecting, but they sure did sell off a lot of their good players. Oh, yeah. They sure did do that, right? And they were not shy about having done that. And it wasn't only that they rid themselves of good players. And it wasn't only that they rid themselves of good players. They also rid themselves of like the role players, right? Which suggested a complete disinterest in winning.

Because, I mean, you need top end talent, I think, to really compete against the other great teams in the NL. But they also, like they got rid of Wade Miley. They were like, we don't even want someone who eats innings at like a competent to good level like they were stripping out all the studs they were selling copperware i don't know what people do when they strip stuff out of walls but you know i don't know that i would have put it in a in specific terms i thought that they had the potential to be one of the worst teams in baseball but i don't know that i necessarily thought they would be this bad but maybe we should have because like you look at that roster and you're like what do they who do they have and

this is one of this is one of the things about this practice that i i think is sort of quietly one of the the meanest is that we know it's bad for the fans and we know that in this case they've been they've been insulted pretty badly but it also puts it puts such a an eye and a lens on on a bunch of guys who like they're not setting out to try to be the worst team in baseball you know the guys on the 25 man are not this is not mike moustakas's plan right this isn't something that like i don't know brandon drury was like let's go be terrible like these guys are trying to be respectable big leaguers it's not the fault of oh god some of the guys on this team though like this isn't connor overton's fault yeah some of the guys on the team

aren't supposed to be on the team even even taking into account what they did, because they have been pretty banged up. Like if you go to the Baseball Prospectus injured list ledger, they are leading what BP calls the hurt scale, which is the number of players on the IL. So right now, according to this, the Reds have 14 players on the IL and the next closest team is 11. So they're at the top of that list. They're also leading in projected wins above replacement missed due to injury. So that's part of it. Like they were down a rotation, basically. And so have the Reds been to some extent. Like some of the more important players like Luis Castillo and others that they didn't trade away. And maybe they would have traded Castillo away if he had been healthy.

So I don't want to give them credit. I think if he had been healthy, he would be in a different uniform right now. Right. So maybe we shouldn't credit them with the value that a healthy Castillo would have provided. But they have a lot of players hurt right now. And I think that makes the difference. That and maybe some bad luck and some just terrible starts that you wouldn't have anticipated, like Joey Votto going from being one of the best hitters in baseball in the second half of last season to not hitting at all. Yeah.

And who knows? Is there a psychological component to that? Joey Votto is a career red. He barely got a taste of contention. And then when the team was competitive, they trade away everyone. Probably doesn't improve his mental state. I don't know that that has anything to do or much to do with why he hasn't hit. But just saying it could have some sort of effect.

It's got to be demoralizing, certainly for the players who are holdovers from that roster. But I think that makes the difference between just run-of-the-mill lousy team and historically terrible. I don't think it necessarily goes from the worst example of tanking ever. And guess what? They're not going to get the draft picks that they were trying to get, which I doubt really factored into their thinking at all. I think they took themselves from contenders, potential contenders, to non-contenders. And that's maybe what matters even more so than whether you are a bad non-contender or a historically terrible non-contender. I think that matters to some extent. No one wants to be embarrassed the way that the Reds have been embarrassed this season so far. But the important thing is that they basically voluntarily said, yes, we had a competitive team last year. We could have brought back those players or even supplemented them. And instead, we just decided to move ourselves from the competitive category to the non-competitive category. So that was bad. And we certainly gave them grief for that. And they deserved it. However, I'm just saying it's not as if they

tore things down this far. There were more studs left. There were some coverings over the studs, at least when the season started, like looking at the preseason fan graphs, playoff odds or projections for win totals, right? They were projected before the season started to go 76 and 86, right? I mean, not good. They had a lower than 10% chance to make the playoffs, but no one bats an eye at 76 wins. If they were on a 76 win pace right now, we wouldn't be talking about them. So whether that was more optimistic than it should have been, I mean, maybe that's the difference between 70 and 76 or something. I'm just saying, like, we've seen Orioles teams.

We've seen that Tigers team. We've seen Astros teams. These teams are winning 40-something or 50-something. Now, the Reds may end up there. I mean, they're on pace for, like like 30 at this point or less, right? 20 more like. They may end up there, but I don't know that that was the plan or that that was what they expect or that that was what anyone else expected.

So I guess I'm defending them to the extent that, yes, it was truly terrible what they did to that roster. And yet things have gone horribly wrong. So unless you believe that there was some kind of karmic penalty that they incurred by deciding to tear down the roster to the extent that they did. And now the baseball gods are punishing them by rubbing their faces in it. I just don't think it's necessarily the most egregious or glaring example of tanking, which I think is what I said about the Diamondbacks last year, too, as terrible as they were. example of tanking which I think is what I said about the Diamondbacks last year too as terrible as they were I don't think that was necessarily the most reasonable explanation for how their season would turn out that was like a 10th percentile outcome yeah of what was going to be

a pretty lousy season to start well and I think that we probably were building into our expectations the fact that you know even though they are not a good roster like they they play in a like they play in a division with the pirates for instance right and there are even among the you know teams there's vulnerability to that cubs roster and so i think part of what we were probably either explicitly or sort of mentally building into that projection for ourselves, not the Fangraphs projections, but was the idea that like, well, they can probably like go beat up on the Pirates a little bit. You know, they can probably take some from the Cubs like they have within the division, a soft underbelly that they could poke at, even as they are also a soft underbelly that other teams in that division can poke at. But it is pretty gnarly. I mean, I think that when you're a fan of a team that's going through this,

I think it is useful for us as analysts and even for fans of teams to think about the different kinds of tanking, right? Like to have an appreciation for the full topology of tanking. But I don't know that your experience of it is all that different if you're you know in the midst of a tank job that is going to end up working right like we can think about the astros that way even though the kind of tanking they were doing was it was different than what the reds are up to or what the pirates are up to i think it feels pretty crummy when you're in the middle of it it feels crummy when you're in the middle of it it

feels crummy when you're in the middle of what we might deem like a process driven tank that isn't necessarily working that hasn't necessarily yielded the team that was expected like the phillies although you know it might be indelicate of me to talk about philly's failures today. Oh, boy. Boy. And, you know, and then there's what the Reds are doing, which I think in some ways, your right is much more similar to the Pirates, but with, like, more of an FU from ownership directly to the fans in some ways. Like, I don't think that...

Yeah, they verbalized it. I mean, they said it out loud, but I would have thought the Pirates were better than the Reds coming into this season. And that what they did was more egregious. Like maybe a little less noticeable just because the Pirates were bad last year too. Yeah. Whereas the Reds were pretty decent last year.

So that made it more glaring that they moved themselves out of the contender category into the non-contender category. But the Pirates were in the non-contender category because they've been doing this sort of thing for years if anything to a more extreme extent but they haven't started a season three and 22 right and you know and you look at their roster and you're like well you know it sure stinks that like o'neill cruz is in triple a but also like brian hayes is good and brian reynolds is stinking in triple a by the way but i know it hasn't been been going great. But you look at that Pirates roster and you're like, there are a surprising number of competent and actually quite good big leaguers on this team. So yeah, I think your experience coming in is a little bit different. But it doesn't feel, I don't know that it feels meaningfully different to you

when you're a fan as you're going through it. I think that it is easier to intellectualize the experience and sort of distance yourself from it emotionally if you have confidence that it is being done, both that it is being done in the service of winning eventually and that the approach to that is going to end up being successful. I think it probably feels very white-knuckly on the roller coaster if you're like, all right, they're saying the right stuff,

but I don't know if they can do it. i hope that this thing like stays on the tracks right but i don't know that your your experience as you're sitting there you know with your 12 dollar beer and your hot dog is like that different if it's something like cincinnati if it's something like what the astros did, you know, before their current, you know, good team, if it's something like the Pirates are doing, I think it just, you know, it sucks to suck. Like it's not a fun experience. And I think the contours of that can vary. But I think the overall vibe of it ends up being pretty similar, which is like, man, I sure am not going to probably get to watch my team win today.

And that I think is the, that's the worst spot to be in. You know, we've talked about this a lot about sort of what is important to your understanding of your fandom as you're moving through a season. And I think having the ability to look at the team and say, well, they might be in this thing in the broader sense is really important, right? It feels good to be like, I might be watching this team in October. That could happen. Even if your team is sort of on the fringes of contention that they would, you know, have the possibility is like really exciting, but on, on the base or more everyday level, like being able to go to the ballpark and say well we could win today like that's pretty important because otherwise why are you gonna go despite what their ownership group thinks like there's

other stuff to do like you could read a book or watch a movie or watch the NBA postseason or the NHL postseason you can watch that for a lot of the summer because gosh they go on forever they really do they last forever go see Dr. Strange and daydream about a lot of the summer because, gosh, they go on forever. They really do. They last forever. Go see Doctor Strange and daydream about a world where the Reds are good. But I think Green's struggles are sort of emblematic of this to me because we probably praised them a bit, if anything. I mean, we lumped them in with all the teams that were promoting their top prospects and putting them on opening day rosters instead of doing service time manipulation stuff. And here's Green, who's been a part of the problem. You wouldn't have expected him to be this bad. He has the great stuff and throws super hard and does miss bats, but he's given up 10 home runs in like 20 innings. I mean, it's been ugly. Who could have thought that would happen. So that to me is like, well, they gave Green a chance and he should have been good. There were reasonable expectations for him to be a valuable contributor there. I guess he's maybe

not ready. Maybe he's had terrible luck, whatever it is. But that is not something I envisioned. If anything, I would have said, all right, well, good for them that they're putting Hunter Green in the opening day rotation. And that has just backfired horribly thus far. So it's really ugly. I don't know which has been uglier, the hitting or the pitching. I mean, take your pick. It's like they have a 66 WRC plus. The next lowest team, the Red Sox and Royals, are at 79.

That's a pretty big gap. But then you look on the pitching side, they have a 167 ERA minus. Higher is bad for ERA minus. The next highest is the Nats at 126. I mean, the difference between the Reds and the next worst team in either of these categories is like the difference between the next worst team and, you know, some team way up the leaderboard. difference between the next worst team and, you know, some team way up the leaderboard. Even if you look at FIP minus, the range is a little smaller, but it's, you know, 132 they're at and the next highest team is at 120. I mean, just big gaps like they're getting just lapped by the league.

So it has been very, very ugly. I hope that things will look up. They almost have to. The 1988 Orioles, they started the season even worse than this. And, you know, they ended that season 54 and 107, which means that they played at a considerably better clip over the rest of the season. I guess it's not encouraging to say, hey, Reds fans, you could win 54 games this year, but that is still in play. Anyway, I wanted to mention this just as a way of giving us a little snapshot of the standings here and the changes in the playoff

odds since the start of the season, because it has been a month now. It is May 6th, as we speak. The season started on May 7th, so we have those preseason playoff odds generated on April 6th that we can do a direct month-to-month comparison. And the Reds' playoff odds, they're not among the biggest changers because they didn't have great playoff odds to begin with. But their playoff odds, pretty nonexistent now, as you might imagine. They are down to 0.1%. So, hey, FanCraft's still saying there's a chance. So that's something. to 0.1%. So hey,

FanCraft's still saying there's a chance. So that's something. But they are down about 8 percentage points it looks like. The biggest losers here in terms of playoff odds percentage are two teams in the East, the Red Sox and the Phillies. So the

Phillies are down about 28 percentage points. They now have roughly a 1-3 chance to make the playoffs. And the Red Sox are down about 28 percentage points. They now have roughly a 1-3 chance to make the playoffs. And the Red Sox are down almost 32 percentage points and are just under a 30% chance to make the playoffs. They have roughly the same records, 11-15 in the Phillies case, 10-16 in the Red Sox case. So these teams are not off to Reds-like starts, but they are off to pretty disappointing starts and in competitive divisions where normally we don't obsess over the standings. We don't even look at them this early in the season.

But when you're in a division where you know it's going to be a tight race and you get off to the worst start and you have losses like the phillies just had in their last game which you were just alluding to where the mets came back from down seven to one in the ninth oh boy it is not looking great for either of those teams and you know i guess it has been the problems that you might expect with the phies to some degree of, yes, the defense, yes, the bullpen, the same old refrains that we've had. It's not just that, but you look at just how well the Mets have started the season and the teams in between the Phill, but the Yankees have been running rough shot over the league. The Blue Jays and the Rays have both been very good as expected. So that was going to be an uphill climb to begin with. And now it's an even steeper uphill because they have dug themselves a hole. Yeah, they were not a team that I think we had maybe a handful of the Fangraph staff select Boston as a postseason team.

I did not expect their bullpen to be quite as bad as it has been, but it has sure been pretty not good. So there's that piece of it. And then with Philly, I have to issue a correction, Ben, about Philly. I said I had no notes about the no defense, all vibes. But I've watched some of this Phillies team, and I mean, I think they should have kept all the vibes. The vibes aren't great either.

They maybe wanted a little bit of the defense. Maybe that would have helped to have just all of the vibes and some defense. The balance is maybe a little off. I mean, I wouldn't have anticipated necessarily that that outfield would be without Bryce Harper. And so that, you know, and that he would be relegated to DH duty because of his elbow. But maybe I should have, you know,

you got to account for injury, Ben, coming into the season. And you're right. Like there's been no defense. And now the vibes, they're not the best vibes. Some of them, some of the vibes are pretty bad. And the vibes will be worse when you have another team that is off to one of the best starts, that being the Mets, who are 19-9 as we speak, and they are up almost 22 percentage points in playoff odds.

So they are not quite the biggest gainer. In fact, the biggest gainer, the Los Angeles Angels are up 55 percentage points. Still in first place. Yeah. We talked about them being in first place last week, and I was like, okay, I got to mention this while they're in first place because that's not going to last. But they are. They still are. They're 17 and 10.

And right now they have a 70% chance to make the playoffs according to fan graphs how about that yeah they're still not favored to win the division but things are looking up for them at least wild card wise the astros are off to a decent start too they're 15 and 11 the mariners uh not not going so well for them i guess no there's been a little slide a little a little a little slide you know how i was like oh i gotta mention how they are you know they're just they're bang on their um their base runs record and they're they're bang on their pythag and now we're in an interesting spot with them because according to their pythag pet expectation they're actually two games worse than they should be and their base runs record has them two games better than they should be so that's creative

and their run differential has shrunk to a meager plus seven but it is still positive i don't know that i could say the same for the fun differential it might be negative at this point. I think the tank is running low there. Their playoff odds have barely changed, though, because this is basically what they were expected to be by the playoff odds. They were projected to be an 80-win team, and they're 12-14, and they're not that far from that pace. But, yeah, the Angels, I just, I mean,

I've been watching a lot of the Angels, as I generally do, and they have looked good, even with Otani not being fully himself offensively. So that division, it's winnable. I would still expect the Astros to take it ultimately, but there's a better chance than there's been for the Angels to make the playoffs in some shape or form than there has been for years, I would say. Well, and I think that if you're looking for a reason to feel optimistic about them, now, this isn't necessarily going to sustain itself.

And I think that you look at that staff and you can still appreciate the injury risk that is attendant with some of their guys. And so this could all fall apart very quickly. But I think that we had noted, you noted you i everyone who's paid attention to baseball the last 10 years had been like it sure would be nice if they had some pitching it sure would be nice if that angels team had a rotation that worked and right now at least by our version of war you know they have the fifth most valuable rotation in baseball they have a staff era of 348 and a staff FIP of 349. And so like, it is encouraging to see them even for just a month,

like put it together in a way that is, is, you know, been useful now, not small percentage of that is Otani surely, but they have been able to put together like competent outings from their big league staff and their bullpen sort of middle of the pack right now so you know if you combine that with like a good you know who knows if if taylor ward will ward it the whole year but it sure is nice that on a team where we have also decried sort of the lack of complimentary pieces around their stars that at a moment where otani is as you noted just kind of a league average guy that there are actually some role players around their core three who are like, that's okay, I got you, Shohei. Like, what a nice thing. Couldn't say that last year.

Right, yeah. And it's some of the supplementations that they made over the offseason. Syndergaard, Lorenzen, now those guys, their peripherals are not so hot. They've both struck out about five per nine, but they have been good so far, or at least successful. Otani has looked great when he's been on the mound. Detmers, I still believe he's kind of going to put it together at some point. Yeah, I think it could be okay.

And Patrick Sandoval is just good. Yeah, he's just a good pitcher. Yeah. So exciting. And that bullpen is deeper than it was. So yes, given their better than expected start, there's a reasonable chance that we might be seeing Mike Trout and Shohei Otani and co. in the playoffs. I'm not banking on that, but it's looking up. It's looking possible.

And, yeah, I mean, the Mets, even without Jacob deGrom, they have the fifth best pitching staff in terms of war thus far. So, really, it's been a bi-coastal act. I know there was some fun fact the other day about the fact that the New York and Los Angeles teams were all leading their respective divisions for the first time ever, I think, at the same time. And you would expect some of those teams to be good. Obviously, the Dodgers, 16 and 7, yawn, you know, doesn't even make you blink. But you look at the Yankees and they reeled off, what, 11 wins in a row.

And their pitching has been great. The offense has been good enough. I still, I thought coming into this season that the Blue Jays were the best team in that division. I don't know that I have changed my mind, but there's not a ton of daylight between the Yankees and the Jays or the Rays and the Jays or the Yankees and the Rays or whatever configuration you want there, which is why it's so tough for the Red Sox right now because those other three teams are off to great starts and the Red Sox have the same record as the Orioles, which is never a good sign. Never a good sign. Anyway, the Mets just doing it without DeGrom and having these big, exciting comeback wins. The Mets in the past, maybe they would have been the ones blowing that 7-1 lead in the night. And now they're the ones coming back to win that one. So good vibes with the Mets these days, even missing an important part of that roster.

So they and the Angels are the ones who have their playoff odds up by the most, and the Red Sox and Phillies have suffered the steepest declines, and everyone else is somewhere in the middle here. I guess we talked at some length about the White Sox the other day, and I know that Dan Szymborski just blogged about them. So they are 11 and 13. They're down by about 14 percentage points of playoff odds. And I think they are just neck and neck with the Twins now for division odds. Yeah. Just because the Twins are off to an excellent start. They're 15 and 11.

So they have upped their playoff odds by basically as much as the White Sox have lowered theirs. So it's been a yin and yang thing going on with those guys. And we talked a bunch about the White Sox and maybe the lack of depth there and maybe Carlos Rodon and other moves that they could have made. But as Dan pointed out, like they should be aggressive because they're in a dogfight now. A lot of people thought they might be able to just walk to this division title the way that they did last year. And now, no, it's a it's a scrap and they've had a bunch of

injuries. But so have the Twins, so have a lot of teams. Things just have not gone well. Although, as Dan pointed out, maybe they have a second base hole with Robinson Cano's name on it. Yeah. I don't know if they might still have a second base hole with Robinson Cano's name in there, but worth a shot, possibly. They're just in that position where it's like, well, we better upgrade. We better be position where it's like well we better upgrade we better be aggressive whatever's available we better go for it well and it'll be interesting to see like the you know the twins are now dealing with the the carlos crea finger injury he has a finger injury we're going to get a look at royce lewis as a result of that

royce lewis is coming up so that's exciting for him given his own injury history that he's in a position to make his big league debut so good for roy Royce Lewis. But I imagine that that will have some, would have some bearing on, you know, the effectiveness of the Twins offense. Yep. I mean, he's no Jeremy Pena, but he's pretty good. I like it. But I think we have had people write about, like others have written about, the real revelation for Minnesota has just been that rotation, which we were all kind of iffy about

coming into the offseason, even with some of the additions that they've made. And you have Gray pitching well, and you have a revitalized-looking Chris Paddock, and that rotation is good. So, you know, who needs Carlos Correa? I mean, the Minnesota Tw twins absolutely do but you know it is not as if the sort of shape of their wins has been entirely reliant on like blowing teams

out with an incredible offense and then just scraping by on the pitching side like that rotation has been really good so far so yeah and i did want to mention uh just a couple other teams i guess the cardinals and the brewers have been the beneficiaries of the Reds' terrible start. Playoff odds-wise, the Brewers are 18-8. They are up almost 14%, basically a lock to make the playoffs. Of course, they were favored to win that division to begin with, but they've looked good. In the NL West right now, it's like the 2005 NL East. Every team is 500 or above yeah

including the diamondbacks including those d-backs look at them at 500 but the giants started well have scuffled lately and they're pretty hurt right now though yeah right which you know i mean that was uh one of the concerns about them would they be able to stay healthy thus far not so much they've been 14 1111. I mean, they're three games back. They're in fourth place, but three games back. And one of the teams ahead of them, of course, is the Rockies. But it's funny, the projections were low enough on the Giants. I think they were projected to be an 85-win team that getting out to a 14-11 start, even though they're in fourth place, they have actually raised their playoff odds. However,

the Dodgers are doing Dodgers things. They're winning at basically a 700 clip and the Padres are right behind them. And I sort of expected those two teams to be at the top of that race. And it's shaping up to be another good race. I know it was shaping up to be a good race between those two teams and the Giants last year. And then the Padres just completely collapsed out of it. But I suspect that maybe they won't this year. You know, they have Clevenger back. Gore has established himself. Like, that's looking like a pretty strong roster. And they will have Fernandez-Attis at some point this season, which is about as big

a reinforcement as you could ask for. So that is shaping up to be at least an exciting two-team race. And then the Braves have been the other team, along with the Phillies, that have suffered from the Mets' strong start. And the Braves have not been off to a great start themselves. They're 12-15, and so they're down almost 18 percentage points. That is one of the biggest losses in playoff odds. So I feel like, you know, I kept picking the Mets to win this division year after year, and then they would somehow find a way not to. And then finally this

year, I was just like, okay, look, Atlanta won the World Series last year. Like, am I really going to pick the Mets again? Someone always makes me pick these things. And this year I just said, fine, Braves, like you've won it however many years in a row. I will just give it to you this year. And so far looking like I bailed on the Mets a year early. I mean, I expected them to make the playoffs still, but they are sitting fairly pretty right now. Not that any Mets fan is going to feel confident at this point in the season, but they have built up a nice little lead there. And the Marlins, meanwhile, they're just chugging along at 12 and 13. And the pitching has been really impressive at times.

But the hitting, I guess, just hasn't been good enough. I mean, the hitting has not been terrible. They have a 106 WRC+. Yeah. So maybe they are playing a little under their heads right now because if they could be even a league average offensive team, you'd think that that would be enough. But I guess they are down at 21st in pitching war, right? Which, I mean, we've certainly talked about the arms at the top of that rotation and how talented they are. I guess it is partly a bullpen issue in the Marlins case because they are 24th in bullpen war and they are 19th in starting rotation war which is

not where i would expect them to be so kind of weird and kind of weird maybe maybe that makes you more optimistic about the marlins because you've got to figure that the pitching will end up being better coming around at some point yeah yeah so i would not count them out of making some noise, at least in the wild card race, but it has not been a strong start for them. No, although it has been really delightful to watch Jess Chisholm being just as good as he has been. While you were talking, I dropped age as a column into our leaderboards. That's one of the fields you can bring in as a custom leaderboard. And I sorted this leaderboard by age, mostly because I just wanted to like, once again, sing the praises of Wander Franco. So we're going to do that. But before I do, I want to, I want to highlight

Jazz Chisholm Jr. because like, you know, there, there was all this, there was always all this promise with him and it was a matter of whether he was going to be able to sort of put all the impressive tools together. And right now, Jazz is hitting 324, 373, 635. He has a 184 WRC+. And, you know, I'd like to nominate him as someone who should be, he needs to do this for longer. But, like, he should be a main character. I think that he should become a main character. He has to do it for longer, but he is,

I think he is in the probationary period of being a main character i think that he should become a main character he has to do it for longer but he is i think he is in the the probationary period of being a main character because he is so much fun to watch he is just himself every day on the field which is great and he's hitting really well right now at a time when like you said the marlins kind of need him too so i i'd like to i'd like to nominate jazz just home junior as a yeah it's need him too. So I'd like to nominate Jazz Chisholm Jr. as a main character. And then I would like to highlight that Warner Franco is still just 21 and he's so good at baseball.

Oh my God, he's so good at baseball. And it's just, I know I've said it on this before. I know I've said it on this podcast before that we were so excited about all these young guys who were coming up and how, you know, we were so excited about all these young guys who were coming up and how you know we were seeing this wave of promotions and we had to see how all the young guys did and there's there's wander at 21 and he's younger than all of them yep it's just the it's just really the best and so i'm here to appreciate that this this leaderboard is you know it's littered with a

lot of really good performances and then a lot of guys who, you know, need to round into form more. But there he is. There he is. He's right there. And, you know, young Jeremy Pena, only 24. Yep. Wanda Franco has a 10.5% strikeout rate. Yeah.

Nick Madrigal has a 16.4% strikeout rate. What's up with that? What is up with that? Madrigal, you're not supposed% strikeout rate. What's up with that? What is up with that? Madrigal, you're not supposed to strike out that many times. He's exceeded his strikeout quota for the season. Yeah, he doesn't get to strike out even one more time. He is maxed out. He struck out 17 times in 215 plate appearances last year.

He's already struck out 12 times in 73 plate appearances this year. And it's not as if he's gotten good results otherwise. He hasn't hit for any power or anything. So if he were selling out for power or something, I'd say, well, that's disappointing. But at least it's working for him. Now it is not working for him. And also he's not as much fun because he's not the super low strikeout guy anymore. So that's kind of disappointing.

But I did not mean to give the Yankees offense short trip before because I praise their pitching. Their offense is also just the best in baseball to this point. So it's not bad when you are leading the majors in WRC Plus and also you are leading at least the American League in pitching war. There's got to be some part of Brian Cashman. I know he's been doing this forever and probably is not like I told you so anymore. But maybe some little bit of him is probably like I told you so. Just because like all of the uproar about what he did not do over the offseason. And look, some of that stuff, it could come back to bite them still before the end of the year.

But thus far, at least, it's like, hey, who needed Freddie Freeman? Have you seen this Anthony Rizzo guy? And did we really need Carlos Correa? We have the best offense in baseball. So things are working out. They may not have gotten the most marquee names over the winter, but couldn't have asked for a better start to the season. They even got everyone vaccinated and everyone made that trip to Toronto. Yeah, and I think Aaron Judge had some homers and some big hits in Toronto. And so maybe he has whatever reluctance he or Rizzo or whoever the holdouts were had at this point. They are certainly not suffering from any impaired performance, I would say, to this point in the season. Which we should say we do not know for sure the status of some of these guys.

Before they went to Toronto, they were vague. Yes, they were very vague. Legal insists that we... But if anyone had concerns, if they had concerns, whoever the holdouts were, let's just say, whoever was taking time to do their own research and not wanting to answer either way about their vaccination status. If part of their reluctance was some concern that it might impair their performance on the field, that concern, I would imagine, has been allayed to this point.

So they are really raking and pitching well, too. Anyway, those are, I guess, the big teams that have moved their fortunes one way or another. Those are, I guess, the big teams that have moved their fortunes one way or another. So congrats to the hot starters and condolences to the slow starters and also the Reds who are in their own category. I feel as if we need to do one thing before we move on from this idea, which is we should probably talk about Nolan Arenado a little bit, don't you think? Yeah. Okay.

Go ahead. I just wanted to point out that Nolan Arenado is good. Not a new development, but yes. Not a new development, but when you're looking at the top of our... So right now, Manny Machado, also good, is leading among qualified hitters, is leading the FanGraphs leaderboard for position players at 2.6.

You don't give them enough credit. Machado, amazing. Machado, definitely amazing. And he's hitting 374 447 657 he has a 215 wrc plus he's already hit seven home runs he also has a 411 babbit which we might imagine will not sustain itself but you know but there's manny machado being manny being good which is excellent for the padres it must feel so nice for them to be where they are after the the just hellacious year they had last year. But there's the Lanier and Otto.

The Lanier and Otto is second in Fangraff's war. 348, 426, 674, 214 WRC+. He's playing his usual superlative defense. He has a much more normal BABIP, which whatever. But he also has seven home runs. So I just, I feel like we should note that Nolan Arenado remains good at baseball and that he has, you know, really sort of risen to the occasion after that, you know, initial year in St. Louis where he was fine.

He was a good, good player. You know, when you play defense like Nolan Arenado, you always are going to have some margin for error when you're hitting. You only have a 113 WRC+, which is respectable, but not amazing. But right now he's just really locked in and hitting the snot out of the ball. So I would

say Nolan Arenado, still good at baseball. We have not yet reached the point of stat stabilization because Mike mike trout is currently fourth but i will i will take a leaderboard that has manny nolan arenado jose ramirez mike trout and aaron judges as its top five that's you know yeah it's a cool sport that we get to watch it's really it's really pretty delightful that that we get to do that. Who would you guess, Ben, among qualified hitters has the highest strikeout rate right now?

We're going to do some fun. We're going to do some rapid fire. Are you ready? Goodness. Who has the highest strikeout? You won't guess. It's fine. Okay.

You won't guess. All right. It's Fran Milreis. Ah, okay. I mean, like, you might guess that he strikes out a little bit. I probably wouldn't have guessed, but he does strike out a lot. Do you know who is walking the most right now? This will not surprise you. S Ah, okay. I mean, you might guess that he strikes out a little bit. I probably wouldn't have guessed, but he does strike out a lot. Do you know who is walking the most right now? This will not surprise you. Soto, I imagine. It's Juan

Soto, 19.2% of the time. Max Muncy up there with 18.7. Good for you. You bringing up Machado and Arnado reminds me that I wrote an article for Grantland back in June 2015 titled Who You Got? Baltimore's Manny Machado or Colorado's Nolan Aranato?

Did you pick those names because they rhymed kind of in the headline scheme? I don't remember why I picked them. I guess they were being compared at that point. It was like the Soto versus Acuna of that era was Machado versus Aranato. I don't really remember if I picked a side, but I guess there was no wrong answer there because they're still awesome seven years later. So there's that. I guess it looks like I took Machado to the extent that I chose a side. I cited some Zips projections and rest of career war,

Machado was higher to that point. Where are they career war wise to date, if you could tell me that? I remember that there was an article I read over the off season or maybe in spring training about how Arenado had made some swing changes or tinkered with his approach at the plate after last year. And I was like, hey, you hit 34 dingers. Most players, they have a season like that. They're not going to go back to the drawing board. But N aronado he has high standards and so he changed some things and evidently those changes have paid off because uh yeah he and machado both been fantastic but to date i guess aronado is at 40.6 fangraphs yes and man he's at 41.8 Could not be closer. I think that didn't Machado come up? He came up in 2012 and Arenado came up in 2013, right?

So let me just do this from 2013 on. It's exactly the same. Exactly the same, really? From 2013 to 2022, they've both been worth exactly 40.64. Their WRC plus is separated by three points what a what a cool oh my gosh i'm gonna we're gonna we're gonna enjoy this for a second i didn't realize that the stolen base gap was as big as it is that is kind of surprising 583. Machado has hit 289, 342, 493. Arenado has a 369 WOBA. Machado has a 353 WOBA. Arenado 120 WRC plus Machado 123. But yeah, they are bang on from a war perspective from 2013 to

2022. Yeah. And Machado's a little over a year younger than Arnauto, so you can factor that into the rest of career projections, but they're both having Hall of Fame trajectory careers. So it's just, it's been a joy to watch them. And it's great when you have that, that kind of like head to head players at the same position sort of comparison, like one of those great baseball debates where there's no wrong answer. And that debate is still just as valid in 2022 as it was in 2013 or 2015 when I wrote that article. Because so often, you know, it turns into like a Harper versus Trout situation where they, well, in that case, like they've both been fantastic and probably both also on Hall of

Fame kind of careers but trout has been otherworldly i was looking at their wars when they both hit their uh 10 years since promotion or major league debut milestone lately and you know harper's been amazing he has uh fulfilled expectations i would say and yet trout has been like almost twice as valuable over the life of their careers because he's just been that good but yeah it's really nice when you can have like a willie mickey and the duke kind of conversation yeah you know and players overlap like that and we've got a a lot of like who you gots among the main characters today so it's wonderful it's wonderful it's a pretty uh it's a pretty special thing all right a couple follow-ups here from listeners to recent discussions

that we've had. We talked about how to define the modern era of baseball, what that would mean. Listener Nathan said, love the discussion on how to define

the modern era. Would it make sense to define it as the earliest season in which an active player debuted? It builds the rolling quality into the definition and ties it

to who is currently playing the game. So that would be what Albert Pujols, I guess, started in 2001. So the modern era is 2001 on until Albert Pujols retires. I liked the suggestion very much. I think I said so in email because it does, it's going to result in some sort of buffeting about of the modern era because what what's the next most next most distant is that the right way to say that debut after pool holes like who's the next

longest tenured active player that's a better pool holes his teammates that's a better way let's say wayne wright was 2005 yadi was 2004 maybe it's yanni who else is uh Rich Hill was 2005 so somewhere around that range Oliver Perez was 2002 but maybe maybe he's out too yeah he's I don't think he's currently on a an active roster so you know there there can be some some jumping around I guess it it does leave itself vulnerable to that because when you have these like long, really long tenured guys, once they all retire, then we're going to like zoop up a little bit. But I like this. I think that it is a useful sort of mental framing device for what is the modern era.

It's like, you know, what are the, who are the guys who like most baseball fans over the age of 10, 10 remember playing, right? Yeah. That's kind of what that accomplishes. I like that. I think that's good. Yeah, that works as a definition. I still don't feel the need to define it.

To me, modern is just right now, basically. And anything else, I'm just going to specify what time frame I mean. But if you're going to use some sort of hard definition, then I like that one because it does build in that variability and it moves forward with you as time proceeds. Okay, a couple responses we got to our skeuomorph discussion, the idea of a skeuomorph, something like a fragment that is left over in the baseball lingo, in the baseball lexicon that originated with something that is no longer really in the game or no one even really remembers how that came about, but we still say it. And of course, in other fields, a skeuomorph, a physical object or something you see on a screen, like when you go

to your phone and there's a calculator icon and it looks like a physical calculator that you would have held that kind of remnant that we bring along in a design sense. So a few responses and suggestions for baseball skeuomorphs. Raymond Chen says, perhaps one of the most important terms in the game, strike, is itself a skeuomorph. Yeah. The job of the batter was to strike, i.e. hit balls. Batters would just stand there waiting forever for a pitch they liked. Since the balls were just lobbed in, the rules implicitly assumed that every swing resulted in the bat striking the ball to improve the pace of play while some problems never go away.

In 1858, the umpire was instructed to announce strike for a good pitch that the batter should have swung at. It was a mix of, you should have struck that ball, so I'm going to count it as if you did, and perhaps also a hint of impatience to the batter strike the ball already. Today, pitchers aren't lobbing balls in. Batters don't call for higher low pitches, and every swing doesn't result in contact. Far from it. But we still have umpires telling players, you should have hit that one. So I guess that's a good suggestion. And along those lines, Damon says, the best example of this in my mind is the strikeout, specifically when it comes to box scores.

Why is the strikeout denoted with a K when the word starts with an S? The man who invented the box score, Henry Chadwick, decided completely arbitrarily that S would denote a single, which is fair enough. But this left the strikeout with no alphabetical home on the scorecard. So how did he land on the letter K? When baseball was first invented, the term strikeout wasn't in effect. When a batter reached three strikes without hitting the ball The most common term at the time for the batter being called out was struck So Chadwick decided on using the last and most striking, no pun intended, letter of struck

To denote a player being called out on strikes, thus the K is born So that's a good one, I guess, strike, strikeout, maybe that works And there were a couple other suggestions. One was from Sean. Now, he wrote, some smaller college or independent teams will play on artificial turf up here in Wisconsin. I assume it's much cheaper to maintain the natural grass. These fields will sometimes be completely artificial turf, including the, quote, unquote, dirt in the infield just being brown turf and home plate white painted turf. Anyway, twice now I've seen an umpire at these games try to give more time to a catcher nicked

by an errant foul by walking around to the front of the painted-on plate, bending down, and brushing the plate. Again, there's no dirt on the plate or field at all, and I'm shocked umpires still even carry the brushes for these games. They don't act like there's anything unusual about it but I suppose after centuries of baseball on natural dirt or grass we still haven't come up with a good way for umpires to delay the game for a few seconds without drawing undue attention to a catcher that just needs a few seconds to catch his breath this isn't a strict skeuomorph I know but this is a vestigial tale of umpire etiquette I think it still fits the spirit and And I like that one. That is an affront against all that is holy, the idea of a white painted on turf plate.

That just seems wrong on some fundamental level, but I love that the umpire brushes it off regardless. I mean, look, sometimes you live in a place that has a lot of weather and a lot of moisture in the winter and you just need to have something hearty. But, you know, you want to observe the protocol. You want it to look like baseball, even if it is, you know, importantly different in some ways. But can't you still have a physical plate, even if it's cold and rainy out? Like a turf plate. It's just a crime against nature. Something about that bothers me.

Like on the level of Olaf in Frozen where I see Olaf and I just instinctively recoil. It just disturbs me, the idea of this living snow person. What? It just scares me. Olaf. I have like an Olaf allergy. You're afraid of Olaf? Yeah, Olaf.

I find him very disturbing. I wish he would melt. Wait, what? I don't know. I just confessed something here that I don't know if I should have put out in the world. I mean, we're definitely going to get emails about it, but that's okay. You don't have to feel ashamed of your... Is it fear?

Is it... It's just a very deep-seated... He gives you like the heebie-jeebies yeah yeah just something unnatural about olaf well yeah i mean he's an animated snow person who sings i don't mind like uh you know sticking the the pieces of coal in the carrot and the sticks into the snowman that's okay but when the snow comes alive, there's also just like something just, it feels like, you know, your days are numbered when you're a snow person.

You know you're going to melt at some point. So that it's like a reminder of your mortality, seeing an animated snow person. I don't know if I'm alone in this or if other people are also disturbed by Olaf, but I'm not looking forward to when my daughter is old enough to watch Frozen and I have to confront Olaf. This is what I was about to say. I'm mostly,

you know, like you are not obligated to like things. And I think that there are a lot of parents who have objections to Frozen. On other grounds. Right. That are mostly just born of exhaustion. And I don't fault them for that. you go already stop singing that let it go song let it go please yes but like your daughter doesn't have I wouldn't imagine like movie preferences yet and so I can't imagine you have yet entered the phase of parenthood where you are having to watch the same thing over and over and over and over again. So you had just seen Frozen? I mean, it was impossible to not see Frozen, I think. Yes, I have seen Frozen.

I was not watching for a kid, just for myself. That snow guy, I don't like the cut of his jib. No, not at all. Interesting. Okay, well, so you do not want to build a snowman? I guess not, no. We'll find out when Sloane does watch Frozen someday. We'll find out if my aversion to Olaf is heritable or whether this is something unique to me. What if she loves Olaf? What if she loves Olaf and wants a stuffed Olaf and wants to be Olaf for Halloween? I mean, you don't have to worry about him melting. He lives in a cold place. They're in Norway or Sweden.

What if there's climate change? Well, it's a magical realm i i think that uh i'm torn between wanting olaf this is easily one of the silliest conversations this isn't even the pedantic about baseball portion of the podcast this is pedantic about a disney movie i guess there is the threat of him melting in the movie but then he gets like the magic cloud. So I don't think you have to worry about it, right? Am I misremembering Frozen? I've only seen it a couple of times. Yeah.

I mean, the Frozen is overrated camp regardless, independent of Olaf, but I don't want to get into that whole debate. There was one more skeuomorph suggestion from Brian who said, I've long wondered if some players would choose to not wear a hat if it wasn't part of the uniform. In the early days of only daytime games, hats surely played a more necessary role. But with mostly night games and even indoor stadiums, surely they're not as needed like cleats or batting gloves. Sometimes I wonder if the baseball hat is an outlier among all sports equipment slash uniforms for being often pointless yet still required. I can think of a ton of reasons not to wear one.

Big hair, uncomfortable, or maybe a player would rather wear a sweatband. Anyway, they seem very skeuomorphic to me, like the candle-shaped light bulb kind of way. Interesting. Well, even evening games often start at a time of day when there is some light. And you could get the artificial lights in your eyes too. Right. You can get the artificial lights in your eyes and you can still suffer sun damage even when it isn't noon.

So I think that as a means of protecting your face in that respect, it's probably still good. But yeah, I'm sure that if people were given the option that there would be players who would elect to to not wear a hat if if they had the option to but i don't know like i also think that there are players who probably like wearing the hat because sure we don't get to investigate their hairlines that too yeah so in the pedantic corner are bringing up the how can you not be pedantic about baseball that has opened the floodgates it has in the pedantic corner, our bringing up the how can you not be pedantic about baseball, that has opened the floodgates. It has given the pedants permission to email us with their most pedantic observations. And in many cases, I'm sympathetic. In some cases, it's too pedantic even for me.

I cannot follow them to these extremes of pedantry. For example, we got an email from listener Andrew who said, I have a how can you not be pedantic about baseball question with a headline editing spin. So whom better to ask than you two? Actually, he said who better? And I just amended that to whom better? Speaking of being pedantic, the MLB.com headline for the Monday, May 2nd White Sox versus Angels game reads, Dylan sees K's 11, Sox shut out Angels.

This is common parlance, but I would argue it is not true. Though Dylan Cease did have 11 strikeouts, he did not strike out 11 people. He only faced nine Angels batters, and there were some repeats in his total, such as striking out Mike Trout three times. So he says in reality, Cease struck out only eight Angels batters. Jared Walsh escaped. Can't go with you on this one, Andrew, I'm afraid. Technically correct, I guess. He did not strike out 11 batters, distinct, unique batters.

But we have to take each plate appearance as its own entity, right? And just for convenience's sake, and I don't think anyone is getting confused by this one, so no communication issue here. I think we are just fine saying he struck out 11, and I guess there's an implied he struck out 11 batters or hitters there, but we all know, right, you're a hitter when you come to the plate in that plate appearance, and so you can be struck out as a hitter. We would maybe not say that he struck out 11 people.

Right. I don't know. But 11 hitters, I think we can say that. I get it, but I can't go with you on this one. Yeah, I think that we can say that. I'd also say, though, that if they wanted to say, like, records 11 strikeouts, fine. Sure, fine. But when you're dealing with headlines, you are theoretically interested in communicating as much as you can

with as much gravity as possible. And so I think that that's why you go with K's 11 because we know what that means, right? Plus, you want to save like the individual pitcher does X against Y specific batter for when it's like really, really notable. Otherwise, it just gets kind of jumbled. So I think it's fine. I think you can let that one go if you want to. And another one that I was willing to let go was suggested by David, who says, are you guys moderating discussions on other listeners' pedantic

baseball bugaboos? Because if so, I guess we are. Can we talk about referring to a player as an all-star? All-star teams are so-called because all of the players are stars, right? What does it even mean to refer to an individual as an all-star? Is it like that guy is 100% star? Even his pinky toe is star. So I went back and forth with David. This was the greatest thread in the history of forums loved by a moderator after 12,000 pages of heated debate. We had some correspondence about this. Friendly, productive correspondence.

Oh, yeah. It was very civil and enlightened discourse. But he did not convince me that this was a problem, and I did not convince him that this was a problem and I did not convince him that this was not a problem. I do understand what he means, but I made the point that the teams are literally called the all-stars and that therefore, if you were on an all-star team, then you are an all-star the way that if you were on the Marlins, then we can call you a Marlin. Right. And that was not persuasive to David either because he doesn't like that we're calling them all-star teams in the first place.

And he does concede that the usage of all-star makes it easier to talk about all-star games and appearances. So I think we reached a middle ground there. And again, we all know what we mean. This is one of those, we know it when we see it kind of conversations. I will say maybe a more valid question or one that I was more sympathetic to. This one was about sweeps. So Aaron, Patreon supporter says, is there an official Effectively Wild take on sweeping a two-game series many headlines today are dodgers sweep series against giants and while technically yes it was only two games at least to me sweep terminology should be saved for a series with

three or four games maybe call winning both games in a two-game series a dusting as in dodgers dust series against giants thoughts i don't know whether we've weighed in on this before or not, but my answer, and you can tell me if you agree, is that I'm okay with calling anything a sweep beyond a single game, I guess. But I would suggest that a three-game series in the regular season is the default. And so if you tell me that this team swept that team, I will assume it was a three-game series. And therefore, if it was not any deviation from a three-game series, you should append the number of games. That should be the prefix here. So it should be

two-game sweep or it should be four-game sweep. You should specify that it was not a three-game sweep. Okay. Yeah, I agree with that. Because I think, again, the base purpose here is that you want to communicate something that is comprehensible to the other person. And so, and I don't know if everyone has the same base assumption for how many games a series is. They probably do. I guess I won't assume that. But to me, when you say series, I think three games.

And so if it is different than that, it is useful to indicate that for the purposes of clarity. Yes, I agree. Along those lines, Kenny says, sorry, I'm sending this via email, not Patreon, because my question is so meaningless, I'll forget about it if I don't send it now. Our people! I love that. It was like so urgent that he had to send it immediately or he would forget it because it was completely meaningless. Our listeners are the best. They're really, you're all so great. He says, I'm watching the Mariners-Marlins game this afternoon, Sunday, May 1st, and the Bally's scroll at the bottom of the screen was running through standings. The AL West standings flashed in the following order. So it was Los Angeles on top, and then it was Houston and Seattle with the

same record, and it said tied for second. Now, Kenny says, my question is, since there are no longer tiebreaker games and that system has been replaced by a tiebreaker formula, is it correct to say that there is no longer the possibility of a tie in the standings? In other words, one of Houston or Seattle would be ahead of the other and alone in second place should the season end today. So should networks and publications be factoring that in when listing out standings? Does MLB's website list teams that are tied on record in the correct tiebreaker order? Is all this stupid? And should we just bring back game 163s? And he puts in parentheses

yes yes i guess he has a point here in that technically teams can't be tied for second although if we say i mean i think there's some utility in listing them that way yeah so that we understand okay they have the same record right that? That is useful to know in May. And I guess you could say that the tiebreaker order would not be determined until later in the year anyway. I mean, I guess the standings aren't either, so. Well, and I don't think that, and this may have changed, and maybe I missed it, but remember, they were still sorting out some of the tiebreaker stuff. Right. I don't even remember what the mini formula are. And I don't know that they have figured it out now either.

I mean, I guess one argument, I think that at this point in the year, you can denote them as tie because, oh, you got to tell me if this is really annoying. Is this a really annoying explanation that I'm about to give? I mean, one can't break a tie if there isn't a tie to begin

with they are tie breaker you got a point there protocols so i think it's fine to indicate a tie you enter you enter the the room yeah two teams enter one team leaves right like and so you subject them to the tie breaker protocol and then at the end of that you emerge without a tie anymore because other stuff because the records are the same and then all of the things that determine what who advances are ancillary to their just straight one loss record so i think i think it's fine because of all of that. Have I persuaded you or is that really annoying? I think you make a fine and pedantic point there. I think that's convincing to me.

Yeah, the tiebreaker now, it's like the team with the better head-to-head is number one. And then like best overall record in intra-division games and then best overall record in intra-league games. Yes. And then team with the best record in the last 81 intra-league games. And if that somehow doesn't do it, then it's like then team with the best record in the last 81 intra-league games and if that somehow doesn't do it then it's like the team with the best record in the last 82 intra-league games and then on and on from there they make them fight and then they yeah make them kiss and then they make them do all kinds of things and at the end of it they're like you get to go to the postseason and you have to go home yeah so i guess you could factor in where the tiebreaker results would stand now

as we do with the standings and say, well, if the season ended today. But I think you're right. I think you're right that you have to have the tie before you can break the tie. Yes. And we want to know who's tied

in terms of record anyway and how else would you list it really without confusing people. And then I guess they'd probably just do it alphabetical by team after they're tied, right? Yeah, right. Last pedantic question from Josh. My email regards something that certainly falls under the umbrella of how can you not

be pedantic about baseball, but I can't keep letting it slide. I watched the Padres broadcast on Bally Sports. So Bally's the target again here. And anytime a batter has passed a threshold of pitches seen during a continuous appearance at the plate, a graphic pops up on the score bug that says, pitches this at bat, colon, X, right? I'd imagine that this happens on all other Bally sports broadcasts and likely a handful of other broadcasts as well. More often than not, by the time this graphic appears, the count on the batter is full. So any succeeding pitch could result in a walk, at which point the player no longer had an at-bat.

They had a plate appearance. This is obviously true as well if the batter is hit by a pitch, is out on a sacrifice fly, etc. If that's the case, why doesn't the graphic say something like, pitches this plate appearance? Since then, if the batter ends up walking, the graphic would still retroactively be true. More generally, I suppose my question boils down to this. Is every plate appearance still considered and at bat until it is officially just a plate appearance?

Or is the graphic in question truly a mistake, likely a result of the fact that colloquially a player is at bat even if their plate appearance ends in a walk or a hit by pitch, etc.? I'm sure this all means nothing, and I'm likely in just a very small cohort of people who care that this pop-up graphic can be wrong after the fact, but wanted to get some thoughts from the only two people I know who might care about this as well. And I will say I am pedantic about plate appearances versus at-bats. And that is an important distinction.

Yes. And so often for analytical purposes, you want to be using plate appearances instead of at-bats. you want to be using plate appearances instead of at bats. And it's especially important, you know, as rates change and strikeout rates go up and walk rates go up and all of these things change that might not be at bats or whatever in certain years, or you might have more your ratio of plate appearances to at bats could change by the year. So I'm sympathetic to this one. The question of like, when does a plate appearance

morph into it bat when isn't it bat official I guess you could say that like plate appearance starts when the batter is at the plate right like it's a plate appearance from that point forward is it an at bat later maybe it only becomes an at bat after the plate appearance is over and you know if it ended up being a ball in play or a strikeout or whatever so i'm sympathetic to the idea that like maybe a plate appearance is always a plate appearance but then maybe it doesn't become an at-bat until later on is that reasonable yeah i think that they should say pitches this plate appearance. And I think some broadcasts do. I think, and now I'm going to have to watch this,

although some of the games that the Dodgers are postponed today. But I'm pretty sure that the Sportsnet LA, the Dodgers home broadcast pitches this plate appearance. And I think the mariners broadcast does too now i'm gonna i'm gonna watch that seems like the correct uh way to denote it on the score bug if you're gonna make a point of showing it because like most and most um you have to be making an editorial choice there right because most score bugs don't show that until they're like oh my gosh another pitch this plate appearance and then they're like, oh my gosh, another pitch, this plate appearance.

And then it's the 11th pitch of the at-bat. So hoisted on my own petard, Ben. But I think that there are definitely broadcasts that say plate appearance there. That seems like the more correct approach. Maybe every plate appearance starts out as an at-bat and then- It's like squares and rectangles. Yeah. Or are they both plate appearances and at-bats and then some of them morph back into being

just plate appearances? Or do they morph from being plate appearances into at-bats? I think they morph from being a plate appearance into an at-bat. I agree. And yet we will just in an offhand casual way refer to an in progress plate appearance as an at bat i think that is unavoidable i mean sure is at the bat so i get why we say that but they appear but they also appear at the plate so that is truly a matter of perspective right what i guess this is just like why do we prioritize

at bats over plate appearance and it just goes back to like the primacy of batting average, right? And not taking into account walks and on-base percentage. And Henry Chadwick, it's all his fault because he put at-bats in the box score instead of plate appearances, right? So I guess that is what it is. We are still deferring in that way to the historical supremacy of the at-bat. I will say, like, obviously space on the Chiron is at a premium. So if you're going to say— Yeah, but PA versus AB, it's the—

That's the same number of characters. Yeah, at-bat is shorter than plate appearance. I would say AB is better known to the general populace than PA, I would think. Like, that even stands in. Like, people will even say, oh say he had a good AB, right? Right, right. You usually wouldn't say he had a good PA if he drew a walk or something. You should. You could. But AB is better known. And if you put PA up there, I don't know that everyone would understand it,

but they'd think public address. So what are we talking about here? That is an argument that I find somewhat persuasive because again we have said like the point of all of this is to communicate as much as clearly as one can yes but but i think it would be fine you have all that space on the bottom and the you know the valley ones have the crawl so i think that they could probably make room for you know they could flash plate appearance very briefly and then put pitches this pa up there because again it's not like it's a fixed part of the score bug they're only doing it when the length of the plate appearance is noteworthy for some reason so i think that they should opt for plate appearance i mean i think that most people you're right to say, are more familiar with at-bats,

but that's because we don't view walking as work. We don't. I think that on a fundamental level, a lot of fans view it as the fault of the pitcher, and so it's charity, right? When we're balancing the skills there, we balance them toward it being a failure of the pitcher rather than a demonstration of some sort of skill or a keen eye on the part of the hitter. And I think we should rethink that personally, but I think that's the, at its core, is the fundamental resistance on base percentage too, because we're like, well, you didn't earn that,

that's charity. And we're so skeptical. so skeptical getting hit by a pitch which is that's a big part of the batter too i mean they take one for the team but also there is a skill to that so right which is funny because you you know we imbue so many other things within the you know oeuvre with morality too like sacrifice that sounds so noble you're sacrificing for your team anyway that wasn't the point of the question but you did ask some pedantic people a pedantic question now i'm thinking about work and chyrons we're a pro plate appearance podcast generally sure yeah so yeah you know since we talked about it we have heard from a few listeners who've said that they have heard umpires change the phrasing when they announce the replay review results. So instead of saying Miami won their challenge, they'll say Miami won its challenge.

Maybe a memo went out or maybe those umps are effectively wild listeners going rogue. Either way, clearly we're making a difference here and the pedantry must persist. That's Pedantic Corner. I will end with one non-pedantic question. It's from David, Patreon supporter, who says, I was at a Cardinals game the other day and while I was watching Yadier Molina leg out a double, it occurred to me that the Cardinals have the two slowest players by a wide margin in the league in Molina and Albert Pujols. some of the very fastest players in the league in the form of Edmundo Sosa, Tyler O'Neill, and Harrison Bader. This led me to wonder if the Cardinals have the highest standard deviation of speed in the league.

I don't even know if the answer to that would be interesting, but I figured I'd throw it out there. I think it's interesting. I think it is too. And it checks out. You are onto something here, David. So all I did, just sort of a simplistic method, was just go to the sprint speed leader board at Baseball Savant and export it and throw it into a pivot table and just get the standard deviation by team. And the Cardinals stand out by a wide margin, actually.

So they have a standard deviation of sprint speed of about 2.5 feet per second. 2.5 feet per second. And the next highest team is the Guardians at 1.9. And then the Marlins are also at 1.9 and Milwaukee is at 1.9. So there's like a giant gap between the Cardinals and the next highest team. On the low end, you have Atlanta at 0.9. So they have the least variation in the speed of their players. And yeah, the Cardinals absolutely stand out in this respect. You are seeing some of the fastest and some of the slowest players on display, and it has worked out for them base running wise thus far. We know that Albert Pujols got caught stealing, right? But Yachty stole a base, right? so it makes news whenever one of them tries to steal a base whether they're successful or not but on the whole the Cardinals have been running wild it's not quite

the 80s Cardinals the Herzog Cardinals back again but they have been the best base running team or at least the second best by base running runs best in the National League at 5.4 base running team or at least the second best by base running runs best in the national league at 5.4 base running runs thus far the rangers are tops in the majors and the cardinals are leading the majors in stolen bases with 24 and they've been caught only three times which is pretty impressive so it is uh working out well for them this mix of super fast and super slow players. Yeah. Man, that Cardinals team, I think they're going to sneak up on some people. We're going to look back and we're like, oh, boy.

Don't they always. Oh, boy. They did it again. All right. Well, that will do it. Thanks for your skeuomorph suggestions. Thanks for your pedantic questions. Thanks for your other just normal baseball questions.

We mean that in a nice way. We need to like imbue pedantic with warmth because that's how we mean it. We are like, ah, fellow travelers. People get that. They know this is a safe space for pedantic questions. Yeah. All right. It's a pro-pedantry podcast as well.

Oh, boy. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. Also, just wanted to relay well wishes to former podcast guest Riley O'Brien. Riley is the grandson of Effectively Wild legend Johnny O'Brien, who has been on the show a couple of times. The second of those times we had Riley and his granddad Johnny on together. That was a few years ago. Riley was in the Rays system at the

time. The Rays traded him to the Reds and he made his Major League debut for the Reds last year. But just last month, April 17th, the Reds traded him to the Mariners, which works out for Riley in a couple of ways. One, he got to flee the sinking ship, although I guess there are innings available in Cincinnati. He is from Seattle. Johnny is a Seattle University legend and still is in Seattle as far as I know. So I expect and hope this means that Johnny gets to go see Riley play, which I think is something that we talked about when we had the two of them on the show together. The Mariners just recalled Riley to the majors. So hopefully he'll make his Mariners debut sometime soon. And hopefully Johnny will get to see him. And if so, maybe it'll be time to have him back on.

He was in his 80s when we last talked to him. He's 91 now. So when I need another nonagenarian on the podcast, we can call up Johnny again. In the meantime, 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, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Jesse R., Jonah Bernhard, Thomas Bennett, Patrick Morgan, and Sam Normington. Thanks to all of you.

Our Patreon supporters get plenty-o perks. They can join the Effectively Wild Discord group where there's great baseball discussion going on at all hours among our Patreon supporters and not just baseball discussion, discussion of all things. Thank you. Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments, pedantic or otherwise, coming from me and Meg via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow

Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. There's an Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. How did you find the healing for you? Across the multiverse we collide

This extraterrestrial love Across the multiverse you and I Transcription by CastingWords