Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1850: Don’t Squat So Close to Me

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about two of the worst defensive plays of the season, which came courtesy of the Tigers and Nationals, Albert Pujols pitching and walking, the Pirates winning without a hit (but with one correct prediction), and the breakout of Taylor Ward; answer listener emails about banning gray uniforms, baseball jugglers, […]

🎵 I'm feeling brave Well, I wanted to start by asking you about two plays where no one was doing all right at all because absolutely everything went wrong. I don't know if this will translate to a podcast because it's not a visual medium. And so we cannot convey the complete incompetence on display here. I will include clips of the broadcasts, which will maybe hint at what was happening here. the broadcasts, which will maybe hint at what was happening here. But I think there are two leading contenders for worst defensive play of this season or misplay. And I want to ask you which one you think was worse or I guess better, depending on your perspective, whether we're talking about the quality of the defense or the entertainment value here. So one was a pretty famous viral example here that probably a lot of you listening have seen. This was from April 26th, and it was a walk-off, the Twins over the Tigers. And I don't know, I'll play the clip here, but would you care to describe what happens here here i don't know if we can narrate it and convey what is happening here well i don't know let's try shall we try so this is the bottom

of the ninth this is the bottom of the ninth in a game that detroit is leading by one run there are two on and one out runners on first and second and g. Gregory Soto is pitching to Miguel Sano, and Miguel Sano sends the ball out to the warning track, and that is where our trouble begins because the ball skips off of the top of Robbie Grossman's glove, and so he takes a moment to corral it. The runner advances to third and sort of is held up there because why get greedy? You have the opportunity to have someone come up with one out and the base is loaded.

And then the acuity sacks start to pour. Yeah. Because with the bases loaded, the ball gets thrown all the way to the catcher. And then you think, like, okay, you're the twins. You're in a really good spot. But then for whatever reason, Sano I guess maybe thinking that the ball was going to roll all the way to the backstop I I can't quite account for Miguel Sano's decision making here

but he starts to advance to second base and Ben I don't know if you know this but in the game of baseball you can only have one runner on a bag at a time because otherwise one of those cats is out. And so he starts to advance, which inspires the runner on second to try to advance to third. And then you think, okay, well, they're going to get a couple of guys out here as he tries to either retreat to second or doubles up at third base. And then the ball gets thrown rather than getting to third base as it was meant to so that one of the runners there could be tagged out. Because what they tell you to do

if there are two runners on the bag is just to tag both of them over and over and over again until the umpire makes a determination of who rightfully occupies the bag and who is out. They tell you to tag out, out, out, out, out, because sometimes both of them will step off the bag and then they'll both be out and then you're having a great time. But that didn't happen here.

Instead, the ball sails into left field. A runner comes home to score, tying the game. And then another runner comes home to score, winning the game. And then Gregory Santos is just standing there with his hands on his hips like, I don't understand how I got here. I made one mistake, but that was not the worst mistake of the night. Line drive right field. Over the glove and Grossman.

Larnik had to hold up. He's going to be held there. And the Twins have filled the bases. And now Sano goes towards second. Do you think I did an adequate job narrating that? Twice in a week. That's amazing. Do you think I did an adequate job narrating that? I think you did, yeah. Dylan's going to clean up the messy bits, and then everyone's going to be like, that Meg, she could do play-by-play right now if she wanted to. Yeah, reading play-by-play accounts can be kind of boring, and possibly listening to play-by-play accounts can be boring too,

but I think you did a decent job there. And we didn't talk about that play at the time, but it made the rounds. And I think that was the leader in the clubhouse for just worst defensive series of just comedy of errors, really, on the season. To be clear, you and I didn't talk about it at the time, but I said everything about this dumb, dumb sequence is perfect. I have no doubt. That is what I tweeted in the moment. Yeah. So that was early in the year.

There was plenty of time for someone to come along and potentially screw up worse than that. And I think maybe the closest that anyone has come happened in the Nationals-Marlins game on Monday. And this was a bases-clearing grounder to short, which you don't see all that often. But I don't know if you are ready to narrate this one too. I guess it's a little simpler. There are fewer moving parts in this one, but that explanation, just bases clearing grounder to short right to the shortstop, that sort of sums it up. Now, it was a hard hit ball. Don't get me wrong.

It was. Barry was blistered. It was indeed the hardest hit ball of the entire game. Okay. Because you sent it to me and I watched this. And there is a moment in this clip where the announcer says that it is a ball that was anything but routine. And so I was like, I'm going to contemplate that. What does that mean to me? Do I agree with this assessment that it was anything but routine play? And it does eat D. Strange Gordon up. It eats him up.

He's a skinny little guy and it eats his entire lunch, right? And so you think to yourself, well, maybe he should have been able to make a play on that. And maybe he should have been able to. He was not charged with an error on this play, right? If you read the play-by-play log it is it proceeds as follows Jorge Soler singles on a ground ball to left fielder Lane Thomas deflected by short stop D. Strange Gordon Jacob Stalling scores Jazz Chisholm Jr. scores Jesus Aguilar scores Jorge Soler to third throwing error by left fielder Lane Thomas throwing error by pitcher Victor Arano

and I mean like I think a very, very good shortstop can probably at least field the ball and keep it in front of him, right? He might not have been able to get an out on the play, but he would have at least been able to keep it from leaking into the outfield. I don't know that D is that guy. And this ball was hit just like very hard. It had a 113 exit velo. Because, you know, Jorge Soler he famously

hits the ball real hard that's one of the things that he does so I don't think it was perfectly routine but the rest of it why don't you do this one are you ready are you prepared not completely but I can just watch it in real time and narrate. That's all I did. Yeah. So the throw comes in to home and it is stopped. It's kind of like gloved but also kicked at the same time. The glove, the catcher's glove, scoops the ball and inadvertently so that the ball gets away from the catcher. The throw itself wasn't terrible.

It was a little offline. But then the ball goes up the line. And then who's that? The pitcher backing up? Picks up the ball and fires it confidently to second base where the runner, Solaire, who just hit that ball, is advancing. But he fires it well wide of second. Well wide. It's sort of incredible it didn't hit the runner.

Yeah. And it is just rifled into center. And I think my favorite part of this play maybe is that the center fielder, he just like dives after it. He makes a diving stop to stop this ball from going all the way to the wall, in which case Jorge Soler could have scored. Yeah. As it is, that does not happen, although he ends up on third. So it's your standard grounder to short that clears the bases and ends with the runner on third. One ball, one strike to Soler. Smashed past D. Strange Gordon and into left field.

Here comes Jazz and he gets in. Two more in to score. Runners are going to move up on the throw. That now gets into center field. In comes Aguilar and the third goes Soler. And the Marlins get three on a ground ball to short that was anything but routine. So I guess there are fewer components to this play. And maybe you could say grading on a curve here or accounting for the difficulty of how hard that

ball was hit, maybe it is not quite as bad. They're both bad. We're talking about which one is potentially the worst play of the season. So obviously they're both bad. I think the Tigers one is worse. Only by a little bit, but I think that the Tigers one is worse. I think that you're right that the best part of this is the center fielder having to be like, oh no! But the second best part is famously not fast Jesus Aguilar just kind of ambling comfortably down the line to go home and score. Like, I don't have to rush at all. I am Jesus Aguilar and I am not in a hurry right now.

I think that's the second best part. Yeah, both great. And I don't know, I'm probably missing some candidates here, but I think potentially the third and fourth worst plays of the season defensively are these same teams. Yes. Because the Tigers had that play in that weird windy April game against the Yankees where the catcher dropped the pop up. The pitcher just didn't go for the pop up. And then there was some juggling involved and ultimately no one caught the ball and the run scored. It was windy.

I guess they were extenuating circumstances. And then the Nationals also had a bad one, which was one of those rundowns, like a rundown at multiple bases with many, many throws exchanged, which ultimately led to another pileup with multiple runners at the same base. And then one of those runners scored because the catcher interfered with the runner or so it was ruled. So that was really bad too. Those are the dishonorable mentions. So I think potentially the Tigers and the Nationals have the two leading or the four leading collectively most embarrassing or visually entertaining defensive plays slash misplays of the season so far but i may be missing some and there's plenty of time left to go we're just a little more than a fifth of the way through the season i think that my favorite among the three highlights

that we watched here is actually the one that we have spent the least amount of time talking about because it is so it's so rare that anyone escapes a pickle like it just doesn't happen very often that you get a pickle escape and and i think that among the the methods of pickle escape which is a phrase that i'm sure i'm not gonna regret saying is catcher's interference of some stripe and i know that this isn't catcher interference in the way that we typically think about catcher interference but like being interfered with by the catcher i think that this is a pretty remarkable way to escape the pickle and get to run and i do like the moment where they're like it's a dead ball and it's like

no no he gets to score yeah spectacular the best this sort of play is much more reflective of the nationals defense on the whole than it is of the Tigers defense. We're cherry picking here with the poor Tigers because they're not off to a great start on the season. But defensively, they've been quite good, at least as measured by defensive efficiency. They are third in the majors as we speak here on Tuesday afternoon after the Angels and the Dodgers, whereas the Nats, I believe, are leading the majors in errors as we speak and are third worst in defensive efficiency after the Rockies. That's partly a park effect. And then the Giants and the Nationals. There was just a big Washington Post article the other day that was headlined, the Nationals defense dogged by, quote, lazy mistakes is struggling. And there are a bunch of quotes in there about the brutal mistakes they are making. I think one of the things that makes the Tigers play so special is that it was a walk off. Oh, yeah. I mean, that just, you know,

the Nationals were already losing that game four to one. So they went down seven to one. Yes. Which is bad. But when it is rubbed in your face immediately because you just lost the game and at the conclusion of the play, your opponent is celebrating right on the field where you just screwed up repeatedly, that definitely adds insult to injury or insult to another insult. So I think that adds to it. But I did enjoy the Davey Martinez face. Sometimes in these highlight clips, they'll end with the manager in the dugout just sitting there making some sort of expression. Mike Socia used to be the king of this, the Socia face. But the Martinez face here is good too. It's, I don't know, it's bemused. it's frazzled, it's unbelieving. I don't know how to describe it exactly.

It's, you know, he doesn't necessarily want to show up his players. They just showed themselves up, really. So it's just sort of, how did I end up in this situation? Yeah, and it has to be such a surreal experience for the manager because you, you know, like, first of all, you manage a bunch of professionals right and like these aren't necessarily the best guys in all of major league baseball but they are among the best baseball guys right you sit there and you can confidently say like these guys are among the best baseball guys what a what a treat that i get to manage them

every day and you think to yourself know, it's a very hard game. And we talk a lot on this podcast about how hard a game it is. But when we're talking about it being a hard game, we're normally talking about like, you know, trying to hit like 95 at the top of the strike zone or get any batter out, right? This push and pull, it's remarkable that anyone gets to go home at the end of a baseball game. It's amazing the baseball games end because it seems like it's impossible to hit and it's impossible to pitch, and yet they soldier through it every day and they do it to great effect and sometimes really well

for a number of years, and then they do this. We all have bad days at work where we make mistakes. You leave a typo in a headline or you misread a correction to a typo. You leave it in there for hours and hours, just to name some things that have happened to me lately. We all make our errors, but when you're as good at baseball as the guys who play in Major League Baseball, even the ones who are not the very best,

who are on the less good teams. It's a lot to sit there and watch that. And I would imagine if you're a coach or a manager, like running professionals through really basic sort of fielding drills and stuff, that has to be one of the worst parts of your job because they feel like they can do it. You know, they're like, we don't need to keep doing this. I know how to do it. I know how to be an infielder

or an outfielder or pitcher. You know, I know how to do all those things because I've been doing them for years. I'm one of the very best guys. And you probably get grief about making them do it. And, you know, they're hot. It's Florida or Arizona and there's humidity or desert. And then they do this. And part of you is amazed that they do. And then part of you is like, see, I told you we had to keep doing those. So it's got to be a strange thing to be a major league manager, even of the best guys. Especially if you won the World Series in 2019. It's like life comes at you fast.

Oh, yeah, it sure does. This is the same franchise, same uniforms and everything, but not quite the same team. Life comes at you as fast as Jorge Soler Grado. So there's been some other strangeness since we last spoke. Much of it concentrated in the NL Central where Albert Pujols pitched. Yeah. Albert Pujols pitched. Yeah.

That happened. He pitched and he allowed a home run to technically a pitcher, Luis Gonzalez, who is not really a pitcher, but he was also pitching in that game. It was dueling position player pitchers. I didn't expect to see Albert Pujols pitch anytime this season, but I like that he did. Why not? You're Albert Pujols. It's your farewell tour. Just cross off items from the bucket list. I don't know if this was something he wanted to do for a long time, but he got to do it. Great. I think that they should have,

I don't know, Yadier Molina pitch to Adam Wainwright in a blowout at some point this season. Just get wild. You have those guys. Why not? So that was weird and wonderful. And then you also had the Reds-Pirates game that the Pirates won without a hit, which was the sixth time in history, right, that a team had won without a hit. Technically not a no-hitter. And some people were upset about that in a how-can-you-not-be-pedantic-about-baseball way, that this was not a no-hitter, that Hunter Green, who was pitching for the Reds, I mean, he was pulled from a no-hitter attempt at the time, the latest to be pulled, although he had thrown many pitches by modern standards. But it was not a no-hitter

because there were only eight innings of no hits. So I personally am totally fine with that. I think that is okay. I think it is fine to reserve the term no-hitter for nine-inning games. This came up when we had seven-inning games as well, too. And there were some seven inning hit list starts that were not classified as no hitters. And some people were upset about that. I'm fine with that. I think it's OK. I think we can use the words hit list start or hit list game or one without a hit or whatever and reserve the technical term no hitteritter for the nine-inning or more accomplishment

because it really does make a pretty big difference in how impressive that accomplishment is. Whether you did it for nine innings or not, there's a big difference from a probability perspective. So personally, I'm fine with that. But it did kind of add to the tire fire that has been the red season. And to be fair, they have turned it around a little bit since we last spoke. As we noted, there was no way they were going to keep losing at that clip. And really, no one had anticipated that they would be historically terrible. So maybe they got some guys back from the IL and their luck turned a little bit and

they have one more. But they did have this one kind of ugly loss or dispiriting loss where they were beaten by a team that had no hits. So whether you call that a no hitter or not, that is demoralizing, I imagine. So we talked about how we're like, they can't keep losing at the pace that they are. But did you believe that after we said it? Like how much of you was like, I know that they can't, but will they? Did you think about it that way? I thought about it that way. I expected that they would be a little bit better because they'd have to be.

I didn't think they were going to win 20 games or whatever they were on pace for. I didn't even think they were that bad before the season started as we discussed last time, but they were certainly looking bad for quite a while there so those were some weird games weird wins did you have strong feelings one way or the other about hunter green's pitch count what did he get up to 117 or something like that something like that i don't know you don't have to have a strong feeling to be clear i was just curious if you

did because sometimes you surprise us ben well he was how far through that game? He was like seven and something, right? He had a ways to go still. It seemed clear that he was not going to- He was not going to make it. He wasn't going to make it. And it was not as if he was not flagging as things progressed.

I think that it became clear that he needed to be done. Because he had, you know, he got a ground out to start the bottom of the eighth, but then he walked a guy, and then he walked another guy. And then they brought in Art warren who famously walks guys so like that was sort of an interesting decision to make if one were trying to prevent the other team from scoring and he walked a guy and then you know cabrian hayes had a fielder's choice that scored a run and and that as they say was that but i don't know i was expecting more kerfuffle but i think people maybe thought well he seems pretty tired and he's walking dudes so that seems bad i don't have any further thoughts on the reds but i do have a thought

on albert pools pitching if you are amenable to it we have talked in the past and in fact i think we talked about it when we were previewing this division and we were talking about pool holes and sort of what to expect from him and the return to st lou Louis. And, you know, how you see a guy who's just been in the big leagues for, well, he has 21 years of service time and how remarkable that is. And I love it. He has 21 years of service time and now he has a pitching page on FanCraft. And a 36 CRA. But a 32.1 FIP, Ben.

Don't shortchange him. Don't you dare. So that's my thought. It's just funny. It's like, you know, he has this long and illustrious career and now someone somewhere is going to misclick and be like, what's up with this inning of pitching work at age 42? Yeah. There are some other Hall of Fame type players who've had an inning at some point late in their career, possibly. Even some good, skilled pitchers like Jimmy Fox, who probably could have been a pitcher.

Even some actually good ones. But yes, he pitched more extensively and actually had some talent for it. But I've been impressed with Pujols in general this season. I know he's only had 56 plate appearances for the Cardinals thus far, but he's almost looked a little more like his old self in terms of plate discipline.

Like the most confounding thing about Pujols' decline was that he seemed to lose his sense of the strike zone. Like he stopped walking. It was just weird. You know, it wasn't like he started striking out much more often. He hasn't struck out a ton relative to the league. But he stopped walking a lot really when he left St. Louis, or I guess in his final season in St. Louis. And I never understood exactly why that was. I think Sam wrote about that way back when, and in very limited time, just those 56 plate appearances. But he has walked and

struck out in equal measure thus far. He has walked in 14.3% of his plate appearances, struck out in same, and has a 135 WRC plus for the Cardinals thus far. That is pretty impressive. So I don't know if he has been rejuvenated by the fact that the finish line is now in sight and that he is back in the St. Louis uniform, or whether it is just just small sample because I did look at the fan graphs and looked for other 17 game samples and he has had some comparable samples during his Angels years. It just hasn't shown up because it hasn't been the entirety of his season. But thus far, the chase rate is looking better than it has, I think, since his second to last season in St. Louis.

So don't know if that will continue. Probably not. Probably not. But if it doesn't, he could always pick up his pitching career. So that's something. But, yeah, I didn't have a strong take on Hunter Green either being pulled or racking up that pitch count. Because in general, I think we've gotten too precious about pitch counts. Granted, he's a rookie.

He's young. He is in that cohort that I would say we should be more protective of than usual. But even so, I don't know that we have to treat every number above 100 as some sort of dangerous pitcher abuse, potential pitcher abuse. I think we've gotten too locked into that specific number or the idea of a specific limit. So I would like to see some pitchers stretched beyond that, whether green at that particular time was the particular pitcher that you would want to push. I don't know, but I don't get too bent out of shape until we get over 120, let's say. And clearly he wasn't going to make it all the way. So at that point, might as well pull him. It is interesting, though,

that it seems like maybe the key to his increased effectiveness lately is that he's thrown fewer fastballs. You'd think the guy with the zillion mile per hour heater would want to throw more of those, but that pitch was getting creamed. So mixing in more breaking balls seems to have helped. Not sure whether that would mean more strain on the arm and more pressure to pull him earlier. Yeah, I think that you could make the argument that since it was unlikely that he was going to go the distance, that you kind of pulled him, but also I think you're right generally. So there you go. There was also some buzz about Josh Van Meter calling that Pirates victory with no hits. Van Meter, who we recently talked about as an emergency catcher. Yes.

A number of people pointed out there have been a bunch of predictions by players lately, and we don't talk about them all anymore because we've discovered that there are just so many and that players are constantly predicting victories or home runs or whatever. victories or home runs or whatever. So Adolis Garcia on Sunday called his shot to his teammate Martin Perez before he hit a big homer. Okay, yawn, dime a dozen. And apparently Josh Van Meter predicted that too. At least the MLB.com game story says Josh Van Meter called it. As the Pirates were facing the possibility of being no hit by Hunter Green, the Reds' electrifying rookie who looked as if he could do no wrong Saturday at PNC Park, Van Meter made his prediction. The Pirates would get no hit, but they would still win the game. The Pirates didn't record a single hit, but they did not lose. By the end of the evening, Van Meter's new nickname might be Nostradamus.

I don't know exactly at what point in the game Van Meter made that prediction, but I would think that's maybe not all that uncommon. As uncommon as it is to win that we won't get any hits ever. But then I guess it is just by definition not defeatist to predict that you will win the game. So maybe it's not that unusual. Again, it comes down to, well, what are the percentages here? How often does a team that is getting no hits say, hey, we're going to win this one without getting a hit as opposed to predicting nothing or predicting that we will get a hit i don't know i'm gonna guess that josh van meter is not the first to make this prediction perhaps he is the first to have it come true i really would need to know exactly when in the game he made it because if he made that prediction in like the fourth inning then something spooky is going on but if he made that prediction in like the eighth then it's like well i mean it would still it's still a rare event right the proximity to it doesn't make it not

rare just because it's more likely than it was in like the first inning i guess but you know it would be a weird thing to predict in like the third and then look around and be like oh my god what else can i do you know do i get to be a superhero now i don't know yeah especially when it's a scoreless game at that point i imagine i assume he didn't predict this after they scored their run and took right because that would be that'd be that wouldn't be much anything at all would it no but even if it was zero zero like at that point it's a lot less unlikely than it would be if you were trailing by a bunch of runs in a game in which you're getting no hit. So yeah, I will reserve judgment on how

impressive this is. But generally, I am almost over being impressed by any player prediction. Actually, here's a tweet. He says he called it in the seventh inning. So while it was scoreless, still late in the game. I'll give him some credit for that. Pirates didn't have a hit, but he did hit on that prediction, assuming it was witnessed and corroborated. So one thing I have been impressed by is Taylor Ward. We've mentioned him in passing, but it's still happening. Yeah.

It's happening even more so, if anything. There's even more Ward. Taylor, now with more Ward. You talked the other day about how Trout was leading the American League in war. Well, he's not now, as we speak, because his teammate Taylor Ward is. Yeah. Taylor Ward is leading the American League in war with only 27 games played and 117 plate appearances as we speak. He is putting the war in war, I guess.

But he is leading just about every player by a lot on the offensive side. So even if I set a minimum of 50 plate appearances, let's say he just leapfrogs the league. He's up at 257. Mike Trout, his teammate, is second at 212. So there's a lot of daylight between those two. He's hitting 385, 496, 729. He does have a 460 Babbitt.

But it doesn't even matter because he is hitting so well that even if you were to subtract some of that Babbitt boost, he would still really be fantastic. Like if you go by expected weighted on base, and I'm not going to quote the specific numbers necessarily because I think the baselines are all off because they don't normalize for the given season until the all-star break. We know that the ball, because of the ball itself, because of the humidor, whatever, it's not carrying quite as far. And so the scale, I think, is somewhat skewed now. But just in terms of ordinal ranking, if you look at players with at least 100 plate appearances and sort by the highest expected weighted on base, and that's just based on your quality of contact. It goes Trout, Judge, Jordan Alvarez, Freddie Freeman, and Taylor Ward. So he's fifth, even by that measure. And that's behind a quartet of name brand batters. And it's not even just how hard he's hit the ball.

It's his plate discipline, which is meaningful in small samples. He's had Troutian swing decisions. He's chased a little less often than Trout. I think he's tied with Rendon for the sixth lowest chase rate among major leaguers with at least 100 plate appearances. So he really seems to have a sense of the strike zone too. So he's kind of come out of nowhere, and he has been the best offensive player in baseball this season.

And so that has been a big part of why the Angels are doing as well as they are, because it's not just Trout and it's not just Otani and it's not even Rendon or Walsh or any other players that were sort of expected to be the main supporting players. It's Taylor Ward, who, at least on the offensive side, has outshone everyone thus far. I don't think he's going to finish the season with a higher war than Mike Trout, but just the fact that he has made it this far is pretty impressive. And he's not someone whom a lot was expected of. I mean, here are some people who have hit as many home runs as Taylor Ward, Nolan Arenado, Jose Ramirez, Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, Shoya Otani, Rowdy Tellez. You know,

they hit home runs, those guys, most of them. And then there's Taylor Ward. So, I mean, I agree with you that he is unlikely to continue to hit, you know, for like a 257 WRC plus. That seems unlikely to me. I feel like it won't happen in the long term. But I think that, you know, this production is banked and it's been pretty

useful to them and as we have said a couple of times this season like it's those supporting guys that they were missing and how nice to be surprised by one right like that's a it's a new a new mode for this angels team to be surprised by a supporting guy and to be like yeah let's see what this guy can do and then keep playing him so i think think it's a good situation. Yeah. I know we talk a lot about the Angels because of Trout Tani, and I'm not trying to fixate on this team, just that he has been the best player in baseball, the best hitter in baseball, and he just so happens to be on the Angels. He's also the most surprising player and most improved player. So the fact that he happens to be on the Angels, purely coincidental.

If he were doing this for any team, I think we would be talking about him in that instance as well. But I'm just trying to figure out how foreseeable in retrospect this was. Now, he was not a bad hitter last year. He had 237 plate appearances. He had a 111 WRC plus, so he was a bit above average. He is a former first round pick and he has really raked in AAA over the years. So 179 games, 837 plate appearances. He has a career 330-439-588 line in AAA, which is pretty darn impressive. So maybe it's a case of we should have seen this coming or other teams should have seen this coming. But clearly they did not. So I feel a little bit better about not seeing it coming.

they did not. So I feel a little bit better about not seeing it coming. It doesn't even seem like the Angels really saw it coming because as recently as I think the start of spring training, maybe Joe Maddon was talking about him as a potential fourth outfielder. It was all about Trout and Joe Adele and Brandon Walsh. And hopefully those young guys could pick up the slack. And then it turns out, no, it's the Taylor Ward show. So I don't think they knew what they had either. So I don't feel bad about missing it. But as always, with a breakout like this, you look back and think, could I have foreseen this? And the answer, I think, is probably not. But it's not as if he had no offensive track record in the past and he you know he was reasonably productive in limited duty last year right he's already matched his home run total from those 65 games and 27 games this year so that's pretty exciting but yeah i mean even with a more normal babbitt and at least in his limited major league time sort of a depressed babbitt relative to what he's done. He was productive last year. And so I don't know, like we probably didn't expect quite this to come along,

but it wasn't as if he was terrible. You know, it's not like he put up the line he put up from 2018 last year. So I don't know. It seems pretty cool. Ben, you know, the Angels are 24 and 14. You can just talk about them as a good team. You don't have to apologize anymore. You can just talk about the Angels.

They are relevant to baseball, not just to you. So it's okay, man. Like you get to just be stoked on the Angels now. I'm not shoehorning them into every podcast. They deserve to be discussed. Yeah. Oh, no. I was reading. I was trying to figure out like, well, where did this come from?

And there is a Sam Blum profile at The Athletic that talks about how a couple of years ago, the Angels assistant hitting coach gave Ward a book called Mind Gym, An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence. And it talks about how he just embraced this Zen approach at the plate. So Sam writes, there's a unique Zen to Ward's approach at the plate. He tries to eliminate what the count is in his head. He often doesn't try to anticipate pitch types that he'll see. Many hitters will tell you they're just looking for a pitch to hit, and it becomes a cliche. For Ward, he's stripping away all the external factors so that he can only be thinking about getting that one pitch to hit.

Quote, the count, it doesn't matter, Ward said. Just waiting for the ball to show up in the spot, that's all that matters. No count, no lineup, it doesn't matter. I'm just in the box doing my thing. Don't think about it at all. Which seems to be working well for him. it at all, which seems to be working well for him. That is not necessarily the advice that I would give to other hitters. Forget about the count. Forget about the pitcher. Forget about everything. Just look for your pitch. It's just such a case-by-case basis where that might turn

out to be great advice for Taylor Ward. And maybe if you told him, hey, you could eliminate this pitch probably because it's this count and it's this pitcher, and maybe he'd have that in his head and he'd be trying to keep all of this information in his mind as he's just trying to hit a pitch and it would backfire horribly. But for him, this seems to be working well. For someone else who is more playing the percentages and is, for whatever reason, able to keep those probabilities in their head while also focusing on what pitch they want to hit, maybe for them this would hurt their performance to just say forget about everything. You're leaving useful information on the table. So I guess you never know what is going to click for any given player. You never know what is going to click for any given player.

And it is somehow less satisfying to me when there is a psychological explanation like this. Like for me, and this is probably a bias that I need to work on. It's like if you tell me, oh, well, he changed his swing or he changed his stance or he went to see this new hitting coach and they changed his setup and his swing plane is different or he's holding his hands at a different level. I'm like, oh, okay. He's like a different player now. Whereas if you tell me he read a book and he decided to just forget what the count was, I'd be like, okay, I don't know. Is that like a post hoc explanation for why this is working? But there's no reason, I suppose, why that should not be just as legitimate, that you should not be able to have a psychological, a mental breakout just as easily as you could have a physical breakout. So in a way, it's like if I can point to the

Fangrass page and I can say, oh, he's suddenly hitting more fly balls and it's because he changed the swing or a pitcher is throwing more of this type of pitch or he has added velocity or something. If there's something concrete like that that I can point to or I can make a gif of, it's somehow more satisfying and seems more concrete. But I shouldn't discount that this kind of approach change could produce a meaningful difference in results. I wonder, I think that part of it is likely a difficulty with quantifying it, right? And we tend to like the things that we can point to and quantify and then combine with all the other little bits of quantification to say like, yes, this is really meaningful or no, it's not. But

I wonder if you just fundamentally have a skepticism about our ability to truly know ourselves, Ben. That could be it too, yeah. You know, but I think you're right that the mental component of it is surely important. It might even be very important. And we just have a hard time of knowing exactly where that line is for folks and how sort of sustainable it is. But then again, some of the changes that guys make that we can quantify and measure and that we can say, he's now, you know, loading his hands here, or he's standing, you know, two inches to this side or that side in the batter's box where he used to be over here, or he's moved to this side of the river, like some of that stuff doesn't sustain either. So it's an interesting, I don't know, I know. I wonder about your skepticism. It's good that you've identified it, I suppose.

You can be on the watch for it. Yeah. I think that Tyler Wade just needs to change teams now. Yes. Oh my God. Now that we have Taylor Ward establishing himself, at least so far, as one of the best hitters in baseball. I have to double check every time. I almost made the mistake in this segment. It's possible that I did. Hopefully Dylan has been listening and will alert me if I did. But the Tyler Wade, Taylor Ward on the same roster, that's just too much. I mean, you have your Tyler Alexanders and your Tyler Andersons

and just generally way too many Tylers in the majors right now. But if they're not on the same team or in the same lineup, I can deal. But Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward in the same lineup, that is unacceptable to me. And at this point, this General Taylor Wade, Tyler Ward. Nope, I got it backwards. Tyler Wade, Taylor Ward adjacent name combination. There can be only one is what I'm saying. And clearly it's Taylor Ward, not Tyler Wade. Can I say that I think that your confusion stretched so far that it made you mash up Brandon Marsh and Jared Walsh's name. Did I do that too? I've done that as well. I think you might have, and that doesn't even count. So we have Jared Walsh and we have Chad Wallach. We just need a greater, we need fewer Ws, I think is the thing.

It's like how the A's Max Muncy, it should be like the Screen Actors Guild. Like, you know, sorry, but someone else in the union already has that name. You got to throw your middle initial in there. Yes. All right. I've got a few emails here and I'm going to defer to you on this one because uniforms are not my forte. So this is a question from Diego from Brazil who says, should baseball be done with gray

uniforms? As a kid growing up in a country with no baseball tradition, I always thought it was one of Who says, if only for the benefit of people with visual impairments of some kind or those with black and white TVs. Ever since properly getting into baseball, I've come to understand the whole tradition behind the travel grays, but it still seems to be the most boring aspect of the sport and yet another example of it clinging to traditions that no longer serve any purpose. As a way of testing this impression, I asked my neighbor's daughter, a seven-year-old also more accustomed to football,

what she thought of baseball uniforms, only to be met with exactly the same reaction. They look cool, but the gray ones are boring, she said. In an era where everything about the sport seems in flux, wouldn't it at least be a branding advantage to get rid of the visual drabness of travel grays? Also, are there any uniform changes you would like to see implemented in MLB? I think that the travel grays are pretty done to death. I think I agree. I think we should go further than that, though. I mean, the grays, sometimes the gray is a nice, if the team is only wearing, say, a gray top or a gray bottom, and then they have another contrasting color, sometimes it can be nice. Like, it lets that brighter color really pop right like you can get it can go pop but i think that the

bigger problem is all the blue and red you know the gray is its own is his own battle to fight but i think that the the bigger issue is that we have so much blue and so much red and it's the same blue and it's the same red and so sometimes you have you's the same blue and it's the same red. And so sometimes you have, you have all this blue and this red and we could have, there's so many other colors, Ben, there's a whole wheel. I got a whole color wheel. You know, I saw the, the A's play the Astros sometime recently that they did that. I don't know. And you have like, you know, you have the nice green and then you got the orange and it was such a good match. Like I, it's just, we have all of these colors and we don't use them. So I think that you're right.

We should have some variety. I really like it when like the Mariners have their Navy Seattle tops. And I know I just said that there's too much blue, but sometimes they will wear the Navy Seattle tops on the road instead of doing the gray and it's much better it's far more visually interesting so i'm with you i think it's time to mix it up and you know the the variety is what really helps make it make it visually interesting not just among you know like you want contrast between the teams and then you want a variety of colors across all of the teams. Is there a lot of the baby blue fabric laying around? Do we just have an excess of the blue? Because I know that everyone's doing the powder blues as throwbacks, but everyone is doing those.

Too many of them. I think that we need more colors. We have talked before, pink, wildly underutilized. It's part of why the City Connect jerseys for the nationals are so nice you get some pink those were nice you know those are like those are stunning they're so not enough purple we should have a lot more purple you know the rockies are bad i mean they're less bad this year than we expected better than the reds i don't know baseball can be so confusing sometimes but it's like we really want to let the Rockies of all teams Bogart purple.

Come on now. Let's do something. Let's be more inventive than that. Yeah, I'm okay with Diego's suggestion in principle. I just can't muster that much outrage here or interest. Uniform's just kind of a blind spot for me. It's like face blindness. I have uniform blindness.

I don't know what it is. I just don't care that much. I care about things that are equally inconsequential, probably more so that matter a lot to me. But for whatever reason, uniforms are one of them. Unless someone is wearing the turn-ahead-the-clock-night jerseys or is playing naked, I may not notice. Like if you asked me after the game, if I was like the witness at a crime scene where everyone was wearing a baseball jersey, they were like, what color was that guy's jersey? I would say, I am sorry, I do not know because I have uniform blindness. So I just don't really care. Like if you asked me in an abstract sense to compare a couple of uniforms,

I would say, yeah, okay, that one looks smart. I like that one. And in theory, I'm fine with a greater variety of colors. Why not? Might as well use the whole spectrum here, taste the rainbow, but it's just not something I get exercised about for whatever reason. I care about it for aesthetic reasons. I have a weird experience of it in other sports that I know less well. I'm very rarely watching, flipping through MLB TV and turn to a big league game and can't immediately identify which teams are playing and who plays for who, right? Like I, you know, cause I like, I'm a professional baseball person, but that is not true. Like sometimes when I have turned on like basketball or hockey and like, they are wearing similar colors. I'm like, I don't think I am confident that you're passing

to the right person. So I don't have that experience of baseball, but I imagine that if someone is new to the sport or to the point that the question brings up like you know it might be confusing to people it might exacerbate people's experiences of visual impairment like i think having a lot of contrast allows just for easy identification of the opponents which is the entire reason they don't all wear the same thing so why is there so much red and blue it It's about patriotism, isn't it? Maybe it matters less in baseball because you don't really have that risk of passing to a player on your own team. People are spaced out and you just have the one guy up from the other. I mean, sometimes you have multiple guys from the other team up at the same time.

But the possibility of you doing the wrong thing as a result of uniform confusion is a lot lower. Yes, right. Maybe that's why I don't care. It's still important to distinguish players visually just for fans watching at home. But I guess soon enough, uniforms will just be so plastered with ads as they are in soccer. Maybe Diego will welcome that. It'll look like his favorite sport. soccer. Maybe Diego will welcome that. It'll look like his favorite sport, but that'll be some visual differentiation because we'll have swooshes here and some other sponsorship there. And that is

probably not the kind of differentiation that anyone wants, but it's coming. And I don't lament that that much either, probably because of just my Jersey blindness in general. All right. Here is a question from Sean. This is barely a baseball question. But the other day, my wife and I were talking about how bad the Pirates are. Yes, we are, for better or worse, Pirates fans. Sorry. I made some offhand remark about how their players may not be very good at baseball,

but they probably have other skills, like juggling, for example. Then we started to talk about it semi-seriously and realized it is highly likely that at least one player on every MLB team could juggle for a whole bunch of reasons. These are guys who are highly athletic with great hand-eye coordination. They are constantly around balls, teehee, and especially for certain positions like relief pitchers, they have a fair bit of downtime during which they could practice. But there are so many questions that I'd love your thoughts on. How many MLB players can juggle? How does this compare to the percentage of folks who can juggle in the general population? Are certain folks more likely to be able to juggle than others? Relievers seem like the right answer to me, but maybe I'm missing a key factor here. Who is the best juggler among

current or former MLB players? Could a washed out player make a second career as a circus act? What about other circus skills? Maybe Kevin Newman missed his shot at a tightrope walking career. Anyway, can't stat blast this. Don't have data on juggling, unfortunately, but I think this is pretty common. My mind went immediately to the iconic cover of Sports Illustrated in 1972 where Dick Allen is juggling. But actually on the same day that Sean sent this email, there was a video that our pals at Cespedes Family Barbecue tweeted of Jeremy Pena juggling quite skillfully before a game. So I happened to see that then. And then just even a cursory Google search turns up numerous

instances and videos of other MLB players who seem to be quite good at juggling, not just with their hands, but between the legs and the whole thing. Like Luis Guillorme seems to be a skilled juggler. Derek Dietrich is a good juggler. Lots of jugglers out there. I would guess that there is some just screwing around on the bench or in the bullpen. You have highly coordinated players who are tossing baseballs around anyway. They're types of balls that lend themselves to being juggled. Like it's easier to juggle a baseball than it is to juggle a basketball or a football for that matter. of baseball than it is to juggle a basketball or a football for that matter. So I don't really know what the incidence of juggling and what the percentages are when it comes to comparing baseball players to players in other sports or to gen pop. But I would think that there is a

disproportionate number of baseball players who can passively or skilfully juggle. baseball players who can passively or skilfully juggle i think that that is likely true although i will say i am often surprised and there are exceptions to this rule too because we sometimes we see a video of them at top golf sending the golf ball a long long way but some baseball players are terrible golfers because they swing the golf club like they swing a baseball bat and then they miss and it's bad and they look silly it's not just me other people do it too right it's a problem for other people also not just a meg problem so you can't necessarily assume that all of the like sort of constituent skills constitutive skills what is the word that i'm searching for anyway you can't

always assume that they all sort of can get rearranged in a way that results in you being proficient at something. But I think that there are probably a lot of reasonably skilled baseball jugglers. And they're also, as a rule, people who are willing to just spend a lot of time doing a small repetitive task in order to like become good at something so i also think that their capacity like their their juggling ceiling is probably really high because i can just sit there and do it and do it and do it and do it until at the end they're like i am an expert juggler right it's juggling an olympic skill like is it a sport is juggling

considered a sport or is it an art so well yeah i i could consider it a sport or Is juggling considered a sport or is it an art? I think so. Well, yeah, I could consider it a sport or an art, but I don't think it's an Olympic either. Oh, that's too bad. Well, this is going to go on the list of things that we get tweets and emails about. Oh, yeah. Because I'm guessing that this will turn out to be quite common and that we will get many submissions of baseball jugglers as we do for baseball prognosticators. But I did find a website, the World Juggling Federation is advocating for juggling to be in the Olympics, but it is not currently, I believe. Okay. All right. Question from Davin, Patreon supporter. I was playing Wardle the other day and had a

thought. How long will it be until we stop listing pitchers batting hand in this, given the proliferation of the DH? Is this bad? Does this matter? Well, it probably really doesn't matter. It almost certainly doesn't matter. I don't know if it's bad. I don't know. I am of two minds on this. the one hand but which hand meg that's

on the one hand whichever hand you prefer your favorite hand on your favorite hand there is just the inertia of having always done it having always done it and for guys earlier in their careers the odds of them being two-way players and not just in a we make pitchers hit sometime kind of way but like in terms of i am a legitimate two-way player or higher and so it seems like information that you would have sort of on hand for guys when they are amateurs and then when they are in the early part of their pro career, so maybe it just persists. But I am also aware of how bad teams are at updating heights and weights, which is a thing that changes often but remains relevant through the entirety of a guy's career.

And so in that respect, if they are tasked with one, you know, on your less favorite hands part, if they are tasked with one fewer piece of data collection, they will probably opt to not do it because, you know, they don't have to. Yeah, I would guess that we will keep doing this just out of tradition. And why not? What's the harm? I don't know, maybe there's some sort of analytical purpose where it could be useful to know what a pitcher's natural batting handedness is, even if he never actually bats. Maybe we're still doing fielding percentage and errors and pitcher wins and all those things. And in a way, it's helpful just to have the consistency because they were collecting that

information in the 19th century. And even if things have changed and the patterns through which those stats are awarded have changed and the ways that we value them have changed, it's just kind of nice to have that consistency so you can compare across eras and, sure, why not keep collecting this? And I guess it's not as if there would be any pitchers who did not know the answer to this. Like even if they hadn't batted since Little League in some cases, they could probably still tell you which way they would bat if they ever needed to bat. So, yeah, I don't think it matters. I don't think it would be bad if we lost it.

But we might as well keep doing it and we probably will. Yeah, I think that that is – I mean that's why i said it was my most favorite hand because it seems the most likely of them but you know i don't know maybe some maybe some bold there's a bold future where we just don't know and then we have a new thing to ask people you know yeah and we might want to know which hand they would juggle with what would be their dominant juggling hand yeah if they were to juggle is there a dominant juggling hand you juggle with both i guess there probably is a lot that i don't know about juggling both of us it turns out yeah i don't know much about juggling i know even less about golf uh yeah don't know about those we're out of our depth today yeah all right here are

a couple of paired questions here one is from yakov and one is from Alex, a Patreon supporter. Sort of the same genre here. So Yakov says, short time listener, first time writer, with all the new rules changes, zombie runner see experimented with, one we came up with was instead of banning the shift, the opposing manager gets three opportunities per game to cancel the other team's shift and default the fielders to some preset arrangement. So that's one idea. You can say, no, you are not allowed to shift on this play instead of a blanket shift ban. And then the complimentary question from Alex is your recent discussion about a batter choosing to reject an intentional walk got me thinking about some kind of intentional walk equivalent, but from the batter to the pitcher. For example, what if once per game the batting team could choose to veto a particular pitcher

who is getting brought into the game, forcing the pitching team to choose a different pitcher out of their bullpen. Obviously, this would need to be limited because skipping a pitcher is a much larger decision and it affects more players than skipping a batter. But I think it could be fun to see a team at the plate choose to not face a particular reliever at some point in the game. Maybe each team could get two pitcher vetoes and the batting team could choose to veto an incoming pitcher, but the pitching team could have the option to use both their vetoes and the batting team could choose to veto an incoming pitcher.

But the pitching team could have the option to use both their vetoes. Oh, my gosh. Veto the batting team's initial veto, thus letting the pitcher into the game. Just thinking about how different baseball would be. So the challenge of the shift, you can veto the other team's shift or you can veto the other team's pitcher selection i'm just trying to imagine tony larusa like armed with these powers or joe madden for that matter well let's see how do i feel about the idea of having the ability to cancel the shift i don't think i like it candidly because i don't like the idea of banning the shift at all.

And so I think that, you know, I don't say this as if it is as simple as we'll just lay down a butt or just learn to hit the other way because I know that it's hard to do those things, right? They are hard things to do. And so it is kind of silly that we are so cavalier with saying, we'll just learn to do this incredibly hard thing better. Why don't you do that? But I would prefer that the way that we interact with strategic advances is to counter them with play rather than ban them provided that they do not put the sort of the scales too far out of balance in terms of the advantage that is allowed to the the offense or the defense and i don't think that the shift does that for the

reasons that we have spent many many hours talking about in terms of its actual efficacy and how often it is over deployed, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't think that I'm in favor of that. I think that the biggest issue with the canceling a pitcher thing is that they're not proportionate, right? An intentional walk and being able to remove a pitcher that you would bring in are not in the proper scale with one another. Because when you issue an intentional walk, first of all, you are putting yourself at what we know to often actually be a disadvantage

in order to face a guy you'd rather face. It often doesn't work the way that you want it to. And it isn't as if that batter is then removed from the game. He's just on base. He's just sitting over there on base, able to do all the stuff that guys on base can do. Whereas if you remove a pitcher like he then can't pitch at all that's not the same thing those don't feel equivalent to me and so i think that's part of where i'm getting jammed up and also i think that having the like as much fun as we have with strategy having the back and forth

machinations of like no i'm canceling your cancellation with my two. Cancel is probably the wrong word to use here. But, you know, I'm countering your ejection. It's not an ejection even, your refusal. What did the question phrase it as? Veto. Veto. Veto is better.

Like I'm vetoing your veto with my double veto. I think that gets very confusing very fast. Yeah, I think I'm with you. Very confusing, very fast. Yeah, I think I'm with you. And I am okay in principle with changing some rules if something proves to be deleterious to the game. And if you can't counter it, if it turns out that this can't be countered, and it is quite possible that the shift or just extreme defensive positioning in general, what we would have once considered extreme, can't be countered, that you just can't decide to hit it here instead of there. At least most hitters can't against the type of pitching that they're facing these days. But I just don't like it. It bothers me on a visceral level, the idea of telling fielders where they can and can't stand. I'm sure we will have

many more opportunities to talk about this before a shift ban potentially goes into place next season. But it really does bother me, the idea. And it also bothers me because I don't think it's that big a problem, at least the shifting that the shift ban would prevent. I don't think that specifically is that big a problem. Maybe outfield shifting or positioning has actually subtracted more offense, it seems, but would perhaps be harder to police. But just in general, I just don't love the idea. And I think there are more pressing problems. And I think there are things you could do, like the limit on the number of active pitchers on the roster, that would produce the same sort of effect in a much less heavy-handed way where it wouldn't actually dictate terms in the game.

It would change roster rules, let's say. But when the game is in play, I don't want really the long arm of Rob Manfred to be reaching in and saying, you cannot use this player at this particular time or you cannot use this fielder and position him there. I don't like it. And as far as challenging, yeah, this falls into the category. Like sometimes we will get people who will suggest a variation of some rule that we don't like, and maybe we like the variation more or dislike it less. It's like when people say, well, what if you started the zombie runner in the 11th inning instead, or the 12th inning instead instead or you had some other method

of ending a game earlier and i will say well that's better than status quo that's better than having zombie runner and having it start immediately in the 10th but it's not better than the default which is i liked it fine before so i can never muster much enthusiasm it's just like yeah okay better than the thing i hate but not better than the previous thing, which I thought was fine. So I am not in favor of the challenge, but I would like it more just because it would be less of a blanket policy and it would inject some strategy because you would have to decide, well, here's when I want to use my challenge or my veto, and I would do it with this player or on this specific count because I think that it would matter more. So that would at least be interesting and wouldn't be too restrictive. So I don't hate it as much as just banning every shift, but I'm with you on the pitcher veto as well.

Yeah. It's just not in, they're not in sync. They're not proportional. They have to be proportional so that you don't want the whole thing thrown out of whack, right? Right. And then last question comes to us from Will, who says, a thought occurred to me once that I returned to occasionally, catchers are too close to hitters. If I told you to provide a safe OSHA compliant distance for two professionals to stand from each other, if one was swinging a baseball bat as hard as they could, you might deem six feet inappropriately safe number. You may deem no number suitable to stave off a workplace injury lawsuit.

However, every day we see many catchers across America squatting mere inches from their competitor who swings a bat with as much force as they can muster. How is this safe in the numbers game of all the swings taken across all the professional seasons each year, how are there not more workplace accidents? I worry for the safety of bright young players we know as catchers. I mean, yes, same, agreed. I mean, I don't know that this is an avoidable situation.

And I know that this is a limited retort because in other work contexts, it can be deployed and weaponized against workers. But they do know what they're getting into being catchers. But as we have said several times on this show, it is wild that anyone wants to do that. I mean, it is incredibly crazy that anyone wants to be a pitcher.

And it is an even more unhinged decision to become a catcher because you are just in danger constantly. You're in danger from the ball. You're in danger from the bat. Your knees are going to turn to cement and then lava. It is bad for you, and no one should do it, and we're very grateful that some people decide to do it anyway because it seems like the kind of thing that if one were weighing the risk versus

the reward would never balance out in favor of actually being a catcher especially one that does it for your entire livelihood so it's really it's really a very strange thing that anyone does it but they do and why ben why Ben? Why do they do that? They shouldn't do that. Someone should intervene earlier in their lives and be like, I don't know that you should do this. This seems like a bad choice for you. Yeah. I guess there's good money in it at the major league level, but you have to be hit with so many foul tips along the way and some backswings as well.

So some of them really do sit too close. There are some constraints there. You have to sit reasonably close, unfortunately, because if you sat all the way at the backstop, first of all, the umpire would have to sit in front of you. That wouldn't work. The umpire has to call those pitches. And so they need to be reasonably close and they need to be behind you. So you kind of have to sit sort of close. And then you have to be close because you want to receive the pitch probably before it bounces. And then also you have to be as close as possible so you can throw at runners. All sorts of advantages to being as close to the plate as

possible, but all sorts of disadvantages too. So sometimes that really does come back to bite them and sometimes they do scooch back a bit. So I think that there has been a rise in the rate of catcher interference calls, or at least there had been the last time Jeff Solomon documented that. So I don't know whether that means that catchers have gotten too close or batters have backed up a bit or some combination of both. It would maybe make sense for batters to back up a bit given the velocity. Although then again, maybe there's more breaking ball movement there. But yeah, you got to watch out. It is not safe. And it is not safe unless you are standing behind the netting behind the backstop. But unfortunately, catchers cannot do that. That is not an option

available to them, although they could retire and sit there whenever they wanted. So that would be a reasonable decision. But many of them do not make that decision. They make the unreasonable one to sit back there behind the plate. And for that, we say thank you. Yes, we do. In fact, forget all the other reasons why the catcher can't back up. He's not allowed to leave the catcher's box.

He has a prescribed position there. We actually get that question a lot from listeners. Could teams just pull the catcher out from behind home plate and station him somewhere else on the field? And the answer is no, because the rules say so. Rule 5.02, when the ball is put in play at the start of or during a game, all fielders other than the catcher shall be on fair territory. The catcher shall station himself directly back of the plate. Except the pitcher and the catcher, any fielder may station himself anywhere in fair territory. Otherwise, it's a catcher's balk. So there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

All right, quick stop blast. R-A-9 is for OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's step last. This will be sort of a simple stat blast, not to look up necessarily, but for me to relate the answers to. I have had help from frequent stat blast consultant Ryan Nelson in actually looking up the answers to these questions. But there is a question from listener Nathaniel who says, according to the Instagram account at MLB Transactions Daily, the past six trades have all involved the Giants. This was a few days ago. Perhaps even more interesting is that four out of six have been between the Mariners and Giants. Yes. In chronological order, the Giants traded cash to the Mariners for Kevin Padlow, cash to the Mariners for Mike Ford, Cash to the Phillies

for Corey Oswalt, Mike Ford to the Mariners for Cash, yes, you read that right, Mike Ford, dealt again, Mauricio Dubon to the Astros for Michael Papirsky, and Alex Blandino and Cash to the Mariners for Stuart Fairchild. Obviously, none of these trades is more than a minor move, only the Dubon one received even a little bit of attention, mostly because Dubon was more of a fan favorite than an impact player. Still, this streak of being involved in six consecutive trades seemed notable to me. I would suspect that a team being involved in something like three trades in a row is relatively common because teams often make corresponding moves. However, I could not tell you if being involved in six consecutive trades is something that

happens once or twice a decade or a rarity. My question, what is the record for consecutive trades that have all involved the same team? And how common is this streak of six? And as far as Ryan Nelson was able to determine, this is unprecedented. This has never happened, actually. So it is very rare. The previous record was four trades, which has happened 11 times. I will put a list of those instances online, but six has never happened. And I was wondering if these happened on the same days as other trades, how would you determine whether they were chronologically consecutive? And Ryan said that was irrelevant because for all of the longest streaks they were the only trades on those respective days so even if we could account

for the time of day it wouldn't return any longer streaks so yeah this was an unprecedented bit of busy dealing with a lot of inconsequential trades i guess consequential for the players involved yeah other than Mike Ford maybe but yes a little flurry of six trades by one team uninterrupted by other trades that seemingly has never happened before so I don't have a whole lot to say about it other than yeah that was weird yeah we're not deceiving yourself Nathaniel that was as strange as it seemed and i guess it makes sense that jerry depoto would be involved in at least some anytime you have any type of record trade activity it's a safe bet that jerry's going to be involved in some of it yeah jerry or aj i mean like right they would have led my leaderboard yes that's the only strange thing that there was

an nl West team and Jerry DePoto involved and it was not the Padres on the other end of those deals. All right. And then in that same genre of simple answers to complicated questions, this was a question from Zach who noted that away teams went 11 and four, that is road teams went 11-4 on Friday, I believe this was, and he asked in the Effectively Wild Discord group, anyone know of an easy way to look up times when something like that has happened? I'm assuming it's not particularly notable, but would be nice to know. And indeed, Ryan looked this up, and he found only once in history did road teams go undefeated on a day with 10 plus games.

That was July 30th, 1890, when road teams went 12-0. So that was a singular occurrence. Away teams, road teams went 15-9 on May 30th, 1914. That is the most away wins or road wins in one day. 14-2 happened on June 21st, 1964. 14-3 happened on July 26th, 1964, same year, and June 28th, 2014. Now home teams went 15-0 on August 11th, 2015. So you would expect that if either side was going to go 15-0, it would be home teams, which have home field advantage. That's the only 15-0 in either direction, or I guess the only better than 12-0 in either

direction. And fellow Patreon supporter Xander noted he was calculating the odds of this happening. He said home teams win 54% of the time, roughly. The odds of 15-0, assuming each game is a 54% weighted coin flip, are roughly 1 in 10,000. In reality, the odds may be longer than that because the chance of getting successful outcomes on two 54% chances are better than getting the same results on one 64% chance and one 44% chance, unless the home teams on that particular day were just disproportionately better teams than their opponents anyway.

He estimated, just based on that basic math, that this should happen one in 10,000 trials. Well, Ryan noted there have been thus far 9,800 days with 10 plus games. Wow. So that is right on. 7,800 days with 10 plus games. So that is right on. It's basically 1 in 10,000 odds and just about 1 in 10,000 occurrences. So that's kind of cool.

Nice that it works out that way. And last question. This is from Jason, who said, in yesterday's Yankees versus Orioles game, Josh Donaldson and Anthony Rizzo hit back-to-back home runs in the top of the ninth inning. This was the Yankees' MLB-leading fourth back-to-back home run, and Anthony Rizzo has been a part of all four. I was wondering whether this is some kind of record. What player has hit the most back-to-back homers in a single season? Is Rizzo on pace to beat this record? Has a player ever been part of every one of their team's back-to-back homers in a single season? Would love to know if any of this is significant. So answers to those questions,

again from Ryan, whom you can follow on Twitter at rsnelson23. Here are all the stats on back-to-back homers. So the record for most back-to-back homers in a season, and this is counting total homers, not pairs or triplets of homers, but just all of the homers that were part of back-to-backs, was 35 for the 1996 Mariners. So the 1996 Mariners, they hit back-to-back homers 16 times and back-to-back-to-back homers once. So that was a total of 35. Then after that, you had the 2016 Orioles with 34, the 2019 Braves with 32, the 96 Orioles, 32, 1977 Red Sox, 31, 2000 White Sox and Cardinals with 31, 2001 Rockies with 30, 1964 Twins 30, and 2001 Rangers 30.

So lots of high home run years there. Of course, you have 2019, you have 2000 and 2001. These are the highest home run eras, so that makes some sense. But it's some kind of random results mixed in there too. The record for most by a player in a season was 2001 Todd Helton, who was part of a back-to-back 10 different times, which checks out, I guess, peak Coors pre-humidor and Hall of Fame caliber player. That makes some sense. Andre Skalraga and Ken Griffey Jr. had nine of these each in 97 and 96, respectively. I guess maybe it makes sense that these would be clustered in that high home run era as opposed to the more recent high home run era because the home runs recently have been

distributed more democratically where you haven't had as many guys hitting 50 or 60 or 70, obviously, whereas in the past you did. So maybe it makes sense that this would have happened more often in the past when you had a few players, a couple of players in a given lineup who had very high home run totals as opposed to a well-distributed number of dingers. So you might have your number nine guy hitting 20 or something, but that doesn't necessarily give you a lot more back-to-backs. So I think that that checks out. Ryan continues that the record for most back-to-back homers by a player in which they participated in all of the team's back-to-back homers, so that's what Rizzo is going for here, is a tie with seven. 1936, Lou Gehrig, and 1929, Chuck Klein of the Phillies.

Powell did it with six for the 1969 Orioles. So Rizzo has a ways to go, and of course that would require no one else doing it so there are some other notable ones here Prince Fielder did it with five for the 2012 Tigers as did Carlos Delgado for the 2005 Marlins A-Rod with the 2006 Yankees Kevin Mitchell for the

89 Giants Bonds with the 98 Giants and Frank Howard for the 1970 Senators Moises Alou participated in eight of the 2004 Cubs, 12. There are some other notable names here. I'll put it all in a document and link there, but you have your back-to-back home run stats. There you go. I will note also that there has been a possum sighting in Oakland. We didn't touch on that earlier. We've talked about the feral cats in Oakland, but there's been a possum sighting in Oakland. We didn't touch on that earlier.

We've talked about the feral cats in Oakland, but there's been a possum sighting. And I was just kind of curious how possums and cats get along. And it seems that they— I wouldn't think well. Yeah, you wouldn't think. I'm on opossumsocietyus.org here. And they have an FAQ. And one question is, will an opossum attack my pets? And the answer is, it is more likely that a dog will injure or kill an opossum.

Yes. A cat may attack and kill young rat-sized opossums. Adult opossums and cats seem to have a mutual respect and leave each other alone. In general, opossums are docile, non-aggressive animals and will not attack your pets. They prefer to escape and avoid confrontations if possible. So I guess the opossums, if anyone is going to be the instigator in the opossum cat showdown, it would probably be the cats. Almost certainly the cats. Yeah, they've learned to coexist i guess it makes sense that they would cohabitate there i mean this is not surprising to me i mean

it is marginally surprising that there is like a society devoted to opossums how does one gauge the respect that animals have for one another right yeah is there a no is there a cat and opossum survey i mean i think think that societies exist within environments and nature. I think that it's probably better for there not to be opossums in the press box. Like just generally, I think that that's something that we'd all like to avoid. No cheering in the press box, no opossums. No opossums. Are opossums rabies carriers?

Do you happen to know? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that either. I'm just saying that like that's a workplace hazard that journalists shouldn't have to, you know, suffer. When I was in college, my dorm, my freshman and sophomore year would often get bats. Like sometimes would get bats. And public safety put up signs in the entryway to all the entryways to the dorm that said rabies if you're symptomatic it's too late so i'm just saying i don't know if opossums carry

rabies but if they do and they bite you you should get um you know shots for that yeah well there is also the question of whether opossums are the same as possums and sometimes those terms are used interchangeably but sometimes they are not. They actually do refer to distinct animals. And it's kind of a regional difference as well. If you want to know more about possums versus opossums, I will link you. But I have looked up just to make sure, possums versus cats in case what we said about opossums does not apply. No respect.

I've learned that, yeah, I don't know if the level of mutual respect is as high, but opossums do not eat cats. No. I have determined. I guess they would be a big meal for a opossum. Yeah. They may occasionally attack a cat if they feel they're young or threatened. Sure. Who wouldn't if they are cornered though they are more

likely to play dead in these situations famously or if they are competing for food so i guess that's the question is food scarce enough in the coliseum that the possums and the cats would be at war or can they coexist peacefully because there's plenty of loose hot dogs or whatever to go around all kind of loose popcorn who knows possums are survivalists and pacifists by nature so cat owners shouldn't be worried about possums harming their pets it is more likely that cat would attack a possum probably especially if it is a feral cat that has no owner well and i guess the question is does the presence of the well is it a possum or an opossum that was in the press box do we know the answer to that to be a possum on twitter but i don't know i don't know that there were any zoologists present so yeah we might not be appropriately

discerning when it comes to possums versus opossums i suppose the question is does the presence of the opossum or possum as the case may be in the press box suggests that they have been driven from territory that the cats are currently occupying like is this indicative of some sort of retreat strategic retreat on the part of the possum or opossum as the case may be but if there is grudging respect or even non-grudging respect between the two species. Perhaps they are serving as scouts for the cats to go see if there is food in the press box that neither species has been able to enjoy to this point. Mostly, it just seems like, you know,

are opossums or opossums, again, as the case may be, like rats where it's like if you see one, there are a lot of them? Yeah, right. It's just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, the opossum or possum iceberg. It's very concerning. I don't want them to die necessarily.

I don't think that they're trying to bother anyone except for a couple of journalists who are covering the A's game. But it doesn't seem great that they're in the press box. They should go out in the outfield, and then they can play dead out there. Do opossums and possums play dead at similar rates? That will require further research. There's a whole society to field your questions.

Yes. I don't know whether they care about possums as much. Maybe they really hate possums. They know whether they care about possums as much but really really hate possums we really like those stupid possums they're always getting mixed up with old possums the athletics as a franchise are are playing dead these days so it's probably appropriate really the possums would be populating their park i saw that joke and i saw the attendance joke that yeah you know those were the ones that really made their way around. And, you know, of course, like if you're cold, they're cold.

Bring them inside. Yeah. You want less wildlife in general at the ballpark. There's plenty of wildlife supplied by the fans in the stands. Other wildlife. There's a time and a place. It may not be at an Oakland A's game. All right.

And I will just give a closing shout out because I forgot to do it before to our valued StatPlast sponsor, StatHead, which is powered by Baseball Reference, our friends at B-Ref. We use it all the time. We recommend that you do as well. sign up to access one of the more powerful tools for sports statistical information on the internet, whether it is baseball, whether it is other sports, it is at your fingertips. You can sign up for $80 for a one-year subscription unless you use the coupon code that we offer you here, Wild20, which will give you a $20 discount. Not bad. So again, go to StatHead.com. Use WILD20 to get your discount on StatHead. It will not tell you if it is an opossum or a possum. Probably not.

But it will tell you a lot of other really useful information about baseball. So, you know, leave the opossum possum distinction to the Opossum Society and use StatHead for all of your other baseball needs. All right. A few follow-ups for you. First, to forestall some emails, I should probably clarify the possum-opossum situation. Reading from dictionary.com here, the word opossum refers to many different species of marsupials native to North and South America.

The word possum has been used to refer to a number of species of marsupials native to Australia and nearby islands. The word possum is also often used informally to refer to an opossum. Does that clear things up? Probably not. Reading on, if you live in the Americas, you might think you know what a possum is. While this word is commonly used in the U.S. to refer to a specific animal, technically possums don't live in the Americas. In zoology, the word possum is used to refer to multiple species of tree-dwelling marsupials native to Australia and nearby islands. The possums of Australia are small, cute animals with large ears and furry prehensile tails.

Now let's return to the Americas. In zoology, the word opossum is used to refer to members of the Didelphidae family of marsupials. Only one of these animals, albeit a very common one, is native to North America, and the rest live in Central and South America. The animal that most Americans are familiar with, and which is often informally called a possum is the North American marsupial known as the Virginia opossum. Unlike the Australian possums, this rat-like marsupial has smaller ears, a fleshy tail, and a face full of pointy teeth. I prefer the Australian possums personally. The Virginia opossum is the animal that is famous for its strategy of pretending to be dead, playing possum, in order to avoid being attacked by predators.

Hopefully that clears things up. Apparently the source of all this confusion is the fault of 18th century English explorer Sir Joseph Banks. When traveling to Australia, Banks described the bushy marsupials he saw as being members of the opossum family, even though they totally weren't. As in the Americas, the name was shortened to Possum and has stuck there ever since. So blame Sir Joseph Banks. We should probably strip him of his knighthood. Okay, some baseball updates. First, the Angels' Taylor Ward homered again after we finished recording. That's his ninth on the season. And on the other side of the ball, Red Sox starter Nathan Ivaldi gave up five home runs in a single inning. Now, Meg mentioned Ivaldi on a recent episode. Because he'd been so homer-prone this year,

at the time I think his home run rate was 2 per 9. Now it's 3 per 9. So five homers in an inning, that ties a major league record allowed by a single pitcher, brings him into an exclusive club with Chase Anderson in September 2020 and Michael Blazek in July 2017. Not a club one wants to belong to.

We had yet another prediction. Cubs rookie Christopher Murrell made his Major League debut, had his first big league at bat, and homered in it. And Cubs beat writer Jordan Bastion revealed later that an inning before his homer, Murrell told Wilson Contreras that he was going to hit one out in his first at bat, just like Contreras did in 2016. I'm pretty over calling your shot, but if you call your shot in your first big league at bat,

I've got to give it up. That's a pretty bold move, and it worked out for him. Also, somehow the Nats did it again. They made another major defensive miscue, or multiple miscues. This was in the game again after we finished recording. This one would have been in the conversation if it had happened by the time the conversation took place.

The one we mentioned at the start of the episode was a bases clearing, three run grounder to short. Well, this is just your standard two run pickoff attempt. Nets pitcher Erasmo Ramirez threw the ball away and he was not the only one on this play. I'll play the clip here. And that one gets away from Bell. Rojas will score easily. Gonzalez heading towards second and now to third. Here's the throw from Bell. It's off the mark and it goes the other way. Here comes Gonzalez. Marlins get two on a pickoff attempt. Is it as bad as the one we talked about earlier? Debatable. Both abysmal.

Ugly, ugly defense in DC these days. And lastly, last week, Meg and I talked about the potential for there to be a player manager in the midst of a COVID outbreak. We discussed how far down the line of succession a player might be in this day and age, if the various coaches were incapacitated, not that we would want them to be. Well, listener Eli wrote in to say, I was listening to your conversation on how serious or far-reaching a COVID outbreak would need to be to lead to a player manager for an MLB team. The conversation reminded me of something similar that happened during the national season last year. During a similar COVID outbreak among the national staff, an injured Kyle Schwarber filled in as Dave Martinez's bench coach.

While that's not the same as acting manager, it does raise the question, if Dave had been ejected or otherwise had to step back, would Schwarber have been asked to step in as a player manager? Not sure how his position on the IL changes things, but wanted to flag this as relevant to your conversation. Had not considered the injury angle, but yes, if a player's with a team, he's on the IL, he's not playing anyway. Technically still a player manager, I think. He's on the IL, he's not playing anyway. Technically still a player manager, I think.

He's an active player. He's just injured. But that could be a time when a player manager might happen. Or maybe the Cardinals could get in on this action. We talked last week about how the Guardians were probably the worst position team to do it because their roster is so young. Well, couldn't Albert Pujols step in as player manager? He pitches now.

Why not manage too? He's much older than the Cardinals regular manager. So I could see that happening. Then again, listener Justin pointed out that in late April, when the Mariners were having a COVID outbreak, Dan Wilson, who had started the series in the broadcast booth for Root Sports, I believe, he ended up being pressed into service as a coach for the Mariners. Granted, he either was or had recently been a special assignment coach for the Mariners as well. But still, I think Meg mentioned the possibility for someone to come down from the front office

to coach or manage instead of a player. Well, maybe someone could come down from the broadcast booth too. Okay, 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. For Tilder, Nuclearia, Eric McKinley, Megan Schink, and Jean-Guy Bourgeois.

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We will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. And old Les, he said to Bubba Dog, hey dog Something going on in the back of the yard We're gonna call the Pops a month Something going on in the back of the yard We're gonna call the big dog