Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1857: Hit Me Right in the Phils

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley announce the availability of new Effectively Wild T-shirts, then follow up on the latest, Mike Trout-related developments in the Tommy Pham–Joc Pederson fantasy-football/slap story as well as Josh Donaldson’s comments about his teammates not supporting him. After that, they banter about a home-run robbery that wasn’t, the homer hitting of […]

🎵 And everything's here okay these days, selling t-shirts and D.I.s. Hello and welcome to episode 1857 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined as always by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So first things first, we have merch. Merch. How about that? Historically speaking, we have been pretty remiss when it comes to merch on this podcast. Just haven't done a lot in the merch space. Probably should have been doing much more, but I guess the limiting factor was our lack of design skills and maybe also business skills, at least in my case.

And so these are pretty big impediments to actually making anything happen merch-wise. So we had one t-shirt years ago, and then some listeners at what point stepped up and just made their own merch shop with our permission. This was back in the Baseball Perspectives days, and they did some m merch shop with our permission. This was back in the baseball prospectus days, and they did some mugs and shirts and such. But we haven't had anything recently. And now I think those two impediments have really been removed because Fangraphs has a designer, Luke Hooper,

who is a longtime Effectively Wild listener and also pretty talented when it comes to graphic design. That is his passion. And he is actually good at it. And Fangraphs has a partnership with Breaking Tea, the t-shirt company. Yeah. And the upshot of all that is that we've got a few t-shirts that are for sale now. There's a Fangraphs collection and half of the Fangraphs collection is Effectively Wild specific. So it's

for sale. We will put the link on the show page. There is a 10% discount for Patreon supporters. Do you want to lay out the options here for fans of Effectively Wild if they want to rep the pod on their persons? We have such exciting options. I want to take you through them here so the base shirt the standby the classic is going to be a a new effectively wild strike zone t-shirt says effectively wild and it's got uh you know some some pitches that one might describe as effectively wild and it says effectively wild established And it says, effectively wild. Established 2012. A Fangraphs baseball pocket. Not on the edge. Not on the corner. No. They're not strikes.

But, yeah, that's just your basic podcast name and logo and a little graphic for you. Yeah, and then we have a delightful stat blast t-shirt, and it says stat blast on the front, and it's got a raucous going on. Should I share with our listeners a delightful stat blast t-shirt and it says stat blast on the front and it's got, you know,

like a raucous going on. Can I, should I share with our listeners the thing we were saved from? Oh yeah. It comes when it comes to the stat blast t-shirt. So, you know, like I have new sympathy for bad corporate logos and designs now because

Luke did a very nice job. He did it as you did a stat blast t-shirt and it says stat blast and it had a cloud and it was meant to evoke like the, like you know a fracas in a comic book it was sort of the vibe i think he was going for or an explosion of some sort or yeah an explosion i guess we we also learned some things about what we understand the blast in stat blast to be like what is the kind of blast is what kind of blast is it and it had that on the front and then it had the lyrics to the stat blast jingle on the back. And, you know, we're in, we're close to going into production with Breaking Tea and they send over, you know, we have our final proofs and they send over the shirts with the designs on them. They send the logos and the pictures and you shared them with your wife,esse and she said that looks like a fart she sure did yeah she wrote the lyrics to the stat blast song so i figured i would show her the stat blast t-shirt and she said is that a fart yeah it was not intended to be one not the blast

we were trying to evoke no and none of us had made that connection. So it's possible that this is a Jesse problem, that this is just a small sample one person reaction. But once it was out there, once she put that in my head, I couldn't unsee it. So we went back to Luke and said, hey, my wife says it looks a little like a fart. And he was obliging enough to unfart it a little bit. And he changed some things. And my wife agreed that it looks less like a fart now. So we were able to go to press, go to print with these things. And emerging from the cloud are a number of stats,

both literal stats and the names of stats that will be familiar to listeners of the pod and also of the song. to listeners of the pod and also of the song. And it's in a very cool purple and teal color scheme that is evocative of some really classic sort of like 90s baseball thread. So it is very nice. And as I said, it has the lyrics to the song on the back. So if you are one of those people who listens to the pod at like 3x speed and doesn't know what it says then you're gonna

have it on your back forever and then i'm saving not necessarily the best but certainly the t-shirt design has been demanded i would say by our our listeners for last we have a how can you not be pedantic about baseball t-shirt yes and uh you know i it's great it's it's got a it says how can you not be romantic about baseball and then romantic is crossed out and pedantic is written there instead and perfectly wild it's it's it's really great so and then there are some fun fangraph shirts and uh new fangraph sweatshirts so there's all there's all kinds of fun stuff if you find find yourself in need of a new t-shirt or wanting to support Fangraphs in any way, you know, if you're like, I'm already a member and I say thank you, but I want to do more, then this is a way for you to do it.

And if you are a person who says, but Meg, the most important piece of Fangraphs merch is the mug. Don't worry. You can still buy a mug at Fangraphs, but if you want any of this cool new merch, you'll have to navigate over to our collection at Breaking Tea. Yes. The Stop Blast shirt has a few stats in it, and they're all Easter

eggs for Effective Wealth listeners. Oh, yeah. So there's a 247, which is the famous Chris Davis consecutive season's batting average. There's a 105 in there, which is Ryan Webb's total, his record for games finished without a save. And then there's a 1422, which is Barry Bonds' 2004 OPS and was also Sam Miller's bike lock for a while, possibly still is his code for that. So that's great. And the

shirts range in price and they also range in color and design. I think they all come in small up to 3XL. I think from what I saw, the How Can You Not Be Pedantic About Baseball t-shirt is available in a broader range of styles. So I think there's just your standard unisex adult t-shirt. And then it looked like there was also maybe a women's v-neck and a hoodie and something else i think yeah there's a fourth option yeah i think there's a children's that's a shirt if you just want to i don't know get your kids uh beat up at school you want to identify them early as you know people who will have an adequate number of friends.

Yeah, it's a good way, I've seen some people say, of sort of identifying fellow members of the Fangraphs Effectively Wild tribe. If you want to wear these out and about or perhaps to a baseball game, maybe people will say, hey, you're one of those. I'm one of those too. And you'll strike up a conversation. So that's nice. And you can introduce people to the podcast. And if we do well with these, if people buy them, then we will make more. I'm sure we have other design ideas that we want to do.

We have the 10th anniversary of the podcast coming up. So we want to offer a broader range of designs and also colors and maybe items as well. Maybe we can get some effectively wild mugs made at some point. But yeah, if you want to see more options, then we should sell out all of these. So please help make that happen. And as I said, there's a 10% discount for Patreon supporters. So if you're not already one and you're planning to buy one or more of these t-shirts, you could probably sign up at one of the lower Patreon tiers and it will pay for itself with the 10% discount on this merch. So that's out there. Check the show page for the link. I assume that these things will go fast and I don't know how long they'll last. So go get yours

if you want them for yourself or as a gift for that podcast person in your life. Yeah, go do that. All right. So in baseball and podcast developments, so like minutes, seconds maybe after I posted the last episode. Never a great feeling. I post these things often late at night when there's usually not breaking news at that time. I post these things often late at night when there's usually not breaking news at that time. But just after I posted episode 1856, which included a lengthy explanation discussion of the ongoing Jock Peterson, Tommy Pham fantasy football dispute slap story. episode went up, our friend and friend of the show, C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic,

posted some Pulitzer-worthy reporting about this saga and just in effectively wild fashion brought Mike Trout into the whole thing. Just when we thought the story had settled down and there would not be further developments, it turned out that this was actually still a developing story and it was developing in directions that I could not possibly have anticipated. So some of you may have heard, because I had just posted that, I reposted it, re-uploaded it with a quick little intro noting that we had recorded prior to that news. Some of you, if you downloaded it immediately, may not have heard that. But here we are reconvening a couple of days later to discuss this latest development. And I'm almost apprehensive about what will happen next,

what will come out after we finish this discussion. Who knows? Maybe this actually drove a stake into the story. But Mike Trout, it turns out, was the commissioner of this fantasy football league. Who knew? Who could have guessed? We had heard that it was all Padres or largely Padres or former Padres and Jock Peterson. And C. Trent reported that Manny Machado is in this thing. Eric Hosmer is in this thing. Will Myers in this thing. But clearly not just Padres because Mike Trout, not only in it, but the commissioner of it. Andmmy fam took him to task he uh issued a verbal slap of sorts to mike trout and his handling of this whole dispute about stashing players on your injury reserve trout did a terrible job man fam said tuesday trout's the worst commissioner in fantasy

sports because he allowed a lot of shit to go on and he could have solved it all he did say that fam said this with the hint of a smile yeah so maybe that's important to know but yeah he had harsh words there he did say nobody wanted to be commissioner yes i didn't want to be the fucking commissioner i've got other shit to do. He didn't want to do it. We put it on him. It was kind of our fault too, because we made him commissioner. Nonetheless, taking Trout to task, one of the maybe universally most respected and popular baseball players, controversy free, and he gets roped into this whole slap story somehow. I just did not see that coming. And apparently, this is also from C-Trend's piece, he contacted Trout to apologize for disclosing his role later. So he felt badly about it.

And I'm going to quote now. I'm going to quote now from this piece. Trout would have preferred not to talk about the kerfuffle, but the Angels had previously organized a press conference for Wednesday afternoon. This weekend, the team visits Philadelphia, which is near Trout's childhood home of Millville, New Jersey. Several reporters had traveled north to ask Trout about the homecoming. Trout pronounced himself excited to play again at Citizens Bank Park and elated about the offseason moves of his beloved Eagles.

He was less thrilled when asked about fam's comments. I ain't talking about fantasy football, Trout said. Then, in a sheepish but genial fashion, i ain't talking about fantasy football trout said then in a sheepish but genial fashion he proceeded to talk about fantasy football trout indicated he had spoken with both fam and peterson he chalked up the slap to the heightened emotions brought forth by the thrill of competition everybody's competitive he said everybody loves fantasy football who doesn't he added tommy everybody who was involved in that is very passionate about fantasy football a lot of people put their hearts into it i do too i lost that league trout was less forthcoming about the particulars of the argument waged by fam and peterson the initial charge from

fam was that peterson had illegally stashed someone on the injured reserved and picked up an additional player peterson countered that fam was doing the exact same thing with san francisco 49ers Jeff Wilson Jr. Pham indicated Tuesday there was a difference between what was allowed on Ian's fantasy football app and the league's own codified rule. The commissioner declined to adjudicate. Did

Peterson, as Pham suggested, break the rules? I'm not answering them questions, Trout said. Was Trout surprised the story was entering its sixth day in the news cycle? I think you guys are dragging it on yeah i don't know if it's just us it's also tommy fam oh yeah he restarted this whole story but yeah trout said it's in the past you guys just keep dragging it on but it is a legendary fantasy league for sure oh yeah he did have one good line, at least, which was when people asked him if he was going to be the commissioner again in this league. And what did he say?

This is from Andy McCullough. Trout declined to comment on whether Jock Peterson violated the rules of the league. He said he's unsure if he'll resign as commissioner for this coming season. Every commissioner I know gets booed, he said. Right. So Trout did not fan the flames here this is like the unstoppable force of this story met the immovable object of trout and just like the controversy free field that surrounds him at all times so he could have prompted another

news cycle here if he had come out and sided with one player or another. Yes. Or just responded in kind to fam. But he opted not to do that. Very diplomatic, very commissioner-like of him. And so nothing controversial. And maybe that will be the end of this thing. But boy, I did not foresee Mike Trout entering the picture at that point. No. And nobody asked him why he's no longer repping Super Pretzel, seemingly. I was hoping someone would ask him that question.

That's at the top of my mind. But the C. Trent report, I think the only other additional detail, well, there were a couple. felt like Peterson didn't tell the entire story, that maybe there had been more than just that lone gif that he had sent for five insults of some sort, possibly, or taunts or gifs or who knows what. And he also said that he had heard from a number of people in the league who reached out to him in supportive fashion. Possibly they're just all scared of getting slapped. Or being forced to be the commissioner. supportive fashion. Possibly they're just all scared of getting slapped. I don't know. Or being forced to be the commissioner. Yeah. They want to get on his good side in case he's in the league again.

Or the other development, I think, was that we found out what the buy-in was here. Yes. Because you had wondered how much money was at stake. I sure did wonder that. So we learned, again, great reporting by Trent, but it seems as if the initial buy-in was $10,000. And then there was an additional $10,000 that had to be paid by the loser, the last place finisher of the league, which Pham was in no danger of losing. Seemingly, he said he was in second when he quit and left the league. So a $10,000 initial buy-in, that's a lot for you and me and most of our listeners. Oh, yeah.

But that's not a lot for Tommy Pham. It's really not. Like, he was making $8.9 million last year. That was just his base salary. $10,000 is like a little more than one one thousandth of that like if you were making sixty thousand as your salary that would be sixty seven dollars which hey you wouldn't want to lose sixty seven dollars but you probably also wouldn't slap someone several months later over having lost sixty seven dollars so when you put that into perspective, like Pham has talked about how he bought a $300,000 Bentley and how he lost $92,000 in a single day in the stock market.

I mean, that's his prerogative to buy or lose whatever he wants. But compared to those losses or expenditures, $10,000 is a drop in the bucket. I mean, that doesn't seem like it's anything to get too upset about. So maybe it was more the gifts and the perceived disrespect there or some combination of the two. Or maybe like if you don't grow up as a multimillionaire, it's probably hard to put $10,000 in perspective. And maybe you're still thinking, hey, $10,000, that's a lot of money. There are a lot of things I could do with $10,000. But as a percentage of his salary and probably most of the players' salaries in that league, not really a lot. So that does not justify the slap anymore in my mind. Yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I should say the piece I was quoting from extensively

I think was written by Andy. It was not written by C. Trent. Sorry, Andy. Yeah. So maybe that puts this all to rest. We'll see. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more to the story somehow. But that's all we know as of now. But we will update this developing story as necessary. We did see, Pham evidently had issued some forewarning of the slap also, because in the group chat or whatever it was, the text chain, at some point last year, Pham wrote that the next time he saw Peterson, he would give him a, quote, pimp slap. So Peterson was forewarned, I guess, and forearmed, forehanded, foreslapped, whatever. Foreslapped. Maybe he forgot about that warning or maybe he didn't take it seriously because I probably wouldn't have.

But he did put it out there and maybe he felt like once he issued that threat or that vow or whatever it was that he had to make do. He had to make good on it no matter how long it took i mean like i i think our base conclusions to this have not changed which is you know like know who you're joking with and whether your relationship is close enough to allow for that but also don't slap people and now we have added a third lesson which is do not appoint unenthusiastic fantasy football commissioners because that way lies slaps, I guess. I still feel weird enjoying this story

because fundamentally, someone got hit in the face. That's not great. But it does keep adding interesting little twists and turns i guess that we are more likely to see the the conclusion of this or have that we are likely to have seen the conclusion of this because it's tommy famison in the league anymore i guess what will really be interesting to know is like are there further defections from the league as a result of this incident right is there sufficient clarification of the rules do they pivot away from esp league as a result of this incident? Right. Is there sufficient clarification of the rules? Do they pivot away from ESPN as a fantasy football provider

to another platform that might better accommodate their bespoke rule structure? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think maybe we know all that we will know, but if someone is going to do an even deeper dive and put an oral history out there or maybe a six or eight part reported narrative podcast, I would subscribe. I would read. So the appetite is there. But thank you to everyone for continuing to chase down this very serious and vital story.

And I guess in other news related to recent flare-ups between players and suspensions, Josh Donaldson came out and basically showed that he is not all that contrite or seemingly hasn't learned the lesson that one would hope that he would have learned because he came out and issued a quote to the AP. He said that he was hurt that his teammates with the Yankees did not back him up after his Jackie taunts to Tim Anderson, which was something we observed when we discussed that, that he really hadn't been backed up by his teammates and that Aaron Boone and Aaron Judge and other people not named Aaron maybe seemingly hadn't come to his defense or had even expressed some disapproval of his comments, which seemed notable just because often teammates will just rally around their teammates instinctively no matter what happened. And so there was not a chorus of people backing up Donaldson here, which spoke to either Donaldson's popularity or lack thereof in that clubhouse or just the nature of the offense here. But anyway, he seems that he is not pleased that his teammates did not have his back here. And he said it was tough to hear those comments. And I think everyone is playing the world's smallest violin for Josh Donaldson here. So he basically is painting himself as something of a victim here, I guess, that he did not receive the support. He still maintained that Anderson maybe misinterpreted the references. He also said, I haven't had a chance to talk to him, which it's been a while at this point.

a chance to talk to him, which it's been a while at this point. Like if he really wanted to reach out to Tim Anderson, I'm sure that he could have tried to arrange that at least. I don't know whether Anderson would have wanted to talk to him, but I think that he could have made that happen if he had really wanted to. So anyway, Josh Donaldson, Josh Donald Singh, basically. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's an intermediate step of self-reflection, right? Like when one has engaged in behavior that other people don't like, and you know, other people aren't always right, but in this case they were.

You know, it can be an uncomfortable process to like reflect on that social feedback and be like, wow, I, you know, a lot of people sure didn't have my back on this. And that might indicate that this behavior was wanting in some way and that I should reflect on how and then make different choices in the future. And normally that process is one that is done privately, right? When you're in the, is one that is done privately, right? When you're in the middle phases of change for yourself,

you're like not keen to share them because you don't feel great when you're in those middle phases. You're like, oh no, am I the baddie? And then hopefully you come out the other side being like, I've reflected on that and like that behavior was not good and I should do something differently and also be sorry about having done it in the first place you know so i guess it's kind of a bummer that the middle phase got aired because it suggests that the later phases might not be coming but maybe we'll be wrong about that and wouldn't that be nice if josh jonathan continues to reflect

on this incident and then thinks to himself i shouldn't do that right people don't like me yeah he was close to an epiphany potentially there yeah it's like you know but like you can lead the man in need of therapy to the couch but you can't make him sit down i don't know right yeah that might be overly familiar on my part and maybe i'll reflect on that and think i shouldn't have said that about josh and i don't know him. But you can lead them in to self-actualization, but you can't turn on the epiphany. I don't know. I'm struggling for an apt metaphor here. But drink the water.

You're not a horse, but you know what I mean. So we talked about Trout, and as a number of people pointed out, if he actually is lacking in some way as a fantasy football commissioner, then one imagines he will come back next year in the upcoming football season and he will be the best possible fantasy football commissioner that he could be because we know that he always tends to target his weaknesses and turn them into strengths. related news. Some people reached out to express some concern that maybe I had been present at the Angels-Yankees game on Thursday. And I did actually have some designs on going to that game. Initially, it was supposed to be a night game. And Shohei Otani was scheduled to pitch against Nestor Cortez. What a matchup. And my wife and I were talking about going. It was going to be sort of a game time decision spur of the moment thing. And we were a bit apprehensive because of our memorable experience at Yankee Stadium last year, where, as some listeners will recall, our anniversary was coming up and Shohei was in town. And we splurged a little and got ourselves some fancy seats to see Shohei.

And then he was completely terrible. He had the worst game of his MVP season and did not make it out of the first inning on the mound. And then the rains came and it was just miserable. We actually went back later in the season to see him on a day when he wasn't pitching and he didn't really do anything as a hitter either. So my wife was worried that we had cursed him somehow. And we were thinking of going back anyway, hopefully to see him on a better day. And then there was rain on Wednesday and the Yankees-Angels game was rescheduled and it became a split admission doubleheader. So the poor people who had purchased tickets expecting to see Otani on Thursday night,

instead, things were switched so that Otani started the day game instead. So some people who probably were planning to go to see Otani missed out on Otani. I could not go because it was a day game. And now I am kind of grateful that I didn't because it did not go well again. He did make it out of the first inning, at least, but he didn't make it much further than that. So I don't know if it's just randomness or if he has some hang up here. Unfortunately, he has not been at his best in New York lately. And then there was rain and there was rain in the forecast and eventually the rain came too. But not a great day for Otani, but I missed out at least on seeing him give up four over three innings and he just didn't have it and wasn't missing bats or anything. But bad timing. I'm actually going out to LA next

week and he'll be back there, but I don't know if I will have time to catch him in person. Anyway, I bring that up just to mention that we got one Otani-related question, which I can answer now. This was a question from listener Jason, who wrote in after Wednesday's game to say, This might be difficult for you two to hear, but in the past two games against the Angels, Aaron Judge has done something that I assume has never been done before. Aaron Judge has done something that I assume has never been done before. In Game 1 of the series, he robbed what looked like a home run from Shohei Otani, leaping at the center field wall to make a catch. In Game 2, Judge hit a home run off of Otani in the third inning.

Has a player ever robbed a home run and hit a home run against a single player? I would assume not, since Otani is such a unicorn. Not sure if this is researchable, but would love to find out if this has ever happened before. So this was a question for Sports Info Solutions, which has home run robbery data going back to 2002. And SIS analyst Alex Vigderman is a listener and Patreon supporter. So I sent it to him. I said, this sounds like a job for Sports Info Solutions. He wrote back and said, that does sound like a job for us.

However, we do tend to be a bit of a buzzkill when it comes to home run robberies. You can see from one of the side angles later in the video, and I will link to this, that that probably wasn't going to be a home run. The ball that Otani hit that Aaron Judge, quote unquote, robbed wasn't going to be a home run. The ball that Otani hit that Aaron Judge, quote unquote, robbed wasn't going to be a home run based on how steep it was coming down and the fact that Judge got to it on his way up. So we don't have this as a home run robbery. And I applaud Alex and the SIS folks for being very rigorous when it comes to home run robbery classification. Because I love a good home run robbery and I've written articles in the past about how the fact that we had this high home run rate era recently, we also had high home run robbery rate era. We were seeing more home run

robberies than ever, which I thought was a perk and upside of the ball flying as well as it was a couple of years ago. And I just think that if you're going to pay attention to home run robberies and value home run robberies, then you actually have to be diligent in trying to determine whether it really was a robbery or whether it was just a nice catch at the warning track, especially if you have a giant like Aaron Judge out there, like maybe he just put his glove up, but was it really a robbery? And so SIS concluded that it was not, which maybe makes me feel a bit better as someone who wants Shohei to do well and was disappointed to see him robbed of a homer. Evidently, he was not really robbed of one, but that makes it more special. But that makes it more special.

I like that. That makes me feel more secure knowing that they are not just going to give anyone a home run robbery on something that looks like a home run robbery. They are going to check all the available angles and try to calculate the trajectory and see if it really was one. So that disqualifies this play of being the first instance of a player, the same player, same combo, having a home run robbery in one direction and the other. But Alex continued to say that if we had characterized it as a home run robbery, it unsurprisingly would have been the only such occurrence. In fact, we don't have any robberies since 2002 where a pitcher was robbed. Jason Lane and Jordan Schaefer became pitchers later in their careers after having been robbed at some point years prior, but nobody who is listed on the roster as a pitcher at the time or had done more than being a position player

pitcher, for example, Sandy Leone last year who was robbed and also pitched a bit, and those guys never faced their robbers as pitchers. So it was almost notable. It was almost another one that we could add to the unprecedented Shohei Otani accomplishments, or in this case, failures as well, archive, but doesn't quite qualify. I wonder how they deal with players like Judge when it's when they're thinking about the possibility of a home run robbery because i understand that the first criteria you need to answer for a home run robbery is like would this have been a home run right like just if there was no if there was no one out there at all it's hit to a part of the park where there's no fielder proximate to it.

But are there balls that, because he's so tall, he can get to that other guys can't? Yeah, there definitely are. My question is dumb, actually. I don't want to ask this question. I think I asked a stupid question. Because the home run or not is the thing you gotta yeah like can you it's a good point though because like not every home run robbery is well it could be because not every home run robbery that's incredibly generous of you ben you know i know

people sometimes wish we disagreed more on this podcast but i really like it's a nice a bit of standard of care we have for one another well i think the good point is that not every home run robbery is really super impressive or extraordinary i think that's the point i'm trying to yeah thank you yeah that was what i meant to say because if you are a giant like you're just standing there you're like you're just standing there yeah it's a little bit different we don. We don't applaud tall people for being able to get things off of tall shelves. Those are just accessible shelves to them, you know? Yeah.

They don't have to move a stool. You might still ask them, could you get this down for me? And you might still ask Aaron Judge, could you please prevent this from being a home run? Oh, yeah. You would ask that. You'd be like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like, does it require

an extraordinary effort? It's like the idea of an ordinary effort, right, when it comes to like deciding whether a play was an error or not. So for Aaron Judge, if he's standing in front of a short fence, it's not really an extraordinary effort. Now, granted, he has to get back there and he might have to go back quite a ways depending on where he was stationed to start the play. But if he's there, all he really has to do is reach his arm up, whereas someone else in the same position might have to have a leap and have it be a well-timed leap. And so it would be visually more interesting and it would require more coordination and it'd be more impressive. So it totally depends on like the height of the wall and the height of the player. But technically, if I were SIS, then for their purposes, I guess you would still say it's a home run robbery.

It's almost like robbery is too strong. Right. It's a home run stand in there. Yeah, it's a home run prevention prevention but it's not really a robbery it's like yes if there had been no player there right it would have been over the fence and therefore it would have been a home run and so technically it's a home run robbery this is a how can you not be pedantic about baseball point discussion that we have ended up on basically can we even call it a robbery yes if it is just a run-of-the-mill reach up a reach up yeah what was the what was the soccer thing that i couldn't get over the footy whatever oh the keepy upy keepy upy yeah is it is this the baseball equivalent of keepy upy yeah it's it's like

maybe it's the opposite right it's like a grabby preventive. Grabby downy. Yeah. That sounds terrible. Grabby downy. Yeah. I don't know about that. I don't know that we want to propagate that one. But yes, thank you for articulating better than I could the point I was trying to make, which was like, it feels like there should be some degree of difficulty adjustment for the fielder.

You first have to determine, would this have been a home run you know in in a vacuum which is hard because you one would imagine it's hard to hit home runs in a vacuum but um you know would this have been a home run just under normal circumstances but then do we really want to call it a robbery if the the guy involved is just very tall but then again you don't want to penalize him for that because he is, in fact, very tall, and his tallness did facilitate him preventing the other team from scoring. It's not a skill, but it is an asset. Anyway, these have been my thoughts about Aaron Judge being just tremendously tall.

As I was watching that game and I saw him hit his own home run, I sat there and I thought to myself, tall. As I was watching that game and I saw him hit his own home run, I sat there and I thought to myself, you know, a lot of people are mad about the current state of the ball and its relative juicelessness. It is not juiceless. It is not dead. It is simply moribund. It is fatigued. It is a ball suffering from ennui, is maybe how we would describe it relative to its recent seasons. is maybe how we would describe it relative to its recent seasons. But everyone else or most other players are sad about this because their balls aren't going so far. But if you're Aaron Judge and you declined to sign

a very lucrative contract extension, and now you are one of the only players who can hit a home run anymore, you must be thrilled. And this is sort of consistent with what we have seen in the variation of the ball over the years, which is the players who benefited the most from the very juicy baseball were players who otherwise struggled to hit home runs at all.

Whereas guys who had thunderous thump in their bats to begin with didn't benefit as much because they're they weren't hitting you know wall scrapers they were just hitting a bunch of home runs because they were big and strong and so that the opposite would be true is unsurprising but as i sat there and i watched aaron judge hit a home run today i was like you know pete alonzo thought that major league baseball was juicing or de-juicing the ball depending on the upcoming free agent class to rob free agents of potential money but what if the real caper is that aaron judge de-juiced all the balls this year because he wants to dominate the free agent market i would never accuse him of being so undecorous and inconsiderate

of his fellow players because i doubt that that is consistent with his values, but he sure is benefiting from a fishy situation. Yes. A few follow-ups to things you just said. First, I guess it would actually be easier to hit a home run in a vacuum if you yourself can breathe, just because less air resistance. Drawing breath in there would be very challenging. Yes, it would. SIS, I believe, classifies certain plays as good fielding plays, Less air resistance. Drawing breath in there would be very challenging. Yes, it would.

SIS, I believe, classifies certain plays as good fielding plays. So maybe I assume that a home run robbery is classified as a good fielding play. And I guess if you're in dredge and you get back there and you stick your hand up and you catch the ball, it's a good fielding play. It's not a great fielding play. Maybe you could count it as a home run robbery but not a good fielding play. Maybe you could count it as a home run robbery, but not a good fielding play. I don't know. Maybe that's a way to adjust the books, balance the books somehow here. And also, yeah, Aaron Judge, that was his 19th home run of the season. He has a 197 WRC plus on the season. So yeah, that bet on himself that he made, at least through almost the first two months of the season, working out pretty well. So I think he got a decent offer if the reported terms of that offer were accurate. But thus far, it seems like if he were able to keep this up, he might do even better than that, as Dan Zimborski just blogged at FanCrafts. So he, I think, had some Zips projections in there, and Judge has raised what his contract recommendation would be.

Not as high as I think what the Yankees reportedly offered him just because of his age and his health and durability and so forth, which was probably on the Yankees' minds when they were crafting their offer. Yeah, it likely would be on other teams' minds when they were crafting their own offers. Right. Yeah. And you figure Judge is maybe a bit more valuable to the Yankees than to other teams just because he has a reputation in New York and has sold a lot of jerseys and brings some marquee value with him. But yeah, he is having a fantastic start to the season. It's like he's the only one tall enough to go on the ride now with the new ball. So he's just not having to wait in line. He's just riding it over and over again. Although the ball and offense in general have picked up a bit, but they are still down, historically speaking.

There's one jar of olives on the uppermost shelf, and he is the only one who can reach it. Right. So I wanted to mention while we were talking about outfield catches, another pretty special outfield catch, and this was from a college game this past weekend and was brought to our attention by a listener and Patreon supporter, Ryan. And we were talking about hidden ball tricks and the lack thereof and other types of defensive tricks and trickery that fielders could practice. And this is a great one because I have not seen or heard of this being done before. A great one because I have not seen or heard of this being done before. And I applaud the innovation and the boldness and just the, I guess, the sleight of hand happening here.

So this happened in a regional final game in Division 2. So I guess it was a regional tournament and Tampa was playing the Tampa Spartans and they were playing Nova. And what happened here, I'm cribbing from a Tampa Bay Times piece, but Tampa was about to be eliminated. There was a ninth inning fly ball to deep left center and the winning run was going to score. I think it was maybe first and third and one out. And so this seemed like a certain sack fly, and it was going to be maybe not a strict walk-off situation, as we discussed recently in a pedantic segment, but not a pedantic walk-off, but at least kind of technically a walk-off and certainly a game-ending play. So the Tampa coach, Joe Urso, he said, you know the game's over.

I kind of put my notes down, put my head down, told his associate head coach, man, that's it. I start walking down the dugout, and then I started hearing, he left early. He left early. He left early. He left early. So the runner tagged up here and expected to just go as soon as the ball was caught and not even have to hurry home necessarily because this was a pretty deep fly and then was called out on appeal. And so the game went on and eventually Tampa won the game in 12 innings. And this was all because of Spartans left fielder Jordan Lala, who used a trick play taught to the team during spring training workouts by Tampa Bay Rays center fielder Kevin Kiermaier, who taught them how to deke a runner into breaking too soon for home on that type of play. And Erso, the coach, said it was an amazing play that you may never see again. So Kiermaier explained that the plan is to camp under the ball with the glove held high

so that the runner thinks it will be a routine catch, the glove held high so that the runner thinks it will be a routine catch, then to pull the glove down and not make the catch until just before the ball hits the ground, creating enough of a slight delay for the runner to break early. So you deke the runner into thinking that the catch is going to be made at shoulder height or head height or wherever, and then the runner goes anticipating when the catch is going to be made. And the fielder then doesn't catch the ball at that level, but yanks their glove down, catches it just before it hits the ground. And in that gap, while the ball is flying from like head height and falling down to knee height or whatever, the runner has already left the base.

and falling down to knee height or whatever. The runner has already left the base. Then the fielder makes the catch and then can just make a leisurely throw to the base to catch the runner who now tagged up early. So there is a video of this, and I will play the audio call of this play. Winning run at third. One out.

Bottom of the ninth. Spartans with a drawn-in infield. The pitch to Frank. Pop fly. Is it going to be deep enough? It probably will be because Lala has to go way back. He makes the catch. Here's the play. It's going to be a ball game for Nola Southeastern. Did he leave it? He left early.

He left early. He is called out. It's a double play. And so Lala, you can watch the video. He sort of, he sold it. He made it look like he was going to catch the ball at the regular height. He snapped his glove and then he dropped to his knees to make sure he held onto the ball after catching it so low.

And Nova, the team had already started celebrating, and then they froze as the third base ump made the outcall. So this is just ingenious, I guess. It's technically not cheating. We could talk about the ethics of this, but Kiermaier has never done it in a big league game. And he said that he's like always wanted to. And the team told him that they had actually pulled off his trick play.

And he said it was incredible. I couldn't believe what I heard from him saying they use that play. It's something we work on. They were kind of curious why I was doing it one day out there. And then we made a drill out of it. He said the idea just popped into his head years ago as he was thinking through unorthodox ways to get an edge in those situations, knowing how geared up base runners get to break the moment the ball hits the glove. He works on the move regularly when shagging balls during raised batting practice, but he figures the risk is so high it only makes sense in a bottom of the ninth or later situation, and he's never had occasion to use it in a game. So what do you think?

Should this be used? I guess there are only so many situations where it could be, and it was a heads-up play by that player to have the presence of mind to recognize when the ball was in the air. Hey, I can do the trick play, the KK play, as they call it after Kevin Kiermaier, and then to execute it as well as he did. But I would be interested in seeing this happen in a big league game. I'm guessing it would be labeled Bush League or that it would become an unwritten rule situation and some players would be upset, but I would love to see this happen. It feels telling to me so there's like the the like social contract aspect of this right is this considered you know poor form on the part of the fielder to so obviously try to deceive the runner into thinking that you've made the catch because like it's one thing if the base runner

is just like overly aggressive and leaves early and gets you for doing that. That happens. But the sequence of events here suggests that the base runner, while keen to run, is also sensitive to the fact that the ball needs to be caught before he can tag up and go and is endeavoring to be in compliance with the rule and is being fooled such that he can't be in compliance with it. So there's that piece of it, but there's also this fact to me how would you would you describe kevin kiermeier as a gifted defender ben when you think of kevin kiermeier maybe the first thing you think

about apart from his piercing blue eyes is that he is an incredible fielder he is a good enough fielder that it has bolstered his value at times when he has not been able to hit very well at all, right? But he has still been like a reasonable regular, a reasonable everyday player because he is so talented out there. And Kevin Kiermaier, if I am given to understand this quote from him correctly, thinks that this would be hard to do. Yes. And so that might indicate to us that like this should not be attempted by mere mortals because if kevin kiermeier is like yeah this seems like you know you could goof it up and so you should really only do it when you know you are either going to successfully do this

and get the guy out or you're gonna lose the game right? Where your fielding does not matter or only matters insofar as you can do this impossibly hard thing and then manage to secure an out where you would have otherwise been giving up a run. So I don't know that it's a good idea for people to try to do this, not just because it seems hard and not just because the number of circumstances under which you could do it are difficult, but because no less a man than Kevin Kiermaier is like, you could goof this up pretty bad.

Yeah. But I still want to see it. Me too. The Tampa coach said that a lot has to happen for it to work. Yeah. First of all, you have to have the right situation. But also, you have to have an athletic outfielder who can fake catching a ball, but also still catch it. Right. which is harder

than it sounds maybe. And then you also have to have an aggressive base runner. And this one was a fast base runner and could have taken his time and waited and just strolled home but didn't. And then third, you have to have an umpire who is on it enough to recognize what happened there and also like not just want the game to be over like he gave credit to the umpire who was not only paying attention enough to notice this but also didn't decide hey it's hot out i want to just go home so all those things

have to happen but yeah if you do have a situation where you have nothing to lose because you're going to lose that game anyway if you fail to catch the ball, then why not? Might as well. So it's creative. There's maybe more room for creativity at the college level in D2. Maybe you have fewer outfielders who could pull this off. Sure. And maybe fewer umpires who would be paying close enough attention to make an accurate ruling. I don't know. But you could probably deke the base runner more easily. And maybe, you know, you see some unorthodox tactics like the strategy, as we called it, pulling a pitcher in the middle of a plate appearance to disrupt the hitter's timing. You see that more often at the college level in an intentional way. So these things can be done and you can get away with things like the hidden ball trick at that level more easily. But I would

like to see this tried somehow. I hope I live to see it in the majors and I would be very curious to see what the reaction is and how harsh the backlash would be. I imagine though, so am I right to think that whether a player has vacated the base early, that's a reviewable play though, so am I right to think that whether a player has vacated the base early? That's a reviewable play though, right? I think it is, yeah. So I think that that piece of it would be a little less of an issue in any ballpark where they have replay review because you could just say, I don't know,

put it on your earmuffs and go check that out. But yeah, it does seem, I don't know, now I really want to see it. But maybe it has to come. Who is the most likely candidate here? Because like Kevin Kiermaier is practicing this, but now people know this about Kevin Kiermaier because, I mean, in some ways the team really did him a disservice here because now people know that this is a is a club that he

has in his bag and and he might try it report advanced scouting beware of the kk play yeah all goes to kevin kiermer yeah so they've you know they've kind of done him dirty here by announcing to the world that this occurred although even that could be an advantage potentially right if the runner is so worried yeah like that's another reason to at least try this at some point because then you're not going to get as good a jump because you actually have to wait and see if they make the catch before you leave so that's another reason why you might want to do this sometime oh boy it's i't know. There's a lot of, you know, the game theory. It's really about game theory. I did want to talk about one other outfielder because we got an email from listener Noah, and this was on May 2nd. And he asked a question back then.

He said, I may have missed you talking about this potentially in regard to Cody Bellinger, but I wonder how many years of mediocrity it would take for a perennial all-star, say Mookie Betts, to disappear from the MLB highlight reel alongside Trout, Harper, Ohtani, Judge, etc. This question was inspired by seeing Mookie in such a reel on MLB TV, but then was pleasantly surprised to see his OPS Plus still hasn't dipped below 100. He's still only two years removed from a streak of silver sluggers and MVP votes, but how many years of being average might he need before he's outside the list after the sort of run he had from 2016 to 2020? When was this email sent? That's very relevant, isn't it?

This was sent on May 2nd. Oh. Yeah. And I responded to the email to say, well, it makes me very sad to think of Mookie not being one of baseball's main characters. But I saw what he meant at that time because Mookie was, you know, coming off a down year by Mookie standards. And then he got off to a fairly slow start this season. I think he had like a 112 WRC plus when Noah sent that email. Well, I don't think Mookie is going to be removed from Highlight Reels anytime soon.

Because since Noah sent this email, in 28 games and 130 plate appearances, Mookie has hit.357,.423,.783 with a very reasonable.337 BABIP. He has hit 13 home runs in that time that is a 231 wrc plus and in that time also he has been worth 2.8 fan graphs war which is half a win more than the next closest player and like way more than almost anyone rafael devers and paul goldschmidt were at 2.3 war over that same span. No other hitter was above 1.6. So he's lapping the league almost entirely. He was worth like one more war than everyone except a couple of players who were also extremely hot. And now he is leading the majors in war just on the season yeah like by uh i guess a fair margin at at this point he is up to 3.5 war on the season i guess he has just edged out manny machado for the

major league fan graphs war lead yeah so mookie has totally turned it on. He is actually second to Aaron Judge in home runs now. Yes. So Judge, as we speak, has 19. Mookie's up to 16. So I don't know that anyone was, like, forecasting the demise of Mookie Betts or anything, but he had receded from the spotlight slightly. It's like when we talked at the start of last season about, like, no one talks about Bryce Harper anymore. And then Bryce Harper just turned it on and won an MVP award. And Mookie Betts was sort of in that same boat where he was on the short list of best players in baseball and probably second best to Trout over a period of several seasons. of several seasons. And then he had a down year by his standards, still a good year, but a down year and hadn't hit for quite as much power as he did in the breakout power year when he won the MVP. And then suddenly it was like, oh, well, we're talking about other players more so than we're

talking about Mookie Betts. And then he gets off to a slow start and people were wondering, have we seen the last of peak Mookie and what's wrong with Mookie? And I know he's been banged up a bit and has played through some injuries, which probably accounted for his subpar season last year. But anyway, Peak Mookie is back. Not that the Dodgers were having any issues without Peak Mookie, but he has been at his best for the past month. So Noah emailed at the nadir of Mookie, i think which was not even that bad and since then he has been phenomenal the best player in baseball well it's and i don't mean to to criticize the perception it is one that i am still finding myself actively battling against when i watch the dodgers because like he hit a home run yesterday we're recording this on thursday

and i believe he hit a home run yesterday and We were recording this on Thursday, and I believe he hit a home run yesterday, and they announced on the broadcast, as an aside, good teams lose to bad teams all the time, but the Dodgers sure did get swept by the Pirates. So he hit his home run, and they were like, that's 16, and I was like, is it now? Is that really how many it is because my you know my sense of him because j jaffee wrote about mookie for for fan graphs a little while

ago i think when he had yet to pull all the way out of the four mookie slow start that he was having and you know i had to be like oh yeah he isn't actually like bad or anything he's just kind of you know having a little bit of a slow get going relative to what he has normally done and now he has a 182 wrc plus so like that's the thing that happened yep and talk about his down year last year it wasn't a bad year at all like he only played in 122 games but he was hurt a lot of it yeah right and he he still managed to be worth three and a half wins according to fan graphs 4.2 according to baseball reference war and that's a down year in a season when he missed 40 games so he still had a 130 something wrc plus like

his floor has always been extremely high because he's been such a good base runner and such a good defender. And then in years when he has one of his better offensive seasons, well, then he could be the best player in baseball. But now that is what he is playing like again, because he has basically, to this point, hit the way he did all of 2018. So who knows if he can keep that up. But that was a year when he had like a 10.5 win season or something, depending on which war you're looking at. So that's the kind of season that he is having again now, seemingly healthy again.

So that's heartening. So no question about how long it takes for a player to recede from the foreground to not be a baseball main character, to not appear in the highlight reels. Well, it's longer than however Mookie's relative slump by his standards was. I guess it's got to be like at least a couple seasons probably of falling off of your established high

level. And even then we might be saying like, oh, that guy, like he could get back to that point. And even then we might be saying like, oh, that guy, like he could get back to that point. That's kind of where Harper was when we talked about him last year. So, yeah, Mookie's amazing and is still amazing. That is basically the point here. Yeah. So I have two things to say in response to that. I mean, like in some respects, like, oh, this is such a sad way to do it.

Like we probably thought that maybe Felix would course correct in 2016, and he didn't. Felix might be a good example of this. And I think some of it depends on how precipitous the drop-off is. If you are engaged in a slow decline, I think you linger a lot longer because people might not realize how far you are from your previous high if it's like a gradual, you know, if you're ambling down a comfortable hill as opposed to like falling off a cliff. So there's that piece of it. I will also say, having spent part of this episode cooking up a criminal ball conspiracy on Aaron Judge's part, like, you know, Mookie Betts and Aaron Judge are,

well, they're physically different in a way that is obvious, but like the way that they, you know, hit for power is different too. And here's Mookie Betts. So what do I know about baseball even, Ben? What do I even know about it? 311, I saw that guy. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. He's got a 617 slug, Ben. 617. That's pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. When I was looking at the top of the position player leaderboard, I also clicked over to the pitcher war leaderboard at fan graphs and I was not surprised to see Kevin Gossman at the top because he has been fantastic and unhittable yes and I was thinking a little bit about that because we talked at the time about the dueling deals for Robbie Ray and Kevin Gossman because they both got sort of similar range contracts.

Oh, no. This is going to not be about Kevin Gossman, is it? This is about to be about Robbie Ray. Yeah. So the Blue Jays, instead of re-signing Ray, now we have learned a little more about maybe why they made the decision not to re-sign Ray, but they did not re-sign Ray. Instead, they got Gossman. The Mariners went and got the reigning Cy Young Award winner, Robbie Ray. And, well, the Blue Jays have gotten the pumpkin. I wouldn't go that far. He's been okay.

The ERA is near five. That's not great. The peripherals are better than that, but not great. He's maybe lost a little velocity. He's lost some strikeouts. Like he's not been exactly what they wanted from him. from him and he did not make the mariners recent trip to toronto which uh we are given to understand is is probably a result of his put on the restricted list i think that we can say that comfortably i don't think we're speaking out of turn there are we mariners did not come out and say it no which is but yeah we can draw that implication i think which uh tells you maybe

why he was not re-signed by the Blue Jays. Now, I don't know whether he would have been anyway, but he was able to pitch for them last year because there was an exemption in place at that time. But now it would have been an issue. Mark Shapiro was talking about back in March when he was saying like, well, some people have suggested that it will benefit the Blue Jays in some ways or that it's been a competitive advantage that the Blue Jays will have some opponents who are not able to make the trip to Toronto. Actually, it's been a disadvantage. And one reason he listed was because they've had their hands tied a bit when it comes to player personnel moves and transactions that they can or can't make, right? And so I don't know whether he was thinking of Robbie Ray specifically, but maybe.

But if that was a case where the Blue Jays had a move dictated to them, then I think it has worked out in their favor ultimately, because, hey, these are long-term deals and we're less than two months into them. So it's too early to draw any grand sweeping conclusions. But I think right now you would have to say that you would probably rather have Kevin Gossman than Robbie Ray for non-vaccination related reasons. So they technically did not put him on the restricted list. They put Drew Streckenreiter on the restricted list. So that's another fun one. But I think because of his, they rejiggered their rotation so that he pitched earlier. And so he simply did not travel with the team. Although I am given to understand if they had put him on the restricted list, they would have been able to replace him. But I think there are some rules around starters and proximity to a start and the restricted list

and this and that and the other thing. So I don't know that any of that is relevant. Yeah. So Gossman's at the top of that War of Leaderboard. And I don't know that that would have been predictable a few years ago, but is maybe more predictable given his performance last year. However, numbers two through four on the Pitcher War leaderboard at Fangraphs, Tarek Skubal, Martin Perez, and updated through his performance on Thursday, Nestor Cortez. So it's not necessarily whom I would have foreseen. I guess Joe Musgrove and Zach Wheeler are tied at the top of the NL leaderboard, which is maybe more predictable. But after Gossman, it goes Scouble, Perez, Cortez. And

Scouble, I guess, has established himself as the best so far, the most promising of that trio of Detroit pitchers. Because Mize, Casey Mize, has been out with an elbow injury. And Matt Manning has been out with a shoulder injury. And Tare Matt Manning has been out with a shoulder injury. And Tarek Skubal is absolutely dealing. Yeah. And has been great. Yeah. And then we've talked about Cortez recently and how amazing he's been.

Yeah. Martin Perez is maybe the most, like, who, what, why? Easily the most surprising. Yeah. With. Which, yeah. Yeah. I don't know what to make of that. Like, he has a 1.42 ERA right now. He has a 2.35

FIP. He is not allowed a home run in 10 starts and 63 plus innings. But the ball has ennui, so what does that even mean? Yeah, the ball does have ennui, but he has a 2.54 BABIP and a 0.0 home run per fly ball rate. So that's kind of concerning. He is throwing more sinkers and he is inducing more grounders. So maybe that's part of it. And he's had better control. So again, like the peripherals are strong. Even the XFIP is strong, but not like a 1.42 ERA.

So he's had flashes before. He's had stretches where he was quite effective, but for the most part, he has been an average to below average pitcher. So I was not expecting to see Martin Perez close to the top of a pitcher award leaderboard even in early June, but there he is. So that's weird and fun. It's weird and fun. I don't know. I like it when we have real randos at the top of the leaderboards. Like it's because, you know, a couple of things are happening. Either a guy is having the best stretch of his career, in which case we should applaud it because it's probably going to change for him. Or he has done something to remake himself in a way that will make us pay attention to him for longer. And I think both of those are exciting.

So, yeah. So last thing, what are we going to do about these Phillies? Or more accurately, what are the Phillies going to do about themselves? Because I subscribe to the Baseball Reference newsletter, which I recommend. It comes every day during the season, and it's just a little snapshot of what happened the night before. So they give you the top offensive performers and the top pitching performers. And then sometimes they tell you what the hottest teams or players over the last 15 or 30 days are. They give you the scoreboard. Maybe they give you a little stat head, fun fact spotlight. They tell you who made their major league debuts. They give you some matchups and probables to look forward to. It's just a nice little thing. It takes me a minute to read,

gets me caught up on some things. But one of the things they tend to do in there is they have the biggest play of the previous day's games by win probability added. So just like what was the biggest swing? And I think the newsletters after both Monday and Tuesday, the biggest play was a play in the Phillies' favor. And usually, not always, but usually, the player who produced that biggest play was on the winning team that day because they had a big win probability swing in their favor. In this case, though, the Phillies lost both of the games.

Despite having the biggest play be in their favor in both of those games, they ended up losing them nonetheless, both to the Giants. And so as we speak here now, entering Thursday's games, the Phillies are not only way back in the NL East, and everyone is, because the Mets have just kept up their furious pace. And they now have a 10.5 game lead in the East on Atlanta, 12.5 on the Phillies, 13 on the Marlins. That's like one of the biggest leads ever, I think, in the divisional era at this date. And this date, the season started a little later than sometimes it has.

So it's pretty impressive, that performance by the Mets, and pretty unimpressive, the collective performance by the rest of the NL East, where there's no other 500 team. But the Phillies are not only way back in the division there at 22 and 29, but they're also, I think now, six games out in the NL wildcard race. So six games out of the third slot there behind the Giants. And there are four teams, I think, in between the Giants and the Phillies. That would be the Diamondbacks, the Braves, the Rockies. And yes, the Pirates, as a number of people have pointed out, have the best record of a Pennsylvania baseball team currently. So the Phillies have the greatest loss in Fangraphs playoff odds since the start of the season. They are down 38.7 percentage points as we speak. So they started out as more than likely, more than a coin flip to make the playoffs. And now they are down to 20.8%, which, given how they have played recently, feels almost too optimistic.

Anyway, there have been calls for Joe Girardi's head or at least his job. He does seem to be on the wobbly chair at this point. job. He does seem to be on the wobbly chair at this point. He has said that he is not worried about his job security just because generally he does not worry about his job security and he just tries to do the best job he can. And if he gets fired, so be it, I suppose. So a lot of other people are unhappy with Joe Girardi's performance, but obviously it's not just Joe Girardi. So what do you do if you are the Phillies and you find yourself in this spot yet again? I mean, they've been 500-ish year after year after they've been expected to come out of the rebuild and be a winning team. And now they are sub 500 and they're finding spectacular ways to lose. sub 500 and they're finding spectacular ways to lose and it's not a pretty baseball team in terms of like the aesthetics of their play and also not in terms of the results recently so i just i don't

know what you do like yeah do you just keep throwing money at this problem like is there hope on the horizon do you just blow it up and say well this rebuild failed we're gonna just try again i don't know well well well i mean it's tricky because so if i were them i would be conscious of the fact that next year at least from a luxury payroll a luxury tax payroll perspective and granted you know they're gonna have to replace some number of these guys but like they are due to take like a hundred million dollar dip in payroll just by letting free agent contracts expire next year right and like they're gonna need to like they're gonna need to replace some of these dudes like some guys you might have an on roster

answer to already like you're just gonna play stott at short instead of dd gregorius but you know you're gonna need like a lot of a bull right yeah and part of a rotation so like it's not as if they are necessarily going to stay at that level but they are going to have some attrition next year. Gregorius is a free agent and Corey Knable and Kyle Gibson and Familia and Brad Hand and Herrera is a free agent next year. And I think they have a mutual option for Zac Eflin. So that isn't an actual thing that happens. It's just like there for reasons. And so you could say if you were them, like we're going to have payroll flexibility next year relative to where we're sitting currently.

So what if we like took on money at the deadline as a way to reinforce what we have, knowing that next year we're going to dip down below like several luxury tax thresholds. Yeah. They do have a lot coming off the books, but they also still have a lot on the books, at least relative to other teams. Sure. Currently, they have the fourth highest payroll according to the handy dandy roster resource payroll breakdown page after the Mets, the Dodgers, and the Yankees. So one of those teams is not like the others in terms of the bang for the buck that they've gotten this season. You can also sort the

2023, 2024, and 2025 payroll commitments on this page. And if you do that, they are third in terms of 2023 commitments after the two New York teams. They are first in 2024 commitments, and they are second in 2025 commitments. So they have like Real Muto and Harper and Wheeler, and obviously all those guys have been good, but those guys are under team control for a few more years at least, some cases much longer.

And then you have the recently signed Schwarber and Castellanos contracts, right? So that is a lot, I guess, for a handful of players. Now, if they were to continue spending at this current level, then you're right, they would still have some room to maneuver there. I don't know that they will be able to convince ownership to stay at that level or whether it was like, hey, we're already this far invested. Let's make one more push and actually try to win with this team for once. But it's tough when you don't have a foundation, a core of homegrown players who kind of came up through your system and actually panned out. They've just been lacking that. And so they've tried to supplement from outside,

and they've hit on some great free agent signings. But I guess the ones that they tried to make this past offseason have not really rewarded them to the same extent. Like Schwarber and Castellanos have combined to be exactly replacement level according to baseball reference were they are a bit better than that according to fangraphs were but they're both in that like 107 108 wrc plus which is not going to cut it for them given their other shortcomings yeah speaking of which the phillies now officially do have the worst team defensive run save total and the worst team outs above averaged

total so as was foretold they have been the worst defensive team in baseball now by those metrics and it's not going to get better probably unless Bryce Harper can play defense again at some point so it's just like a weirdly built team yes it is a very strangely built team. Dave Dombrowski took over and, you know, instead of doing the whole full scale rebuild, which would have been pretty depressing to embark on that at this point, he did the latter day Dave Dombrowski move of convince owners to spend more on prominent free agents. And it seemed like there was a chance that that could work, but thus far it has not worked. So I just, it's a sticky situation. It's like, I don't know if it's hopeless. And again, like they still have a shot. They could turn this thing around this season.

But the best they could hope is that like they squeak into a third wild card or something. Like clearly it's not a good team. It's not like a perennial contender which is what you want when you come out of a long-term rebuild so that ship has already sailed yeah and it's it's funny because like so you know our numbers are estimates right but like they did that weird thing where they went over a luxury tax threshold by a little bit, but not by a lot of it. It could be worse, but the first luxury tax threshold is $230 million, and we have their payroll estimated for tax purposes at $236.

So you might say, oh, no, they're already over the threshold. Or you might say, well, the next threshold is $250,000, and you're already in a pay tax in this bracket, so why not just blow it out a little bit? But I don't know if I have a ton of confidence in how they'd spend because they built their team so strangely, and I don't know how you remedy all of these issues. So it is a sticky wicket.

It's a real sticky, strange strange i don't want to keep saying sticky i'm gonna be done saying that word but it's a it's an odd one why is it a sticky wicket does other stuff get stuck on it do you get to look this up. This is a cricket question, which we love. Do we love cricket questions? agents and so a lot of your production is coming from players you acquired when they were already veterans then generally those guys are not going to get better over the life of those contracts so it's like you want to win now they're at their best right you want to maximize their production yeah right and so you you've probably already gotten the best or you're getting the best from your real mutos and your harpers and your wheelers and your Schwerbers and your Castellanos. And so if it's not clicking now, it's not going to be more likely to click in future seasons with that same set of players. So

that is why it is deeply problematic. I don't know what you do. And so Dave Dabrowski, I he had departed and, you know, not long after they won a World Series. And at least they won the World Series, which was like you can put up with not being great and maybe having a bloated budget without the returns that you would expect with that if you recently won a world series and at least it worked when you first got that group together the phillies have not had that and not even a playoff appearance to show yeah and that's why it's kind of a deeply depressing spot to be in so i know that joe gerardi has made some phillies fans upset with his attitude and

with his in-game moves or some combination of both. But I don't know. He's been there for a few years now, since 2020. I don't know what portion of the blame he deserves. Generally, I think maybe managers don't deserve as much as just the architects of the team or the players who didn't pan out. It's just not a good situation. So there aren't a lot of teams where you would look at the combination of payroll and expectations coming into the season and also just look in the future and say, man, how is it going to get better than this? And it's not great now. So that is worrisome. And I was just looking back at my preseason staff predictions, which I'm forced to do every year for the ringer. And I may have mentioned this on the podcast at the time, too. But after much waffling and agonizing and deliberation, I ultimately picked the Phillies as my third wildcard spot team, but then also picked them as my flop team. I don't know if that's internally consistent or not. I think in Vegas, they call that hedging your bets. Yeah, I guess it is. I guess it's consistent because in order

to flop, you have to have some sort of expectations probably. So I was saying, okay, maybe they sneak into a playoff spot, but also there's a really high chance that they suck. And what I wrote was, I waffled for a while between the Giants and the Cardinals for my final NL wildcard pick before landing at last on the Phillies. I'm pretty sure I made a mistake. And this was when I filed the prediction. So I could have undone that mistake, but I opted not to for whatever reason. I was like kind of rooting for the Phillies to do well because it's been a long time in the making and their fans have been waiting for a while for them to come out the other side of this thing. And as we discussed, I thought it might be fun to watch them win in this very inefficient and inelegant way.

Yes. But that just hasn't happened. So I feel for Phillies fans. fans yeah i mean i i thought that we would have strong enough vibes to be immune to the bad defense and the bad defense and other and the injuries and the bad defenders not hitting super great you know like that it's like a it gives its own vibe it's uh anti-matter for the good vibe you know it's like spy versus spy and i i feel badly for philly's fans too i know people who work for that org and want them to get to go to the post season and uh and also you know as i have said several times on this podcast it's sneaking up on you the length of that drought it really is it's really

kind of sneaking up on i mean philly's fans are It really is. It's really kind of sneaking up on. I mean, Phillies fans are like, shut up, Meg. We know exactly how long it is. And to you, I say, I'm sorry. But to everyone else, I say, you got to get your eyes trained on that one because eventually the Mariners, probably not this year, but eventually they will make the postseason and then we're all going to be looking around like, who's next?

And I hope it's not the Phillies. It might be the Phillies. Ben, that mariners team isn't very good no they're not very good either no we don't have to dwell on that that's not the point of today's today's pod but i gotta say they're not the best that that mariners club i don't think we're having fun also can i briefly are you are first of all should i i should ask have you completed your thoughts about the phillies for now before i one last demoralizing you go about the phillies is that the farm system is not good either no it's not they were i think 27th according to eric's updated ranking last year i know they were 28th according to Keith Law's 2022 ranking. So

if they're somewhere down there, they're in your bottom five, let's say, then that does not offer a lot of hope either because the combination of not a young team that is well-paid and also not performing well with not a ton of farm help on the way in the near future. It's not an enviable spot. So I wish I could offer a way out of that situation, but I don't know that I see a great one. No, I don't think that there is one right now. They'll figure it out eventually, but I don't know what the combination of people involved will be when that happens.

Yes. I'd like to clarify my previous confused thought about Robbie Ray and the restricted list because I knew there was a wrinkle then. I remembered the wrinkle, but I couldn't remember the wrinkle. And then I found it. I found the wrinkle. This is a tweet from Daniel Kramer who covers the Mariners for MLB.com. This is from May 16th. Unvaccinated starting pitchers who've pitched

within four days of their team entering Canada are not eligible to be placed on the restricted list for competitive advantage purposes. It's a way to prevent those teams from filling that pitcher's roster spot. So that's the deal. Because when you're on the restricted list, they have, I think it was

left to the teams that they had the option to pay you or not pay you. Right. And so, and then they can replace you. So like Drew Steckenreiter was replaced on the roster by Rowanis Elias, as I recall. But they don't want you to do shenanigans. They don't want you to be able to do, say, what the Mariners did where they rejiggered their rotation a little bit and then be able to replace the guy later because he has already pitched and then can't go. Anyway, so that is the news. All right. Well, unless you have any further thoughts on the Mariners and their negative fun differential, I do have a history minute to end on.

Please. I don't know what to call this segment. We need a name for this. Today's episode number in baseball history. I don't know. We'll workshop it. Yeah. We're taking suggestions here. historian, saber writer, and author of Strike Four, which is a great book from a few years ago

about the evolution of baseball with a focus on the 19th century and rules and how they developed. So he sent us this little excerpt for 1857, which was a big year in baseball, a landmark year. And Richard has actually written a Sabre Journal piece about that, which I will link here. But there was a big convention in 1857, a watershed moment in baseball history. Some people pinpoint 1857 as the origin of modern organized baseball, just because a lot of teams, 16 teams got together and they hammered out some rules. A lot of teams, 16 teams got together and they hammered out some rules. And that was when you went from like first team to 21 runs, wins to nine innings and other aspects of modern recognized baseball were cemented then. But that is not what he sent us here.

He sent us a little episode from 1857 of ungentlemanly behavior by spectators. 1857 of ungentlemanly behavior by spectators. So there was a game on August 28th, 1857, two Brooklyn clubs, the Niagara and the Excelsior, they matched up in Brooklyn and it was a high scoring game as many games at that time tended to be. It ended up being 36 to 12 in favor of the Excelsiors, but there was a distraction which was caused by the fans, the rooters at this game, who were not behaving well. So there is a little newspaper piece here, and I will link to the sources as always, but this was unbylined or filed by someone who was going by the nom de plume of Tempest Fugit, Time Flies, and wrote, some of the Niagara's friends did not behave as gentlemen should. Whenever the Excelsiors were about to strike, such remarks as shanks, Shanghai, and other words not quite as

decent as the above were heard. Now, I have no idea really what shanks meant as an insult. It's like a lower leg. I don't know if that was, I assume that was slang for something else. And Shanghai is a word. I don't know whether that is the same definition that we would have today, which is like the idea of tricking someone or doing something underhanded, maybe. Which I think is a turn of phrase that has fallen out of favor. I would think probably yes, for probably obvious reasons. But this was a period, I guess, appropriate in that time and in that context, but not so appropriate by modern standards. But they were yelling stuff, some of which I understand and some of which I do not, and most of which we would not hear people say today.

But of more practical effect, this article went on, In several instances, when the Excelsiors had the bat on their making a strike and reaching the first base, their ears would be saluted by the word foul sung out in a loud tone by one of the Niagara's friends. The consequence would be that the Excelsiors, thinking that it was the decision of the referee, would hasten back. No sooner would he get halfway to the home base when the pitcher of the Niagara's would send the ball to the first base. And the consequence was that the Excelsior was out. So some of the people,

not in the stands, I'm sure there weren't stands at the time, but standing by watching this game, they were yelling foul so that the batsman was thinking that it was a foul ball and then went back to the plate and then was easily thrown out at first. So this is like, I don't know, someone yelling, I got it or something, right? And the fielder thinking that someone else had claimed the ball. But this account went on, common politeness at least required some effort on the part of the Niagara Club to stop such proceedings, but they were looked to in vain. Now, this call, the outsiders, the observers call a foul would be a feature of the game for years to come.

But there was some question of who exactly was acting so ungentlemanly. So Jonathan Shields, president of the Niagara Club, wrote in a rebuttal and said, the Niagara came from Brooklyn with nine members who went to play the match and none of their friends were with them. That yelling and hooting took place, I don't deny, but it was friends of the Excelsiors. So he's saying it wasn't our supporters. It was supporters of their team. Now we had another rebuttal by F.H. Cowperthwaite, the captain of the Excelsiors. F.H. Cowperthwaite, the captain of the Excelsiors. F.H. Cowperthwaite. Amazing.

Wrote in to say, your correspondent is mistaken in saying that either the Niagara's or their friends treated us unfairly. They acted as gentlemen on every occasion. And the hooting spoken of by Tempest Fugit was made by outsiders, enemies of both clubs. So, Richard says, sadly, the mystery of the identity of the Hooters remains unsolved. Fortunately, the problem seldom arises today. Fans, but rarely, calling out players as shanks. However, they do often call them other things, but we're accustomed to that. At that time, it was seen, I think, as somewhat unusual to even have large crowds showing up to these games.

At first when that happened, they were like, who are these people? They're not playing in the game. Why are they watching us play? But this was, I guess, the- What are you doing here? Why are you here in this place we built for you to watch us? This is real weird. Right.

And then eventually they figured out, oh, people like watching this. Maybe we can sell them tickets. And the rest was history. But this, I guess, was the origin of people just standing by and hooting and hollering things and maybe even interfering with the game at times. So we don't know whether it was supporters of the Niagara's or the Excelsior's or neither. quarters of the Niagara's or the Excelsior's or neither. But someone was shouting disruptive remarks and even pretending that a foul ball had been hit to disrupt the play. Just a bunch of cranks out there and they've never gone away.

I mean, they're persistent, those cranks. And that was a term I think for baseball fans was cranks at the time. But now we would use that in a different context as well. Anyway, thanks for the history minute or whatever we actually end up calling this. All right. I'll leave you with a little etymology here in case anyone was wondering about sticky wicket. Here's what Wikipedia says. Wicket has several meanings in cricket.

In this case, it refers to the rectangular area, also known as the pitch, in the center of the cricket field between the stumps. The wicket is usually covered in a much shorter grass than the rest of the field or entirely bare, making it susceptible to variations in weather, which in turn cause the ball to bounce differently. If rain falls and the wicket becomes wet, the ball may not bounce predictably, making it very difficult for the batter. the ball may not bounce predictably, making it very difficult for the batter. Furthermore, as the pitch dries, conditions can change swiftly, with spin bowling being especially devastating as the ball can deviate laterally from straight by several feet. Once the wet surface begins to dry in a hot sun, the ball will rise sharply, steeply, and erratically. A good-length ball becomes a potential lethal delivery. Most batters on such wickets found it virtually impossible to survive, let alone score. Certain cricketers developed reputations for their

outstanding abilities to perform on sticky wickets. So that is why that is used as a metaphor for a difficult circumstance. Also, as for Shanghai or Shanghai-ing, it originally was the practice of kidnapping people to serve as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. So in the 1850s, that term joined the lexicon, along with the words crimping and sailor thieves. So the 1850s was when that quote came from. That term had just become popularized seemingly because Shanghai was a common destination of the ships with abducted crews. So they'd say that they were sailing to Shanghai, and then it expanded just to mean kidnapped or induced to do something by means of fraud or coercion.

So evidently the original meaning may not have been pejorative, but maybe best avoided nonetheless. As for shank, I really don't know. Hopefully it doesn't mean something horrible. I don't think it's the shank as in golf shanking. A poorly played shot that seems to have come along later. It can mean crooked or to send off without ceremony. Your guess is as good as mine. Also wanted to mention on our last episode, I noted that there

was an incident of an umpire being caught on the PA mic talking to another umpire and seemingly not saying anything very interesting. And we lamented that there had not been something juicier overheard. Well, there have been a couple more instances that made me think of that. There was one report that on June 1st, the home plate ump with his mic still accidentally on had told Adam Duvall that he is having a good hair day. As it turned out, it seems to have been the PA person or someone the PA person was talking to who had entered the PA room and they said you had a good hair day. And that was broadcast to everyone. So that seemingly was not actually the umpire.

Then there was a case of umpire Tom Hallion, he of Ass in the Jackpot fame, being overheard saying, once I send it to New York, it's their fucking call. He was talking to one of the benches about a replay review. But I'm pretty sure that was just caught on the TV mic, not on the umpire's mic. However, there was one more case, again involving Hallion, who can't seem to avoid being overheard. And this was a legitimate one. He put in the earbud as he was preparing to make a call over the PA. And then the earbud fell out of his ear and frustrated. He said something aloud with the mic on. And both the fansbud fell out of his ear and frustrated. He said something loud with the

mic on and both the fans and the broadcasters enjoyed it. And now you can enjoy it. Here it is. So, the replay review is underway. My son of a bitch. Our fires are wired up to sound, so we're getting all of them up here. All right, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks while also allowing us to stay ad free.

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It's a shame.