Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1858: The Fan Who Knew Too Much

Episode Date: June 4, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Joe Girardi’s firing and where the Phillies go from here, the Astros’ Yordan Alvarez extension, the dip in DH offense, and the trade deadline, then answer listener emails about MLB.TV highlights, the upside of ignoring playoff odds, getting plunked on a full count, things that haven’t happened in […]

But I don't wanna stay down here, I wanna be free! Wobbly, so wobbly, I've been feeling wobbly, real wobbly I'm just kinda lovely, alone-y, cause now I can find the truth of me And if you think you love me, take warning, don't get too attached to that one. Make us stop, we're feeling wobbly. So wobbly, hope you're feeling wobbly. Hello and welcome to episode 1858 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

I'm feeling pretty well. How are you? I'm fine as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm feeling pretty well. How are you? I'm fine. Doing fine. Neither of us has lost our jobs today, which puts us in a better position than Mr. Joseph Girardi. His squid is fried. We talked on our last episode about Girardi's chair being wobbly. And in between that episode and this one, it toppled all the way over. Yep.

He's gone sprawling on the floor. Joe Girardi has been dismissed as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. Yeah, keeping up his radio appearances despite his firing. That's good. Got something to fall back on. Something to keep him busy. He'll be back in the broadcast booth in no time, I'm sure. Right. And, you know, because of how these things seem to go,

probably wouldn't rule him out for making another managerial run at some point. No, not at all. Yeah. So we talked about everything that ails the Phillies last time, so we don't have to rehash the whole segment, which was probably pretty depressing for Phillies fans, but I guess baseball life in general

is probably pretty depressing for Phillies fans these days. guess baseball life in general is probably pretty depressing for Phillies fans these days. And I don't know whether dismissing Joe Girardi helps in that respect. I was going to say, do you think this solves any of those problems we identified? I don't think it solves the problems. I think sometimes a manager can become a locus of fan anger, whether it's truly the manager's fault or not or what the manager's contribution to the disappointing season is. Sometimes the manager, you know, they're the public face. They're out there.

They're making the moves. They're filling out the lineup cards. It's not necessarily their fault if the people whose names are on the lineup cards are not hitting or fielding or the right people are not pitching. But they're the figurehead. They're the person who's out there on the front whose name is sort of on the stationary, I suppose. So they're a public face of the franchise. And therefore, maybe on some level, it is satisfying to see the person who signaled for the reliever who came in to blow the game, even if it's really the reliever's fault for blowing the game. Jojo already put them there, although ultimately maybe Dave Dabrowski put them there. So it doesn't really solve the problem on any fundamental level. Will the Phillies play a bit better from this point forward than they did up to that point? Maybe, probably, right? I don't think they've dramatically underperformed because I think they

were probably the expectation was that they would be a 500-ish team yet again, and that if some things went their way, then maybe that could lead to a playoff appearance in a 12-team playoff format. But 22-29, it's not a wild, drastic underperformance, but they've lost ugly a lot lately. Just generally, the team as constructed as we spoke about, not the most aesthetically pleasing brand of baseball. And then they've also had a bunch of really tough losses lately, which presumably is what did Girardi in. So maybe it's satisfying on some knee-jerk, reflexive, immediate level. But then maybe the despair sets in again because he realized that there's a new manager in charge, but the roster is the same. And the new manager isn't even a new addition, really. It's Rob Thompson, the former bench coach, who's now going to be the interim manager.

So does that actually address any of the deficiencies that got the Phillies to this point? Eh, I kind of doubt it. And that isn't to say that he was perfect as a manager or even above average as we grade these things with all the great accuracy that we were able to bring to bear on assessing managerial performance. But yes, it does feel like this is part of your job description when you get hired as a manager and perhaps the part of your job description that you hope you never have to really do. But sometimes you're the sacrificial lamb because it's not like they're gonna you know they're not gonna cut any of their recent free agents on you so that's not gonna help you know i don't know what the solution is gonna be you could i guess you can say at nick castellanos and gail shore we're like be better defenders but like is that gonna help probably not no yeah so

dave dombrowski said it has been a frustrating season for us up until this point as we feel that our club has not played up to its capabilities. This is the Phillies president of baseball operations. While all of us share the responsibility for the shortcomings, I felt that a change was needed and that a new voice in the clubhouse would give us the best chance to turn things around. I believe we have a talented group that can get back on track. And I'm confident that Rob, with his experience and familiarity with our club, is the right man to lead us going forward. So it's a new voice in the clubhouse. It's a change. It's sort of a surface-level change because there's a lot more change that needs to happen. Back to Dombrowski, who was not gifted with an ideal situation when he took over in the first place.

And even the situation he walked into in Boston where they had prospects, at least they had a farm system. Yes, some of it was him just throwing money around, which can be a useful skill for a GM. But he also had some prospects to deal. And with the Phillies, he didn't really even have that arrow in his quiver. And with the Phillies, he didn't really even have that arrow in his quiver. So he had to sign some free agents and sign some players to an extension move. But that just has not been enough. And you don't really bring in Dave Dombrowski at this point in his career for a full scale rebuild. And he probably would not want to sign up for that either. So they were hoping that he could paper over the cracks, and that just hasn't happened. So Joe Girardi, during his not-so-distinguished tenure, two-plus season tenure, and one of those was a shortened season, as the Phillies manager, he finishes 132 and 141. So, look, it's just so dependent on the roster that you have. And he's been dismissed after winning the Manager of the Year award in Florida, right? So he's had the ups, he's downs, he's won a World Series, he's

had losing teams. It's so dependent on the talent and the context. And you really have no further to look than Gabe Kapler, I guess, for an example of that, right? Who didn't last a long time in Philly and didn't have a distinguished record himself. And then he goes to San Francisco and suddenly he's the managerial genius who's getting more out of all the players. So it's just it's so dependent on the fit and the players that you have and the front office that you work with. And so I don't think this addresses any of the deeper roots of the problem here. No. And, you know, I think that on the one hand, you can look at Kapler's success in San Francisco and say, well, this just, you know, proves that he was a better manager than he was given the tools to succeed with. In Philly, you can also say that, like, you know, he maybe adapted his managerial style having learned some things from philly so it's it's always kind of a complicated soup like on the one hand capler is working with a team that seems to do a better job of getting the most they can out of players who either you know they've identified as being sort of underperforming and fixable or whose careers have been good and who they've been

able to help adapt and then lengthen. I will say that like dealing with the myriad platoons that they run in San Francisco requires some kind of managerial skill, right? Like, I mean, he's being given information by the front office, but executing that still takes some doing. So there's that. But I don't know. Managers are important.

How much? You know, some. clean slate, everything's going to be great. Maybe there are occasional situations where it seems like really the manager poured fuel on the fire. You have your Bobby Valentine in Boston sort of situations where it just seems like that's not a good fit and that maybe the manager actually did some significant number of wins. In this case, I don't know. It doesn't seem like Girardi was maximizing the talent or getting more out of this team than was there to begin with. But there are just a lot of other issues that persist even after his dismissal. It is almost surprising at this point to see a manager dismissed at this point in the season because we haven't seen that

in a while. It wouldn't have been unusual at earlier times in baseball history, but I believe the last time a manager was changed, was fired at midseason was 2018. The Cardinals fired Mike Matheny after 93 games in July. For the most part, when we have seen changes lately, we've seen offseason changes or maybe just for the last few games of the season changes. So a midstream change that almost feels out of step with the way that managers work with front offices now, where it's that they're usually moving in lockstep. that wasn't the case here because Dombrowski inherited Joe Girardi when Dombrowski was hired in late 2020, which maybe made him more dispensable in Dombrowski's mind here. The firing of Girardi or the failures of Girardi or perceived failures did not necessarily reflect on Dombrowski himself. So maybe that's part of it because usually it's, well, you go through this exhaustive interview process with the manager and you hire someone who is on the same page in most respects. And then you're constantly in communication and you're meeting.

And the manager is largely in a lot of cases just working in concert with the front office or executing the front office's directives to some extent. And so there's almost no point in severing that limb because it's basically the same body. It's not like the manager is contravening some orders from above. They're kind of on the same page. And then once you remove the manager, then there's no cover for the general manager. It's like the sacrificial person who is positioned in front of the GM. And then if things keep going bad, then people start saying, huh, well, they changed the manager. Right. And the team's still losing. So.

Right. And then you point the finger upstairs. Yeah. It's like, you know, there's that expression about you don't have to be able to run faster than the bear. You just have to be able to run faster than the guy behind you. Exactly. And it's like, that's true. Except, oh, no, there's another bear. Yeah.

Watch out for that other bear. Now there's no guy back there it's just you and the bear like what are you gonna do with that it would be better if like the cubs were really good for this like analogy to really work and they're like clawing at the phillies and they're the bears but no like it's it is kind of interesting to me because they don't well he didn't well didn't pick jojo already like they don't seem ideologically opposed to me in terms of the way they think about baseball. They seem like they probably understand the game in largely the same terms as one another. So in that respect, it's like, well, I didn't pick you, but we're not wildly different.

They wouldn't make a sitcom about us or anything like that. But yeah, I think it's doing something you know and it's sort of a bummer that i would be kind of cavalier about that because it's like yeah this is a person's job although i think joe gervardy's done fine for himself i think i think joe will be fine but you know i guess the the risk that you do run in these situations is doing this and then like losing the clubhouse or really disrupting what you've got going on. But as we have discussed, it doesn't seem like the vibes are amazing to begin with. So there's that piece of it.

It's very rarely the manager's fault, as you said. fault, as you said. And like when there is an obvious identifiable issue with the manager, simply getting rid of them and not addressing larger, you know, potential front office dysfunction or what have you, isn't really going to do a whole lot. And I'm not saying that there's necessarily like front office dysfunction here, but as you said, because there's so often a tie between them, it's like, well, so it's just like your press secretary. That's a dismissive way to talk about a manager, but you know what I mean? It's like you're the front facing person of the organization. If the rest of the org is still committed to vibes and no defense, then what are you going to do with that? And there's been a lot of turnover in the front office too, but again,

there's only so much you can do without that turnover on the roster or without underperforming players starting to perform as expected or overperform at this point. So no, it's not Girardi's fault that the Phillies have not been able to develop a great homegrown, talented core. It's not really Girardi's fault that they haven't had a great bullpen, that Dave Dabrowski, whoever could have foreseen that he might not assemble the strongest bullpen ever assembled. So he was handed a set of players and perhaps he did not make them into more than the sum of their parts or even the sum of their parts. There's something less than the sum of their parts perhaps, but hopefully it was cathartic for Phillies fans to have at least the illusion of change, the appearance of change, some surface change. And coaching assistant Bobby Meacham was also dismissed. And Rob Thompson, as he was promoted to interim manager, the quality assurance coach, Mike Colitri, was promoted to bench coach. Now, that guy, his job is to assure quality. That has not happened. So you'd think his head would roll too. You know, it's not that type of quality control. It would be nice if you could have a coach who just assured that your team was good, just quality control. Yeah, that sounds easy. That's more about the process of planning and advanced scouting and positioning and such. Anyway, a little change there. Sorry, Phillies fans, that you are going through what you are going through.

I hope for your sake that this helps somehow. Yeah. I mean, if nothing else, I hope it gives you something else to think about for 24 hours. Yep. So in other baseball news, we had an extension signed, right? Yeah. Seemingly, reportedly, Jordan Alvarez has been signed by the Astros to a six-year, $115 million extension, it sounds like. And I know that he was the subject of one of Dan Cymborski's recent Fangraphs posts about candidates for extensions. And that was well chosen, obviously. extensions. And that was well chosen, obviously. I think Dan had put his estimate at seven years,

128 million. Same sort of ballpark, it seems like. In the neighborhood. Yeah. So Dan wrote, you've already struck out with one of your outfielders. Why not go after another one? Alvarez isn't quite as well-rounded as Tucker is, but I think he's even more interesting in terms of pure offensive talent. If 2021 erased any worrying lingering injury issues, then 2022 should be doing that for any concern that Alvarez would have trouble with a de-juiced ball. Despite that juice being gone, he's still crushing the pulp that remains. And even our least optimistic projections for him now has him finishing with more home runs than 2021. And it's true. Like. Looking at Alvarez, he has really raked his entire career. Last year was a down year. He still hit 33 dingers.

Going back to 2019, minimum 1,000 plate appearances, there is one major league hitter who has been better than Jordan Alvarez, and that's Mike Trout. Mike Trout has a 177 WRC plus since 2019. Alvarez has 156. That is above Juan Soto at 154 or Fernando Tatis Jr. at 153 or Aaron Judge at 152 or former Astro George Springer at 148 or Bryce Harper at 147. He is absolutely on the short list of one of the very best players in baseball, at least hitters in baseball. We don't talk about him and obsess over him as much as we do some of the other players I just named because he is a more one-dimensional player, but that dimension is superlative. He is better at that dimension than just about anyone. So I can see why the Astros would want to stay in the Jordan Alvarez business. They're not a young team and they've let a lot of people go. They haven't been big players on the free agent market. They've been more active when it comes to extensions. But Alvarez, he's 24, which, wow, 24.

You think of him, at least I think of him as being older, I guess, because he's been so good and he came up young. And maybe because he's had like multiple knee injuries and he's just giant. And I think of him as just like being in an older body, I guess. Yeah. So maybe it is in terms of wear and tear. But I don't think there should be much concern about him over the period covered by this extension. I guess when does this run through? Because he was-

2028. All right. So yeah, that's not a long time. So he'll still be fairly young at that point. Yeah, he would have been, he would have become a free agent following the 2025 season and now it will run through 2028.

And so, yeah, he's just just he's a very satisfying hitter to watch right yeah he gets on base he hits for power like his you know his speed is what it is he's never gonna like he has one career stone base he has one you know he knows what his strikes are and he does that stuff really well and he doesn't make silly choices out there when it comes to base running. And you're right that it redounds to the Astros' benefit to keep him at DH for as many of their games as they can and to not really have to suffer him and left as often as possible. But he's just such a great hitter.

He's just a tremendous hitter to watch. He strikes out less than 20 he's walking 13 of the time this year he's a 172 wrc plus like he's just he's just been great he's you know he's a it's funny to say this because he is known for being able to just hit the the snot out of the baseball um what little snot the baseball will allow these days. But I think because we are in a depressed offensive environment, like everybody's home run totals are kind of surprising to me this year in both directions, right?

It's remarkable that Aaron Judge has 19 and that Betts has 16. And it's wild that some of the guys who have managed to put up like reasonably big totals in the past are uh kind of quiet when it comes to to their homes home runs this year and you know there's your don alvarez like with 14 he's he's doing great so i think that this is an easy one i think because it is not simply power that like there is a you know a really nice complete package here when it comes to his approach to the play. You imagine that that might age well, even as he continues to be less and less playable in the field. Yeah, he's not totally unplayable there now. He's a below average outfielder, obviously, and you want to minimize the strain on his already surgically repaired knees. But you could stick him out there. They do sometimes, and he won't completely embarrass himself. He might be an upgrade for the Phillies in the corners. Let's put it that way.

So he's listed at 6'5", 225. I would believe the over on either of those. Like if you told me he was taller than that, he certainly looks taller than that. He just looms at the plate. He's very intimidating. taller than that. He just, he looms at the plate. He's very intimidating. I guess he turns 25 later this month, which is maybe why I was somewhat surprised that he is still 24. But even so, like Dan's projections for him, he's projected to be a greater than four win player for the next couple of seasons and an above average player more than two war through 2029. And that's hard to do

for a player who is largely relegated to DH and probably will be more and more as time goes on. But you have to really rake in order to be limited to DH and still project as a above average to very good player. And he does. He does. So that is what you want out of a player who only hits. You want someone who hits as well as Jordan Alvarez, and almost no one does. Yeah. I think that we tend to mentally over-penalize DH-only guys in terms of value because of what we see war telling us. And I think there's an argument that we could have that is probably overdue about how much our positional adjustments penalize DH, but like really good DH is that's just hard to do. It's really hard to do that. And I know that he doesn't DH full time and, you know, they,

they have him out and left on occasion, but like, he's just a really great hitter. And I think that we should allow ourselves to appreciate those guys and sort of be a little more generous in terms of how much we're mentally penalizing them for the fact that they're not able to do the other part like that stuff obviously matters and i think that when you're constructing a value metric like it makes sense to you know reward a guy who can play a defensive position well or you know play a hard defensive position well more than a guy who can only hit but like when you can really hit you can really hit you know and a hard defensive position well more than a guy who can only hit but like when you can really hit you can really hit you know and those runs count the same so yeah i was

gonna bring up the lack of just big hairy monsters at dh these days because dhs have now sorry now i'm envisioning like the abominable snowman from um rudolph theNosed Reindeer. As long as it's not Olaf from Frozen, that's fine with me. He's not big and hairy. He is neither big nor hairy. That is why he's so disturbed. You don't like him because he's smooth like one of those hypoallergenic cats? Don't get me started. To be clear, we're talking about Olaf, not your Nana Alvarez.

I cannot speak to how hirsute he is. I do not know. Yeah. But DHs as a whole have not hit that well this year. They have a 102 WRC+. So that is one of the worst DH performances on record. Fangraphs has these positional splits going back to 2002. The only years with less DH production prior to this one are 2020, which makes sense because no one even knew that there was going to be a universal DH that year.

And then 2017 and 2013. I mean, there is some fluctuation in this from year to year, especially because in the past it was largely only one league that had DHs at all. So it's not super surprising, I guess, that this would not be a high watermark for DH offense because it's expanded to every team now and every team has to fill that slot with ADH or DHs. And as we have discussed, there seem to be fewer dedicated DHs these days and teams will use those slots on the roster

and in the lineup to cycle players through and get position players more rest. There's a lot more attention paid to load management and positional flexibility and all of that. But it is pretty rare these days to have a DH who hits like the prototypical ideal DH. Your David Ortiz, your Jordan Alvarez. How dare you not name the most obvious DH choice there, Ben? Who? Who is the award named after? Excuse you, sir.

I was going to say Nelson Cruz, but he's not holding up his end of the bargain this year. Are you only picking players who are currently or very recently active? There we go. Okay. Players who are currently or very recently active. Yes. But yes, it is a position that has, despite offense sort of being the game for them, not produced the way that you might expect. It's very cruel that Father Time has decided to catch up to Nelson Cruz.

Yes. Apologies to sliding Edgar. Thank you. I did not mean to. But yeah, Nelson Cruz has seemingly been felled by father time, perhaps finally. I don't know. I hate to count him out. But he is leading the majors in plate appearances at DH, and he has not done a lot in them. And then you have Shohei Otani, who was not hit like he did last year. JD Martinez, who is certainly doing his part, he is hitting. And then you have Miguel Cabrera. You have Bryce Harper.

Now he's boosting the numbers. He was not even supposed to be a DH, but he has had 162 plate appearances in the DH spot. But then you have Daniel Foklbach. You have Franmil Reyes. You have Andrew McCutcheon. You have Luke Voigt. There are some talented bats here,

but yes, a lot of them have not performed up to snuff. And so you have basically league average offense out of your DHs. And probably everyone was scrambling to fill that slot because we assumed that there was going to be a universal DH this season. But we didn't know. Yeah. We didn't even know if there was going to be a season until fairly shortly before it started. So some people probably did not have time to put plans into place. Anyway, Alvarez signed. I'll just read off the names of the other players whom Dan suggested should be signed to long-term deals since he called Alvarez. He also had Walker Bueller on his list,

Brandon Woodruff, Pete Alonso, Harrison Bader, Raphael Devers, Louisa Ries. Love Louisa Ries. What a season she's having. Oh, man. So much fun. Zach Gallin, and he had a separate post. He had more candidates of potential extension players. Vlad Guerrero Jr., and Dylan Cease, and Julio Rodriguez, and Tyler Stevenson, and Andres Jimenez, and also Shane McClanahan. So a range there of positions and service time and such.

But Dan usually has a pretty good sense for projecting these things and getting the contract in kind of the right vicinity. So read Dan. I will link to those posts if you are interested. And I know he just wrote also a little trade deadline preview too. He did. I guess people are starting to talk about that. We still have two months to go almost until the trade deadline post on june 3rd and then pass in round one that had like 148 names apparently and then i felt like we had shirked we had we had failed in our responsibility jd martinez has a 474 babbitt right now what's up with that that's weird someone should write about that i might i might bother someone who writes it the website i work for to take a peek at that because 474 it's true it's june 3rd we're writing

about the trade pipeline already that's a long time to be doing that yeah yeah it's uh it's weird out there i guess yeah so you know one of the other names that you mentioned i'm gonna say a nice thing about a mariner because we've been kind of we've been kind of down on them because they've been bad and i feel like that makes our mariner fan listeners uh kind of bummed out so i will say the following which is that um you know i picked an arbitrary date just like april 23rd because then he'd been up for like two weeks you know that that since april 23rd julio rodriguez is sitting 308 353 487 he7. He's 151 WRC+. You lop off those two bad early weeks, and it's been going better. Still feel dicey about the breaking ball recognition,

but it hasn't been a problem so far. Yeah, the umpires have been treating him a bit better perhaps. A bit, a bit, yeah. If you are the Mariners, follow Dan's advice and try to sign that man to an extension while you still can. A bit. A bit. Yeah. pretty conclusively. I suppose he could always get overruled or bowled over by an offer, but that seems like something that ESPN was trying to make happen more than it was actually organically arising or was going to happen. So if we do not have Soto on the trade market, the other names that Dan mentioned, J.D. Martinez, Frankie Montas, Luis Castillo, Martin Perez, whom we discussed last time, Andrew Benintendi, David Peralta, and I guess we'll link to Passan's list if you want many,

many more. So we'll have time to see how the market is shaping up. I'm not there yet mentally. No, it's not time. I mean, it's fine. It's a fine time. It's just two months, you know? Yeah. That's longer than they've been playing already at this point it's it's just two months you know yeah that's uh that's longer than they've been playing already at this point we're not even two months into the season so two months from now it's longer to get there than it took to get here so we can wait a little longer yeah all right i mean the demands of traffic uh are are imperatives but people were asking dan about the deadline in his chat and so he said, I will answer the people because Dan, he's a man of the people.

The market is still shaping up. It's still developing. All right. Let's answer some emails. Here's one from Martin who says, I thought I was alone in my frustration of seeing the same 14 walk-offs shuffled in a loop between innings of every MLB TV game I watch, as well as that guitar riff. When Meg brought this up around opening day, I was walking my dog listening to the pod and I literally shouted, oh my god, me too, or something. So deep ran the identification. But generally, I have some sympathy for MLB TV's predicament here.

What to do? By the way, I do enjoy baseball zen. So do we. I don't know if you were watching the YouTube game on Wednesday, but for the night game, which involved the Dodgers, they made the choice to just show the highlights for the same two teams from the night before, which I thought was pretty intelligent. So that sparked an idea. What if MLB TV kept the memorable highlights concept but came up with highlights from all baseball history that stem from games involving the two teams you are currently watching. So if you're watching a Pirates-Cubs game, you could catch a glimpse of, who knows, Fergie Jenkins facing Willie Stargell,

young Barry Bonds versus young Greg Maddox. If it's Angels versus Brewers, you might have Doug DeCensee versus Moose Haas, or Garrett Anderson versus Ben Sheets. Okay, maybe a little less exciting. Some of these would be memorable playoff matchups or walk-offs of course. The main problem with the flashbacks is that they're never fresh and seem to misfire in their aim of wallowing in MLB history so many are from the current year anyway.

My solution kind of gets the best of both worlds of exposing fans to unknown footage and indulging in baseball history which has always been one of the things MLB is best at. MLB would have to hire a couple people to work on this, but I think it would be worth it. What say you about this suggestion? I like it very much. I mean, it might be a little technically tricky to pull off, but like, I really don't think that we're making as good a use of the vast archive we have as we could. There's been so much cool baseball.

And I think that there are a lot of people, particularly younger people, who have heard tell of things but haven't had the opportunity to see it necessarily. And so I think that using that space to really bring some new highlights to the fore would be, I think that'd be pretty cool. I think people would see stuff that they were like, oh yeah, that.

I had heard tell of that. Yeah, I'd like that too. I guess it wouldn't work for every matchup of teams because you have teams that maybe haven't been around that long or don't have history with each other. But I think it would be interesting. I would like to see it. I don't know how much has been digitized and would be available. So if you're limiting your sample to games between the two teams who are currently playing and you want to do that for every team that's playing on a given night, I don't know how demanding that would be and whether you'd need to get people to pop in the old tapes and turn them into files that you could play on MLB TV.

I don't know what the mechanics of that would be, but in general, I like the idea. I'm all for deepening the pool and widening the pool when it comes to potential highlights and just getting a broader swath of baseball history involved there and just more variety. So if you want to make it specific to the teams, great. And if you have a rivalry series,

maybe that's more exciting than if you don't and you have teams that don't have a lot of history or animosity or anything, memorable moments between them, but it's okay. I would still enjoy it. I would still just prefer that to what we have now, just the small sample and the endless repetition. Yeah. Although I haven't seen the guitar riff interstitial in months, moons. Most people who read fan graphs or listen to Effectively Wild are aware of the playoff odds that have 15 teams with an under 20% chance of making the playoffs as of June 1st. Those people may be appropriately concerned about a lack of excitement down the stretch. But for the casual fan who looks at the standings and sees, for example, that the Mariners are only five games out of a wildcard spot, there's still plenty of hope that this could finally be the year they end their long playoff drought, even though the Fangraphs odds have them at 11.4% to make the playoffs when this was written. The same could be true for fans of the Arizona Diamondbacks, just three and a half games out of a wildcard spot, despite their 2.2% chance to make the playoffs. And the Colorado Rockies, just five games out, despite their 0.2% chance.

Perhaps the more uninformed baseball fan is lucky in this way. They have more hope. And yeah, we've touched on this before, the idea that maybe we know too much. Too much. Yeah. Maybe we would be happier if we had some blissful ignorance, or I don't even want to call it ignorance, but maybe we're just, we're too online. We're too plugged into the playoff odds. If our engagement were shallower, that sounds sad too. We sound condescending and snooty no matter what we say here.

Oh, okay. Here's one. This maybe is better. If our interests were more diverse and so were spread across a greater range of activities. Okay. Sure. Yeah. If we were less online. I try so hard to be less

online. I know you do. I'm trying really hard. I have to be online some some of the online is good. I like talking to our readers. They're often delightful and our listeners of the show are great. But a lot of the online is bad. I think there's something to the idea of being able to engage some and be done at some. To be able to look at the standings and say, it's only two games. There's a lot of season left. I hear they're talking about the trade deadline. Those people are crazy. There's so much season left.

That kind of thing. I do think that to be a fan is often to i mean maybe not for mariners fans just to honor the email but like you know to be a fan is to be optimistic yeah and to and to think that you're guys who aren't very good or better or about to turn things around and that your guys who are good are great you know i think that that's part of our often our experience of fandom and so to believe that you know it wouldn't take very much you just take a a little run all i need is to go on a little run and then they'll be right in this thing like i think that there is something to that and so i wonder not that that we have been too harsh on

the format i still think that there are problems with the format and i think even a a fan who isn't tremendously engaged right who is fairly casual in in terms of how they interact with the standings like they they might look at the number of games back and think well that's a surmountable challenge but they are probably aware of like how many other teams are ahead of the team in question right like even casual fans will be like well there's a lot of teams in the al that are like kind of in this thing you know and so they might have a a sense of where their team is in terms of relative position even if they aren't you know obsessively checking our playoff odds but i do think that like how big a challenge and how achievable a goal it is to just overcome all of that is probably altered pretty meaningfully based on what you look at and what you listen to

and i do think though i do think the place where this line of thinking is perhaps vulnerable is in terms of talk radio because i think that like there can be a lot of doom and gloom and if you're like a casual fan that just listens to like drive time sports talk radio and you're like in philadelphia you probably think that the phillies are in danger of being relegated so you know it's not as if you go and look at the standings and that is the only media you consume even if you're not an obsessive like you you're still gonna be subject to an information ecosystem that probably gives you some hint that like not everything's going great in seattle except for that julio let me tell you about him yeah if you can look at the standings and you're within a week of being in a playoff position, if you won all your games and the teams ahead of you lost all their games, you can talk yourself into it.

Fandom is irrational and sometimes it can be irrationally pessimistic. But sometimes it can also be irrationally optimistic too. So I don't think that it's necessarily worse and in some ways it might be better to unplug to some degree and watch the games and look around the league and monitor the standings, but not check the playoff odds as often as we do. Come to your own conclusions, assuming that you don't have money riding on it or anything. There are no stakes if you're wrong. And if you enjoy things that way, we've definitely talked about that in the past. And I think there is something to be said for that. And most baseball fans do enjoy things and experience the game that way. So I think if there is even the superficial appearance of parody and of contention, I think that's a good thing.

Right. Even if we might look at a certain team and say, no chance. If their fans are looking at them and saying chance, I guess that's a good thing in a lot of ways. Yeah. Now, I do think that we need to be mindful that the feeling of your team having a chance is not necessarily something that remains static. And part of why we were nervous about the expanded field is that we were concerned that it would you know reduce the incentive to try because you can get in with fewer wins now that incentive compounding over time might result in more teams kind of looking the same and all being close and it

might also result in some teams that are just like really god-awful and then their fans are gonna have a hard time being like well we're in it and that's gonna be like no you're this year's i don't know pick a pick a team you're this year's nationals yeah yeah who can up at the reds now ben did you know that no longer the worst record in baseball yeah pretty bad the reds okay all right question from jacob patreon supporter last night mike trout had a full count when he was hit by a pitch in the ninth Worst record in baseball. Yeah, pretty bad. Paid for the Reds. Okay. All right. Question from Jacob, Patreon supporter. Last night, Mike Trout had a full count when he was hit by a pitch in the ninth inning. Yeah. My wife said he should get two bases.

That pitch would have been ball four, and also it hit him. Oh. I'd never thought about that, and I think she's right. It doesn't seem fair that the batter gets nothing for being hit by the pitch that would have been ball four. Your thoughts? Well, that's hard to argue, isn't it? I mean, we don't really have any two-base things, though. We've talked about whether it just should be two bases as a baseline,

or maybe if you get hit in a certain spot, it should be two bases. Like your glass ass. Maybe. If you get hit in your certain spot, it should be two bases. Like your glass ass. Maybe. You get hit in your glass ass, you get three bases. But this one is just – We're going to have to do a glass ass t-shirt one. Oh, yeah, probably. Yeah, we've considered something that might incorporate that idea.

Yeah, we have. Stay tuned. But if you get hit on a 3-2 pitch, it sucks for you. It's a bummer because you can't, as you're trotting down to first and nursing whatever bruised body part just got hit, you can't say, well, I took one for the team. At least I got a free base out of this because if you had gotten out of the way, then you still would have gotten that base. Yeah. So that's not good, but I don't know whether it's fair to penalize pitchers more for that just because it came on 3-2. It would be a pretty dramatic increase in odds of scoring to afford someone to give them, to essentially award them a double for having been hit by a pitch in a count that would have led to a walk. That's a big shift, right?

Doesn't that seem like maybe as unfair as it feels that you aren't really getting exactly what you want? Like that's a big, that's a lot. That's a lot of stuff. Right, and I don't know that that's fair to the batters who get hit earlier in the count. It still hurts just as much, no matter, at least physically, maybe psychologically, it hurts you more if you were hit and you know that

you could have gotten that base even if you had gotten out of the way of that ball. But I don't know that it's fair to assess a steeper penalty on the pitcher. If you hit the batter, then it should probably be the same penalty and the same disincentive regardless of what the count is. I don't know. It's tough. I would feel bad for the hitter. Maybe they should like get a pizza party or something. Just like get a little bonus in their paycheck.

I don't know. I want to do something for the batter who gets plunked on 3-2. It's rough, but I don't know that it actually merits an extra base i want to preface this by saying this is an incredibly rudimentary way of thinking about this but ben did you know that fan graphs has a a win probability added inquirer tool right where you can yeah you can set the base situation and the inning and the outs and the run differential. And you can see like what does changing stuff do to the home and away teams win expectancy, right? So what I did is I just was like,

hey, let's say that we have the reality of the situation after Trout had walked in. Obviously, this isn't taking into account the particular batters or pitchers involved and it assumes a particular run environment, but we'll keep it simple. So on the one hand, we have the actual base situation following Trout getting hit by a pitch,

which is you had runners on first and second because Otani had walked earlier in this inning, and you have two outs, and you have a one-run run differential, which is very hard to say. That's hard to say, but that's our actual situation and in that moment in this stage of the game the home team's win expectancy is 85.9 no way teams is 14.1 now let's reimagine

it our new rule is in place so now you have runners on second and third because in order for mike trout to be on second base showy optane has to be on third base, right? Still two outs, still just a one run run differential. I'm going to keep saying it until it's easy. In that situation, the home team's win expectancy drops to 79.9 and the away team's win expectancy goes up to 20.1. I don't know what the number is I have in mind for how much an individual mistake on the part of the pitcher should sway the wind probability of a particular

moment. But this feels like too dramatic of a shift to me in my incredibly wonky, non-specific moment of description. So I think that it's too much, but it's too bad because there's not, this is where the, the you know the sort of brutish nature of baseball gets in the way because we can't we can't give like half a base you know yeah we can't be like this is worth one and a half bases

you get to stand in between first and second you're a mole man now congratulations like we don't have that capability you just have to be on a base or not like it's you know it's a binary state so that's too bad because yeah like poor Mike Trout he gets whacked it looked like it hurt so bad I was so angry at Clay Holmes who I really enjoy watching Clay Holmes is fantastic he has been great he great. He was the AL reliever of the month for May. Right? Fantastic. Ben wrote a great piece about him for us.

Clay Holmes is a joy. But he hit Mike Trout and I yelled, he should be in prison. Because Mike Trout looked like it really hurt. And, you know, sometimes stuff just really hurts for a second. And then sometimes Mike Trout is is gone for an entire season. I just had this moment. I was like, no, it can't be true. Then I think he was fine.

I will admit to overreacting. I will admit that my little rudimentary, how likely is the home team to win inquiry is, it's an indicator. It's not a particularly precise one it's just a way to think about it but it seems like too much so that's too bad i think the pitcher should just have to say sorry just more effusively sorry i hit you and really sorry that i hit you on three two yeah that stings i know it does but I wouldn't actually put anything in the rulebook, I don't think.

I don't think so either. But it's useful for us to be engaged with whether we think the scales are sort of equally balanced in these moments. And hopefully we do that using more sophisticated tools than I just did. All right. Question from Ethan, Patreon supporter. I'll cut right to the question. All right. Question from Ethan, Patreon supporter. I'll cut right to the question. What, could happen, but as far as I can tell, have not, at least in MLB. The list I came up with included the below. Combined perfect game. Zero strikeout, zero walk, no hitter for a single pitcher. A five homer game for a single player.

A five double game. A four triple game. Eight hits in a game in a nine-inning game, seven walks by a hitter, seven strikeouts by a hitter, 21 strikeouts, of course, by a pitcher. Some of these are simply records. For example, we have had a 20-strikeout game, so next on the list is 21. Others are just unique events. I'm curious if you can think of anything missing, and what, if any, of these you think is actually most likely to happen? Given changing pitcher usage, it sure feels like the combined perfect game is coming.

That's true. It is sort of surprising that we haven't had that yet. Yeah. I think of that list that might be the one that I would point to i guess i find it weird that we still have teams that haven't made it to the world series just because we've had a lot of world series and i know that for some you know for some of the teams in question like they weren't around for most of those so it becomes less surprising when you think about it that way but i guess i'm kind of i guess i'm a little surprised that we haven't had every team at least appear you know in the world series even if it's not

as surprising to me that like every team has a 1-1 because again like that's hard to do yeah but yeah combined perfect game does seem like it kind of seems like we're due for it i wonder how we will react when it happens. Well, there hasn't been a perfect game of any kind for some time now. I know. That's why the Mariners haven't been to the postseason. Right. I would care more about it maybe because of that.

I don't care at all about combined no-hitters. Combined perfect game, I would care about more maybe, but not that much more. It is weird that it hasn't happened. I guess you still get a lot of walks and hit by pitches these days and other things that could prevent that from happening. But really, if it's just – it depends. If it's one of these like six reliever type deals where a bunch of guys throw a single inning and didn't even know that they were throwing a combined perfect game until after it was over. I don't think I would care all that much. I'd care marginally more than a combined no-hitter. Yeah, marginally more.

I think you might be surprised by how much marginally more you care. One run, run differential. It's not exactly in the spirit of the question question and it's not fun exactly, but this is where my mind went in a morbid direction. So it's really not what Ethan was asking, I don't think, but I have been kind of surprised that a pitcher hasn't died yet. I mean, this is really taking things down in a different direction here. But we've seen so many close calls. And every time we have one and some pitcher gets hit in the head by a line drive and make some miraculous recovery and everyone always says like, oh, it's going to take some fatal occurrence here for anything to happen for pitchers to start wearing some protective equipment or for that equipment to be perfected. So I hate to be a wet blanket here when we're just talking about fun statistical things that could happen. But given how many games have been played and how long baseball has been played and the fact that the mound has not moved back any and players have gotten bigger and stronger and they're releasing pitches closer to the plate than ever and they're hitting balls harder than ever.

And they're ending up closer to the plate when they release the pitch. All of those factors make you think that the risks are higher than ever potentially aside from the fact that there are fewer balls in play, I suppose. There's a close call, whether it's someone who gets brained and has to miss a lot of time, whether it's a Brandon McCarthy case or a Chris Bassett case, or even if it's just someone ducks and just barely misses them every time. I think like, man, we bit the bullet there or bit the baseball or whatever, and that at some point someone might not be so lucky. So that was the darkest possible answer to this question. I don't know if we can lighten it up at all, but that was just the first way mood a little bit. Yeah, I was trying to help you out. I try to pivot away to something, you know. I don't know that it's less dark. Depends what you had for lunch. Friday show.

But yeah, like I feel like we have a lot of close calls. You know, we find out about close calls every year where guys like, you know i couldn't couldn't be out there because i was in the bathroom i had to do you know and so i'm kind of i'm kind of amazed that we have not seen a guy just blow out we've seen guys throw up on the mound sure or in the field you know mostly on the mound. So we've seen that. So it's not as if there's no precedent for, you know, unpredictable bodily function. But I, to my knowledge, don't think we've ever seen a publicly gay major leaguer in 2022 sort of surprises me. I mean, I understand it. But obviously, that barrier has been broken in a number of sports, most sports, high-level leagues at this point. Baseball seems to be lagging behind. MLB does.

Of course, there have been minor leaguers and indie leaguers and such. But that does sort of surprise me. I guess Ethan just did a good job here of listing the statistical possibilities, and that's why I'm grasping for other ideas and going in other directions here. that there have been so many homers hit in recent years, you might have expected to see a five-homer game. Although, again, those homers have been distributed across the lineup more so than any one person. Or maybe, I don't know, some other single-season records that have stood. I suppose it doesn't really surprise me

that no one has challenged Bonds or anything lately, but no one has even really taken a real run at Ruth and Maris in recent years, which is surprising. I think if you just knew that the home run rate was higher than ever and of course, different patterns and distributions of dingers, but it is weird that in the years when we had the highest home run rates ever that no one really made a run at any significant single season record, although there were some like rookie home run rates ever that no one really made a run at any significant single season record. Although there were some like rookie home run record and lots of, you know, team level home run records and that sort of thing. I think it's surprising that we haven't had a woman umpire a big league game.

Yeah, that's a good one. That's weird. That's so strange. I mean, like strange is a perhaps generous way of describing what state that suggests about that game. But that's real weird that we haven't seen that. We should get on that. Yep. All right. Okay.

Good suggestions, Ethan. And anyone who is listening right now and shouting at us their ideas that we are not thinking of, please do write in. Yeah. Give us your emails. All right. And here's a question from Dank Hank, Patreon supporter, who says, on May 31st, Twins at Tigers, Corey Provost mentioned in the bottom of the first that Devin Smeltzer's wife recommended he use his curveball more,

and Smeltzer had attributed his recent success to that change. This raises the question, how valuable is it to have a baseball spouse slash partner for a player, not just a fan, someone with knowledge or experience who could coach an MLB caliber player? Also, does having a baseball hater as a partner decrease player value? Who do you think is the MVP, most valuable partner in MLB? Would not dare to speculate on that last one. What is Jessica Cox's or Chelsea Freeman's war? Yeah, I guess we can't assign war to partners here.

That is a good story. Kudos to Smeltzer's partner there. But I don't know. I could see it going either way. Smeltzer's partner there. But I don't know. I could see it going either way. I mean, for one thing, that's not the job of your romantic partner necessarily to recommend changes to your pitch usage. There are people who have that job and are employed in positions where they're supposed to deliver recommendations like that. No one has your own interests at heart, probably, hopefully, No one has your own interests at heart, probably, hopefully, more so than that person.

So if they've been watching you your whole career and they pick up on something that you should or could be doing something differently, that's great. But I could see why it would be helpful for a baseball player not to have a partner who cares that much about baseball because they're around baseball all day. So maybe when they're home, they just want to decompress and they want to talk about something else and they don't want to be coached by their girlfriend or their wife or whoever their partner is, right? I mean, maybe that would be annoying if you go home from the park where you have actual coaches, uniformed coaches who are telling you to do this or that and then you get home and someone says, honey, why don't you throw the change up more? Yeah. I could see how maybe you would want a break from baseball depending on how your season is going. So if you happen to have a very perceptive partner who has some baseball acumen and could

pick up on something, that'd be nice. Like sometimes there are players who go back to their college coaches, right? Yeah. Or someone who tutored them as a kid or often a parent who maybe instructed them in the first place. So someone like that who's seen you your whole life and knows your psyche and your mentality, they could maybe coach you more so than a major league coach who just met you this year. But I don't know that you would always want that necessarily. Yeah. I think a lot would really just depend on what is the best mechanism in your partnership to convey support for your partner. And that might involve like, hey, I noticed that you're tipping

this pitch or hey, you know, you're like, change is looking really good. You should throw that more often. But it might also mean like, let's watch Stranger Things. Yeah, right. You know, and I think that like truly one of the very best ways to build baseball expertise is just to watch a lot of baseball. And so by that rubric, the partners of players are often very well positioned to like know what works and what doesn't because they watch a lot of baseball, like and the the the seeming cultural expectation that they be engaged with with their partners careers and like be present when they're doing their work,

not all the time, but often it's like a kind of interesting and unique thing about being a pro baseball player, I would imagine. So by that rubric, I imagine that there are a great many partners of big leaguers who know a lot about the game and probably could offer, you know, maybe if they, even if they couldn't offer specific coaching advice to their husbands or boyfriends or what have you could tell you stuff about baseball and like have an opinion on what works well and what doesn't and like would be able to watch you know their partner like throw a bullpen and be like oh that pitch isn't working today right like i'm sure that there are people who can do that but whether that is productive and

and helpful might vary and it's such a funny thing because like if we were talking about surgeons and their partners we'd never be like they can tell them how to do surgery no so it is a weird you know but but also you might come home at the end of the day from your long day being a accountant and be like, oh, honey, you'll never believe this math accounting thing. And then they'll be like, oh, boy, you should try this. Yeah. So I don't know. I think it probably just really depends on the couple and what works well for them and what their expectations are of one

another and i don't know like not every player's partner is going to be like i really don't mean this in a dismissive way like they're not going to be like a professional helpmate you know like some some of the women who are involved with big leaguers like part of their job is organizing the logistics of their lives and that means that that's what they do for work and that is work so i don't mean it in a dismissive way but they're gonna there are players for whom that isn't true so i think it really just depends on the person yeah well done brianne smeltzer who uh says apparently smeltzer said she even recommended that he throw the change up down and away more often.

So not only pitch type, but location she was specifying. And he said she doesn't give me advice often, so I listen when she does. Cool. So that's good. At least she's not like bombarding him with advice for every game. That would not be helpful. Sounds like they got it dialed in really nice. Yeah, she's picking her spots. Yeah. That would not be helpful. Sounds like they got it dialed in really nice. Yeah. She's picking her spots.

Yeah. Okay. Last question. This comes from Monty who says, I'm high and watching my Padres. Yeah. I assume you have mailbags. Yes, we do. Being a catcher looks like it isn't much fun.

You have to squat a lot and dive a lot. You have to put on and take off a lot of crap. You get hit with baseballs. You know it wrecks your body and will shorten your career. This is totally open-ended. What if dressing up like Robocop or Iron Man wasn't worth it and no one on the planet wanted to play the position of catcher? Baseball is the same in every other way. The importance of the catcher position is understood.

The world needs baseball and every player understands someone has to play catcher. Every young kid and professional would still love everything about baseball except for the idea of playing catcher. It sucks. It is a road trip where you have the middle seat in the back and there is no air conditioning. No destination could be worth it. Unless the compensation or motivation were sufficient, they might be willing to give the game up entirely rather than play catcher. What are we going to do here? Great question, Monty. If you had not said you were high, I would have wondered,

is Monty high when he was writing this email? So no one wants to play catcher. So I don't know if the premise of the question is that literally no one is playing catcher or someone has to play catcher, I would think. How could you get by without a catcher yeah kind of an essential service i wonder if this would be a problem that would take care of itself in short order because like if there's literally no one who will do it then i guess you have a problem but i think that what would happen is you would just have a much smaller pool of people who were willing to do it and could also do it at like a professional level because that's the other issue like i'm sure

there are plenty of people who are like i'd be a big league catcher and then they get in there and they'd be like no thank you this is in fact terrible these pitches are terrifying but i think that what it would mean is that you would just end up being like one of the best paid players in the league exactly right scarcity yeah supply and demand i think that the market would probably start to provide a powerful enough incentive for more people to be like i you know there are plenty of people who really hate their jobs and they don't get paid like big leaguers so imagine if the market forces of the big leagues came to bear on there being a legitimate catcher shortage people would be like i guess for 40 million dollars a year i'll do it yeah fine and then and then the rates would come down because more people would be like oh i'm gonna be a catcher and then it'd be like haha gotcha economics right friday show yeah you gotta have a catcher it's it's pretty non-negotiable

you gotta have a catcher the ball just uh yeah-negotiable. You got to have a catcher. Otherwise, the ball just... Yeah. Even when we have robo-umps, we're going to need catchers because the ball just rolls to the backstop forever and ever. Never stop rolling. That would be a big problem. Okay. I will leave you with today's history minute or whatever we're calling it.

Today's episode number in baseball history. We have not received any great suggestions yet, as you can tell, for how to name this little segment here. But this, as always, comes from Richard Hershberger, historian, Saper researcher, author of Strike Four, about the evolution of baseball in the 19th century. So Richard says, I have a humdinger here for 1858. And this was something that he transcribed into his notes years ago. I do not have an image of this to share, but he knows where it's from. So this is from the Happy Home and Parlor magazine, December 1st, 1858. So it says, ball playing has become an institution. It is no longer a healthful recreation in which persons of sedentary habits engage for needful relaxation and exercise, but it is now an actual institution. Yes, this is,

as Richard says, the earliest known complaint that ballplayers are not playing the game the right way anymore. This is 1858. To continue, young men associate for this object, organize themselves into an association with constitution and laws to control them, and then plunge into the amusement with a sort of young America fanaticism. In almost every town throughout all this region, there is one of these regularly formed and inaugurated ball clubs, the members of which meet frequently to practice the art for the sake of being able to worst some neighboring club whom they challenge. Not best some neighboring club, but worst. That makes some sense, too.

Or by whom they are challenged to a hot contest. Hot contest. Hot contest. The matter has become a sort of mania. And on this account, we speak of it. In itself, a game at ball is an innocent and excellent recreation. But when the sport is carried so far as it is at the present time, it becomes a public nuisance. For these reasons, we class ball clubs as now existing with circus exhibitions, military musters, pugilistic feats, cockfighting, etc., all oflor magazine, December 1st, 1858.

And Richard says, did not have a really long run, I guess, containing articles on various pious topics. This excerpt is from an editorial bemoaning kids nowadays, just a time-honored go-to column topic for someone who's out of material. The objection is not to baseball, but to organized baseball. Baseball was a traditional boys' game since colonial times. Men might indulge on occasions, such as holidays, briefly throwing off their adult cares. But organized baseball? Adults forming clubs with constitutions and officers, sending scores to be published in newspapers? That was another thing entirely. So, playing baseball,

just getting together with some friends, just tossing the old horse hide around or whatever it was made of at the time. Fine. No problem with that, according to the Happy Home and Parlor magazine. But when you start getting teams together and trying to beat other people at baseball, that's you've taken it too far. That's a mania. And we've only continued to take it further still in that direction since 1858. take it further still in that direction since 1858. So sorry to inform the author of that editorial,

but their words did not have the intended effect. Now I'm envisioning like a version of Footloose, but about baseball. Ooh, right. Right? Because it's like, oh, we can't have these kids dancing. It'll lead to sex and independent thinking. Yeah. Yeah. This is why I wanted to do this history segment for many reasons. We get some insight into the development of certain rules and how we got this crazy game that we have today. But also just because history repeats itself endlessly. And this sort of complaint, I guess we don't hear this exact complaint these days.

Like people are playing games. Have you seen this? People are trying to beat other people at baseball instead of just having a good time. Jeez, relax. Take it easy, people. But we do certainly see complaints about people not playing the game the right way anymore. In every successive generation of players, you have some crusty, ornery veterans who say that today's players don't play the game the right way. And you just go back to the beginning of baseball history and it was like, oh, baseball used to be better. Like this is not quite baseball is dying, this argument, although I'm sure we'll get plenty of that in this segment. This is like baseball should die. Like baseball is a public nuisance the way that they're playing it these days.

Keep and score and everything. Come on. But you have heard that basically since the beginning because as soon as baseball became professionalized, everyone was just waxing rhapsodic about how they used to just play for the love of the game, not for the paycheck. And these days it's just a business and it's not the same anymore. So that hearkening back to some earlier era, that was a constant, even if the earlier era was the 1840s instead of the 1850s. Cats and dogs living together in this economy? That will do it for today and for this week. All right. All right, we got a few responses to our discussion on our most recent episode about home run robberies and whether it actually constitutes a robbery if a tall player just sticks his hand up and manages to intercept the ball before itockets the batter. It's a single deft effortless swipe that nabs him the goods

although it's not like he ends up with the home run himself afterward but the outfielder who makes a fantastic leaping catch that player pulls off a daring heist. Timing the jump, risking the slam against the wall coming down with the big smile, showing off the ball that's a daring heist, right? So David wants us to dub that the home run heist. Christian, Patreon supporter, wrote in to say using aggressive effort to dub that the home run heist. Christian, Patreon

supporter, wrote in to say, using aggressive effort to pull down a home run is a home run robbery. Being able to easily do the same is a home run burglary. All right, home run burglary it is. And Patreon supporter Kellen writes in with a late-breaking suggestion for a name for the history segment. An idea for the history minute. Time to play it by year. Not year, but year. All right, Kellen, thank you. That is the leader in the clubhouse. Best suggestion we've gotten so far. Also the only suggestion we've gotten so far, but not bad. That's the name to beat. And Patreon supporter Aaron wrote in to say, I might've missed you discussing the Justin Turner deke pulled on JT Real Muto at third base. Turner pretended the ball sailed over his head,

got Real Muto to scamper off a few steps, then hurriedly tagged him for the out. Bustled up the middle. Turner ranges a long way to get it and throws late. Throw goes to third. Real Muto's in safely. Oh, good move! Comes off the bag, and he's out!

Great move! Real Muto thought that the ball was down the line, and he's tagged out by Turner. Wow! JT not only deked Riomuto, but the third base coach as well. Great play, great awareness. Wow! And that's right, we've been talking about hidden ball tricks and defensive dekes, and this was a good example of the latter.

Dave Roberts said, Just a heady play. Turner sold the wide throw really well. A good player in Real Muto, but we got him. That was a big out. I thought that was going to be the difference in the game. It was not. This came at the expense of the Phillies, but this was a game that the Phillies won.

This was back on May 22nd. That was the one where Max Muncy made the game-ending error, got sucked into the Phillies' nexus of subpar defense, but that was a good defensive play. Nice deke. Well executed, Mr. Turner. And you may have seen some stories circulating about a fancy new pitching machine that the Mets are acquiring and that some other teams have already been using. I wrote about this topic last year for The Ringer, about the new science of pitching machines and the quest for the perfect pitching machine. This advanced one sounds like it's the Traject Sports model, which I wrote about in that piece, but the idea is that the only way

for hitters to keep up with pitchers and the science of pitch design is to replicate those pitches more accurately via machines that hitters can use to practice against before the game begins. more accurately via machines that hitters can use to practice against before the game begins. So these machines more accurately replicate the movement of pitches and also the release point, and they simulate the pitcher's delivery, etc. The idea is that, well, if you can replicate those in-game plate appearances more closely by training against this machine and having a more accurate facsimile of that pitcher in your practice, then that should be better than just having someone throw slow batting practice or someone even throwing fast batting practice, but from a different release point and with different movement profiles, etc.

So some teams are using VR to improve their batting practice and train against the pitchers they're about to face in game. And this is another way to do it with more and more advanced pitching machines. So hitters are trying to keep pace however they can. I'll link to the article in case you're interested about the ins and outs and the challenges of actually making a machine throw like a particular pitcher. Not that the Mets need a ton of help on offense these days. They have been out hit by only the Dodgers so far this season. But rather than say not mess with success, they are trying to arm themselves with whatever implements they can use to practice, and they are not the only team going down this road. So I will link to that article on

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