Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1863: Belly to Bellyache

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about what it means to be humbled, whether Joe Maddon’s mohawk could have caught on and caused a Shohawk had he not been fired, another point about Aaron Judge’s potentially historic home-run pace, a Byron Buxton fun fact, whether Buxton or Luis Arraez is a more entertaining hitter, Ozzie […]

Some folks say that I'm egotistical. Hell, I don't even know what that means. I guess it has something to do with the way that I fill out my skin-tight blue jeans. Oh, Lord, it's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way. I can't wait to look in the mirror. I get better looking each day. Hello and welcome to episode 1863 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs.

Hello, Meg. Hello. You know, there's something I appreciate about doing this podcast that is also sort of humbling. And to be clear, I mean humbling by the dictionary definition, not in that false modesty sense. None of this nonsense where someone wins a prestigious award or gets a great honor and they say, oh, it's so humbling to be up here on this stage. Or when a baseball player joins some exclusive statistical club that only Hall of Famers have joined before and is like, it's humbling to be in that company, to be mentioned in the same

sentence as those names. No, it's not. That's the opposite of humbling. Humbling is when you get beaten or benched or demoted. It's not when you succeed. Starting off on a very pedantic note here, but I hate that humbling usage. That's not what humbling means to me anyway. You need a cooking show judge to be making you feel bad about the lamination in your dough. Otherwise, you are uninterested in the word humbling. Get out of here. Yes, you're supposed to be laid low if you are humbled. It is not a moment of pride and success and accomplishment and achievement when you are elevated and exalted.

That is not being humbled. So one actually humbling thing about doing this podcast is that almost inevitably after we post an episode, someone points out something that I hadn't thought of that I then wish I had said. It's just the wisdom of crowds, even when we know what we're talking about, which is not always the case. But we can't outthink however many thousands of people listen to this thing. So someone's going to think of something that did not occur to us and sometimes people say well you should have said this and i say well we did say that yeah that happens a lot it's fine we say a lot of words and we know that sometimes the episodes are long arguably sometimes longer than they ought to be but sometimes people will be like you didn't account for this and i'm like, I immediately go through memory wipe

when we're done recording. Like I couldn't tell you a specific thing I said, except when people are like, you didn't say that. And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure we did. That I have perfect recall. Yeah.

I think we did say that. Yeah. And people are commuting while they listen to this thing. Sure. They're doing their stuff. They're falling asleep, whatever. They may not retain every word.

And sometimes people say, well, you should have said this or why didn't you think of that? And I say, well, no, that's a terrible point. I'm glad I didn't say that. But it often happens that people make excellent points. And I appreciate that because it shows that people are paying attention and they're active participants in this thing. Anyway, that happened a couple times after the most recent episode. Anyway, that happened a couple times after the most recent episode. One thing that Patrick pointed out, we talked about Joe Madden and his mohawk that he got before he was fired. Now, if he had not been fired, if they had had mercy on him, whether because of the mohawk or because they just weren't ready to dismiss him yet, then in theory, that might have inspired other angels to get the mohawk.

Yeah. And that means that we might have seen Shohei Otani with a mohawk. Sure. A show hawk could have happened. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Mike Trout has a mohawk starter kit. Yes.

It's not nearly a mohawk. But he's flirted. You know, he's mohawk curious, clearly. Yeah. But he's flirted. He's mohawk curious, clearly. Yeah, it has the same sort of pattern of higher in the middle, lower on the sides. Now Shohei, if he had a Shohawk, I think I would... I mean, look, I'm curious to see it maybe once. But Shohei has great hair, and I'd hate for there to be less of it, at least if he felt peer pressured to do away with some of it because it was a team bonding exercise.

So maybe that's why they let him go. Maybe they said, hey, you got a Mohawk. This is going to catch on. Shohei Otani, our most marketable player, he's going to feel pressure to shave his head here. And what a disservice that would do to all of his fans all over the world. So sorry, Joe, we got to let you go. But I felt bad for not considering the implications here, because this is an obvious implication. What could have happened? The alternate history of this haircut, it could have spread, it could have metastasized

to the rest of the team. And I'm sort of relieved that we were spared that. I feel like I'm learning something about you, Ben, which is that you are antagonistic toward Mohawks, which I, you know, you know, I'm surprised by mostly because I have a hard time thinking of you as antagonistic toward anything except like the zombie. Yeah. And people using humbling the wrong way right yeah i guess i've underestimated your capacity for antagonism i i think i think a couple of things here i can't believe i just said i think a couple of things i've informed an informed opinion about multiple aspects of this but you know here we are first do we think that that showy would really be susceptible to peer pressure here. I mean, look, I know that people, it is like a human drive to be amongst your fellows, to have camaraderie and community with your peers

because otherwise you feel lonely and sad. So I don't want to say that he is immune to that, and nor should he be. It's often a nice instinct that we have as human people. But I also think that if you're one of the better players in baseball and the reigning MVP and someone says, you should get a Mohawk, you could say, I don't want to do that if you don't want to.

And then you probably wouldn't. It's like being in your 30s and finally being able to say no to house parties. You're just like, I don't need to have an excuse. I just don't want to go because I'm a fully formed person with interests that aren't these. So there's that. I didn't even have to wait till I was in my 30s. Sorry, I started young. Congratulations on having a fully formed sense of self, Ben.

Way to brag. Not humble, are we? So there's that. I think that the particular greatness of Otani's hair probably means that he could pull off a mohawk because he's got you know he's got good volume and i'm given to understand that that's helpful in in doing a mohawk doing a mohawk it's like when people say i'm gonna do weed and i'm like no you're not anyway so i think that he could pull it off if he wanted to. And, you know, the thing about it is that even if he couldn't, because they do wear hats,

the impact, I think, would be minimal because, you know, your hair does grow back. I know I expressed concern for Madden that at his age, maybe less of it would come back, perhaps betraying a misunderstanding of how human hair works. But I think that Otani's hair would grow back if it needs to. And, you know, if it took a minute, it'd be fine because our main engagement with him as a player is when he's on the field.

And I expect that any other marketing opportunities he had probably transpire in the offseason when it would definitely have had time to grow back. I mean, look, I'm going to say a thing that is, I will admit, a little unkind. It's not about Shohei, so you're going to be probably fine with it. But Chris Bryant's been walking around with that forehead his entire life. And people think he's really handsome,

and he is. He just has a big forehead. And maybe your mileage can vary on that. It's fine. But we're able to forget it for stretches, entire months at a time, because when we see him, he's got, he also does mohawks sometimes. Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with that other than to say-

We haven't seen him much at all this season, regardless of how his hair or his forehead looks. Yeah, that's too bad. And purple seems like it would be a good backdrop for a mohawk. I don't know why, but I feel like it's conducive to having one. I don't know why, but I feel like it's conducive to having one. I don't know why. I just do. So anyway, I think that it probably would have been fine if he had set a trend because Otani probably would have decided, does this feel good for me as an individual and then

done that? And no one would have given him guff because he's the reigning MVP and his margin for error is pretty high given the state of his hair and also his proclivity for hats. Yeah, I'm of two minds about that because on the one hand, he's clearly not a conformist or he would not be a two-way player in MLB. So he will go his own way. On the other hand, he's not really like one of these, you know, 25 taxis home from the stadium type of guys. I mean, I guess he has a driver who is also his interpreter, although I think now he drives too, which I was sort of sad to see because for a while I felt some solidarity with Otani

because he didn't drive either. But he's like he has this pre-decor. He's not someone who really seems to like, you know, flaunt his achievements and just be like, hey, I'm the superstar, so I will do my own thing. Like, he seems to get along. Everyone seems to love him. He seems to be a good clubhouse presence. We hear about a lot of this indirectly because he doesn't talk to the media that much and doesn't divulge that much about himself. But we hear from all of his teammates. He's a prankster and he's a jokester. And he seems to be friends with some of the scrubs

that the angels have employed during his career so it doesn't seem like he is pulling privilege or status or anything so i don't know that he would say i'm too big a star to go along with the mohawk now i just mean that he's like a you know he's like a self-possessed person right he has you know preferences and i feel like he would have the the wherewithal to express them and have them be respected yeah not like in a show up kind of way but just in a no i didn't mean to do that but in like a no thank you you know just like in a no that's not for me right being a baseball player and wearing a cap it does seem to semi-defeat the purpose of the mohawk though i mean yeah it doesn't have to be a high mohawk. It could be the trout where the elevation is lower. But really, if you're going to go for

the mohawk, you might as well just gel it up and have it be high and spiky. And you just can't really do that with a baseball cap. No, you can't. It's hard to do. You can't even do it if you're just DH-ing. You just have to do it if you're just DHing. You just have to. The other thing that someone pointed out after we posted that podcast, this was Mitch, Patreon supporter. Now, maybe this was implied by our discussion, but I don't think we stated it explicitly. We were talking about how newsworthy and historic an Aaron Judge home run chase would be or what that chase would be exactly if he's going for 60 or 61 or 62 is that meaningful given that it would not be the single season record but as mitch pointed out it would be the american league record oh yeah which is notable because all the other guys we talked

about mcguire sosa bonds they happen to be in the national league when they had their 60 or 70 something seasons so if he were to chase maris or pass Maris, that would actually be meaningful in that way. I didn't really make that connection when we were talking about it, I think because now I barely draw distinctions between leagues anymore. Now that we have universal DH and we have constant interleague that's going to become even more constant. I mean, it's just almost meaningless at this point, although it has been very meaningful at previous points in baseball history.

But if we needed to lend a little more juice to an Aaron Judge 60-something chase, that would do it, I think, because it would be an actual record. It wouldn't displace Bonds or McGuire or Sosa, but it would be a real record, an American League record. So there's something to be said for that. Yeah, I think that there is something to be said for that. I think you're right, though, that that feels less meaningful in a time when the distinctions between the leagues have largely leveled out. But it is a thing that would get said, right? It would be in the crawl on SportsCenter. So yeah, meaningful in that way for sure. Now, yesterday we also talked about Byron Buxton and Matt Carpenter separately,

and those two were linked in a fun fact that was brought to our attention on Monday because there was a fact that was tweeted by The Athletic's Aaron Gleeman, former podcast guest, when he noted on Monday morning that Byron Buxton had hit 44 home runs since last grounding into a double play, which sounded like a lot. And people asked us, is that a fun fact? And yeah, I think that's a pretty fun fact. But Buxton homered again on Monday. And so now it's 45 homers since his last double play. And Sarah Langs looked into this. Sarah Langs of MLB.com, with help from the Elias Sports Bureau, they saved us a stat blast here and did the stat blasting themselves.

And this is actually a record now. So Buxton's 44th homer gave him the most home runs between double plays grounded into since double plays were officially tracked for batters in both leagues. That's 1940. So the 44th broke a tie with Matt Carpenter, who went 43 home runs between grounding into double plays from September 9th, 2017 to April 14th, 2019. So Buxton's last double play was August 18th, 2020. He actually hit into two that day, kind of incredibly. So got it out of his system. And since then, he has hit in 124 games entering Tuesday without a single, grounded into double play, and he has homered 45 times. So I think that is a fun fact and it is a record. So I'm all on board with this stat and I will be watching it. And I guess it makes sense that it would be Buxton, right?

Because he's kind of the perfect person to do it, which maybe is what makes this fact so fun. Just that he seems to fit the archetype of, okay, what kind of player might do this? And maybe there's an era effect here because you would think that, well, fewer balls in play and more homers lately. The conditions are conducive to this, as we talked about. Often the offensive environment sort of suits records that are set. So Buxton, he's so fast, so he can beat out ground balls that are potential double plays. He strikes out a fair amount, so he's not putting a ton of balls into play. And he hits a ton of fly balls and very few ground balls. And he has a lot of power, so he hits home runs a lot.

So he is sort of the perfect power speed, lack of contact, batted ball distribution type of player to set this record. So it seems appropriate. So I'd take every opportunity to celebrate him while he is healthy and on the field and performing. So I applaud this fun fact that I guess Aaron surfaced and Sarah researched. Yeah, hit another home run last night. Yep, 45, yeah. I also wondered, because we talked about Luisa Reis

a little bit in recent episodes. We enjoy watching him too. And they have produced very comparable offensive performances in the aggregate in terms of value per plate appearance this season, but really couldn't be more different in terms of the shape of that performance yeah the production has been quite different even though it has felt similar on the surface yeah Buxton

has a 154 WRC plus Arise has a 161 WRC plus both great both in the same range there which one is more fun for you and I I mean, purely offense. Yeah. Forget about the defense. Obviously, Buxton, much more skilled defender. Yes, the gap there is considerable. Yeah, and thus a more valuable player overall. Yes.

But just talking about the bat and their production thus far this season. So Buxton is your low average slugger. Yes. And Arise is your extremely high average hitter. And he's someone who has been touted as a potential batting title winner in the past and looks like he is well on his way to earning one this season. So Buxton has hit 236, 313, Buxton has hit 236, 313, 592. So that's 18 homers in 46 games. He has walked about 8% of the time, struck out about 27% of the time. Then you have a rise at 362, 444, 436.

So higher on base than slug. Whereas Buxton has a hugely higher slug than on base. Arise has walked more often, 12% of the time, and he's struck out less than a third as often as Buxton. He has struck out about 8% of his plate appearances. So far, far less power, much more contact, many more hits better on base base but when he gets his hits they don't tend to go as long away so ultimately it amounts to about the same value offensively and i guess if you want to throw in speed there honestly like buxton is much faster but he doesn't steal bases no you know which is maybe prudent. Yeah, I think that there's a caution to it that is probably to everyone's benefit.

Yeah, so Arise has actually stole twice as many bases as Byron Buxton this year. And by that we mean he has two. Yeah, right. So Buxton, probably more fun to watch, get up to full speed and try to take the extra base and that sort of thing. But neither one of them is a base stealer at this stage. So if we were just to talk about what they do in the batter's box, do you have a preference? I think that, okay, so I'm going to sound like I'm trying to be too clever by half when I say this.

I'm going to say Arise, and I don't say that like I don't enjoy watching Byron Buxton play baseball. Like it is a great joy to watch Byron Buxton play baseball. Every time Byron Buxton is like healthy for a long stretch, you're like, yay, we have all won. We've all of us won something here because he is healthy and he's doing his thing and that is great. But I think that in terms of like how it's not entirely singular, right? His profile isn't unique in baseball, but it is increasingly rare. And so from a scarcity perspective, I think I'm going to advocate for a rise because he is doing a thing that is less common than what we typically see in the game today.

And I think that baseball more generally is more compelling when we have a diversity of profile and so I'm going to sort of pound the table for Arise because I think that he is doing sort of the best version of this particular profile this season and like there are other guys who have sort of similar lines but not quite the way he has like you know like there's a i guess like ty france is sort of in the arise zone he's hitting for a little more power than arises he has more home runs but like he's sort of that same guy right where it's like a high average and a high on base and the slugs still sort of middling looking at a leaderboard of qualified hitters sorted purely by on base percentage is making me really

appreciate the season that paul goldschmidt is having but that is not the purpose of this segment because it's like what if you had a guy who also got on base a lot but then he slugged 598 and that would be paul goldschmidt who was also done i think hit a home run today so anyway that's not the point of this segment though so i'm gonna i'm gonna pound the table for arise just because i want there to be like biodiversity within the ecosystem and so this is not a knock on byron buxton but having luis arises in the game makes you better able in my opinion to appreciate the byron buxtons because, you know, baseball is a land of contrast. This heightens the contrast, and that's really great. So I'm going to say Arise, but not because I don't like Byron Buxton. He's pretty great too. Yeah, we love them both, but

I'm with you. Yeah, Arise has about 20 more plate appearances than Buxton thus far this season. And Arise has 60 singles. Yeah. And. Yeah. It's a lot. He does. Buxton has 15 singles. So Arise has four times as many singles.

Like, I guess you could argue that a single is not super exciting, but singles are so scarce now. It's the most single-averse era in baseball history. So Arise is giving us that. He's sending you home happy in terms of what percentage of his plate appearances make you pleased if you're a Twins fan, right? I mean, he's gotten

on base. He has achieved his goal of not making it out almost 45% of the time, whereas 68 hits and 60 of them are singles. Don't change even one thing, Luis. Not even one. I love it. Yeah.

And Buxton, meanwhile, has like 31%. He's getting on base and he's sending you home happy in his plate appearance. And sometimes he hits a homer and he makes you happier than one of Arise's singles will make you. But yeah, I'm totally with you. We've got plenty of low average sluggers. It's a low average sluggers game right now. And so Arise is just completely going against the grain and he's a ton of fun. So yes, purely on the bat and what they have produced thus far.

I think I would rather watch Luisa Rice right now. I'm really enjoying taking in this leaderboard because it is just a poo-poo platter of different kinds of guys. Can I give you some lines? Can I just give you some lines here? So first, I know that we talked about him when he signed the extension, and we've talked about how he's underappreciated, but are you conscious in a front- a like in front of your face kind of way of the fact that jordan alvarez's

line for this year is 315 436 25 that's uh that's pretty great he's uh that's pretty great a rise and buxton combined yeah he's like uh does everything they do he he's an amalgam yeah he doesn't strike out he He hits for power. He hits for average. He does all the kinds of hitting that you can do. Yeah, it seems like Houston was right to want to sign that guy to an extension. So there's that. Then we need to take a moment to appreciate the Andy Diaz line

because he is hitting 266, 401, 343. It's so weird. It's so weird. Live it up to the ground beef nickname that we kind of tried to give him. Yeah, we kind of tried. We didn't put a beef boy swing into it, but we tried. Yeah, the full weight of our bully pulpit here we reserve for more serious matters. But he's ground beefing almost 60% of his balls.

He has a.0777 iso, Ben. I love baseball so much. What a great stupid sport we've got here. We got a great stupid sport on our hands. I also like, I'm realizing that this is tightening up, certainly as the ball has become livelier and less French. But I'm still kind of surprised by lines and what that means in terms of WRC+. I'm still not quite dialed in on that.

But anyway, that's neither here nor there. So yeah, those are some lines. Mike Trout, 293, 392, 634. Yeah. It's like, man, should we take a moment to appreciate the big sluggas? Let's do it. Oh, Aaron Judge. It's the guys you think, you know.

It's those guys you think. It's Aaron Judge and then Jose Ramirez and then Mike Trout and then Bryce Harper and then Jordan Alvarez. That's the top five. So anyway, this has been Meg looking at her own website, a new segment that we're introducing on Effectively. Yeah, the more extremely offensive environment, the more it makes you appreciate the plus stats. Oh, yeah, gosh. The RPS pluses and the WRC pluses.

That's when you need them. Yeah, otherwise you're just like, you know, you're swimming without a life preserver. Mookie Betts has a 536 slug. Yeah, all right, Mookie. Look at you. Anyhow, Pete Alonzo, Pete Alonzo, 559. Sorry, I didn't know.

I know what's coming in the show, so I didn't know if that would be a useful transition for you or not. Yes, we will be talking about Pete Alonzo shortly. Hold at that, friends. So we also talked about the Braves last time, and they won again. They won their 12th straight, but they did suffer a significant loss, which is Ozzy Albies, who fractured his foot in a way that mystifies me. Like if I had watched this play 10 times and submitted 10 potential

diagnoses for what could have happened there, I'm not sure I would have gotten to fractured foot in my first 10 guesses because what happened here is he was hitting and he took kind of an awkward swing and then, you know, it was a ground ball and he sort of stumbled on his way out of the batter's box and didn't make it down the line and they threw him out and he was taken out of the game and then he had x-rays and it turns out that he has a fractured foot and he's going to miss some time. But boy, that did not look like what I would think a fractured foot would look like. The first time I saw it, I was like, oh, the ball must have hit his foot or something, but no, it didn't come anywhere close to his foot. I don't know what happened exactly. And it's almost disturbing. It's like almost more

disturbing to me than watching some gruesome, like Jason Kendall rolling his ankle horribly kind of play where like, you don't want to watch, but it's like, at least you understand how that happened there. I understand the anatomy and the physiology and the trauma that led to that particular injury with Obby's, I don't get it at all. He just sort of like stumbled, took like an awkward step and somehow that led to a foot fracture. It makes me concerned as I'm just like walking around. Is this in the realm of possibilities that I could just stumble and fracture my foot? Can that happen at a non-advanced osteoporosis weakened age?

This can just happen. We can fracture our feet if we put them down the wrong way. So that was weird and unfortunate. He's not off to the greatest start of his career, but he is still solid defensively as always. And probably the offense would have picked up and they don't really have a ready replacement for him. So's unfortunate for him unfortunate for Atlanta but also unfortunate for me because I'm now questioning everything about how feet get fractured yeah it's it's like you know there are all these weird little bones in your feet Ben and I am always suspicious especially as as my age advances and obviously like I'm i'm older than ozzy albies because time only moves in the one direction even if that's depressing but it's like you got all

those weird little little bones and you're like how vulnerable are those weird little bones are they they look like bird bones you know they shouldn't be i'm in a good mood is what i'm getting from my own participation in the podcast today it's kind of nice it's like oh i'm discovering my own mood as we pod like i'm worried about bird bones but i'm not that concerned so anyway it didn't seem it didn't seem like it would be a bad one like the the injury you i feel the most confident in being able to like immediately diagnose just on film as someone who has very little medical expertise read none it's like when the guy pulls up suddenly and you're like that's a hammy right exactly and often it's a hammy yeah you know you're like oh those soft tissues just sounds gross you know

and you pull up and you're like that's gonna be four weeks at least and and often not always thankfully sometimes we are wrong because we're never rooting for guys to get hurt obviously but you know often the next day the manager would be like well it's gonna be a couple weeks and you're like yeah it was a hammy i saw it but yeah this one was kind of mystifying because i thought he just maybe he had like tweaked i wondered if he had like tweaked his ankle or something you know like like if he had landed on it funny, but then he'd come out and then he'd be fine the next day. And instead, this is those little weird. I don't even know if it was the little weird bones, but that's what I assume it to be.

You know, the other day I was like cleaning the house and I had to Swiffer and then my like lower back was messed up for two days because that's what happens when you're about to be 36. You can like mess up your lower back. But like that makes sense because like you're you're into your 30s and so you get weird house cleaning injuries but those little those little bird bones in your feet remain mystifying yeah it's like when a hitter breaks their their haymate bone i think yeah you say it haymate like the little wrist bone where it can just look like a regular swing but they break a bone like yeah they're what a what a weird bones and like those and those ones are bad because like they can sap your power for a while right like that could be bad yeah it can be really bad like sometimes you know prospects get those and you're like oh gosh our our power evaluation is gonna be weird for like at least six months. Yes. Well, we wish you well as y'all be.

Yeah. Be careful out there. Yeah. Take care of your, of your little bird bones. Again, I don't even know if those are the ones that got broken, but they just seem so vulnerable.

Those little bird bones. It's like the little bird bones you have. Like you said, your hand mates are just even looking at your hands. I'm looking at my hands now and it's like, that little guy seems like he could get in trouble. Seems bad. Yeah. All right.

Well, let's do some emails and maybe a stat blast and some patantic questions. We do have an email actually that is relevant to a play that we were just watching shortly before we started recording. And got to tip our caps here to listener and Patreon supporter Gibran, who emailed us about this very scenario in 2018 and then emailed us again today to remind us that he had emailed us about this in 2018 very presciently. So in 2018, Gibran emailed us to say, I've been wondering for 32 years, well, 28 years of baseball watching, why, with the bases loaded and two outs, with an attempted force at second, why doesn't the runner just keep running through the bag? Yes. Harrison Bader just did that, and he was only out by half a step. If safe, the cards take the lead.

I don't have a question, but just figured I'd point it out. And apparently we agreed with him at the lead. I don't have a question, but just figured I'd point it out. And apparently we agreed with him at the time. I don't remember what our response was, but he just emailed us today to say that a few years ago, he messaged us wondering why runners don't run through the back at second on a bases loaded two out situation. I messaged after Harrison Bader tried that tactic at Coors Field in 2018. We both agreed that runners likely slide into second out of force of habit. The Cardinals have been practicing that exact play this year and tried it a couple of times unsuccessfully. It finally worked today.

And so it did. This was kind of cool. Who was it? Nolan Gorman was running into second. And instead of sliding, just ran right through the bag and kept going vroom vroom style. Vroom vroom. And this made it so that the force play at second was unsuccessful and the runner who was at third was able to score. And then there was a rundown and things went on from there.

But it was a grounder to short and just a simple flip to second. And usually, I suppose, would have been an inning ending out at second that would have prevented that run from scoring, but not so here. And I will play a little clip from that play. Chopped up the middle, Castillo gloves, and that's by design. That is something the Cardinals work on. The run will score. Sosa in a rundown, back to his bag. Smart play by St. Louis, and again, it is by design.

Because if the run scores from third before the out at second, the run counts. The Cardinals have worked on that play and they pull it off. So clearly this is something that the Cardinals have been working on. Initially, it took me a minute because I had forgotten Jabron's four-year-old email. And it took me a minute to catch on here because I was thinking, well, if he was at second, if he was safe, then did it matter if he kept running through? Because that runner could have scored anyway. Yeah. Slow down. And the throw to second, the flip was not in time and the Cardinals got a run out of this. So pretty clever. And Gibran wrote in to say, this makes me wonder why every team doesn't do this. You steal a run and possibly more. If the Pirates botched that rundown, it could have led to one to two more runs. Just wanted to point this out as I hope this becomes a regular thing. Yes. And I will say that Gibranze takes the

cake for having sort of predicted this and then getting to see it. We also got another Patreon message about it. I have received a message from Fangra Starter Ben Clemens, who was like, I don't think I've actually ever seen this. And then an instant later, we already had listener email. so i'm just taking this as an opportunity to say that our listeners are the best yeah and we also had listener nate right in also prompted by that game to note that it was interesting that there were two nolans on the cardinals yeah wants to know if that's weird to have multiple active Nolans in MLB and on the same team at the same time. So that's more of an effectively wild genre question here.

Some people write in to notice a clever play. Some people write in to notice that there are multiple Nolans on the team. I don't know. I don't know any non-baseball Nolans. I've never known an in-real-life Nolan. Yeah. I guess I don't know a non-baseball Nolans. I've never known an in-real-life Nolan. Yeah, I guess I don't know a Nolan either in my personal life. Which I don't think means anything because how many people do I know? But I just don't know any non-baseball Nolans. I think if I meet one, I'm going to be confused because it's like they'll

be out of context. I expect them to exist in a baseball context and they won't. Reminds me of one of the best baseball names or nicknames ever, the 19th century player, the only Nolan. His last name was Nolan. Still, he had no teammates named Nolan. Would have been a bit awkward if Nolan Arnado's nickname was the only, and then Nolan Gorman came along. I think he wasn't actually nicknamed the only because he was the only Nolan.

It was a compliment. It was like the one and only. Anyway, I recommend and endorse the Cardinals running through second play. I think everyone should do that. I mean, look, I'm sure it's not unprecedented. And if Gibran was writing to us about that 2018 play where Harrison Bader, also a Cardinal, attempted it, I guess people have been trying this and it's a sport with a long history. I'm sure this has happened plenty of times before, but it's rare enough that we are at least rediscovering it now and thinking, huh, why don't people do that more often? And it's like the Kevin Kiermaier play, the Deke play that we talked about.

Things have to go right and you have to have the presence of mind and it has to be the certain situation and everything. But there's no downside to doing it. You might as well try it. and everything, but there's no downside to doing it. You might as well try it. And so it's interesting, I guess, that even now in 2022, there could still be a fairly basic base running scenario in play where someone might actually come up with something semi-new or at least something that's not in vogue where we would say, oh yeah, that's a cool little neat new base running trick that people have figured out after hundreds of years of baseball history. I'm sure it's not really new, but still kind of new to us.

I think that I might expect this to be. I mean, I know the broadcast talked about how this is something that they practice. I think that we maybe can expect that this is like an unusual scenario that a lot of baseball players must practice, because the fact that Nolan Gorman, who hasn't been in the big leagues for very long, granted, has been in the Cardinals organization, so maybe this is like a weird organizational focus. The Cardinals way, yeah.

Right, this is part of, but maybe this is a thing that just gets practiced as like, here are your edge cases that we got to run through a couple of times during spring training because Gorman, good heads up sort of Gorman-ing here. Yeah. All right. Well, let's answer some emails.

We got one from Matthew. Let's take the Pete Alonzo question that you looked into earlier. So Matthew says, I wanted to direct your attention to a commercial featuring Pete Alonzo. I'll just play the clip. It's a commercial with Pete Alonso. I'll just play the clip. It's a commercial with Pete Alonso for the company CarShield that came out in late April. When I step in the box, I have to be ready for anything. A two-seamer, a breaking ball, and even a change-up. I'm Pete Alonso, and out here, you can't afford to be caught looking. That's why when it came to preparing for a car breakdown, I called CarShield.

They knock unexpected car repairs out of the park and help you save money on expensive repairs. I know a thing or two about good defense, and there's no better protection than CarShield. With coverage like this, you'll never get stranded on third. Baseball season is here. Don't let expensive repair bills strike out your budget. All right. So Matthew says, two things in the commercial stand out to me as weird. At the beginning, Alonzo says, when I step in the box, I have to be ready for anything. A two-seamer, a breaking ball, even a change-up. The phrase, even a change-up, seems strange as change-ups are pretty common pitches. Toward the end of the commercial, Alonzo says,

I know a thing or two about good defense, which struck me as strange because I didn't think Alonzo had a reputation as a good defender and defensive stats seemed to support that. Is this another case of a baseball player having lines written for them and not bothering to give any input? Is this as weird as Clayton Kershaw thinking about throwing a changeup in that tire commercial? So I think a little bit of yes, but also a little bit of no. Because like how does Pete Alonzo do versus changeups?

I think you have this handy, Ben. I think you looked this up because you responded to this email. I did look up how often he sees them. I have not looked up how good he is against them. So if you want to check that, you can. he sees them. I have not looked up how good he is against them. So if you want to check that, you can. But in the ad's defense, he does see change-ups a lot less often than breaking balls or sinkers. So if it's comparing, if it's in a relative sense, I have to be ready for anything, a two-seamer, a breaking ball, even a change-up. Even a change-up.

He sees change-ups about 10% of the time, which is, I think, slightly less than league average. So it's definitely less common than those other kinds of pitch types, but it's not so uncommon. I mean, it does make it sound more exotic and infrequent than it is. I think it's a change-up. You wouldn't be shocked to see it. Maybe the issue here isn't with the copy so much as the line read because i could imagine you know it's like a often ben did you know that change-ups they're they're throwing they're throwing less fast as a change of pace pitch right that's the understanding you have of a change-up and so

maybe what the the copy is meant to convey is that there's like a craftiness to a change-up like i have to be prepared for everything even the crafty stuff but he can't act well so he doesn't convey that i mean uh i think even probably does suggest a greater degree of exoticism than is borne out by pete alonso's own experience uh in the batter's box but maybe this is an issue of of a line read gone slightly awry. He's a pretty good change-up hitter, by the way. He's 1.4 runs above average per 100 change-up seen for his career. So, you know, he does all right. I think that for the defense piece of it, that perhaps they are overly invested in his defensive ratings from last year, maybe,

because he did fairly well. DRS liked his defense fine last year. UZR was still sort of iffy on it. OAA was like he was slightly above average. Maybe they looked at it last year, and they're like, he does know a thing or two about defense. It's weird to give that line to a first baseman just generally, though. Like, that's a strange category issue.

But I have an alternate reading of this entire commercial. Are you ready for it? Okay. So you sent me two commercials, right? There's the one that is in the email. And then he did another commercial for this car warranty company. So, Ben, I know you're not a car owner and you're not even a driver,

but like, is this one of those companies that calls me all the time? So asking me if I want to extend my warranty on my Volkswagen, is that what this is? Cause like Pete, those companies suck. They're super annoying. They call all the time.

So don't show their stuff. I don't know if that's what this is, but I think it might be what it is. Anyway, in the second commercial, which is a rich text. Yeah. It starts. The second commercial starts by the... Well, see, so let me set the stage. We zoom in on a car.

And in the car, there's Pete Alonzo in the passenger seat, and there is a guy in the driver's seat and he is shocked by pete alonso's presence in the car right because he's like what are you doing here he asked him that several times throughout the commercial he starts by saying pete alonso two-time home run derby winner so carshield clearly doesn't think that their audience knows who pete alonso, which makes his selection as a spokesperson kind of curious to me because, you know, they clearly couldn't clear like Mets gear. He's in CarShield stuff. Right. It's one of those that they have the MLBPA license, but not the MLB license. Right.

It's just like civilian clothes or sponsored. It's like a polo, which always like the the low budget often like the local ads like the car dealership ads so it's just like you know the player just you know polo and a t-shirt or whatever and yes they have to make it very clear who they are in case they're not a household name or certainly not a household face right so they they have the guy the driver who's like why is this random man in my car, tell you who Pete Alonzo is. And then they put a little chyron below Pete Alonzo to remind you in case you have forgotten from the two seconds prior when you were informed who he was, who Pete Alonzo is. So they have that little bit.

And then the guy asks him, like, how did you get in my car? And Pete Alonzo says, this isn't about me. This is about you. And I'm like, well, Pete, he wants to know why you're in his car. The about him part is you answering that question of how you got in here. Then he goes on his spiel about how it's going to help you with dead batteries and roadside assistance and all the other stuff that these warranty companies want you to buy into.

Then he, at the end of the commercial, asks this driver for a ride to the game, which is also funny. This inspired a couple of thoughts for me. The first is that I think that the second commercial helps us to understand some of the generic text that is present in the first commercial. Because Carshield clearly doesn't think you know who Pete Alonso is. You, a generic viewer watching infomercials at 2 o'clock in the morning, doesn't think you know who Pete Alonso is.

And so they don't think you know what his change-up scene percentage is, and they don't think you know that he's a first baseman, and they don't think you know how good a first baseman he is. They don't think you know any of that so they are simply writing baseball words they are writing generic baseball text it is not specific to pete alonso and they do not think that that matters because they do not think that you know who pete alonso is so many baseball terms by the way like with these ads it's always like how many baseball reference kids can we squeeze in here? Oh, yeah. In the first ad, you have, you can't afford to be caught looking. No.

You have, they knock unexpected car repairs out of the park. And then there's the, I know a thing or two about good defense, which, by the way, I guess you don't have to be good at defense to know a thing or two about it. You could have observed. I know a thing or two about good defense, too. I'm not a major league defender. Right. Anyway. You can observe good defense and be like, that's good defense. Yeah. They have don't swing and miss. They have don't strike out. They have

all-star savings twice. They have you'll never get stranded on third. They have strike out your budget. It's like, I think an Atlantic author once figured out that there were like seven and a half jokes per minute in 30 rock or something. It's like there are eight or nine baseball references in this one minute ad. It's like a 30 rock pace of baseball references. And I also really enjoy the line that says, baseball season is here. Don't let expensive repair bills strike out your budget. Like, is there a connection between that first sentence and the second sentence? Or is that a total non sequitur? Baseball season is here. Don't let expensive, like, is baseball season when you tend to get expensive repair bills? It's like, uh-oh,

baseball season's here again. My car's going to get damaged. Like, are you parking in the parking lot and you're going to get hit by a fly ball? You're going to get a cracked windshield. The thing that stands out to me, though, is that you wouldn't think that there's anything about a first baseman or Pete Uanto specifically that would make him a great sponsor for CarShield, except for the fact that he was in a serious car accident. Yeah. See, I was going to get to this. He was in a very serious car accident, which does not get brought up in this at all. He's not like, I had my car rollover on my way to spring training. Good thing I had car shield. Are they expecting that we know that? Is that subtext here? No, they don't think you know who he is, Ben.

Exactly. They do not think that you know who he is. They want you to know he is a baseball player, but they do not care that you know who he is they want you to know he is a baseball player but they do not care that you know which baseball player he is i mean they they are giving his bona fides as like uh an all-star and a home run derby winner as if that has anything to do with cars so they want you to know he's important but they're not really super concerned with you having like a a meaningful engagement with peter lonzo as a as a particular baseball player they just want you to know that he is a baseball player and a good one that's really all that they care about but you're right it's very strange that they do not bring up his accident

and and perhaps that is because like his accident looked very scary and like we at the time i think expressed extreme relief that he was not badly injured that that we did not have to have a Pete Alonzo in memoriam kind of situation. It seemed like he really got lucky in that moment, and it could have been so much worse, and it was very good that it was not. It's too dark to bring up, so they are assuming that those of you who do know who Pete Alonzo is know this about him, but they don't want to reference it. They can't clear any of the Mets stuff. Is the reason he needs a ride to the game at the end of the second commercial because his truck has been totaled? Yeah, right. I wonder, was he more receptive to being a spokesman for Car Shield?

I wonder, was he more receptive to being a spokesman for CarShield? Because he got that accident in March, and then this came out in late April. So was it like, hey, Pete, we saw that your truck rolled over. Do you want to endorse CarShield? Or did he have CarShield, and it saved him a lot of money? And he was like, wow, I really believe in this company. I should speak out on their behalf. I don't know. Maybe.

It's very curious. in this company i should speak out on their behalf i don't know maybe curious and it's like it bums me out that look i don't want to denigrate the good people of carshields who may or may not have been calling me daily for the last like seven years of my life but um you know pete alonzo has like as this commercial attests has won the home run derby twice. He plays on one of the best teams in baseball. He is a beloved figure for many in the greater New York area. He couldn't have managed a progressive ad. He didn't have something higher rent at his disposal than car shields. Something that could have cleared a Mets uniform for one. How much better is that second commercial

if he's sitting in the front seat in full uniform? It's a funnier visual i will say that like when you watch again the first commercial is what it is i found the second commercial to be a much richer text yes you can tell that he is like looking at a cue card off yeah for much of this commercial like he does not have these lines down and you know what it's hard to be an actor and he is a really good baseball player you know not one who sees like change-ups to a shockingly low degree or anything like that but he is a very good baseball player and so it is hard to be good at a lot of different stuff so there's no shame in him needing the cue cards but you can like clearly see him reading his right the stilted delivery actually enhances it for me, at least in the second ad

where he's in the car, just because it really hammers home like this is Pete Alonso, first baseman. This is not an actor. This is a real person. He is who he says he is. He doesn't sound like a practiced, polished performer. So I did really enjoy that second ad much more than the first. It's odd because there are two different ads by the same company with the same spokesman released at the same time, as far as I can tell, with dramatically different tones. One of them is just very serious and meat and potatoes and by the numbers and I'm Pete Alonzo and here's Car Shield and hit it out of the park and don't strike out. And the other is like this absurd situation where he's sitting in someone's car and they're drawing attention to the absurdity of it, which I appreciate in ads because inherently

it's going to be sort of strange if you have a celebrity who is with a regular person and is just hawking this product. It's like, well, why is this person there? Why are they saying this to me right now? So I like an ad that calls attention to that and acknowledges the humor in that situation. But it's weird because one is funny and one is not funny at all. And I actually had a friend who's a Mets fan and a copywriter and an ad man, and he messaged me about these ads too. And I asked him like, well, why would you have these two different ads at the same time? Aren't you like segmenting the market here? Don't want your one your your lead your a material here with pete alonso to be the one getting the attention so i don't know he said maybe they just didn't know what they were going to do with them and maybe he like nailed the car one on the first take and they were like hey we still have a lot of daylight here we have

pete alonso on set for the rest of the day let's just knock out this other one and it's just like a collection of one-liners so you could just put them on social or something. I don't know. It's an interesting strategy, but just a lot to discuss here. So thanks to Matthew for giving us the prompt. Yeah. I just am going to be thinking about how they picked a guy who they don't think we know who he is as their spokesperson. I'm going to think about that every day. Yeah. Baseball players, unfortunately, just not nationally marketable maybe anymore. And maybe that's why he's Hawken Carshield instead of progressive or something. Yeah. I mean, I'm probably going to think about it as often as Carshield will call me to see if I want to extend the warranty on my Volkswagen, which I don't. It's fine. All right. Here is a question from Lee. She writes, I am writing today to bring a beef boy who stands out in a particular category to your attention. Alejandro Kirk is pretty much leading the league in beef boy performance, and I've heard not a peep from you. Kirk could very possibly join the AL All-Star team this year, so he deserves some discussion from you wonderful folks.

deserves some discussion from you wonderful folks. He's a quiet, calm player who tends to fly under the radar, and I'm concerned he isn't getting his due from baseball media not dedicated to the Blue Jays. Blue Jays people are amped about Kirk. I'll leave it at that. Please enjoy the sweet gem that is Alejandro Kirk. So yeah, I guess we have given Kirk short shrift. He is having a heck of a season. He is having a heck of a season i appreciate him every single time i watch the blue jays which is not infrequently 145 wrc plus yeah yeah and one of my favorite things about alejandro kirk is you know like we have talked a good amount about like one of the really cool things about baseball is that it is it is a sport that can be played to a really high level by a lot of different body types right and that it it has room for a lot of different kinds

of athleticism and it sort of complicates our understanding of athleticism and that we should you know like i think in an earlier era of baseball analysis we would look at someone like kirk and like his body shape would be like a thing that is commented on and it is still commented on but it would be like commented on in a probably not very nice way and there would be assumptions about his ability to like be a good catcher as a result of that even though you know like there are obviously a long tradition of stocky catchers but we'd look at Kirk and be like and it would be like not very nice and then you look at him and you're like he's a good catcher and he's a good hitter and this is great.

Like he's not a particularly adept base runner, but that's okay. He does a lot of other stuff well. So yeah, we are pro Alejandro Kirk. Yeah, he's good. He is leading the American League in catcher war, it looks like, or I guess he is tied at the top with the surprising Jose Trevino of the Yankees, who is also a fun story. And he is a good framer, it would appear.

Yes. He's been a couple runs above average in framing thus far this season. Not among the leaders, but up there. So he's given you the offense. He's given you the defense, too. And the Blue Jays have really been rakingaking lately and he has been a big part of that so yeah apologies to alejandro kirk for not talking about you more yeah like he he should like alejandro kirk should probably be an all-star right yeah yeah i think so i mean i don't think the blue jays are gonna have a shortage of those guys. But like, yeah, look at that.

I'm enjoying engaging with the catcher leaderboard for a second. It's just nice. Yeah, doing well. Always appreciate an opportunity to look at catchers. And as a catcher, he has a 157 WRC+. So I guess what he has DH'd or played other positions a little bit. He has DH'd a bit. He has had a i think

a couple of pinch hitting appearances so that that probably accounts for that so as a catcher 157 and among the 33 catchers who have had 100 player pinches or more while actually catching he is leading trevino who's at 144 by a pretty wide margin. And then you have Wilson Contreras at 138. So yeah, he has been the cream of the catching crop. Yeah, yeah, sure has. Kirk, by the way, another guy with more walks than strikeouts. Love to see that.

And it's not like they've even lost a lot when he hasn't been playing because his primary backup, Danny Jansen, has a 150 WRC plus himself. And now Jansen's hurt. And so they call up one of the best prospects in baseball, Gabriel Moreno. So now you get a look at him too. You put it all together. The Blue Jays entering Tuesday's game had gotten 2.7 war from their catchers, which leads the major leagues. Kirk is 23. Moreno is 22.

Embarrassment of riches. All right. Well, thank you, Lee, for pointing that out. All right. Well, thank you, Lee, for pointing that out. All right. Scott says, at softball last night, in three consecutive at-bats, I hit balls right back up the middle, as in a line drive that the pitcher got a glove on but didn't catch it as it went by them. I also pitch fairly often and understand the dread of facing a hitter who tends to hit them right back up the box, especially since most of them hit harder than me. This led me to wondering

which MLB hitters have the strongest propensity for hitting right back at the box, especially since most of them hit harder than me. This led me to wondering which MLB hitters have the strongest propensity for hitting right back at the pitcher. Since pitchers probably know who these hitters are, would it lead them to alter their delivery a little in anticipation of a possible ball right back at them, thus perhaps giving the hitter a bit of an advantage by taking the pitcher off their game a bit? The theory to test would be if hitters who hit it right back at the pitcher the most, as measured by the number of line drives caught by the pitcher, or maybe just the spray chart, have a higher-than-average batting average or OPS,

or maybe it doesn't happen enough to make much difference, or MLB pitchers know that they always live with this possibility and have learned not to let it bother them, even with hitters who do it more often. So I did a little baseball savant browsing and tried to figure out what exactly are the characteristics of a batted ball that could potentially hit the pitcher. And just by trial and error here on baseball savant, you can set up criteria for launch angle, vertical launch angle, but also spray angle, the horizontal angle, and zero degrees would be right back up the box, up the middle.

And so just by looking at various videos, I determined that roughly between negative three and positive three degrees horizontally, and then roughly between four degrees and eight degrees vertically. That is the sweet spot. I guess it's the opposite of a sweet spot. We don't want pitchers to get hit by line drives, but this is roughly what leads to a batted ball that could hit a pitcher. There are some higher ones where the pitcher might flinch or duck or put their glove up in a half-hearted attempt to catch it, but it's not actually within range of their glove or their person. So negative three to three horizontally and four to eight, I think that is roughly the range where it could hit someone.

And there's not perfect precision with StatCast when it comes to these things, but that's close enough, I think. So fortunately, that is about 0.7% of batted balls. So it's not very common. And looking for hitters who have done it the most often, I don't know that there's really enough of a sample to say for sure. Like if I use those specific criteria and I say 500 balls in play since 2019, say 500 balls in play since 2019. The leader in percentage is CJ Krohn, who has hit nine of his 551 balls in play in that little narrow range. So that's 1.6% of his batted balls, which is a little more than double the league-wide rate. And then you have Dansby Swanson, who has been a big part of the Brave's success lately, Jared Walsh, Yadier Molina, Hunter Dozier, Ty France, all of those

guys are at 1.5% or more, Trey Turner, Jonathan Scope, Gleyber Torres. So you have a mix of very good hitters, not so good hitters. I don't know that there is a clear pattern there when you look at that exactly. Now, maybe the pattern would be clear if you looked at a less narrow range, like if I just search for line drives, as classified by Baseball Savant, that are hit to straightaway center as opposed to pulled or to the opposite field. So that's a broader range. And if I again go back to the start of 2019 and we do 500 balls in play minimum, then we get Kevin Newman is the leader. 13% of his batted balls have been straightaway line drives, 86 out of 664. Then you have Manuel Margot, J.P. Crawford, our man Louisa Rise, Alec Boehm, Chris Taylor. So I guess the top of the list would be like, well, obviously line drive-ish hitters or not like lofty, uppercut type fly ball sluggers.

I mean, it's guys who hit kind of level line drives, I guess, and not great hitters in some cases. Kevin Newman is the leader in that category, and he's not what I would consider a good major league hitter. But Luis Uribe is a good hitter, just not a slugger. So it really depends. I don't know that there's any clear pattern. And even if there were, I don't know that you could detect it. Like, I don't know that there's any clear pattern. And even if there were, I don't know that you could detect it. I don't know that you could sense that pitchers were being careful or were being thrown out of their game because they knew that so-and-so was more likely to hit a ball right back at them because that would be kind of baked into their performance. And I don't know how you would detect it exactly. So I don't know that anyone has such a proclivity for that particular type of batted ball that a pitcher would be especially worried about them. And I

think the other thing is that some of those hitters I mentioned who might be more likely to hit that type of ball, they also might be less likely to hit it really hard, right? Like Kevin Newman, he might hit that line drive back up the middle, but it's not going to be crushed like a Giancarlo Stanton line drive back up the middle. So you might have a little more reaction time and you might be able to get out of the way. So I don't know that there would be that specific or individually based an intimidation factor. Like as a pitcher, I would be kind of perpetually stressed out about that. But I don't know if I would feel that more acutely with certain hitters more than others, because if they were more likely to hit that ball at me, they might also be less likely to hit it really hard. And so maybe those things kind of cancel each other out.

Yeah. I think that you would have sort of a generalized anxiety about it yeah just every time you're on the mound no matter who the hitter is even you probably worry about it even with guys who are just not particularly good i think it's just a thing that you're always having to have some amount of vigilance about so i don't think that there would be particular dudes where you were like ah ah, I don't, you know, I gotta, I gotta be on my guard. I need to sort of alter my mechanics. Cause I think that you probably, even if there were a particular way to pitch a guy where you've thought this will, you know, minimize the likelihood that he is able to hit it hard up the middle. I think that what you would probably say as a pitcher is, if I alter the way I normally do things, I'm more likely to make a mistake

and less likely to say, strike a guy out or get a ground ball. And so even if there were a guy where you were like, aha, I need to be worried about this, like 10% of his batted balls go up the middle. Wouldn't you just say, I'm going to stick to my guns and try to do the thing I know to be the most effective, and that is probably the surest guard against just giving up contact at all, let alone-

Probably should. Yeah. Right? Easier said than done, maybe, but yes, that would be wise. Oh, yeah. As a person who worries about stuff at inopportune moments, I get the instinct to maybe course correct in a way that isn't particularly useful. But I think you would probably just say, what is my best method for minimizing the likelihood of any kind of contact and stick with that? And that probably means doing what you do best and what you know best,

which probably means leaving your mechanics alone. Right? Yeah. If an individual hitter has hit you before or narrowly avoided hitting you, then maybe that would come to your mind and maybe that would get in your head a little bit. I will say that in general, hitters are less successful on these types of batted balls than they used to be before extreme aggressive shifting. So if I look in little two-year buckets in the stat cast era starting in 2015, this specific type of batted ball from negative three to three spray angle and from four to eight launch angle, 2015 and 2016, that produced on average a 636 batting average. Usually these batted balls would be single, so I'm going to use batting average. Usually these batted balls would be single, so I'm going to use batting average.

From 2017 to 2018, that fell to 589. From 2019 to 2020, it fell again to 566. And from 21 to 22, so far, it's down to 539. So there has been a pretty dramatic reduction there. And even more so if you look at like ground balls hit in the straightaway direction, and you just look like going back to, I guess you can go back to 2008 on Savant. But if you look back years ago, I mean, according to Savant from 2012 to 2014, batters hit 300 or more on grounders up the middle, whereas now they hit like 230, 240, which is something that I think bothers people just because they grew up watching baseball in a time when a ball hit fairly hard up the middle would be a hit often and you would be happy to see that. Whereas now very often there is a middle infielder stationed there and you give something back because there is a hole created by that infielder standing there instead of over in the other standard spot. But I think that is one thing that kind of annoys people, even people who aren't inherently upset about the shift. They don't like

that little moment where you see something off the bat where you think, oh, this is a good outcome. And then it turns out not to be. I don't think we've made that mental adjustment yet. Yeah, I think that that's right. All right. Question from John. I was looking at the playoff odds on fan graphs and noticed that combined the AL East and NL West have a 51% chance of winning the World Series as of June 9th. Now, as of today, June 14th, as we record, it's exactly 50%. So you add up all the AL East and NL West teams World Series odds, and it comes to 50.0%. John's question is, would you take those two divisions or the field to win the World Series? As I think it through, I think I would take those two divisions or the field to win the World Series? As I think it through, I think I would take those two divisions because they could possibly end up with seven of the 12 teams

in the playoff field. And we actually talked about this yesterday, right? The fact that four AL East teams were in playoff position and three NL West teams. So you can sort of see why the playoff odds are saying what they are so would you take two of the divisions against the other four combined in terms of your world series field well what a good question so we would be taking the al east and the nl west yes? So let me think about this. Well, nothing in the AL Central makes me think, oh, can't discount the Twins or the White Sox or even the Guardians for that matter. I think the Astros are a legitimately good team,

but I think the rest of that division is not good. Oh, man. Mariners, what did you do? Okay, so and you know the nl central is another of the centrals sorry cardinals i don't mean to f and i'm trying to delete brewers you too so really the question is do we like given those marginal bits of fright that we might experience from the centrals is there any and you know like the astros are good but like how good are they so really what it comes down to is do we like the astros plus i guess the mets and the braves more than we like the east and west teams and i I think that the answer is no, I don't.

I mean, I don't say that to discount the Mets being quite good. I think the Mets are quite good, and I think that Atlanta has certainly played itself into better position, and even those Phillies aren't quite going away, although when you lose like 13-1 to a D-backs team thrown at bullpen day, that's not that bad. The Marlins aren't bad either. They've lost a lot of one-run games.

They have a positive run differential. Yeah, and so there are good teams, but I think that if I were going to have to pick, I think our playoff odds are right. Yeah. I mean, right now they're a coin flip, so they're not taking a side. Right, yeah.

No, but like, you know, that's true. They are not taking a side. But I think that the amalgamated strength that we see there in just those two divisions is consistent with my understanding. No, we have to caveat these things as we always do, which is that the playoffs are something of a crapshoot, and we are in a spot this year where like there will be good teams that are put through the gauntlet of

the wildcard round and will not emerge victorious because they're just little three game series, you know. And so the potential for a good team to sort of fall by the wayside earlier than it otherwise might exist. Now, that means that a less good team is emerging and then taking on some of the buy the buy round teams the the teams that have clinched buys what's our shorthand for that top seeds there you go there it is it's right there for you and so in that respect you would have like a weaker team going up against a team that is not only better to begin with but is getting the benefit of rest so maybe that kind of cancels out and evens out. But I think that I would take the AL East and NL West teams

against the field. It really hurts the question that the centrals are what they are. Get it together, centrals. There's a lot of baseball fans in that part of the country. Maybe play better baseball. I don't know. I think I would too because yeah usually i am often inclined to take the field like usually when we're talking about award candidates individual awards then you say well so and so might be the most likely to win this thing but you take the field over any one player or two players

but in this case taking the field might actually be taking most of the teams in the playoffs just because you might have seven of the 12 coming from these divisions. And who knows, obviously, once you get there, but I think you have probably the best team in each league. You have the Yankees, who certainly look like the best in the AL thus far, and you have the Dodgers in the NL,

and we're getting them in these divisions and all these other good teams. And also we're getting bulk. We're buying in bulk here. We're getting more lottery tickets. So I think I would also go with this. We should maybe unbalance things a little bit. We need to, like, get the poor flyover states involved here, the heartland.

We need to get them some better baseball teams i think that's right and it's not that there's not any good teams or that there aren't good players there they're just like on a relative basis they're less intimidating there's a bi-coastal bias in mlb right yeah yeah not always true but right now, seemingly so. All right. So a few pedantic things here. This is kind of a pedantic question to start. How can you not be pedantic about baseball? By the way, it seems like our merch, our shirts have started to arrive. Yeah. Based on the reviews I've seen, seems like a lot of happy customers out there. People are saying our shirts are soft. it sounds like they are pleased with the quality of these shirts as am i we got some samples yeah i got some samples and they are quite soft they arrived like the day that they went up and i was like oh these are good shirts that we're selling

which is nice because sometimes you know you get shirts and they're not good shirts and then you're like oh do i how would i feel about encouraging other people to buy these shirts knowing that they're not good shirts i'd feel bad i think we did not have the merch available in time to suggest it as a mother's day gift but we do have it in time for father's day if you're like a kid of a a dad who is pedantic about baseball which seems like that seems like a dad pursuit not exclusively you know but it seems like a pursuit that dads would have as a person who enjoys puns i often resent that it is referred to as dad humor because it's like, hey, hey, what about me? You know, so we don't mean to suggest that they have exclusive province. But if you're in in the market for a Father's Day gift and you are the kid of a dad who's pedantic about baseball, you know, it seems like the shipping's been quick.

So you might get it in time. Yeah, you don't have to buy me one. I already have one. This is my first Father's Day as a father. Oh, hey. Hey, so you might get it in time. Yeah, you don't have to buy me one. I already have one. This is my first Father's Day as a father. Oh, hey. Hey, happy early Father's Day, Ben. Thank you. I definitely am in the pedantic dad category, so it would apply to me.

But yeah, go get it. I recommend it. We were sort of upstaged, I guess, by the Giants who were sporting some shirts of their own on Monday, as reported by beat writer Maria Gordado. She pointed out that some of the Giants, at least, were wearing T-shirts that said stashing players on the IR isn't cheating. Just continuing extending the petty fantasy football dispute slap story. I love it. They weren't even like playing the Padres or the Reds or anyone. But the shirts came in. But they had the shirts, so why not? Of course, this did still come to

Pham's attention because he responded to a tweet about it and said, they really played themselves because now all I have to do is release the IR rules in the league and the text how I told Jock I was going to pimp slap him for cheating. I'm not sure what that would accomplish or how that would show them, but okay, you do that. All right, so we got this question, which I guess is not so much pedantic as just asking for clarification, but this is from former baseball prospectus writer Zachary Levine, who tweeted the other day, runner on third, one out, then the batter hits a sacrifice fly. Does this count in those stats about scoring X percent of runs with two outs? And he asked me whether I knew the actual answer to this because his boss had asked him and he put it on Twitter and he got a split response from the people who replied to that tweet where some people said, yes, it counts. And someone else said, no, it doesn't count. I had a pretty strong suspicion about this.

I did not think it should count because if you have a sacrifice fly, like to me, that percent of runs scored with two outs, like that's before the play starts in my mind. Like technically, yes, if you hit a sack fly by the time that runner scores there are two outs because that ball has been caught the second out has been recorded and then the runner scores from third so that run did score with two outs but what i want to see if i look at a with two out split if i ever do is did they score how many runs did they score when the plate appearance started right there right when they stepped in the the box there were two outs already because it suggests it suggests

a very different game state that you have to deal with right like it it is important to your understanding or at least i think of a very specific thing when I'm looking at a split with two outs because I assume in that moment that you really have to get a hit in order to bring a guy home you know so right yeah it definitely it changes your approach you can't hit a sack fly with two outs so famously against that was the case and that is indeed the case But just putting that out there in case anyone was also not sure about this, I asked Kenny Jacklin of Baseball Reference, and he says, yes, this data is split based on how many outs there were at the start of the play, even if an out is recorded before the runner touches the plate. would be a run that scored with one out. So I think that's right. And also it's like almost a necessity because sometimes you don't really know if the run scored before the out was recorded or not. I mean, you can't really parse that on an individual level. So you have to do it that way. And that is indeed the way that they do it. So we got a few pedantic questions about, I guess,

broadcaster terms most often that are applied to types of balls in play. So Kyle, Patreon supporter, says, one of my pedantic qualms is a swinging bunt. I recognize why this might be used when a player makes weak contact on the ground that doesn't travel very far, but I take umbrage with directly associating it with a bunt. In my mind, a bunt is based on the batting setup and intent of the action, whereas a swinging bunt is an unintended outcome of a swing attempting to place the ball in a more advantageous position than the immediate infield. So Kyle says, what are your thoughts? Do you take umbrage at the swinging bunt? I get what he means. I get it. But I, you need something.

I guess what would our alternative be if we didn't call it that? I guess there are other terms that are used for like maybe a duck snort or something. I mean, yeah. I guess that's more of a fly ball, right? That's more like a blooper. Yeah, I think that suggests a different distance. Yeah, you could call it like a blooper so yeah i think that that suggests a different distance yeah you could call it like a bleeder maybe yeah honestly i have no problem with swinging really either

i think the term itself acknowledges that this is a contradiction in terms right it's a it's an oxymoron swinging bunt because a bunt famously you don't swing that's the whole thing with a bunt right so by saying it's a swinging bunt you are acknowledging that it was not a bunt that it was a swing but that it produced a bunt like result so it's about the batted ball itself it doesn't really have anything to do with the swing or lack of swing, everything that transpired before the ball was put in play, right? So I actually think it's kind of a useful term because it tells you what the batted ball was like, and then it clarifies that it was not a bunt, it was a swing, but it produced a bunt-like batted ball. This is fine with me, not a qualm of mine.

Yeah, I'm fine with this one. All right. Brittany says the phrase contact hitting continues to rub me the wrong way. Am I alone in this? All hitting is contact hitting. Contact is literally what hitting is. I think that this is a more legitimate grape. Okay.

So I get it. i get this one more i still think it's probably okay because the the distinction we're drawing here is between like hitting for contact versus hitting for like over the fence power right like that's the distinction we're trying to draw yeah and so i get how in isolation it it reads as kind of redundant it's like saying atm machine right because you're like it's in the thing right but i think that we are it is trying to differentiate between hitting for like in the field contact that is like gonna be potentially fielded versus something that goes over to fence right yeah this is almost like i guess the opposite of the swinging bunt because it's telling you something about, well, it's telling you something about the process that produced the contact. And it's telling you, maybe it's telling you something about the contact itself, but it's telling you that you were prioritizing contact.

Or maybe if you're a contact hitter, that means you make a lot of contact. Like Louisa Rice, you would say, is a contact hitter. You would not say Byron Buxton is a contact hitter, that means you make a lot of contact. Like Louisa Rice, you would say, is a contact hitter. You would not say Byron Buxton is a contact hitter. So I think that is a useful term. They both produce contact, but one produces contact more often and is more geared toward making contact. I guess you could say high contact hitter or low contact hitter, and that might be more precise more accurate but it is true that someone who strikes out a lot just is not a contact hitter because they just don't make contact all that often sometimes they do and when they do i guess they're a contact hitter but to me it's a

useful distinction to differentiate between you know your slugger your power hitter right and your contact hitter obviously your power hitter makes contact and your contact hitter hits for power. But we're talking about a difference in degree here. Yeah. I get it more. Like, I do. But I think it's okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Last one in this genre comes from Discapades, who, first of all, he responds to our conversation about things that have yet to be accomplished in an MLB game. And he suggests the ultra-maculate inning is what he's calling it. One inning pitched, four strikeouts, 12 pitches. That's a good one. I don't think that's happened. I like that. But his pedantic question is, when a power hitter gets jammed, breaks his bat, and bloops a single between the infield and outfield,

the announcers will usually say something like, he's so strong, he got a single between the infield and outfield, the announcers will usually say something like, he's so strong, he got a single because of how strong he is. While it's true that if he had less strength, the ball would have been caught in the infield, if he happened to be even stronger, the ball would have gone further and the outfielder would have caught it. So it's not really accurate to say he got a hit because he is strong. He got a hit because he was in some sort of Goldilocks zone of strength. Not too weak, but not too strong. Just right for a bloop single. Does this bother you? No. I want to validate people's

pedantry here. I don't want this segment to be people writing in and us just shooting them down and saying, no, forget about it. This is fine. Obviously, we have our pedantic hangups here, too. I started this episode with one. But this is not one for me because I think this is usually said about a mishit, right, where you don't make solid contact. You're not squaring it up. So the ball couldn't have gone much farther than it did in light of the quality of contact. It's only the strength of the hitter that allows it to travel as far as it does.

It's like you hit it poorly or you broke your bat or whatever, and you still manage to loop it over the infield because you're so strong right so you could certainly hit it more squarely or cleanly and then it would go farther but i don't know if you could hit it much farther given the same angle and timing yeah like a realistic level of strength right i mean i guess you could be the strongest person in the world and maybe it would go farther but talking about in the realm of major league baseball players and their strength, like generally this is something you would say about a strong hitter, like someone who is big or strapping or hits for a lot of power. You probably would not say it about a, quote unquote, contact hitter that often. I guess you could have strong contact hitters too sometimes. But I think generally this is said when you like just you don't really make good contact,

but you still manage to propel it that far because you are sufficiently strong. And I don't think that you could be stronger realistically and propel it much farther than that. You could only hit the ball better. And then it wouldn't even require as much strength because you would be making more solid contact. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think that that's right. I think that that's right. You'd have to be like,

now I'm just envisioning like Yandy Diaz's arms, but like bigger. Bigger than that? Bigger than that. They don't come much bigger than that. Yeah, certainly on a baseball field, they don't. Is it like kind of like they're so big and strong, but are they like so heavy that he can't lift them? Yeah.

Can you even swing? What sort of bat speed would you be able to generate? I feel like this is like something in a philosophy class. I want to give someone validation here. I want to agree with someone. I think we might have one that I will agree with in a second, although I'm not sure it's this one. Another Ben says, the pedantic question about calling first and third base the corners a few episodes ago led me to this. Another pedantic question that doesn't necessarily bother me, but I could see bothering others.

This is like we're in pedantic concern trolling territory. He is not bothered by this, but in theory, someone could be bothered by this. Why do we call it a baseball diamond? Isn't it a square? It seems like there isn't a clear definition of what a diamond shape is, but in general, it's just another term for a rhombus, which is not the shape of a baseball field. Once again, this doesn't actually bother me, and I like the way baseball diamond sounds more than baseball square, but I could see someone being pedantic about it. So if there is a hypothetical person who is pedantic about using baseball diamond instead

of baseball rhombus or baseball square or something, Does it offend you that it is not technically a diamond? Do you think it is not a diamond? What is the diamond? Does the diamond encompass like the dirt area, the rounded dirt area? Because like to me, that does kind of look like a diamond if you include that. And again, a diamond can look like all sorts of things. But I guess when I think of a diamond, I think of it like sort of like a spinning top shape, where it's narrowed on the bottom and it comes to a point. So you're thinking about a diamond like you would put in a ring maybe.

Yeah, right. That's kind of what I'm picturing. And that's kind of what I see if I look at a baseball field. The entire baseball field or the field within the field, like the infield also has that shape if you include the rounded part with the dirt outlines. Like that to me looks like that kind of diamond. Yeah. outlines like that to me looks like that kind of diamond yeah well and i'm i'm noticing on google you can you can search diamond shape diamond shaped logos diamond shaped square which seems to assume the answer to the question diamond shaped road signs what do you got for me i know that there's a lot of there's been a lot of oh see these look like baseball diamonds just like the what i guess if we're making a category error so is every traffic sign there's a lot of driving in this so i know that that's like a that might be confusing to you

yeah it is a square but it's like a square that is balanced on one of its points points yeah yeah i guess like i've never i've never known to be annoyed by this, but maybe I should be. I don't know that that's conceding the pedantic point, but I'm going to try it on, much like you would a diamond. Reading the definition and the etymology here from the third edition of the Dixon Baseball Dictionary, it says a diamond is the enclosed square resembling a diamond-shaped figure formed by home plate, first base, second base, and third base, the infield of a baseball field. It then says the term is a misnomer. A true diamond has two acute angles and two obtuse angles, but a square has four 90 degree angles which define the infield. But the enclosed space appears diamond shaped when viewed from any corner or from the grandstand. Oh. Huh. Interesting. So it's an illusion? Yeah. It's acknowledged, at least within the definition, that it is not really a diamond, but from a certain point of view, perhaps it is a diamond. Evidently, this goes way back because it has a citation here. Baseball comes from the 1835 booklet The Boys' Book of Sports,

a description of the exercises and pastimes of youth published by S. Babcock. It included the term diamond. This is interesting. And according to Dan Schlossberg, baseball's use of the term stems from the urban planning of the 19th century. Towns were generally built around a square featuring public buildings. In the east, that square was called a diamond. Huh. But it also has a second definition that says it's the entire playing surface on which the game of baseball is played, not necessarily just the diamond. So definitions differ, interpretations differ. I guess there is ground for pedantry here. Yeah, and it's affording us an opportunity to engage with baseball's past in a way that I'm appreciating.

But now I'm having to take exactly one toke, like, do I know what a diamond is moment? Right, yeah. So this has been kind of destabilizing as an email. Yeah. I mean, a diamond, the actual substance, a diamond could be any shape, presumably, right? You pull it out of the ground where it's been compressed and then you can turn it into any shape you want, I guess, in theory. But there is kind of a classic diamond shape, which to me does actually kind of look like a baseball field. So I guess I'm OK with it. And also, I just like the term baseball diamond.

It's kind of cool, as the other Ben said, like to be able to call that something other than just a field or the playing surface. Like you have a baseball specific term for the field. So I would not want to lose that on pedantic grounds. Yeah, I would. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I would feel very silly if I just like didn't know what shapes were. All right. Well, last pedantic question and maybe the most persuasive to me.

This comes from Phil, who says, as an elderly, soon to be retired high school English teacher, I have been enjoying your excursions into the eternal questions of baseball terminology. In tonight's Twins-Yankees game, Louisa Rice, effectively wild fave Byron Buxton, there are those guys again, and Carlos Correa led off the game with three consecutive home runs, which the announcer called back-to-back-to-back. Two people can stand or sit back-to-back, but it's physically impossible for three people to be back-to-back-to-back. What the twins did was go back-to-back, Arise and Buxton, and belly-to-belly, Buxton and Correa. A fourth consecutive event could be back-to-back again since there's now a back to match up with. This has bothered me for longer than either of you has

been alive is it time for me to wave the white flag and just accept this as a completely illogical idiom that means what it means because it means what it means or can i continue to man the battlements against errant nonsense okay so i think that we have finally found one where i'm like yeah no you got a good pedantic point that seems wrong i think that this is our winner i really appreciate belly to belly as an alternative to what came to mind for me where i was like it's a human centipede yeah that's what i was thinking too i was trying to come up with some configuration yeah belly to belly is so much better yeah thank you for sparing us my horror show, literally, of an idea here. Yeah, I think, you know, ding, ding, ding.

I think that there's a good pedantic point to be had here, which is that the only, I mean, I guess, okay. So here's a question to consider, Counselor. What if you were like, I guess you're not technically back-to-back, like you could be shoulder, you could also be shoulder to shoulder to shoulder. You could have one shoulder against the other and they could form a little triangle

and there could be a gap in the middle. But again, not totally. I guess it is back to back insofar as your backs are facing one another. So perhaps that is the pedantic wiggle room that we need here. But otherwise, I think that this is a good point and technically the points of contact are your shoulders not your backs and is that distinct

is that separate how do bodies work don't know yeah i think see my opinion is kind of colored on this because i grew up listening to john sterling on Yankees radio broadcasts. And John Sterling, after back-to-back homers, will say back-to-back and a belly-to-belly. Go back-to-back and a belly-to-belly. Go back-to-back and a belly-to-belly. As they go back-to-back and a belly-to-belly. Go back-to- Belly to belly. Go back to back. Belly to belly. So he doesn't even wait for the back to back to back, the three consecutive. He will say back to back and belly to belly after any back to back homers, just two consecutive. So that to me, I guess that is kind of correct because, well, when the hitter comes around and scores after hitting that second consecutive homer, then often he will be belly-to-belly with the hitter who preceded him.

And they will do like a belly-to-belly kind of multi-arm slap sort of. Or maybe that is more when there's a runner on base and you drive him in with a homer. I don't know, but maybe he overuses back-to-back and a belly-to-belly. So I've always sort of thought of those two terms together just for two home runs in a row. But I think Phil is right here that if we have three consecutive, it should be back-to-back and then belly-to-belly. Yeah, I think that's right i think that that is right all right i'm so glad we don't have to call it a human centipede of hitting yeah i didn't see that movie it looked icky no i did not either is there like much more to the conceit other than

it's gross i don't think so but i don't know if it was like a aren't we glad to not development sort of situation. Character development. Oh, no. You really learned something from that day at work, you know. I've not really interrogated the plot of Human Centipede, at least not lately. Yeah, good. All right. Well, I have a

stat blast to end on that is very similar to that back-to-back question. They'll take a data set sorted by some simply similar to that back-to-back question. So the Stat Blast, as always, is presented by StatHead, which is powered by Baseball Reference. And we sing the praises of StatHead constantly. baseball reference and we sing the praises of StatHead constantly. We recommend that everyone go get it because we use it all the time for this podcast and for our other work and also just to satisfy our curiosity. And it's always getting upgraded. So our friends at StatHead let us know this week that they actually just made a key addition to the StatHead baseball tool. And I will link to a blog post that explains this,

but there are a couple of new search types that allow you to search for cumulative stats in matching games. So for example, if you use the post-season filter and you look for, say, World Series Game 7s or wildcard games or something, you can now look for combined stat lines from those games. So you can say, well, how did a player hit in those games? Who had the most win probability added in game seven's career? Or who hit the most home runs as a catcher hitting fourth in the batting order? Who had the most strikeouts in postseason? No decisions. So there's another layer now of analysis that you can do and querying. And so it's become an even more invaluable tool. If it can be more invaluable, it was already invaluable. It is now more valuable

than it was when it was already invaluable. And now with that find totals from all games option that you can check, you can do all kinds of queries that weren't possible before. I think they already rolled this out for the player game finders on StatHead hockey and football and basketball, but now StatHead baseball has been updated in that same way. So go to StatHead.com, sign up using our coupon code which is wild 20 w i l d and then the numerals 2 and 0 and you can get a $20 discount on an $80

one year subscription so go sign up so the question that is linked with Phil's here this one comes from Adam who says I had a somewhat specific question occur to me while high and playing the show and i'm finding it hard to answer on google this is a new genre of listener question i guess like i'm sure it's

not new i'm sure we've had sure excuse you emailing us since the start that might account honestly it might explain like at least 60 of some of our weirder emails over the years it would clarify so much. There is no way this is a new genre of effectively wild email. The difference is that they're now announcing that they're high. I guess that is the only difference. Well, yeah. I mean, like there's, you know, it's a different political climate.

Yeah. Things have changed. The national climate when it comes to weed has shifted since the start of this podcast quite a bit. So Adam says, here's the question. What MLB player has the most career home runs without ever hitting a home run in two consecutive at-bats? So basically going back-to-back with himself. Is there someone out there who managed to pile up 300 or 400 homers without ever going deep in back-to-back plate appearances? Pure curiosity. Now, you'll notice there that Adam, who must not be pedantic or maybe not when he's high,

he switched from at-bats to plate appearances in the middle of that question. And those are two different questions. Consecutive at-bats, consecutive plate appearances. We'll answer it both ways. So this comes from frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson. Find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. The most homers ever hit by a player who never homered in back-to-back plate appearances was Mark Grace.

And Mark Grace hit 173 homers, none consecutively. So that's the record. And it stood out in my mind also. I think Mark Grace went a notably long time without hitting a grand slam too. Like he didn't hit his first career grand slam until his 6137th at bat, which was he was the leader at the time. So I guess he didn't hit home runs in certain situations that often, but he is the leader. 173 dingers, never hit dingers in back-to-back plate appearances. Only 13 players have ever had 100-plus homers and never gone back-to-back in plate appearances. Billy Butler, Milton Bradley, Chris Sabo, Royce Clayton, Giovanni

Soto, Dixie Walker, Granny Hammer, one of the great names, Granny Hammer. Granny Hammer. Brian McRae, Lou Piniella, George Sisler, Honest Wagner, Martin Prado. And those guys all clustered close to 100, which is that tends to be the case of if you say something that's hard to do and you set the minimum at 100, then most of the results will be very close to 100. But Mark Grace, he got closer to 200 than 100. So that's special. And if you use it bats instead of plate appearances, then you just remove some players from that list. You remove Billy Butler, Milton Bradley, Dixie Walker, Granny Hammer, Lupinella, and Martine Prado, all of whom did do it in back-to-back at bats, but not back-to-back plate appearances. So it's a pretty exclusive list.

It is hard to hit a lot of homers without hitting them in bunches, as they say, or at least in two consecutive at-bats or plate appearances. And I guess I've got to actually end on the past blast. We did the stat blast. Here's the past blast. This is from Richard Hershberger. It's also home run related. It's from June 10th, 1863.

So Richard, as always, I mentioned, he is a historian, saber researcher, and author of Strike 4, The Evolution of Baseball. So I will link to the source as always. But June 10th, 1863, the Gotham of New York versus the Star of Brooklyn. And the quote goes, This game was made a noteworthy contest from the fact that during the match, an important precedent was established that we hope to see followed up on each occasion of a match. That is that every player will have to touch every base in running round in future, or he will be liable to be put out.

If he fails to touch every base as he passes, he will be made to return to them. Smith of the stars was put out in this way. He had made a hit, which gave him his third base, but in running round, he failed to touch the first base. McGrath, who was attending to the first base for the Gothams, called for the ball and holding it while on the base asked for judgment and the umpire at once decided Smith out. Richard writes, that was from the New York Clipper, by the way, and Richard writes, this exact play could happen today. The batter apparently hits a triple but misses first base. The ball is thrown to the first baseman who appeals to the umpire who calls the batter runner out. What makes this interesting is that it was not clear at the time that the runner actually had to touch the bag. The rule required that he

make the base but did not define what that meant and opinions varied. In this instance the umpire John Grum agreed with the Gothams that the runner had to touch the base. Grum was an influential figure at the time, and his opinion became the consensus, though the rules would not explicitly say this until 1865. Wow. Runner and the fact that the zombie runner sometimes goes to second and starts there without having touched first first and that that seems to contradict the rules as written. So that would seem to violate a principle that was first codified in 1865, which meant that before then there was some disagreement about what make the base meant. Did you just have to run by it or run over it? Probably people argued about that at the time.

So maybe we have John Grum to thank for laying down the law and saying that make the base means to touch the base. You do, in fact, have to touch them all. Wow. You know, we could just be like waving to the base. Hi, I acknowledge the existence of the base. I'm going to move along now it was interesting because like you'd think that that might have been there from the start right like right you wouldn't think that there would have been a period where like you had bases but people argued about whether you had

to touch them like it seems like the whole point of having the base is okay you have to touch that base or or not touch it right like that makes the difference. But because they said make the base, I guess like almost everything, things we take for granted, they actually had to figure out and hash out at some point and argue about it in a sometimes pedantic way, even touching the base, which seems self-evident, seems obvious. But it was not in 1863 it is all made up all of it is made up is the thing and so it is useful to remember that it's all made up and so you have to be specific about stuff and you know there are things that seem obvious and evident but you still have to write them down on occasion because people are tricksters try to get out of stuff and that's why it is important to be pedantic about baseball how can you not be we must agree on the rules of this silly exercise that we have collectively agreed to participate in and enjoy. It is wild.

All right. When Meg ended the episode with wild, did I consider saying effectively wild? Yes. Yes, I did. And now you know that I did. A few follow-ups. One other humbling omission from the last episode

that was pointed out by listener Mulder Batflip. We talked last time about players who had really turned it on since a May 20th episode about who really needed to turn it on. We focused on Joey Votto and Nelson Cruz, but the player we highlighted first on that episode was Marcus Semyon. We were talking about who needs a Trevor Story game to get their numbers up all at once. And the most obvious candidate at that time was Marcus Semyon. Well, since May 20th, Marcus Simeon has a 156 WRC+. He has turned it on. He had zero homers when we recorded that episode. He has six since then. He's been a top 25 hitter in MLB, minimum 80 plate appearances. Literally number 25, but still top 25. 302, 364, 531. Not bad. Maybe the defibrillated ball has helped him.

That's helped the Rangers spring up to second place in the AL West. So has the Angels, losing almost every game. Rough week out there for injury news, by the way. Casey Mize having Tommy John surgery. Hyunjin Ryu having elbow surgery out for the year. Andrew Kittredge having Tommy John. Liam Hendricks has a forearm strain. Royce Lewis with a torn ACL done for the

year. Fernando Tatis's timeline to return moved back. Albies out until at least mid-August. Stay safe out there, everyone. Last week, we talked about that hour 54 minute game between the Rays and the Cardinals. Well, the aforementioned Gibran wrote in to say, I watched that whole game while working. All points raised on the podcast were valid, but you did overlook that getaway day games tend to be swingaway day games as well. Batters swing more often to get the game over so they can get to their flights. That is exactly what happened during that game. Batters were swinging early and often made the game go much quicker.

It's often postulated that there is an umpiring effect in getaway games, that everyone is in a rush to get away, and therefore maybe strike zones are a little more expansive than they usually are, which would give hitters greater incentive to swing. Bill James did a study on that back in 2013, and he did find some support for that hypothesis. He found that the last games of homestands tend to be lower scoring and presumably quicker too. There's just less offense. There could be multiple reasons for that, as he suggested, but it could at least partly be an umpiring effect.

So good point, Gibran. It was a game with two quick-working pitchers going deep into the game and no mid-inning pitching changes and not a lot of offense. But maybe one reason why there was not a lot of offense was that it was a getaway day game. And listener Joe responds to an email we answered last week. He says, at first blush, I absolutely love the listener's idea of having MLB TV in-game highlights that are specific to the teams that are playing, and I thoroughly enjoyed your discussion of it. But one thing you did not discuss is just how fantastically brutal this would be for specific fan bases. For example, if the Twins are playing the Yankees, most Twins-Yankees highlights would presumably feature the Yankees' complete dominance of the

Twins in the postseason. And if the Dodgers are playing the Giants, Giants fans would be forced to relive their 2021 playoff loss over and over and over again. And as an Orioles fan, I might be forced to relive the Jeffrey Mayer fiasco every time they play the Yankees. You get the drift. So basically, if MLB TV were to do this, it could potentially be punishing to a lot of fan bases who are forced to relive their most painful memories.

Of course, the flip side is also true, with fan bases getting to relive their best moments against the other team, but I think the negatives will outweigh the positives in most cases. Anyway, just curious what you think about this consequence. Do you think it would be good or bad on the whole? I suppose it would stoke the rivalry, so that might be good, but I think there should be some sort of equal time provision. Would have to be fair and balanced. It wouldn't necessarily need to be the biggest games and the most consequential moments. It could just be your run-of-the-mill regular season game, but an interesting highlight from that game.

So I don't think it should be skewed completely toward one side of the audience. Unless, I guess, you are watching a home broadcast, let's say, if MLB TV could calibrate it so that fans of one broadcast are served uplifting moments from that team's matchups with its opponent, and then fans of the other broadcast could be served something other than that, more mundane moments if they don't have highlights. Wouldn't want to depress anyone while

they're watching the game. Although really, if you're watching a real rivalry game on a national broadcast, let's say, you tend to see the same highlights between those two teams played over and over again. I'd like it to be a bit more even-handed if you don't know who's watching, but maybe you could narrowcast, you could tailor it to the viewer. MLB TV asks you what team you're a fan of too, so that could be another piece of data. Maybe it could be customized based on the team that you select. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up.

Pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Get themselves access to some perks and help us stay ad free aside from our stat head sponsorship. And I guess clips from Car Shield ads that we're kind of making fun of. Matt Stryker, Kevin Smith, Raul Bell, Russell Bryce, and Daniel Joslin. Thanks to all of you. Our Patreon supporters get access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, now more than 650 strong. Great conversation going on there at all hours. They also get access to monthly bonus podcasts with me and Meg, playoff live streams, and

discounts on the t-shirts we teased earlier this year. Check the show page for a link to the merch. You can keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit

at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode later this week. Talk to you then. Oh, please Oh, baby Humble Let me be humble

Humble me Don't let me forget What I did Humble me Humble me I'm a little lonely.