Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1890: You’re a Peach

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter a bit more about whether Dottie dropped the ball on purpose in the movie version of A League of Their Own, then discuss an Angels defensive meltdown, a vomiting Oakland Athletic, a Javier Báez bad-ball batted ball, Tony La Russa (and Bill Veeck) taking suggestions from the stands, the […]

Daddy, I like it, keep on holding me Daddy, I like it, keep on telling me How much you love everything that I do And how you miss me when I'm not with you Dottie, I like it Hello and welcome to episode 1890 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangrafts and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? If, as you maintain,

Dottie in a league of their own dropped the ball on purpose, I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, why did she go out to the mound before the plate appearance with Kit to call for high fastballs because, and I quote, she can't hit them, can't lay off them? What happened in between that mound conference and the collision at home plate to change her heart such that she would go from advocating, throwing pitches that she knows her sister can't hit, to then taking pity on her and rolling over?

I don't know. That seems to be the strongest argument in favor of didn't drop the ball on purpose i think so at least that's persuasive you could say she beat her at her own game she threw the high fastballs she didn't lay off him but she did hit him so she had grown as a player. She had proved herself. She belongs. She stood up. She answered the challenge. And therefore, she is worthy of scoring and of Dottie pretending to have dropped the ball. I guess that is one possible interpretation. That is an interpretation. Yeah. One could engage with that if they wanted to. Yeah. I will say the creators of A League of Their Own, the TV series, I believe have come out in favor of Dottie did not drop the ball on purpose.

Now, that's not canonical. Their opinion carries no more weight about what happened in the movie than ours does. But I was happy to see that they're on the right side of history when it comes to this important question. Yeah. This has been on my mind just because people have been talking about the show and enjoying the show. And we've got a guest related to the show later in this episode. We're going to be talking to Justine Siegel, who has been a

boundary-breaking coach in baseball at all levels with women, with men, in the majors and beyond. She founded Baseball for All, and she's also the baseball coordinator for A League of Their Own on Amazon Prime Video. So we've talked to some baseball coordinators before. I know I've had the baseball coordinator of Pitch on a podcast and of Twilight, of course, memorably. So now we're talking to another baseball coordinator.

This is a nice little niche for us. Yeah, yeah. I will ask her a nice little niche for us. Yeah. Yeah. I will ask her about the Dottie question. Yes. But otherwise, we should probably drop this or it'll end with us just yelling mule, nag at each other. No, I would never call you a mule or a nag. Come on now.

It's a term of affection. Yeah, yeah. When sisters do it. So you were watching the Angels self-destruct on Monday night against the Mariners. Is that correct? I was not watching live, although I've since brushed up on the GIFs. Ben. What happened?

I mean, oh, I just feel, you know know it was uncomfortable it got to a point where it was like uncomfortable to watch i i feel like i'm maybe i'm just gonna read from the play log i don't know if that could do it justice i mean that's that's a start. It helps to set the scene, right? It does, yes. Well, let me set the scene further. It's the top of the ninth inning. The Mariners and the Angels are knotted 2-2. I would describe both Otani and Castillo's starter performances. They were not their very sharpest.

They were still quite impressive. I think that we should have an appreciation in our hearts for very good starters who maybe don't have their absolute best stuff, but still grit through. They're gritty, and they reach back when they need it. Show me what I'm telling you. Might just have a new pitch. We should talk about that at some point here. Yeah, he's thrown a few of those this year was two seamers yeah yeah yeah just like hey let's add another one in here it's been it's been

so easy for you all before now so so you know that that was sort of the evening there had been home run related strangeness in this game prior to the ninth inning. There was a ball that ricocheted off of Julio Rodriguez's glove during a semi-collision with Mitch Hanegar that resulted in a ball being called a home run off the bat of Luis Ranquifo. Then Julio had a home run called back that the umpire said was foul. They looked at it and they maintained that opinion,

although there are Julio Home Run truthers on Mariners Twitter. So, you know, that's out there. And the game's all knotted up. And the Mariners themselves had had sort of a sloppy defensive inning earlier in the game that led to the game being tied. So it was like, yeah, you know, here we are. Okay. So with that scene set, Cal Raleigh grounded out to third.

Totally normal so far. That's a thing that people do. Cal Raleigh does that. All sorts of people do that. They ground out to third. Then Sam Haggerty single to left. Now, Sam Haggerty is like, I feel bad about how I have thought of Sam Haggerty, right? Because I think this Mariners team is pretty good.

I think that they're a playoff team. I know that in the days leading up to the deadline, one of the things that you and I talked about was how, you know, the sort of the bottom of their 40 man could have used some reinforcement. And they did some stuff to that effect, right? Like they brought Jake Lamb in. But, you know, there was a while while Julio was hurt and Ty France was hurt

and Mitch Hanager wasn't quite back yet. And I think Dylan Moore was on the aisle where you were like, wow, like Sam Haggerty is like really factoring in on this roster in a way that seems bad, you know? Because like Sam Haggerty's end of the bench piece right like that's sam hagerty's role but here's one thing that sam hagerty is really good at i don't know you ready very fast fast guy he is a fast guy so he singles to left and he

you know he was he was playing with aaron loop he was like oh i'm playing with you at first base and looked like he was preparing to try to steal second. And Aaron loop drew a pitch. It ended up buried in the dirt and Max Dazzy. I assume having seen Sam Haggerty noted fast guy kind of playing with Aaron loop, just assumed that he was going to take off for second base.

Sam Haggerty stopped about, you know, a third of the way off of first base. That did not stop Max Dazzy from just throwing that ball right into center field. So then Sam Haggerty was like, well, thank you, sir. I shall advance to second. So I'm editorializing our game log and play log is much leaner than the set fan graphs, but I'm just relaying what I remember.

So he advances to second on an error. Ben, have an error counter in your mind, all right? That's error number one. Then he steals third base. No error involved. Fine. Then Carlos Santana walks. And here's the thing I'm going to say.

It was the end of the evening. I was a little tired. I think that Carlos Santana was gifted a ball for. I don't know if you've gone back and watched this, but there was some confusion about what the count was in this. And so Laz Diaz appeared to get kind of flummoxed by the count. I think that Manny Acta, the Mariners third base coach, was saying to him, it's 3-1. And Laz was like, it's 2-2. And then Manny was like, it's 3-1. I think it was 2-2. I think it was at one point 2-2, and then it became 3-1. I think it was 2-2. I think it was at one point 2-2 and then it became 3-1 and then it became Carlos sent in and has won.

Yeah, that is one of my favorite baseball things when the count just breaks down and all the universe's laws just are suspended. And I know John Boyce, I believe, has done a video on that. I wrote an article about that for The Ringer. It's just great. And it happens more often than you'd think. Yeah. And I think it might have happened here. I don't want to, you know, like, Las Diaz gets a lot of grief from a lot of people. So I don't want to unnecessarily heap scorn on Las Diaz. But I think that maybe, I don't know if, I don't know if Maniacta was like trying to fool him,

like if he was up to shenanigans or if he was himself confused or if I was confused. Totally possible that I just miscounted again. It was the end of the day and i was tired anyhow carlos santana walks that brings julio rodriguez to the plate i will remind everyone it is tie game and right now there are runners on the corners noted fast guy sam hagerty less fast guy carlos santana who the mariners decided to pinch run for with Dylan Moore, who is himself a fast guy. So you got two fast guys on the corners, right?

Yep. Ben, then all hell broke loose. And this is where the hell started, but it was hardly where the hell finished because Julio Rodriguez should have been grounding into a fielder's choice. A really good defense maybe could have just turned two on this and gotten a double play. And then, bim, bam, bum, Bob's your uncle. The Angels are out of the inning. But that's not what happened.

No, it's not. Instead, what happened was, and this is one of those things where I have stopped trying to spend so much time looking at fans making expressive faces in crowds because, you know, like they didn't ask to be on TV and they didn't ask to be in my dumb baseball blog. But I was very tempted here because what happens is Julio Rodriguez grounds into what should be a fielder's choice to the second baseman. But the ball kind of like eats up. I think it's Rangifo.

And then Rangifo tries to come home and Haggerty is already partway down the line. And so you think, oh, no, Sam Haggerty's goose is cooked. He is done. They are going to get this out at home. But no, instead, they try to run him back up the third baseline. But there is no one covering home because Aaron Loop has kind of fallen down a little bit. He's kind of fallen down a little bit.

Now I'm watching it again. Yeah, he did kind of fall down a little bit. So he does not get to home fast enough to cover. There is no one at third base. So Dylan Moore makes it to third. Noted fast guy Sam Haggerty has scored. Julio thought he was going to maybe be out or had ended the inning is on first base so you're sitting there going oh no that surely that's all

that's the end of the angels goofing stuff up because we are now did they really not did they really not call an error in that play we do not have an error in the game like there but i'm here to tell you that somebody made a terrible mistake. So then that brings Ty France up. Ty France. Ty France. Here's the notation in the play log. Ty France reached on fielder's choice and error to shortstop.

Dylan Moore scored on error. Julio Rodriguez advances to third base on error. Ty France advances to second. Error by Max Tassi. So now it's 4-2. Jesse Winker comes up. He grounds out to third. Julio scores. No

errors are committed, but everybody feels bad about themselves except for the Mariners who feel great. Mitch Hanegar has intentionally walked the scores. Now at this point, I will remind everyone 5-2. And then J.P. Crawford single to left field. Ty France scores. Mitch Hanegar advances to second. And Eugenio Suarez grounded out to third to end the inning.

And it is just at the end of the Sam Haggerty score, they cut to two fans doing the like, no face, right? They're like, no! And it was really bad. And then you're like, oh, I'm sure they'll be done now. I'm sure that that will be the end of things. Because certainly they're going to like hunker down now. They're going to like really gird their loins and they're going to get out of this inning.

And they're going to, you know, they're going to be down a little bit, but they're going to still be within striking distance. They're going to be able to rally back in the bottom of the inning. And then, and then, and then you watch, you you watch Stassi try to catch the ball to tag out Dylan Moore at home plate. He fails to do that. The ball ricochets all the way to the backstop. And everybody is safe and scoring except for the Angels. And then they cut to Phil Nevin, who is pinching his neck.

I want to slowly strangle myself rather than keep watching this team play baseball. And I don't know if my explanation of what happened here was remotely comprehensible to anyone, but I would encourage you to just go back and watch because it is some of the sloppiest baseball I've ever seen. The amount of falling down that happens. There is just like so much falling down.

There was more falling down when dylan more scored you know there's like all of this everybody's just falling it's like they're on ice skates or it's a roller rink or something we've seen a lot of bad baseball this season we talked about the red socks stretch of bad baseball but it was over a period of games and days and weeks and not necessarily so compressed within a single inning. I mean, it was bad. Like I was not watching live at that point. I had watched Otani and then I was over

into Better Call Saul series finale mode by that point. So I had to catch up later, but I will link to the GIF thread for everyone's enjoyment or sadness. I mean, wasn't there also a point in that inning when Phil Nevin did not have a ready reliever ready? I don't know if it was for France or for Julio or at what point that was, but Loop had to face someone that he probably shouldn't have.

That might have been true. There was a managerial miscue maybe. The Angels are just a super fun site right now. He just like really, he really threw a lot of pitches. It was very bad. You know, it was a bad. I really think that Julio hit a home run earlier in this game. Maybe I'm a truther.

Yeah, sounds like it. That's neither here nor there, but I don't know. It seemed like it tucked behind the pole to me. I don't't know maybe this is the sign that i really have reignited my fandom that i'm like don't you think that was a home run though don't you look at it and know in your heart gonna be a mariners podcast down the stretch i think probably but that's okay not exclusively not exclusively but you know they are they are fun and they winning. And maybe it wasn't a home run. I don't know. Show it again in slow-mo.

Now I'm just sitting here re-watching parts of this game. I found it to be kind of frustrating early because, you know, again, it was not like an entirely crisp, super sparkling performance from either pitcher. It was not bad, but it was like, you know, this is not one where you walk away like wow you know like when castillo and cole pitched against each other i think that was a home run i'm watching it again ben that's a home run i think that what a roller coaster this is i think he was robbed of number 19 i think that he should demand restitution yeah if anyone's hitting home runs it's probably julio you know yeah there's been a lot of perplexing action lately. There was a recent vomit incident on the field, which was- I heard that there was some vomiting, yeah.

There really was. Skybolt, Oakland A's center fielder, just voluminously vomited, just like me in the morning after a bunch of brussels sprouts he was out there you know hold on i'm gonna interrupt you i'm sorry that's very rude i know that it's rude i just want to say like easily the wildest stretch of time we have had on this podcast this year was the in venue interview but the while, this was when you talked about the sprouts thing. Like that is a, that's an old timer, Ben. That's, I don't know, man. Anyway.

I believe he had some sort of food poisoning, but he did not specify what the food was. Anyway, that was seemingly symbolic of how the A season is going. Then you had Javier Baez swinging at a pitch that bounced. Now that part is not unusual. The unusual part is that he made contact this time and actually put the ball in play. So he flew out on, I believe, a slider that bounced. So that was a weird one. And maybe the most

amusing of all was Tony La Russa appearing to take a fan's suggestion slash reminder to insert a pinch runner. So I don't know if you saw this video. I did not. Okay. Well, I will link you to the video and we as a pinch runner in the eighth inning of the White Sox game on Monday. see what his reaction is or if he is responding or if he's looking over, but they're shouting at Larissa. They're directing him to insert Adam Engel. And then he did.

Now, is this cause and effect? Is this correlation not causation? I don't know. Based on what we can tell, it certainly looks like causation because he had dallied in inserting the pinch runner i believe a whole at bat maybe went by without inserting the pinch runner and then he did on maybe the first pitch of the following at bat after repeated and loud urging from this fan which sort of fit into the narrative of tonel ra is asleep at the wheel, possibly literally at times. And it doesn't reflect well on him that he did not make that move unless he had some other rationale.

Sometimes maybe something changes and now it makes sense to insert a pinch runner, whereas before it did not. But it certainly looks suggestive that he is just taking suggestions from the crowd that they are maybe reminding him to make moves that he was not completely up on. So choosing to believe that that's the case for the comedic value. Yeah, that would be the funnier option. But then don't you have like, now they need to test it with additional moves, right?

We need some crowd verification that this has happened. See how open to suggestion he is. Right. How far can we take this thing? Right. Yeah. This is like one step removed from Bill Veck's grandstand manager's night stunt, which he did like six days after Eddie Goodell's debut in 1951 with the St. Louis Browns. He had a night where the fans made the moves from the stands. So grandstand managers night, they had like a thousand grandstand managers, quote unquote, in a special section behind the Browns dugout.

And the Browns actual manager, Zach Taylor, was just set up in a rocking chair in the next box over, just in his civilian clothes with a pipe in his mouth, just enjoying the night off. And then the fans wrote their choices on lineup cards, which they delivered to the Browns before the game. And then they tallied up the fan lineup preferences and they decided on the lineup. The Philadelphia A's manager, the opposing team's manager, Jimmy Dykes, was not amused. He said that Vec was making a farce of the game, which was often the case. I was going to say, hardly the first time he was accused of that, I'm sure. Yeah, but in a very amusing way, generally. And he explained it to Sports Illustrated later.

He said, the fan comes away from the ballpark with nothing more to show for it than what's in his mind, an ephemeral feeling of having been entertained. You've got to heighten and preserve that illusion. You have to give him more vivid pictures to carry away in his head. a bad job. They were calling for the Browns infield to play back and play for a double play. And they, I think, advised the catcher not to steal because he was slow and he didn't. And ultimately, the Browns won the game five to three with the grandstand manager's assistance. So maybe the White Sox should just outsource their managerial moves to the fans. Couldn't go much worse than it has been, probably. I mean, if nothing else, it would be kind of instructive, right? Because you would realize how hard it is. And I don't say that defending Tony LaRusso's decisions to date.

I think that we have given him the business when he has deserved it this season, right? When he has made errors, we have been like, Betty, you're making some mistakes but i do think that the the general task of managing is harder than people often give managers credit for and a lot of that is just that there is an information asymmetry that exists between fans and the team right where even a manager who is making bad decisions does have at his disposal a whole range of information and bits of this and that that can help to inform the decisions that he's making. And sometimes managers will avoid a guy in the bullpen because they know something about him that we don't know. And even though he's technically available, he'd like to stay away from him if he can.

And we don't always know all of that stuff. like to stay away from him if he can, right? And we don't always know all of that stuff. So there's an information asymmetry that I think often allows fans to feel aggrieved and haughty. Now, White Sox fans have good reason to feel aggrieved this year because it hasn't been a smooth time, you know, like it hasn't been an easy going. But I think that it would perhaps illuminate for some people like oh yeah this is actually hard you know this is a tricky tricky thing plus a lot of fans you know probably don't have a fluency with like all the data that managers have at their disposal not just information about availability and health but like actual data and wrapping their arms around that might be tricky and they might

make decisions that kind of fly in the face of what their ops group has told them they should do or what their broader team strategy is so yeah they might start issuing intentional walks when the pitcher's ahead in the count or something i mean yeah some just baseless move like that yeah it could it could get out of hand and maybe they'd come away being like you know that's one of those days he's maybe he's okay like it might be it might be fine i would just like to say that i had forgotten that carlos santana took a giant fistful of sunflower seeds and just like shoved him in his mouth right before he stepped into the box but i think las diaz definitely goofed this up i again i don't know if maniacta was like trying to pull a fast one on him if there was shenanigans but but I just pulled this up while you were talking.

And it's like pitch one is definitely a ball. And then pitch two is the pitch where Haggerty steals third. And you can see Lazdija is clearly making a strike sign, but then I think maybe got flummoxed by the steal and got distracted. He makes the same sign for pitch three, which is also a strike. And then pitch four is a ball. And then they're like, no, no, the count is 3-1. And then on the next pitch, Carlos Santana took his free base.

Dylan Moore came in. And everything kind of fell apart from there. And it might have all started with them getting the count wrong. So if I were an Angels fan, I'd be mad at all sorts of people. You're just getting distracted by sunflower seeds, potentially. It's just like the biggest, Ben, it's the biggest wad of sunflower seeds you've ever seen in your whole life. And he's just like, rah! Sounds Terry Francona-esque.

It just looks like sunflower seeds. Don't make it gross. There's not other weird stuff in there. Look, we're not trying to give Tito a hard time, but that's disgusting. And I don't think that we should lay that on Carlos Santana. He's just there with some seeds.

It's just the biggest wad of seeds you've ever seen in your whole life. I'm going to take a screenshot for you so that you know what I'm talking about. Because you're like, how big of a wad could it be? And I'm here to tell you a pretty big one. I definitely forget to put the pinch runner in if I were a major league manager, but I'm completely unqualified for that position. Oh, yeah.

I would decline to serve if asked, not that I would be asked. So, all right. A couple other things. I went on a little journey here looking at the FanCs war leaderboard because i noticed that francisco lindor is a top 10 player yeah i wore this season which had largely escaped my notice until fairly recently yeah he's been really good yeah in fact until there was a a viral bad tweet about yes i'm not even gonna give it attention but I will say that the upside of the attention was that it made me look up, hey, how good has Francisco Lindor been? Because this tweet was all about him being overpaid or his salary or something.

Turns out he's been fantastic. Yeah. I don't know if we've talked about him this season. No, we haven't. Has his name been uttered on this program? I don't know if he has. Possibly at some point, but not that I recall. And he's been like a 5-1 player so far. What's up with that? This has name been uttered on this program. I don't know if it has. Possibly at some point, but not that I recall. And he's been like a 5-1 player so far.

He's been great. Now, the rest of that journey is that I was looking up the other players involved in the Francisco Lindor trade, and they've all been pretty good. Yeah. And in fact, Andres Jimenez of the Guardians is a top 20 player by Fangraphs. Yeah, we have him at 14 as we are recording this on Tuesday afternoon. All right. So if you add up the wars at least entering Tuesday and you throw in Ahmed Rosario, who

was going to the Guardians in that deal, and also Carlos Carrasco, who came back to the Mets, it's like neck and neck. It's like 6.7, I think, Fangraphs were entering Tuesday for Lindor plus Carrasco versus 6.4 for Jimenez plus Rosario. And now I guess Carrasco has an oblique issue and he's going to be out for a few weeks at least, it seems like. And so we're going to get basically a photo finish, the two sides of this trade war wise. Now, if you wanted to bring years of team control or salary into it, as perhaps that tweet did, then I guess you would have to give an edge to Cleveland.

But if we don't have to bring salary into it, because who cares what Steve Cohen is spending on baseball players? It's been remarkably even. I know that there were a couple of minor leaguers involved in the trade as well, but at least for just this season, Lendora Carrasco, Jimenez Rosario, very even in terms of on-field value. Jimenez has been fantastic. Rosario has been a good contributor too.

So probably too soon to say who won that trade, but I don't know that there is a clear winner right now at least it has turned out i guess better than probably some people were thinking in the moment right that happens more or less on the heels of the mookie bets trade and we're thinking oh no another franchise cornerstone and icon gets traded by a team that won't just pay that player instead. And it's not as if they gave them away, at least in retrospect. Now they've done pretty well on that deal and they've gotten good players back. And that's been a strength of that Cleveland front office.

They've been good at developing pitchers. They've been good at winning trades, which highlights the fact that they didn't make any trades really at the deadline. So if you have a front office, just empower them to do what they do well, which is develop players and make trades. And they don't really get much of a chance to spend big money for the most part, at least on free agents, et cetera. And yet they've managed to remain competitive anyway. And this deal is a good example of that. So if you're the Mets, you have to be pretty happy to have Francisco Lindor. And if you're the Guardians, you have to be feeling like, well, if we had to lose Francisco Lindor, we did pretty well for ourselves seemingly. Yeah. I think that we can still have just a broad-based philosophical and methodological objection to the instinct to

trade very good players rather than retain them and then pay them. Like, I think we can just like we can say that's that's not the kind of baseball we enjoy, because it would be meaningful to people if Francisco Lindor were having this season in Cleveland. Right. Like that would be that would be good, too. People would like that because he'd be this guy that they'd had the whole time. But it does look less egregious with the benefit of hindsight in the last couple of years of performance. And to me, the money part of it is like, whatever.

That doesn't matter. But just in terms of actual production on the field, they, I think, properly identified something in Jimenez and seem to have maximized him pretty dramatically. And we'll have to see if he keeps hitting the ball as hard as he has because he hasn't really shown a capacity for that before but yeah it doesn't look as it doesn't look like giving up stuff like not giving up stuff like giving it away but like giving up right yeah

which is sort of how it looked at the time where we were like oh so you're getting like i think that a lot of people's reaction including mine at the time was so just trade ramirez now right because like what are you doing if you're getting rid of lindor if you're doing that then just you know commit to the bit and instead they extended ramirez and they've gotten a really terrific season out of andres menace which i don't say like gotten it out of him like he was like oh please help me but like you know he has been very productive for them and i think has been an exciting part of their season to date. So I don't want to take that away from him,

but also sometimes it's good to keep your franchise cornerstones is all. So both things can be true at once, right? It didn't end up being like a white flag kind of a trade and also we can just like it when guys stick around or given the opportunity to do that. Yeah, right. I mean, money may not matter for Steve Cohen. Cleveland ownership has decided that it matters, has chosen to operate in such a way that it matters. And so for them, I guess if they had signed Lindor, perhaps they would not have signed Ramirez, which is not to

say that they couldn't have potentially done both. I just don't know that their track record suggests that they would have. So in that sense, if you could only keep one, if you're setting that up as your condition, rightly or wrongly, then I guess they've done decently in being able to keep one and get good value back for the other in terms of players who were producing it roughly an equivalent level to the ones they gave up at least this season. So I guess that's a bit of both sides winning or at least not losing as much as it initially looked like they might. Anyway, it just stood out to me because I had failed to recognize how good a couple of those players had been this year and then how close it is if you just

add up the wars which is maybe oversimplifying things with a player like lindor but still good players on both sides it turns out i have another update in the uh carlos santana uh the sunflower seed explosion and yeah you were not exaggerating no but i have a further update and this is why i should search twitter before i start talking to you about stuff so this is from jeff fletcher last night umpire laz diaz just said he did in fact lose track of the count i messed that one up he also said if the angels had pushed their objection further they would have either checked with the other umpires to correct it or gone to the video to correct it. And then here's a funny thing.

This is from Sam Blum. Phil Nevin on the ninth inning. It was awful. I think that was just a more general comment, not specific to Laz Diaz. He also said he was aware of missed count call on the Carlos Santana at bat, but said ump Laz Diaz insisted that a pitch he'd call a strike was actually a called ball.

Weird. That's like, yeah, can't you just go to look at the tape? Because then you would have been like, oh, the Sam Haggerty, you know, being fast. That goofed this whole thing up, I would wager. Because he does make it very clear. Anyway, it was a weird game, Ben. It was a weird game. Sure was.

So other things that have happened since we last recorded. Walker Bueller is injured even more than people hoped that he was. So other things that have happened since we last recorded, Walker Bueller is injured even more than people hoped that he was, I guess. No one hoped that he was. They hoped that he wasn't, but he is. He's having Tommy John surgery. So he's going to be out for quite a while. Presumably we'll miss next season as well. So that sucks. That hurts the Dodgers short-term pitching depth and longer-term too. And I suppose his potential earnings and people who enjoy watching Walker Bueller. And it's always a bit of a bummer when a pitcher lingers for a while on the IL before having the surgery and then ultimately ends up missing more time than they theoretically could have if they had had surgery immediately, which is not to say that he was mishandled or mistreated or anything. Sometimes it does make sense to wait and try alternative treatments.

And occasionally that will pay off. And there are certain times when it doesn't really matter because of the calendar anyway. And so you're going to miss a certain amount of time regardless. But that's always frustrating. miss a certain amount of time regardless. But that's always frustrating. It was for me as a fan when it was like, not only did we lose this guy for a while, but maybe if he had gone under the knife sooner, easy for fans to say, hey, go get a new ligament in your elbow immediately. No, but it can be frustrating when you feel like, oh, not only is he gone for a while now, but if we had started the clock sooner on this thing, if somehow we had known what would happen and we had not waited for a few months, then he'd be a few months closer to returning.

But, you know, he was less effective before he was hurt and then he was hurt in a more acute way. And I believe he said that what had ailed him in that start had not been ailing him previously, but his fastball was a lot less effective. And who knows, maybe there was some underlying weakness there that was taking a toll so dodgers pitching i mean they are often losing pitchers and somehow finding more and kershaw of course is hurt too although dustin may is about to be back and i believe is scheduled to start saturday so you lose one pitcher to TJ, you get one back. So that's something. I mean, it makes the Mitch White deal look a little funnier in retrospect, which, you know, I think your mileage can vary on how much of a load he was necessarily going to

carry. But like it is depth that they dealt away. And now they are reliant on like Kershaw coming back and being healthy. And Dustin may not getting hurt again, which I don't say, obviously hoping he stays healthy and not knowing anything like special or insidery. But it's just like this guy was broken recently. So the odds that he's going to be broken again are like non-zero at the very least. So, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about the Dodgers wanted depth and how they have all this length in their lineup.

And like now Max Muncy looks like he's getting it together again and who will stop them? And it's like maybe themselves, like maybe the answer will just be that they will take too many hits in the rotation and be compromised. Not in a, you know, I don't think they're in danger of losing that division. I don't think that they're even in danger of like getting played out of a first round by but i think that it does it certainly complicates their postseason pitching pitching picture i'm not tired i'm not like you know i'm doing fine i'm drinking a seltzer. I have water. Anyway, just one of those days where my tongue is moving faster than my brain. But anyhow, I think that they have a more complicated October picture.

Oh, no. New podcast, yips. Oh, God. Anyway, it makes october more complicated and i don't want to make too much of dave roberts having been too cute in the past but it's like oh no where does the rubber meet the road on like the limitations of their pitching depth and like his at times strange like postseason proclivities when it comes to the pitching. But maybe this is what he needed, Ben. Maybe he'll just end up being constrained in what he can do

and try to get goofy with because he just will have a couple of guys who can throw. Maybe it was a strategy all along. Elsewhere in the NL West, the Fernando Tatis suspension news broke after we recorded last week in time for me to mention it in the outro and read the relevant statements and such and some of the early parsing of at least the first explanation for how this supposedly contaminated sample occurred. Do you have any thoughts about either the suspension itself or I guess about the conversation about the explanations for the suspension i just i mostly am just disappointed you know like it's just a bummer i don't feel the need to like moralize on it more than has already happened like this was you know i think that we have a couple of really big examples of his judgment just not being very good in ways that affect his ability to be on the field.

And that's a real shame because he's a super talented guy. He's a really exciting player. I think everyone was looking forward to, you know, the like full strength Padres and what they might be able to do in the postseason with, you know, the addition of Soto. And then and they haven't even gotten Tatis back yet. And's like right yeah you know I don't know him right I don't know how like convincing of an explanation that defense is that he offered but I will say that you know part of when you're a player of that caliber, when you're as important to the ongoing organizational plans of a team as Tatis is, I think that you want to approach moments where you might, you know, kind of run afoul either of, you know, a motorcycle or weird stuff that might be in a medication that

you don't understand with just like a good amount of trepidation. And there are so many resources available to these guys, right? It's not like he couldn't have just gone to the team and been like, I think I have ringworm, you know, what do I do for that? Yeah. In a way, like if you take the explanation as legitimate, then that makes him look bad in a different way. I mean, if he's cheating, then obviously he's not going to go to the team and announce that and ask them what to do. If he's not cheating and it was accidental, then it still should have been avoidable. So either way, it's not great. And even if he had some perfect airtight excuse where you somehow couldn't really blame him

and he just ran afoul of the rules and got a bad batch of something or other and it wasn't his fault even if that were the case and he were suspended for 80 games that would still suck yeah so it's bad either way no matter what the actual explanation is whether you actually buy his explanation i guess that might have some bearing on his perception and his reputation and whether people hold this against him long term or not. So not saying it's irrelevant. And certainly I think some of the explanations, they weren't the most convincing that I've ever heard and seemed somewhat flimsy in some respects, although you just never really know.

But it wasn't going to be good news regardless of what his explanation was or whether he had one at all or even if it was a perfect one. If the explanation at the end or the result at the end is that we get no Fernando Tatis for quite a long was a mistake that could have been handled differently. Destroy the image of a player for such a small thing for a situation like this. It is a catastrophe not just for Tatis Jr., but for all baseball. There's millions of fans that will stop watching baseball, which sounds like a bit of an overbid. Maybe Fernando Tatis is quite popular and compelling both domestically and internationally. I don't know that he has the power to make or break millions of fans necessarily. But yeah, it's just not great news. It's disappointing on multiple levels. he's like old enough to have better judgment than this. But like I mentioned him being young because he has a lot of playing career left, right? And so I think trying to project

what the trajectory of his reputation is going to be as like kind of a fool's errand because I don't know, like we'll have to see how he plays when he does come back. We'll have to see like, is this the thing that sort of, you know, arrests a bad chain of events for him and

you know he's like really committed and doing all the right stuff like we don't know like there's a there are a lot of directions that his career could take and not all of them are bad so i don't feel the need to like bury the guy i think he's being appropriately punished it sounds like his teammates are irritated and disappointed it sounds like the front office is similarly annoyed and so he has some work to do to kind of repair those internal relationships which are gonna be probably more important for him going forward than like anything that we're gonna say on this dumb podcast you know but it's a bummer like you want to be able to see the best players at the height of their powers. And we had this looming, exciting Tatis on the horizon. And now we're going to have to wait a

while longer to see him. And that's just too bad. So I hope that he does learn from this and makes better choices. And then we get to enjoy him for a long time to come. And we look back like 10 years from now, we're like, you remember that weird year Fernando had? What a weird thing that was. So like, that's the thing I hope that we get to say a decade from now, but it will be interesting to see if he is able to course correct and certainly what the reception will be for him from his teammates and the organization going forward, because people sounded pretty annoyed. Yes, they did. In a public way. so talented and you've made you know i don't know when the organization found out about the looming

suspension so i don't and i don't think we've heard anything about how that was sequenced relative to the soda trade i think that those things happened independent from one another as far as we know right yeah preller said he didn't know before that day so like you know i think that i think that aj probably like coveted one soda and probably would have done whatever he could to like get him. But they did make plans sort of with a hope and understanding that Tatis would be available for a postseason run this year and a complete and hopefully healthy season next year. And this does compromise, you know, big stretches of that time.

does compromise, you know, big stretches of that time. So I hope that like, it is something that we don't have to keep talking about because he just has like a normal year next year. He comes back from the suspension, he plays, he plays well, he does his thing and we all get to move on. But yeah, and I hope I did not get a fungus from the haircut that I had on Sunday, because apparently that can happen. So it's said. The most important takeaway from this situation is that the planned September 7th Fernando Tatis Jr. bobblehead giveaway has been changed to a Juan Soto City Connect jersey giveaway. So make your plans accordingly. Maybe there were millions of fans of Fernando Tatis Jr. bobbleheads. So last little bit of news was that

the Rangers fired their manager, Chris Woodward. And we will just remind everyone, Tony La Russa still has a job. Yes, he definitely does. Yeah, this has been a big year for managers being fired mid-season. Rangers are the latest one.

I don't have a ton to say about this, except for the fact that I'm interested in the idea that one reason why he was let go potentially is that the Rangers have this historically awful record in one run games, which we've talked about before this season. I don't know how closely tied that was to his being let go, but he was let go in part because they didn't live up to the expectations that they set for themselves. And of course, they've made some big free agent acquisitions and they were hoping to be competitive this season and they are not quite. And a lot of that has to do with their record in one run games, because if you look at their run differential or

other metrics, I mean, they're negative one in run differential right now, which is not great, but is not as bad as you would expect based on their 52 and 63 record as we speak. So they're like five wins below where they should be according to base runs and other methods. runs and other methods. And they have what would be the second worst one run winning percentage really since 1901. I just saw in the baseball reference newsletter on Tuesday. Now, funnily enough, they won a one run game on Monday after Woodward was let go. So there you go. They had Tony Beasley, interim manager at the helm and they won a 2-1 game. So how about that? But they're now 7-24 in games decided by one run. That's a 2-26 winning percentage. The only one worse, 1935 Boston, 7-31, 184 winning percentage. There is this popular perception that maybe that has something to do with managers. Even though we know that record in one-run games is very dependent on luck and

it fluctuates a lot from season to season or even within a single season, there is a lingering idea that maybe this is an area where managers can be assessed. Or similarly, maybe if you beat your Pythagorean record, your expected record based on how many runs you've scored and allowed, maybe that would be an area where the manager's impact could become clear. I'm sort of skeptical of that theory in general. And I emailed Chris Jaffe about this, who wrote a lot for the Hardball Times and has written a ton about managers and wrote a whole book about managers. And I asked him whether he buys into that. And he said, I'm not sure I put much or any stock, especially iffy about a one-year sample size. It could maybe

mean that someone is bad at handling their bullpen. Then again, maybe it means that you don't have a good bullpen, or maybe it means that your hitters or your pitchers just haven't been performing at the right time. So it's a clutch issue. But basically, he says, I don't put much stock in one run games besides wondering if it says something about bullpen use. So I don't know why Woodward was let go exactly. pen use. So I don't know why Woodward was let go exactly. Maybe it's just general disappointment in where the Rangers are, but it seems like their historically bad record in one-run games is a big reason of why their record has disappointed. Otherwise, they would not be totally out of contention in theory. So in that sense, maybe he got a bit of a raw deal. I certainly have not been watching the Rangers on a daily basis.

So if he has been making horrible tactical decisions in close games that have led to the Rangers losing some of those games, then I could see why that would lead to some frustration. I'm probably the low man on managers making a big difference just in general, except for some isolated cases, although the post-Girardi Phillies might make a decent case for that. But then again, how have the Angels done since they fired Joe Maddon? Weren't we just talking about them earlier in this episode? It doesn't seem like the ship is too tight right now. And I guess the post-Montoyo Jays have more or less the same record, maybe a tiny bit better than they were with him. So mixed bag there when it comes to the in-season results. I don't know.

If I had paid closer attention to the Rangers and been watching them day in and day out, I would have a stronger opinion probably on Chris Woodward. But haven't seen him be the subject of any videos where fans reminded him to put a pinch runner in. Maybe I just haven't noticed. It is an interesting thing because you do kind of wonder, and I don't know that we'll ever have a satisfactory answer to this, but is the one run game thing kind of an excuse? Was there a miscalibration of expectations internally after the busy and spendy offseason that they had right because externally it wasn't like we all bought the rangers as an immediate contender right i mean maybe they saw themselves that way but right but like we didn't think of them that way but part of our basis for that understanding was like looking at the additions that they had made looking at how

their roster projected and then being like well you, you know, it's definitely better. And I think that we had, we were inclined to, or I don't remember how you felt about it actually, but I remember feeling like, look, you know, there's only one Corey Seager. And so if Corey Seager is your guy and you're signing him to a long contract, you get him this year, even if you're paying him in a year where you don't have an expectation that you're going to really contend because like, he's not going to be on the market next year. So if you want him, this is your chance to get him. And so sometimes you're just going to pay a premium up front, even though your years of contention might be a year from now or two years from now, right?

So I thought that the signings were fine. Like I was excited for them being like, no, we're going to, you know, we have this big new Costco that we play baseball in and we want to get people excited about this team and we like these guys. So we're going to, you know, we're going to commit to them. But if you do that, I think it is hard to properly message to a fan base that might not like go to the fan graphs projections every day and say but we're probably not gonna win right like that is a weird communication issue to have to navigate and i can understand how especially when you have these one run losses that feel so bad right because you could win them but you don't right i feel like you should be winning but then you don't end up

winning them like i get being like, look, we just got to move on from this. And again, there might be stuff that we don't know because there always is with managers. So it could be that like they just were philosophically in a different spot. You know, they could be that they assessed his performance in those close games

and thought he's not pulling the right levers here. I don't know. Yeah. All right. Well, let me end with this. I don't know if I even want to call it a stat blast. I guess we could technically call it a stat blast. We can play the song. Minus or OBS plus And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit

Discuss it at length and analyze it for us In amazing ways Here's to Daystablast StatBlast is always sponsored by the baseball reference stat head tool go to stathead.com use our coupon code wild20 get yourself a $20 discount on an $80 one-year subscription for the baseball tool or for any of the single sport tools although they also have multi-sport options we love stat head You know we do. So we got a question about that Drew Rasmussen start that he made for the Rays. He's having a nice year. I know Ben Clemens just wrote about him and his new and improved cutter. And he looked

like he was going to go for a complete game. He did go for it, which would be quite rare for a raised pitcher. And he didn't quite make it. He had a very low pitch count. He started the ninth, but then he gave up a double and a ground out. And then there was a wild pitch and a run scored. And then there was a strikeout. And then he was replaced for the end of that inning. But he had a perfect game through eight. I'm kind of burying the lead here, right? So he was going for a perfect game and he didn't get it. But we got a question here. It was really a question about a question. But Kevin, Patreon supporter, said on August 14th, Ethan Ellis started a question on the Effectively Wild Facebook group asking which is more impressive, a perfect eight innings or a no hitter, which brings up the question, what has happened more often? So even though he did not finish off the perfect game, he did start with eight perfect innings And this is from frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson. So since 1916, there have been 48, and this may have been before Rasmussen starts, perfect eights, Ryan was calling them. games where the starter pitched eight perfect innings to start out, including the 19 perfect

games over that time. Over that same period, there have been 223 single pitcher, nine inning no hitters. So a perfect eight is much rarer than a nine inning no hitter. And I wondered, well, how far down do you have to go until it's roughly the same rate, right? So what number of perfect innings to start a game is equivalent, if not in difficulty, at least in frequency to a nine inning no hitter. Lower the bar quite a bit, actually, to make it equivalent. So seven perfect innings to start. That has happened only 137 times, including the 19 actual perfectos. Now, six perfect innings is 427 times. So that is more than the number of nine inning no hitters. hitter is about as common as between a six and a third and six and two thirds perfect inning start

to an outing. So there have been 198 times when a pitcher started with six and two thirds perfect innings, which is about as close as we can get without coming up with six and a half innings or something like that, which would lead to probably some pedantic emails. So that's basically the exchange rate there. You have roughly as many six and two thirds perfect inning starts as you do nine inning no hitters that are actually finished off. So I leave that to you and the listeners to decide if that is the same, I leave that to you and the listeners to decide if that is the same, like if actually finishing it off is so much more impressive for a nine inning no hitter that that makes up for not finishing off what starts as a perfect game but isn't finished as one. But those are the numbers for you. So basically, it's just a lot harder to be perfect than it is to not allow any hits, which is probably not news, but maybe it's somewhat surprising just the magnitude of the difference.

Yeah. It strikes me as surprising. I really thought he was going to do it, Ben. And then a lot of people tweeted at me that this means the Mariners aren't going to the postseason because I confessed to my one bit of really intense superstition. So I don't know. I feel nervous now. The curse of Felix.

Yeah. Yeah. superstition so I don't know I feel nervous now. The curse of Felix yeah yeah but see I gotta get over it because I can't sit here and say the curse of Felix what does that mean? I love Felix silly Meg. Yeah why would

Felix curse the Mariners? I mean I know his tenure maybe didn't end in the happiest possible way but I'm sure he wishes no ill on that franchise. I'm sure he wouldn't want to continue to deprive Mariners fans of playoff appearances just because he was deprived of them. Yeah, I would be surprised. He seems like he wouldn't be vindictive like that.

Right. And the other thing in that genre, I don't know whether you saw the fun fact on Friday, I believe it was, from Tim Britton, who covers the Mets for The Athletic. And by the way, the Mets just called up one of their top prospects. They did. Yeah. We need to petition to change the pronunciation of the name, I think, because Brett Beatty, spelled B-A-T-Y, really, if you are a position playing prospect.

You want it to be Batty? Yeah, come on. No, but then Batty is- I know B-A-T-T-Y is something else, and maybe you wouldn't want that to be your pronunciation. But no, can we go with Batty if you're a bat player? If you're a bat man? Yes.

If you are the bat man. But Batty can mean like crazy. Right, I know. Yeah. But if you were a baseball player. That doesn't mean that. I'm just saying. That's my one note for know, yeah. Yeah. But if you were a baseball player... That doesn't mean that. I'm just saying. That's my one note for Brett Beatty.

Yeah, you should... I mean, I think that you should call his mom. Yeah, probably the first person who has ever suggested this to him. Yeah, excuse you. But Tim Bretton, who covers the Mets for The Athletic, he tweeted, Bryson Stott is the first player to ever reach base four times in the same game against Max Scherzer. And that tweet blew up because it's a great fun fact because you read it. Is that true? It is true. Even if you include fielder's choice and errors, it doesn't even have to be reaching base in an OBP boosting way. Just getting on base,

it just had not happened. So that's a great fun fact because Max Scherzer, he's had a Hall of Fame career already. He's been around for a really long time. You would think at some point he must have been bound to allow someone on base four times in a single game. The man's 38 years old. But it's true. Now, here's the thing. I think like all fun facts, as Sam used to say, this fun fact lies a little bit in kind of an interesting way.

So Max Scherzer has thrown 2,639 and a third innings. Here's the thing, though. He has only faced the same batter in one game 253 times after that start, which is not a lot of times because he is extremely effective on a per inning basis, but he doesn't tend to go that deep into games. I mean, over the course of his career, he's averaging less than six innings a start. I mean, he's a pitcher in this era when pitchers don't go that deep into games. And maybe, I don't know, he perhaps goes a little less deep into games than you would expect just based on how great he is on a per inning basis. So he's only faced the same guy in the same game 253 times. game 253 times. And he's obviously a very good pitcher who has allowed a 278 career on base percentage to all of the hitters he's faced. Now, Ryan was able to confirm that this is the longest

streak of innings ever to start a career without a pitcher having allowed four on base events to the same person in the same game. So that is special. It is notable and historical and unprecedented. And now he also found, after Scherzer, the next most innings of anyone who has not or did not allow someone to get on base four times the same game. Anibal Sanchez at 1973 and a third innings, almost 700 fewer than Scherzer. And then Kirk Reeder, who had 1918 innings and retired many years ago. So it is notable, but also he just doesn't allow that many opportunities for this to be accomplished because he doesn't go that deep into games.

Because he doesn't go that deep into games. And so if you do some just sort of simplistic probability as Ryan did, and you just kind of run the numbers based on the OBP he's allowed in general, which is maybe oversimplifying things, maybe you can't assume independence like that. You're facing some hitters a bunch of times in the game who are more likely to get on base than the average. Also some who are less and there's the times through the order penalty and all of that, of which Scherzer has a somewhat smaller than is typical times through the order penalty. So that may be part of this too. But basically, if you just run those very simplistic probabilities, you would expect only 1.5 actual hitters to have done this. So it's kind of like right in line with what should have happened. Yeah. If you use 290 instead of 278 to account for errors and fielder's choices, then you'd expect 1.7 instead of 1.5. So it's not actually that weird.

The weird thing is that he has only faced batters a fourth time, 253 times. So that's actually the weird part. And you don't realize that when you see the stat initially. I'm not finding fault with the fun fact. I'm just sort of over explaining the fun fact, I guess. But that's the thing. It's like if Bryson Stott had been the second player to do this against Scherzer, then maybe that would have been just as unlikely as no one having done it to this point in his career. to do this. Like Justin Verlander, let's say, has seen a batter four plus times in a game, 565 times. Roy Halladay, 945 times. Tim Hudson, 729 times. So out of all pitchers in the history of baseball with 2,500 or more innings, no one has faced players four times in a game less often than Max Scherzer. So maybe that's the fun fact. That's not nearly as fun, actually, but that's sort of the explanation. And if you look at the pitchers who are like closest to Max Scherzer in career innings and number of times that they have faced hitters four plus times in the same game, like Kyle Loesch is right there, for instance, and Kyle Loesch, not nearly as good a pitcher as Max Scherzer.

Yeah, breaking news here. But he's only allowed three hitters to do it in his whole career. He allowed only three, Magliordonez, Lance Berkman, Carlos Beltran, even though he was way worse than Max Scherzer. Or Zach Greinke, who is also very good, but has pitched more innings than Max Scherzer. Four hitters have done it against him. Willie Harris, Kurt Suzuki, Mark DeRosa, Buster Posey. So basically, this is one of those genres of fun fact where it makes you say, wow, it accomplishes its objective. It's great. It deserved to get retweeted a whole bunch. But the more I looked into this, the more I was like, actually, that's kind of what you would expect. It's just that Max Scherzer kind of has an atypical career by historical standards. Buzzkill, man. Yeah, maybe so. So sorry if I harshed anyone's vibe there, but that's sort of the explanation. I mean, that makes sense. All right. So now we will lead into our guest. And this will be a good lead in, I think, because it's time for the Pass Blast. This is 1890. So Pass Blast from 1890 and from Richard Hershberger, saber researcher, historian, author of Strike Four, The Evolution of Baseball. This fits the theme really well. And this was something I did not know. This past blast is about a woman

named Ella Black, who was the first woman baseball reporter, also a trailblazer. So Ella Black of Pittsburgh in early 1890 began sending correspondence about baseball to Pittsburgh newspapers. That March, she moved up to the Sporting Life, the most important national sporting paper of the day. The Sporting Life seems to have initially printed her letter as a novelty, but she kept sending in interesting and insightful material, and eventually the paper sent her press credentials. She did not simply try to copy what her male colleagues were doing. She approached the topic from a different perspective, sometimes distinctly feminine, and sometimes just looking at it from a different direction. Here's an excerpt from her Sporting Life column of August 9th.

This was the year of the Players League, set up as a rival to the National League. This was a financial fight, making league finance as a subject of general interest. Both leagues were losing money, but both also put out disinformation, presenting a rosy picture. Ella Black took a creative approach to analyzing their financial condition. Quote, although there is no more earnest adherent of the Players League than myself at this time, I am compelled to admit that it looks as if they, as well as the National League clubs, were becoming a great deal more careful in regard to their expenses than the latter body was one year ago. At that time, so far as this city was concerned, there was nothing too good for the clubs,

and they nearly all stopped at the Hotel Anderson. This year, that house has all the guests it can accommodate and does not care whether it gets any ball clubs or not. The result is that although when the season opened, the clubs of the Players League stopped at the Hotel Anderson and were willing to pay $4 a day for the style and comfort they could have at that resort. But there has been a very great change in all this of late. The change I speak of is not confined to the Players League clubs, but the National League members are getting a dose of it as well. I regard the hotels at which the clubs top as a sort of thermometer by which the observant public can tell something of the financial condition of the different bodies. So she was doing hotel analysis, just judging their finances by their accommodations. just judging their finances by their accommodations.

She continued, the high-toned, expensive $4 per day hotel was only early in the season, at a time when all the players and others connected with the club still clung to the idea that each and every team was going to make an enormous profit this season. Now their dream of dollars is over and has been dispelled very decidedly. They are no longer able to stand quarters that will not make a special rate or anything of that sort. After leaving the Anderson, the clubs went to the 7th Avenue Hotel and the Monongahela House because at both places they were given a special rate that made it an object for them to stop at either house. Now of late, both of these houses have been left in the shade and the St. Charles has sheltered the teams that visit the city. This is because the regular rate of the house is $2 per day and the special rate that is given to clubs is much smaller. Now, to my way of thinking, this changing of hotels and gradual descent from $4 to $2 per day for the team's board per man shows very plainly they have not any of them got any money to waste.

It is not one side that is economizing any more than another, but both the major leagues are trying to do it. Ballplayers, like all other men, love their appetites and want plenty of good first-class food with which to satisfy it. And it is on this account that I am led to believe that the change I referred to has been made because the clubs could not stand it any longer to pay the expensive rates required at the first-name houses. Certainly, it is being done, and to save money can be the only reason for it. I wonder whether Bob Nutting is paying the $4 a day now or not, whether part of Nutting is staying at the cheaper hotels on the road. But Richard writes, many found it hard to believe that it actually was a woman writing these columns. In the same issue, the regular Pittsburgh correspondent relates how Billy Hoy, the center fielder for the Players

League Buffalo Club, asked if Ella Black really was a woman. Upon being assured about her sex, he replied, she seems well-posted on baseball for a woman. Thanks, Billy Hoy. When she tried to use her press credential to get into a game in Brooklyn, the ticket taker was incredulous. She eventually just paid for a ticket rather than endure the hassle. Unfortunately, her baseball writing career lasted just the one season. She dropped out of view and nothing later is known about her. And Richard sends me to an article that was written at Atlas Obscura. I will link to that too. But interesting.

One season overlooked, under-known career. I was not aware of Ella Black. Yeah, me either. Yeah. I wonder what happened to her. Yeah. Well, we will take a quick break now and we'll be back with Justine Siegel to talk about Yeah. I wonder what happened to her. Yeah. do talk about some of the baseball action in the series. And we discussed that last time when we gave our general review of the show. And I think our one quibble with the baseball action, which is generally quite good, was some of the digital effects, which I don't think we can lay the blame

for that at the door of Justine. I doubt she's doing the CGI herself, but she does explain in a way why it looks like that. So that might be a bit enlightening. But again, for the most part, I think not only did we enjoy the series, but also enjoyed the baseball action. So let's talk to her about it in just a moment. There ain't no way of telling where these seeds will rise or win I'll just wait around till springtime Then I'll find a friend In the field of opportunity

It's plowing time again Well, we are joined now by Dr. Justine Siegel, the founder of Baseball for All, a trailblazing baseball coach at many levels and in a lot of leagues, and most recently, the baseball coordinator for a new league, A League of Their Own, on Amazon Prime. Dr. Siegel, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So if I'm Googling and doing my arithmetic right, you must have been about 11 or 12 when A League of Their Own, the documentary, came out and maybe 16 or 17 when the movie came out. So were these formative or favorite movies of yours either at the time or later on?

Yeah, I mean, I didn't see the documentary when I was a kid, but definitely everybody saw the movie. And it was seeing a league of their own with Penny Marshall's brilliance. It just made me feel a little less alone about my love for baseball as to knowing that women had played the game before me, because I was the first one in my high school, the first one in Ohio to play baseball. So it just felt like, oh, there's other people who love the game like me who have played. Yeah. And we do want to talk a little bit about your background and your career, but I wonder how this gig with the reboot with the TV show

came about. Had you had experience as a baseball coordinator working in media before, or how did you get connected with this project? No, I've never done TV before. My friend River Butcher offered me the opportunity to speak to the writers as they wanted to talk to someone who, you know, sort of experienced life in baseball as a woman. And so I did and they thought, oh, I should train the actors. It kind of went from there. Liz Coe was really helping me out getting there, one of the producers. So I did the pilot with another baseball coordinator. And then when it got picked up, I became the head baseball coordinator. And what does it mean to do that?

How are you putting these actors through their paces? And what were the different levels of sort of baseball or perhaps softball experience that they were bringing to the table? Yeah, sure. So the baseball coordinator does a lot of things and I'm not sure, you know, I've worked on one other show since. And so it varies just a little bit, but mainly I train the actors. So that could be a training camp where I bring in other coaches. Alina Park was my assistant baseball coordinator as well. And so we train them. And then you also have to like during the show, you know, you stand by the director in case the director has questions.

Or if you kind of see the actor doing something that she could do better, jumping in. So it was really everything from looking at the script to being on the field and trying to get the best shot possible and just being of help to the director in any way you can. And there's a lot about baseball now and baseball as you've played it that is similar to the timeframe when the series is shot. But what research did you do? Were there any sort of period specific adjustments that you found yourself needing to make as you were training them so that it would not only look like baseball, but look like baseball at this time? Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So a good example would be the catcher with Carson who was played by Abby Jenkins. And

when she's catching, she actually has her mitt, her hand, her right hand near the mitt, not behind it, not behind her back, but near the mitt. And the reason is, is because it's really hard to catch with those catcher's mitts. And so back then it was pretty common to kind of have your hand out and just be ready for anything and to catch it. How do you think the original movie holds up from a baseball level now that maybe you've gone back and watched it with a critical baseball coordinator's eye? Because there's a wide range deal breaker. But it seems like the original League of Their Own, I think, holds up fairly well in that respect. So I don't know who the baseball coordinator for that project was or whether you talked to them or whether there was one. But I wonder whether you've gone back and looked at it now that you've worked in this capacity. Yeah. What was interesting about the original, I mean, the movie, it's not even like a comparison. The show is really builds off the movie, but it's not a replica.

Right. Is that they used real baseballs. So we used real balls sometimes, but a lot of times we didn't. And so in the movie, the actors had to really learn baseball and they really needed to cast people who they thought could do the job and for me a lot of that what it means to do the job is like can you get your arm in position you know there's so much just like an arm art can you can you get it so you look like an athlete and so I think that baseball in many ways looks very very real like in the movie like I'm super impressed with it and then i love

that our tv show you know we do a little bit more you know we're a little bit more creative with some of the baseball spots and of course there are some baseball moments you know where that play a homage to the movie you know like with uh shantae adams the character max just picking up the ball like gina davis catching the ball with one hand so that's those type of things but i think there's talent on both ends but if there was a game game to game if you played one another you know i mean the movie might get them maybe might have them with laurie petty pitching from the mound not sure it would be a good one when you say that you weren't always using a real ball do you mean it was like shadow ball, like the Negro Leagues team that is shown or the barnstorming team that's in the show?

Or do you mean it's just a different kind of ball that was standing in for a baseball in some scenes? No, so they used the VFX at the end. So sometimes it's actually a bit harder to shoot when you're not throwing the ball. Sometimes it's actually a bit harder to shoot when you're not throwing the ball. And I could point out examples of that in the show, but I'm not going to. I'm sure other people will. So you mean it was like pantomime, like just going through the motions and then the ball would be added later? Yeah, you throw through the motion or like the hitter hitting and you don't actually have a ball coming at the hitter.

It's just too complicated with all the cameras around but there's plenty of times where the ball was in play where that ball in the outfield that they're shagging is real and then they're throwing into the cut you know so there's plenty of times there is there is the ball and then there's other times when there isn't so they used vfx to make some of it look more realistic but i would imagine that there were times when what was being asked of the actors was either beyond their capability or perhaps unsafe? Were there times when you had baseball stand-ins on set and what was their experience like? We had body doubles, but never for safety. Well, I guess that's not true. We had stunts. So we had body doubles and we had stunts, which are really two different things.

So like Shantae Adams has a body double that one of them came from the baseball for all program. And another one had played high school baseball who I was so excited to find that these, these two women looked enough alike to do the job and do it really well. And then other times when there's slides, sure. That's someone from stunts,

but not, you know, not always like the actors, you know, had a good base coming in some more than others, whether that was, you know, softball, middle school softball. But it was it was all really great. Yeah, I was going to ask about that without ragging on anyone's baseball skills specifically. But you've coached people at all levels from young people to the major leagues.

So I'm sure you've seen everything, but was there anyone who was bringing a special baseball expertise or were most of the actors starting from sort of the same level? And if there were some people who were basically just new to the sport, how do you give them a crash course in looking like a baseball player in whatever time you had available? Yeah, and I think, you know, that comes down to sort of like, how well can you communicate the movements of baseball and what they need for the scene? You know, so I don't need to teach someone how to, like, you know, hit the corner with a curveball or something like that.

But I do have to help get them into position so we can at least film it. But Kelly McCormick, who was the shortstop for the Peaches, she actually played in a women's league up in Canada. Melanie Field played softball in the Broadway League and both Tarsi Carden and Abby Jacobson both had some softball background. So, you know, you kind of build off of what they know.

And other times if they didn't know something, for me, it's like, how do you relate the information to what they do know? And that's sort of the quickest way to learn. For Shantae Adams, it was, you know, she called it choreography. The pitching motion, I'd never thought of as choreography. But for her, she was able to, you know, use her own experience in dancing and then think about it in the steps in pitching. And so as a baseball coordinator, just as a coach, you know, grabbing what they do know, whether that's tennis, golf, what do they know about balance and transferring your body, you know, front, back and so on and working with it. back and so on and working with it. And was it sort of a team building or team spirit building exercise just in the same way that the peaches in the show bond over practice and playing baseball together? Did the cast kind of do the same? I mean, I'd imagine that with some people,

they just thought, oh, this is a cool show and a great role. And I guess I'll just have to, you know, grin and bear it when it comes to the baseball. But did a lot of people actually embrace it and end up enjoying that aspect of the role? Oh, all of the actors wanted to look as good as they could. And the whole show is very focused on bringing honor to the original league, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. So, you know, being good, you know, they wanted to pick up everything they could. We did a two-week training camp before the pilot, two-week training camp before we shot with the season. And even before the pilot, I was over, was it the pilot? No, it was the second thing. We were shooting. I was already practicing with some of them like three times a week.

So it was through the baseball, I think that that the bonding really started. And they could see within one another how each was improving. And that was, you know, really exciting, you know, when someone makes a big play, because we did play. You know, we did, part of our practice was to play the game so they could see where the ball goes, what it feels like, how to lead off. You know, you're just super excited when someone gets it right, you know, and it throws in and you get them out at home. And it's, you know, it's like any other win that you would have, whether it's, you know, professional or little kids, it's just about achievement and helping someone with their

goals. I know that there were a number of women from the original Real Life League who were involved with the series in a variety of capacities. And I wonder if you had the opportunity to talk with any of them about their own baseball journeys and what a league of their own, but mostly the actual league had meant to them. Yeah. So you'll see two women in the TV show on episode one, Shirley Berkovich and Mabel Blair. Shirley passed, I don't know, maybe six months ago, four months ago, and Maybel has become a superstar on the media everywhere. She has come out at age 95 during one of the premier Q&As. You know, I've had the good fortune of just sort of knowing the women from the league over the years and hearing their stories and talking to them

and having them actually come out to our tournaments with Baseball for All so that our girls who are 10 years old can meet an 85-year-old who can still throw a ball. And some of the barriers and obstacles that the members of the Peaches encounter in this series, and this is taking place 80 years ago, but how analogous are they to what girls and women continued to deal with in baseball today or that you dealt with growing up? I think, you know, it's definitely a different time period. And, you know, the movie shows the different time. Of course, it's a war and sort of the roles of women.

And then in the TV show, you know, we really build off of that. And what does it mean to make a living, you know, when your husband goes off to war? What does it mean to be gay? What does it mean to question a living? You know, when your husband goes off to war, what does it mean to be gay? What does it mean to question your sexuality? And what does it mean to be a Black woman trying to play baseball in 1943? And so I think those are some really huge, you know, huge issues that had to be overcome. I think in today's world, like for example, I had a parent reach out to me and say the high school is not letting his daughter play baseball. So we then have at least Title IX

on our side and can go and I can look at the rule book and see, is there actually a rule or is this just someone's opinion? And then at times we reference Title IX and we can get her playing. And then other times we can't, it's a private school and we can't do anything about it. So I think there's still this struggle to ensure that girls and women have the same opportunities to play baseball as boys and men. But I feel that, you know, we've had a lot of success as women building up more opportunity, more freedom. You know, we all stand on the shoulders of others, you know. So I couldn't just compare it in an isolated incident. We've had women's rights movements and so on. So 1943 was a long time ago.

I wanted to ask you about Baseball for All and how the organization has changed over the years and how its scope has changed or broadened since it was founded. Yeah. So I started what is now Baseball for All back when I was 23. You know, I had a baby and I just knew I wanted to create a better future for her if she wanted to play. And so originally, I started taking teams, girls teams, and playing at Cooperstown Dreams Park with the boys. And then I kind of realized if I could start a girls team, I could teach you how to start a girls baseball team in your community. And with that model in mind, we held the first national girls baseball tournament in 2015.

And so that's significant because that's since then Major League Baseball has come forward supporting girls baseball. They run girls baseball programs. Team USA has never been stronger. And so it's, it's growing. It's definitely, you know, to me at a tipping point where real progress is about to happen, where more and more people are like, Oh, wait a minute, why aren't girls playing baseball? You know, so so I'm very excited to see the movement that's coming quickly, if that makes sense. Yeah. It's slow, but it's like moving faster than ever. quickly, if that makes sense to you. It's slow, but it's like moving faster than ever. Yeah. I mean, I know that even just in my lifetime, I'm just old enough where, you know, girls playing, either playing Little League or playing past Little League was, you know, sort of really variable and often not a possibility. And now I have little nieces, and that's not true where they live anymore. So even just in my lifetime, it has moved significantly and in a positive direction. Oh, I think, yeah, it's absolutely in a more positive direction. And I would just say that like through baseball for

all our girls, most of our girls are still the only girls in their leagues and their team, but now they have a community that tells them that, you know, anything's possible. There's now girls they can look up to i mean kelsey whitmore's playing in the atlantic league but there's also girls playing college baseball so it's all about representation and the more representation there is not do just the girls realize they can play baseball but then the men in power realize that hey girls should play baseball yeah you know how how can we we be more welcoming and how can we grow this game, not just for girls, but when girls and boys play together, the world becomes better.

Leagues get fuller, people understand equality, and everyone learns to get along. Yeah. And I guess the presence of women in coaching roles and player development roles, the presence of women in coaching roles and player development roles, et cetera, in the majors or in affiliated men's baseball or what is currently men's baseball is only one way to gauge progress. But it seems like even in the years since you broke into those ranks, whether it was in Indie Ball in 2009 or throwing BP for Cleveland in 2011, or then coaching with the A's in 2015 and other teams subsequently, it seems like there are a lot more women in coaching roles and player development roles, some in the majors, some in the minors, in recent years. I mean, belatedly and maybe still not enough, but just the presence in the coaching ranks and also in the front office as well. I don't know if it's a tipping point, but it does seem to have really taken off in just the past few years. Yeah, for sure. I mean, everybody thought I was crazy. I remember being about 15,

16 when I told my coach I wanted to be a college baseball coach. And he was like, he just laughed at me and said no man would listen to a woman on a baseball field. And, you know, I was just like, well, at first I was really embarrassed. Then I started thinking, well, how am I going to prove them wrong? And then, and then I went on and spent three years as assistant coach at Springfield college while I was getting my PhD. And so I'm super proud that now there's over a dozen women coaching pro baseball and i know it's more to come and that there's a true path uh for for girls to know hey if i do this there's a good chance that i can get hired whereas before it was like for me it was like if i bang my head against

the wall enough times will it move an inch and so i always knew that you know i'd be banging my head on the wall and and others would be able to get the full advantage of being in it. But it's great to see there's never been a better time to get hired for baseball ops jobs and coaching jobs. And I'm really excited to see where that goes because I just truly believe that diversity helps teams win. And we get the question a lot, as maybe you do too, about when will we see a woman playing in the majors or getting drafted or signed by a team in affiliated ball, et cetera. And those are worthwhile goals. I guess they're not the only goals, but I do wonder whether you think there should be a priority on that, or is it more important to focus on, let's say, women playing at lower levels in an amateur ball and in college or even maybe having a domestic pro league? I mean, not that these

things are mutually exclusive and maybe they actually go hand in hand, but I guess other than continuing to have that increased presence in the majors or with major league organizations, what are some of the other things that people are or should be setting their sights on? Yeah, I think it's a big question. I mean, the first is we have to go back to the girl in high school who's been told she can't play, right? We have to solve that issue, that girls are being told still today in 2022 that they can't play. And I've had as young as 70 years old, a girl having to fight for the right to be in a league. So I think that's the biggest question is systemically,

how are we making sure girls have the opportunity to play and develop just like the boys do? Of course, I'd love to see Kelsey Whitmore get signed. I mean, she's already proved she can play at single A, maybe double A with the Atlantic Ferry Hawks. So I guess it would be actually the Stanton Island Ferry Hawks with the Atlantic League. But I'd take a better, a better move would be actually the Staten Island Fairy Hawks would be Atlantic League. But I think a better move would be a women's pro league,

just like the WNBA. Instead of waiting for one woman, you know, to prove that she can compete with men, why don't we just celebrate women who can play and give the most opportunity? And so that's why I think a women's pro league would be better. I'm very cautious about how women athletes are often like, well, their value is in can they compete with boys and men? Yeah.

And sometimes they can and sometimes they can't. I mean, I'm better than my brother. I don't make my brother any less than a man. I'm just better than him. So, you know, women athletes are valid in their own right. And the comparison to men doesn't need to happen to have that validation. And what are the options in terms of international competition, whether it's pro leagues overseas or just actual international competitions? I know you've coached in the WBC, for instance, in men's baseball, but in terms of women's international competition or

pro leagues outside the US? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, women's baseball has really grown in the last 15 years. Internationally, I mean, Japan is just number one. They're phenomenal. But Australia now has John Viev, who's throwing, I think, low 80s as a lefty in the Australian Developmental League. And that was caught on video and everyone was seeing that. So if I was a lefty and I was 17, you know, 12 and low 80s, I would think I'd have a chance to get signed.

So I think a lot's happening. And Team USA just played a friendship series with Team Canada up in Thunder Bay in Canada. So it's exciting to see how good these women are getting. And it's not surprising to me. And the more women that play, the more, you know, the more talent you're going to see. So I think just a league. I'd love to see a league in the U.S. because I'd love to be a part of it and, you know, get to take my daughter and, you know, go get some popcorn and watch women play baseball. That'd be awesome. And I wanted to ask one more question about the show, which is that there's a lot of baseball in almost every episode. But I wonder if those were all filmed out of sequence because a lot of them take place, it seems like, in the same field. I wonder whether you compressed a lot of things and filmed scenes for many episodes on the same day or, you know, trying to just streamline the production schedule as much as possible so that's a that's it's not a complicated question but it's kind of a complicated question

no all the games weren't at the same field but it does feel like that so it rained a lot in pittsburgh nobody nobody knew that and so um like there was one field we'd come at and it just like every time we got to the field it would rain rain. It'd be just enough to get everyone, you know, in their costume and their makeup and then have rain. So some of it was out of sequence because of that. Like we had to do makeup for those rain times and film near the end. So I'm sure if you looked really carefully, you might feel like the trees changing within the scenes like it being fall versus summer but that's basically it there's just a lot of home games we just play at home a lot and will there be you mentioned that you've had one other project since the league of their own

do you have others on deck are there going to be more baseball coordinator opportunities for you in the future well first i hope yeah you hope, you know, obviously that a league of their own gets picked up. I think there's still stories to tell. I would love to continue doing baseball coordinating. I really love how I get to use all the knowledge that I've compiled over these years and use it in a new domain and yet still get to spread the game of baseball. But, you know, I don't know. I honestly don't know what would be next. Hopefully it's a league of their own and then we move forward from there. Yeah. And it must be gratifying to have it out in the world. We're talking to you on Tuesday and the series just came out Friday. So I'm sure people are still working their way through it. But

what have you heard from people who have seen it so far after, I guess, having to just sit on everything you knew that was in the series for probably many months, if not more? Yeah, it's a long time to wait. Well, it's the number one show on Amazon right now in the U.S., so that's fantastic. There's a lot of queer narrative in the show. And so for a lot of people, it's the show they've always wanted to see and we're getting that feedback well you have to look on on twitter and see and see just like this is amazing this is this is what i needed to see when i was a kid you know and then there's others of course who wanted to be just like the movie and it's purposely not just like the movie you know it's

it was time to explore some of the topics that Penny Marshall just couldn't do in the 90s. So I'm very proud of Leela Rowan. And I think it definitely deserves a season two. And people want to know more about these characters and where they go. Do you have an opinion on whether Dottie dropped the ball on purpose? Have you been asked this a million times? Yeah. So I absolutely have an opinion because I pitched against my brother.

So I think he was probably 11 and I was 12 and I pitched against him. And it's like a 3-2 count. And it never occurred to me that I should walk him. You know, I just threw the ball and I struck him out. You know, so I think, you know, that's a brother-sister duo. I just think you're a competitor out there and you kind of forget who you're playing against. I mean, I knew for a second, but then you were like, oh, it's 3-2. I can't let this guy walk.

So I think as a competitor, she didn't drop the ball on purpose. Seems like Meg, you must have a less competitive relationship with your sister or something. Well, we didn't both play the same sport. We were doing different enough stuff that I don't think we had the same fertile ground to nurture that competitive spirit and beyond just being siblings. So maybe that has something to do with it. Yeah. If she were blogging for Fangraphs, maybe you would be very exacting in your placement or something. There you go.

I guess editing is not really a competitive activity. No, it should be collaborative, hopefully. I think everything can be competitive. So, Justine, do you have a favorite baseball scene or one that you're proudest of or that took the most work even if it's not apparent on the screen i mean i think i don't want to put any spoiler alerts out there but i really love max's story yes we did too i really you know identify with the idea of having a dream and in the world telling you it's crazy so i identify with that part of the storyline and so i really love watching her and um i just i don't want to give it up, but watch to the end.

And I think you'll agree with me. Other than that, you know, for me, there's just triumphs throughout the whole show. Because I worked with an actor and, you know, for their scene. And they got their scene right. They look good. And so I'm so excited for them, you know, and then it's the next actor in their scene. So, you know, almost everyone has a big moment. And so, you know, I just, I just love to see them succeed, you know, and when, when you see it and they film it and the, and the director yells cut, you know, I'm

out there with a big hug, you know, saying great job because I'm, I'm that excited for them. I know they put the work in. Yeah. Well, you can find the series of course, on Amazon prime video, you can find Justine on Twitter at JustineBaseball. You can find Baseball For All on Twitter at BaseballForUnderscoreAll. And the websites are JustineSiegel.com and BaseballForAll.com. Are there any other resources or places to find information either about Baseball For All or the show or anything else you want to plug while we have you? Oh, I think if you want to know more, go to our website. You have the social media handles and Be Gone Prime is putting out great content as well about the show. All right. Well, thank you very much for filling us in a bit on the process and good luck with

a renewal and any future baseball coordinating efforts that might be ahead of you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And just so you all know, if you hear this in time to take advantage, the cast and crew of A League of Their Own are hosting a season one finale Twitter watch party on Wednesday, August 17th at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern. Check the hashtag League Watch Party. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

Following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free aside from our stat head sponsorship and get themselves access to some perks. Roland Smith, Kathy Harden, Eric Zaborzin, Zachary Morgenstern, and Owen Barron. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Patreon Discord group, where some people are already watching a league of their own and talking about tons of other stuff. You also get access to monthly bonus episodes hosted by Meg and yours truly, as well as discounts on t-shirts, playoff live streams, and more.

You can contact me and Meg via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. 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 soon. Talk to you a little later this week. Green Pigeons Green Pigeons Steal them right off the tree South Carolina in the summertime Green Pigeons South Carolina in the summertime

Green Pigeons