Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1896: No Backsies

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s habitual misappraisal of checked swings and the potential for automated checked-swing calls, then discuss the potential unionization of the minor leagues via minor league players joining the MLBPA, Nationals rookie replacement Joey Meneses outplaying Juan Soto and Josh Bell since the trade deadline, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, […]

Check baby, check baby, one, two, three, that's alright with me Singing, playing all the time, now you look lucky Me always been in touch with reality, you see Oh, check old man, check old man, check all the cables in the chain Check, old man, check, old man, check all the cables in the chain. Yeah, check, baby, check, baby, one, two, three, that's all right with me. Hello and welcome to episode 1896 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Riley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Well, I had a bit of an epiphany about myself as a baseball watcher, which is that on check swings, on first viewing, I never think

the guy went around. Oh. Then I see the replay, and I very often think the guy went around. But on first glance, that first time I see it in real time, I never think so. I'm like, what? Oh, why even bother to check? He barely offered at that thing. And then they show the side view and it's like, oh, wow, he went around that far? I can't believe he went around that far. So I have sympathy for umpires, I suppose.

But maybe it's just the view. Maybe it's just the perspective, the center field camera. Obviously, you can't fully appreciate how far they went around. And maybe it's also that I am watching the ball. Keep your eye on the ball. And so I'm not fully paying attention to the swing or how far exactly the swing ran around. I'm just watching the ball into the glove. And so it's kind of almost a peripheral vision sort of thing that I see how far the bat went around. I'm just watching the ball into the glove. And so it's kind of almost a peripheral vision sort of thing that I see how far the bat went around. I'm always taken aback whenever I see the side replay. And I think, oh, wow, how did that happen?

I don't know whether other people identify with this or not or whether you do or whether when you see it in real time, you think, oh, he went around or not. But I am always just shocked to find out how far he went around now i'm reflecting like what is my gone around rate yeah what is my i would say that i probably and i don't mean this in like a randomly distributed way i probably say he went around maybe like half the time i think i think it's probably about 50 50 before you see the replay yeah huh okay and now the natural follow-up question from you ben to me having made that statement is what is my accuracy like how often am i right and i couldn't i couldn't rightly tell you probably isn't bad i guess it's better than me, which is just every time, no way.

No way you went around. Yeah. I mean, there are definitely times where I will be like, oh, he didn't go around. And then they show the side view and I'm like, oh, yeah, he did. He did go. He did go then. But I don't know. Sometimes it seems very obvious that he went and sometimes it does not.

And then, you know, they show the little side view. I'm always of the opinion that you should just, even if you as the home plate umpire feel confident and even if you are proven to be right, you should just always ask for help. Like it's just, even though they don't always overturn you or disagree, even though I'm convinced that some, less than 50%, but some proportion of the time, the relevant base umpire was, like, kind of spaced out and has to go, oh, shit, oh, shit. Like, yeah, he did go.

He did go, though. Just like me, not really paying attention to the bad. I'm not accusing anyone in particular, and I'm not saying it happens all the time. In fact, I imagine it happens quite rarely, but I bet it happens a non-zero percent of the time that you're just distracted. Like, did I turn the stove off? Did I lock my car when I came in here?

Did he go? I don't know. I don't know the answer to any of those questions, right? So I imagine that that happens. But every time you... Every time? I mean, there might be times when i think he went around but even so if i see the replay i'm surprised by how far by the degree yeah the

severity of the going is like arresting to you so like you i would probably appeal over there all the time not just because i don't want to make a mistake, but also because I don't trust myself to evaluate it on first glance. Like the empire's closer, obviously, and maybe they have a worse view, a more obstructed view of that in some ways, even though they're closer than we are or the camera is, but they're seeing it from behind and we're seeing it from in front. And it's just not the same as seeing it from the side. So I am always surprised by that. And now I realize that about myself. And I think I would support some sort of robo-ump for check swings. We have mixed feelings about robo-ump for balls and strikes, at least without a challenge system.

But I think I would be on board with doing it for check swings because I don't know that there's any skill there really that we would be missing out on. Like there's some skill in inducing check swings. And there is an interesting study that Sports Info Solutions did earlier this year. I'll link to it on the show page. But there's some consistency, some repeatability from year to year when it comes to like check swings on balls for instance thrown by pitchers it seems like as you would expect guys who get a lot of chases and get a lot of swings and misses also get a lot of check swings it sort of checks out so to speak but you would think that some guys get the wrong end of that when it comes to the umpires not making the right call or

not appealing over to the person who could make the right call. So I don't know if you'd be losing a lot of skill or finesse or nuance the way that you would if you took away a lot of what catchers do behind home plate with a robo zone. But it's just it's so vague what constitutes a check swing. It's like one of the vaguest things in officiating in sports. It's like this side of yardage things in officiating in sports. It's like this side of yardage markers in the NFL, right? Where it's just like, oh yeah, looks like first down. I don't know. Sure. Let's bring out the chain here and try to figure out where the ball was. It's kind of like that because like even the rule book doesn't say like, you know, people use like

breaking the wrist as a rule of thumb, but that's not actually a rule. That's just something people say or understand about the conventions of this thing. So if we could institute some sort of angle that would constitute having gone around and now we have bat tracking with StatCast and everything, it seems like it wouldn't be that hard to do to figure out. cast and everything, it seems like it wouldn't be that hard to do to figure out, like, did this guy swing just based on, I don't know, what angle the bat was or how far did he go around? Like, we could track that now, it seems like. It would be kind of handy to be able to actually determine that with technology instead of just, eh, looks like he went around. It does seem like a place where we could just very easily remove ambiguity and not have to essentially manufacture conflict on the field right because uh you could just check you

could just be like oh we looked and there's a little dot on the end of your bat and if it breaks this plane then we know and if we didn't and then we don't and then we move on we move on and you never grouse about it i love how i will just afford people the the benefit of the doubt that they will like in the face of definitive information not complain about something as if that's how human beings operate which is definitely not true i mean we would still have unnecessary conflict on the fields but maybe it wouldn't be about this quite as often because sometimes they get real they get real worked up and they're like throwing their little hats yelling and hurling of bats and um you you really think every time you're surprised have you tried so so here's a question then so you know this about yourself right you've identified this as a

as as a trait of yours while watching baseball. And it's one that I don't have judgment about because you're right. We're not at the optimal angle to be able to say, to provide either an answer to the binary question, yes or no, did he go? And then, to your point, to properly assess all the time the degree of the going. The degree to which he went, how far around he went, whatever. Anyway, I don't think that this is like, I don't know that you were feeling embarrassed.

Maybe I shouldn't assume. You shouldn't feel embarrassed about that. I think it's a weird thing that we have to, from the center field camera, try to judge. Sometimes you can really tell when a guy went, but not so you say. Yeah, well, but again, have not uh revealed a hit rate so who knows what i know really i could just be useless you don't know you're assuming i know

i don't know did he go don't know anyway so i don't think you need to feel embarrassed about oh so here was gonna be my question tracking through my mind people are listening to me being like is that what the inside of her brain sounds like all the time that's terrifying Oh, so here was going to be my question. Tracking through my mind, people are listening to me being like, is that what the inside of her brain sounds like all the time? That's terrifying. Having noticed this about yourself, have you tried to like spend an inning focused on being able to arrive at an answer every time it's come up? Or have you just said, it doesn't matter if I know or not, because they're going to show it to me on replay?

I'm just curious. I have not, because I just recently had this flash of insight. Yeah. The scales have fallen from my eyes. So maybe now that I know this about myself, I will watch more carefully. So we'll see. I have been interested in check swings for a while. I remember like 10 years ago, I did this long article for Baseball Prospectus because Bill James, who was working for the Red Sox at the time at a Sabre Analytics conference, he said he made the point essentially that umpires have different check swing success rates like base umpires and that teams are aware of that and that they take

advantage of that in the same way that, for instance, teams are aware of umpires' tendencies when it comes to calling pitches. And so they might approach a plate appearance differently. And I was surprised, skeptical. I'll just read. He said, the different first base, third base umpires are wildly inconsistent in how they call the check swing strike. Major league teams are aware of that, and under certain conditions, the starting pitcher will be aware that the first base umpire likes to call, will call the strike. Because if you throw a slider down and away, he'll start to swing at it. He'll check. There's a swing.

And it's really important that that's an umpire that tends to call that a strike or tends not to call it a strike. So, yeah, we're aware of that stuff and we watch it. And I would bet almost every team is on top of that issue. I bet almost every team is on top of that issue. Yeah, which still sounds strange to me that teams would be like, what's the first and third base umpires check swing appeal success rate? And would that govern whether we throw a slider or whether we throw it a little farther down or away or something because we'll be more or less likely to get the call? It sounds far-fetched to me. I mean, he was working for a team, and I guess he would know that they were paying attention to that.

But I acquired this data, which was not publicly available at the time, and did this whole big study about it. And from what I recall, there wasn't really that huge a difference. Yeah, like how many runs a year? I mean, forget wins. How many runs a year are you really? Yeah, not a many how many like runs a year? I mean, forget wins I had all check swings, not just check swings that were appealed maybe was what I was working with. So it wasn't perfect data. So it seemed like there was some difference in the rates, but I don't know if it was enough to like govern your pitch selection or something. Although I did find when I broke it down by count that it seemed like there was the same kind of effect that we see with the strike zone where the strike zone will shrink on O2, let's say. The strike zone is a lot smaller. And therefore, if you throw a pitch

like on the corner, it might be a strike on 3-0, but not on O2. And similarly, you're less likely, it seems, to get the call on a check swing if it's O2, which is kind of interesting. It's like that same kind of compassionate umpire effect that helps the batter get back into the plate appearance or helps whichever party is currently disadvantaged in that plate appearance get a little leg up. So there do seem to be some differences there, but I don't know that it would affect my game planning that much. I'm just saying we should perhaps just take this out of the umpire's hands. Now, if there were like some huge difference that teams were actually planning for and exploiting like this, then I guess you could say, oh, no, if we do away with this and we have robo check swing calls, then we will remove the skill that is at play here. But I don't think that skill is apparent to anyone the way that, say, catcher receiving is to a spectator who's watching

on tv or could be if you are hip to that and you're paying attention to that so i don't think i would miss it anyway it's a lot of thoughts that i've had about check swings lately yeah i mean now i'm gonna now i'm gonna try to make an informal study of my own accuracy when it comes to these things please do because maybe i'm wrong maybe i am only believing it to be 50 that i go yeah one way or the other and then who knows what's right after that i don't know man now what does anything mean well even the fact that you think they went around sometimes differentiates you from me it's just like no way i mean like ben i said that i don't want to make you feel badly about yourself and i i am i'm gonna hew to that but i am gonna say like i i think sometimes it's pretty obvious that they went nope you know i think

sometimes you look at them and you're like but but but maybe i am watching the the bat more often than you. And so like here would be an interesting little bit across comparison. Like am I, you know, in those innings where my sense of whether a hitter went around or not is the most accurate, is like my pitch track ignition meaningfully worse than yours? Oh, you you know that could

be because i'm watching the bat i'm maybe not paying as good attention to the ball and where it's going and so maybe maybe you're doing it right and i i am the one who is wrong i don't want you to feel bad that's not the point of this exercise i mean you brought it up but that's not what i'm doing here i'm just saying sometimes you watch it and you're like, that guy won. And then it turns out, yeah, he did. Go. I just have laser-focused tunnel vision on the catcher's glove. I'm only in it for the framing. It's like, oh, did he

get a hit? I didn't notice. I was only watching whether the catcher was going to increase the odds of getting a strike on this pitch if it had been caught. I will admit that there is a small part of me that is worried that when the robo-zone finally does come, I'm going to get an email from you being like, I just don't know if I want to do the podcast anymore. Yeah, it's over. We had a good run. Just not that into this anymore. Anyway, that was not the biggest news in baseball this week

that I realized something about my thoughts on Czechings. Was it 15 minutes worth of news? Apparently so. That surprised me too. I like that we keep people on their toes. Yeah. What was big news is that the minors might be getting unionized. Yeah. How about that?

How about that? Congrats to everyone who's been proudly wearing your Tipping Pitches unionized minors t-shirts for a while now because it might actually happen or at least it's a step closer to happening so we're actually going to get a guest on next time to discuss that in depth so i guess we don't need to go over every in and out of this now but pretty amazing i didn't expect this to be the big news this week i mean it really is big news like it's big news if you care about labor issues of course but it's also just the big news this week. I mean, it really is big news. It's big news if you care about labor issues, of course, but it's also just big news just relative to everything about baseball, just the way baseball works. I mean, most professional baseball players in the States are in the minors, right? And this will dramatically affect all of them potentially.

So just the fact that this is even on the verge of being possible, that MLBPA is interested in adding minor leaguers to its union, is sending out cards and getting a vote up to see if they want to be resolved. But boy, things have come a long way in a fairly short time. I guess it's already sort of an example of the potential power of advocacy and collective action that they're even at this point where it would be conceivable for minor leaders to be unionized or to join one of the strongest existing unions just because it wasn't that long ago that no one was really talking about or paying any attention to conditions for minor leaguers and what they were being paid and what they were eating and where they were living. And that's become a bigger and bigger issue over the past decade or so, even more so just in the past handful of years. And a lot of that is because of organizations like Advocates for Minor Leaguers and More Than Baseball, etc., that have brought a lot of attention to the conditions there.

And there have been a lot of writers who've done a lot of great reporting and analysis about this issue. But really, like, to go from the way that it's always worked throughout the history of the miners which is you have no power like you know like it or leave basically to things gradually improving here and there and now potentially a major step that could happen so really like it's not a done deal yet and i have some questions about how this will all work. Totally. But that it's even an issue that has become a big story this week. Like I didn't expect this week to learn late one night that MLBPA was interested in adding minor leaguers to its union. I mean, that was like even given all of the developments over the past several years to see that kind of come out of the blue through me for a loop. developments over the past several years to see that kind of come out of the blue through me for a loop. Yeah, I think that, you know, as you said, we will kind of delve deep on some of the more

technical aspects of it the next time around, but just the recognition of the power that collective action has had for this group, even in the sort of limited capacity that they've been able to enact without a union to represent them is remarkable. Like if you had asked me five years ago, are we going to get to a point where teams are not only expected to provide housing for their minor leaguers, but are being sort of held to account for the quality of that housing and it being up to a particular standard, I would have said no, because even though we have seen over and over again in analysis from folks like Russell Carlton, the value, just the for even if you're able to set aside sort of the moral part of it, the the sort of cold business value that seems obvious by providing people with housing and removing housing insecurity as an issue and making sure they have access to good nutrition and are able to concentrate on training rather than worrying about how they're going to

fill a couple month gap in the off season with some jobs so that they can pay rent in the meantime. There has just been a very obvious baseball case for doing better by minor leaguers for a long time. And that hasn't inspired a lot of action until, you know, organizations like Advocates for Minor Leaguers really helped these guys to recognize the power they have in acting collectively. And so I think that it's an incredibly powerful step. I am nervous about what the league's response to that is going to be, right? We have seen them, without anything as potentially threatening to their bottom line as a unionization effort, make the miners smaller, you know?

And so I do worry about what the repercussions of this action are going to be, but that's not a good reason not to do it. If anything, it underscores the necessity of these guys to force the issue of having a real place at the bargaining table and being a bargaining unit rather than a bargaining chip. better job and clearly was making an effort to improve the lot of young big leaguers and prospects in a way that was welcome because there have been times when their sort of conditions and treatment have been, you know, a thing that the union has been able to give away in pursuit of goals that the actual bargaining unit has. But, you know, doing that because you think it's the right thing to do and doing that because you have an obligation,

a real legal obligation to represent that unit in bargaining is very different. And so I think them getting a real seat at the table is pretty powerful. And I think it's really encouraging that the PA brought on the entire staff of advocates for minor leaguers right like that group basically got absorbed into the players association to help with the union drive so there's a lot yet to know but i

think the necessity for this has been obvious for a really long time and yeah it's incredible just you're just sitting there Just you're sitting there, Ben, you're sitting there on a Sunday, you know, and then all of a sudden, you're like, wow, we're entering a new a new phase of of this. And I imagine it will, you know, this is the beginning of their unionization fight. It's hardly the end of it. But you got to start somewhere. And this is, you know, the literal place to start. So here we yeah right i mean there have been some past cpas maybe where the mlbpa and boy part of me just like recoils at saying the mlb at the beginning of the mlbpa but it's okay right right i'm so conditioned to say mlb not the mlb but it's okay yes it's the players association it's okay. Yes, it's the Players Association. It's okay.

We can say the MLBPA. It's okay. Also, friendly tip out to all of the editors and writers out there. It's not a possessive players. You don't have to put the, it's just players. You don't have to put the apostrophe there. Anyway. Right.

It's neither here nor there, but it's everywhere in copy. So it's a thing I don't have to put the apostrophe there anyway right neither here nor there but it's everywhere in copy so it's a thing i'm gonna be annoying about yeah so there have been previous rounds of bargaining where they maybe used the minor leaguers as bargaining chips themselves or just didn't really pay much mind to them and they probably could have been better about that even though they weren't actually representing those players and legally were not allowed to represent those players because they were not part of the bargaining unit. But I think they've been more conscious of that. You're right, lately. And this would be a big step from that to actually represent them, to have them in the bargaining unit or a bargaining unit, because that's the part that I think a lot of people have questions about, understandably, which is just that there's such a huge difference between someone who's making $30 million in the majors, which of course is just a very small group of guys, but someone who's making even like league minimum major league

salary and someone who is in a ball or whatever. I mean, the salary differential is so vast and in any union, you're going to have some disparity, but not that much. Typically not, yeah. Yeah. So it sounds as if there will potentially be separate bargaining units if this goes forward, that there would be a major league one and a minor league one. And I don't know how they would coordinate exactly because sometimes their interests are at odds in certain ways or at least not aligned. So you can see some reasons why the MLBPA might want to do this just out of pure self-interest. And it sounds like there's more to it than that. I think that MLB players are more sensitive to the needs of MILB players, which most of them were, all of them were up until very recently.

So it's partly that, I think, and the attention that, I don't know if the minors are unionized, if minor league players are making more, like maybe teams would be more inclined to spend in free agency or something. I don't know. Like, I guess you could come up with reasons why it would benefit players who are already in MLB for MLB players to be unionized. But it seems like there's more to it than that. It seems like there's more to it than that. And I think our pal Michael Bauman pointed out that really like the presence of the miners and the ununionized miners, that's kind of a cudgel that MLB can use in bargaining because if there's the prospect of replacement players, right, that's leverage over MLB players. Now, maybe it's not the best leverage because no one really wants to see replacement players in MLB. But if you have that huge pool of not unionized workers who could potentially come in and replace MLB players if they're on strike, well, that would be a big consideration. And so if those players are unionized and are in the same union even, then they could coordinate things such that that would not be something that MLB could really hold over the heads of MLB players.

So I think there are a lot of perhaps self-serving reasons why they might be motivated to do it, which is fine. Yeah, they can be mutually beneficial. They should be looking out for their interests. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. But I have questions.

I think a lot of people have questions about the way it would work. And we'll probably get into some of those questions next time. Yeah. I suppose. But they must have an end game in mind for, hey, if we're going to even take the additional step here and gauge interest and get people on board, then we know how this would work in the long run, right? So a lot of that, I think, is sort of inscrutable to me at this time, but I'm sure they know what they're doing or think they know what they're doing, and we will find out more about that on our next episode. Yeah. But in the meantime, you know, big moves. Here we were, Ben, thinking that after the CBA got done that, you know, the biggest labor stories of the year were behind us. And that is proven to be false. Yeah. Not at all the case. So that's exciting and much more to come.

Yeah. And on this podcast and just in the world in general. Yeah. So some other MLB stuff that has happened. So my favorite story, I think, of this month, I don't know whether you have paid attention to what Joey Manessis has done for the Washington Nationals. So Joey Manessis-

I can't say that, you know, I've been so busy watching Chuck Swings that I just haven't. Right, exactly. Yeah. No, it's okay if you've not been watching the post-trade deadline nationals on a very close level. But Joey Manessis, not Joey Manessis, as I have heard it pronounced by some broadcasters, which is perhaps uncomfortably close to Joey Menzies, which I've

also heard people say, I believe it's Joey Manessis. He is basically the direct replacement for Juan Soto and Josh Bell to some extent. Oh boy. Poor guy. Yeah, except here's the thing. He's been better than they have. Whoa! Which is wild. Yeah, so this is my favorite thing. This is the most

you-can't-predict-baseball-season sort of thing that has happened. So I almost chose this guy for a Meet a Major Leaguer segment because he's on the older side. He is the eighth oldest player to make his major league debut this year. He's over 30 and he's been everywhere. He's born in Mexico. He has played in Mexico. He has played for multiple major league organizations.

But in the minors, he played for the Braves. He played for the Phillies. He played for the Red Sox. The Nationals signed him earlier this year. You know, he's been to Japan. Like, he has played in multiple countries and leagues and just has been bouncing around and has hit decently well. He's got a lifetime 840 OPS in AAA, which is pretty good, but had not necessarily pressed his case, demanded a call-up. So the Nationals on August 2nd trade Juan Soto and Josh Bell to the Padres, as people will recall. And immediately, Joey Manessis was called up, and he has played those players' positions. So he has played the outfield corners, mostly right field, which is what Juan Soto was playing for the Nationals. He's played some first base, which is what Josh Bell was playing for the Nationals. And he has out-hit them and out-valued them ever since. So he's had now 89 plate appearances, 22 games, which is essentially what Soto and Bell have had, a Soto 21 games, 95 plate appearances. He has a higher WRC plus than Juan Soto does with the Padres, just by a little bit, not that much, but higher.

He's been worth 0.7 war. Soto has been worth 0.6 war for the Padres. Soto with the Padres has a 159 WRC plus and Manessis for the Nationals, again, since the same day, has a 164 WRC plus. So he hit a homer in his first game. I think he hit like five in his first nine, which was like the second most ever in that span of time. And he has just kind of kept hitting. And this is fascinating to me because like you can make the case that the Padres, instead of offloading most of the rest of their farm system for Juan Soto and Josh Bell, should have just traded for Joey Manessis instead.

Okay, but could you make that case and not laugh by the end of it like you just did? No. Yeah, no. But that is what has turned out to happen during that time. And Josh Bell has been sub-replacement for the Padres. He's had a 94 WRC plus, and he's not given you a ton other than the offense. So basically, Manessas has been worth more and has been better than the best trade deadline acquisitions, and he is direct replacement for those players. No one had really ever heard of or was expecting a lot.

someone no one had really ever heard of or was expecting a lot. I'm imagining, what if the Nationals knew that Joey Manessis was actually amazing? And they're like, you know what? Juan Soto is expendable because we've got Joey Manessis just sitting there in AAA. We can deal Soto, just enrich our farm system, get all these top prospects, and then we'll just call up Joey Manessis. We won't miss a beat. It'll be one for one wine soda replacement and meanwhile we will get this huge farm system upgrade so that's not what happened but i'd like to again point out that you didn't get to the end of that without laughing yeah that is not what happened and yet that is what has happened to this point yeah so i So I love it. It's kind of amazing.

He actually, like, he has a higher OPS plus in baseball reference war even than he does fan graphs. Like, he's killing it. Now, has he overperformed his expected stats? Yes, he has. Has Juan Soto underperformed his expected stats? And I mean that not just in the terms of what you would expect for them based on their projections, but how well they hit the ball. Oh, but in terms of their actual expected stats, yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, he's probably getting a little lucky and maybe Soto has gotten a little unlucky. And that is how Joey Manessis, 30-year-old rookie, can outplay Juan Soto for almost a month at this point. But he has outplayed Juan Soto for almost a month at this point, but he has outplayed Juan Soto for almost a month at this point, which is just pretty amazing. I think that it is a really nice thing about baseball that, and maybe Joey Manessis will go on to have a really productive and long major league career, probably still not as productive of one as Juan Soto, but maybe he'll go on to be a good big league regular, and this will be sort of a moot point because he'll go on to be like a you know like a good big league regular and it'll be this will be sort of a moot point because he'll just be one of those guys who just has a spot on

a big league roster and well here were his best two months but it has to I don't know it must be kind of nice to know that because of the the variability and variance within an individual batter's performance and your ability to just like have a two-month period where you're like really good and everything's kind of clicking you can always look back and be like remember that two months where i was awesome and then you have you you'll never you're not gonna lose those two months that stuff is banked that production is banked and now you know when we look back you know two years from now i now, I'm sure that once Soto is supposed to reach free agency, assuming that the Padres don't get a deal done with him, we will end up, all of us, doing trade retrospectives

on the Juan Soto deal. Because the discourse demands its answer. And now, this is going to have to be part of what we say. It won't be a big part of what we say you know it won't be a big part of what we say in all likelihood but there will be a little aside at the very least it's you know you're maybe you look at it and feel like you're a footnote to something bigger but you're getting mentioned and a lot of guys just don't so it's something yep twice as many homers for the nationals joey manessis as one Soto has for the Padres so far.

Again, you keep laughing at the end of it. I mean, yeah. I don't mean to say anything about, oh boy, they should, like, they pulled off a swindle here because they had Joey Manessis waiting in the wings the whole time. You don't want someone in our mentions being like, I can't believe that you think the Juan Soto trade. That's not what we're doing. That's like, Jeremy Nessus is better than Juan Soto. No. Just saying that. That would be a big statement.

Arguably, he has been better over the past month or so. Or at least he has had better results. Right. Yeah. So it's just one of those like, you know, we make such a big deal over the trade deadline and it's fun and it's consequential. But like, you never know. Like someone can get hot or go in a slump for a couple months and like it will just undo whatever you thought you were getting on that trade or whatever. Like there's just no way to tell. Like occasionally someone will just completely go off and will be so great that they will propel you into the playoffs.

that they will propel you into the playoffs. But it's pretty rare that a trade deadline acquisition will get you there, will make the difference, or even put you over the hump once you're in the playoffs. That's what you're hoping will happen. And obviously Juan Soto was not just a rental either. He's going to be there. He's going to be a padre for a while. And I feel confident that Juan Soto will outperform Joey Manessis next season, let's say, and also the rest of this season. I would wager that that would be the case, but just like a month. I remember just

looking at the Nationals lineup the first day after that trade, and probably Joey Manessis was in it, and I did not know who Joey Manessis was. And I was like, who are these guys? And it turns And you don't remember. story to stop being one but it is not yet so like as long as he manages to outperform juan soto and juan soto and josh bell combined that will continue to amuse me at the very least i just love the idea of like you know we all have our things that we check on because we can't watch all the baseball there's too much of it to watch and so we all of us have our little things that we check whether it's at the end of the day or the next morning, to see what's going on with everything. And I'm checking the wild card standings,

and I'm looking at our playoff odds, and I'm maybe checking in on a couple of players who I'm individually interested in. Yeah, suit yourself. Yeah, none of them are Joey Manessis. Looking at the Nationals box score. Yeah. Yeah, you're in this weird zone where you're really interested in Otani,

and then also Joey Manessis. But you know what? I think that's nice. I think it's good to have a diverse set of interests. And it's good to remember that players who are not future Hall of Famers, they contribute stuff too. We should give them their due. How panicked were you yesterday when Aaron Judge hit his 50th home run

that Otani would be on the losing end of an effort yet again? Were you very panicked? Well, and then Otani hit a on the losing end of an effort yet again. Were you very panicked? Well, and then Otani hit a home run of his own, and that put the Angels over the top. So that was a fun little MVP race to do, sort of MVP finalist going head-to-head, toe-to-toe, homer-to-homer. So that was amusing. I felt bad for Otani in a sense because like Angel Stadium was full of Yankees fans.

Oh my God, there were so many Yankees fans. I think they may have outnumbered the Angels fans just judging by the boos and the cheers. They very strongly did. They very strongly did. Yeah, for sure. Which we don't say to knock Angels fans, to be clear. We were just like, whoa, there sure are a lot of Yankee fans there. Yeah. And there were MVP chants. And there are often MVP chants for Otani. But in this case, I think there were more for Judge. And I felt bad for Otani because he had a quote. He said, it feels rewarding to be able to play in front of a crowd like this. It doesn't matter who they are cheering for.

Oh, my God. Oh, my god. Oh my lord. It doesn't matter who they're cheering for. I was able to have a lot of fun playing. Look, Shohei Otani's got a great life, but I felt bad for him. Get that guy out of there. Get him in front of crowds who are cheering for him.

That would be nice. But it was fun to see both of those guys just uh going homer to homer and it really is like i mean otani is within a win of judge war wise at fan graphs and even closer i believe at baseball reference so he's kind of turned it on he's only like six points of wrc plus below where he finished last season. So like the offense has been picking up and he's been amazing on the mound too. So there is this scenario where, and I was just talking to Zach Cram at the ringer about this, but there's a scenario where like Otani, I don't think he'll win the Cy Young award. Like he's in the conversation, especially with Justin Verlander on the IL with a calf issue now, depending on when he comes back. Like Otani's in the running. There are other pitchers who probably have stronger cases at thisani, even though he's on shorter rest these days.

So he is pitching more often and getting more innings, but there's still going to be an innings gap there. And then you have like Kevin Gossman as the FIP candidate, I guess, if you're very into FIP. So I don't know that he'll win, but like. His batting ball look is so freaking weird. Yeah. But like if he finishes strong and keeps pitching the way he has, like he's going to finish like close to the top. Yeah. But like if he finishes strong and keeps pitching the way he has, like he's going to finish like close to the top. Yeah. If he doesn't win the thing. I don't think he'll win the thing.

I don't think he'll win. and then also have like 35 dingers, you know, and like 140, 150 WRC plus and not win the MVP award. Like that is a possible scenario where like maybe your number two or number three Cy Young finisher like hits 35 bombs and does not win MVP. And also like that might be okay, you know, like just because Judge has 50 homers and could end with 60 or something and is playing really good defense and center and everything, it might be fine. But just how weird would that be if you have a guy who's a leading Cy Young contender and also one of the better hitters in baseball and might not win the MVP award, which you'd think he'd be a shoo-in based on that. But maybe it might not even be a bad thing if he didn't win because Judge would be so deserving. So it's a fun race. I mean, it's not maybe as close as the NL race that we talked about last week, but it's pretty fun just because these guys are so impressive in their respective ways. Yeah, I agree with you that it's not as tight.

How many turns is Verlander going to miss? Because I know that they said this morning that the news with Verlander was better than catastrophic, which, you know, that's a weird way of me categorizing that news. He's probably going to miss, what, at least a turn or two when it comes down to it? Yeah, I mean, he's on the 15-day IL. He had an MRI. But the MRI was like kind of okay? It was not disastrous, but he's out for at least a couple weeks.

And, you know, given his age, given just that they want him to be right for the playoffs, obviously, like they'll probably be careful. Be kind of conservative in bringing him back. I guess they would want him to get some innings in before the the playoffs, obviously. Like, they'll probably be kind of careful. Be kind of conservative and bring him back. I guess they would want him to get some innings in before the playoffs start, ideally. He's not eligible to come off until September 13th. So if he came off right then and got some starts before the end, I think he's probably still the leading contender, right?

But, like, if he missed more than the minimum, I don't know, because there are some pitchers who are pretty close to him. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how voters interact with the the kevin gaussman of it all because like his performance is just so weird like he is just having the worst batted ball luck in a way i got asked about this on toronto radio the other day and i didn't have a satisfactory answer and i'm sure that the people listening could tell that I did not have a satisfactory answer because it's not like that defense is like terrible you know like when you look at the metrics Toronto's defense is fine and

the other guys in that rotation are having a lot better luck on batted balls than Gaussman is but I also think that it you know if Verlander is hurt for a while and doesn't do a lot more how will people interact with like the fact that he has a sub 2 era gaussman's era is over three but like you said he's like the fip guy i'm just kind of noodling through this i don't think otani will win but his case isn't bad i mean like at least by our version of war and obviously this will change between now and the end of the season and how voters interact with war can vary and how they interact with like our version of war versus base level references versus bps like you know people have their metrics that they like better or worse but like he otani has accumulated as

much war as shane bieber in what like almost 30 fewer innings 20 fewer innings so i don't know i don't think he's gonna win but i do wonder if a couple years from now we're gonna look back and go it's kind of weird that he didn't win but if judge breaks a home run record then i think we're gonna think it's fine so that's a roundabout way of me saying i'm glad i don't have an almvp vote i think is really what i mean yeah it's interesting sometimes there is no satisfying answer for a 373 babbitt like gossman has sometimes it's just you had lousy luck it's weird one nice thing that baseball savant does is it lets you break down the defense behind an individual pitcher. And if you do that on their leaderboard, it says that Gossman has negative nine outs above average behind him. So it is possible, I suppose, that a team's defense could be fine overall, but not

fine while a particular pitcher is pitching, which is just another form of lousy luck i guess but he actually has the lowest oaa behind him in the al and then keegan thompson of the cubs is tied with him at negative nine but then patrick corbin is at negative 19 oh no yeah he has more than doubled the bad defensive support of the starter who is next after him so we're not out here saying that patrick corbin's actually good because i think patrick corbin's pretty well he did just snap the the nationals records no starting pitcher wins i saw that one yeah i saw that on the espn crawl, and I went, wait a minute, is that true? Yeah, 5-17 now. Wow.

Yeah, though, I mean, he's had bad luck too, I guess, in multiple forms, just really bad defense behind him. Yeah. Because, you know, FIP is not terrible. No, we're not, Ben, we're not doing it. His ex-FIP is even better. It's goofy, doing it. His ex-fifth is even better. It's goofy. Stop it. He's got half a win above replacement, according to fan graphs,

even though he has a six and a half ERA. Yeah, but that is bad for a starter. Yeah, I mean, that's not good. Yeah, I saw that floating around a couple weeks ago, and they're like, well, he has positive four, and I was like, he's accrued bad value for a starting pitcher. What are we talking about here? Yeah, no, he still has a crude bad value for a starting pitcher. What are we talking about here? Yeah, no, he's not good.

No, he's not good. Maybe a little not as bad as you would think. Well, sure, but like- Just based on the ERA and the win-loss record. Yeah. Yeah, it's not good. I don't know that there's anyone crying out for us to complicate the Patrick Corbin story. I think it's fine to say he's maybe not quite as bad, but not quite as bad as being pretty

bad is still not that good yeah there you go yeah speaking of that i i saw a stat somewhere that dallas keitel i believe he has i think he's the first pitcher ever to have a 7.5 or higher era for three teams in the same season yeah it's like like the long tail of a former Cy Young award winner it's like like we saw with Jake Arrieta it's like yeah that's a good comp if you were really good at a certain point and Keichel was good in a different way sure Arrieta was but still like if you were a Cy Young award winner like you were one of the best pitchers in baseball. Like desperate teams will continue to give you chances for a while. So like, you know, he had almost an eight ERA with the White Sox after not pitching well for them last year either.

Yeah. And they gave up on him and they need pitching help. And so they decided he wasn't going to be any. Then the Diamondbacks were like, hey, former Cy Young Award winner Dallas Keuchel is available. He racks up like a 10 ERA with them almost in four starts. And then they let him go. And the Rangers are like, hey, former Cy Young Award winner Dallas Keuchel is available. And so they pick him up and he gives up seven earned runs in a five and a third inning start.

I don't know whether anyone else will give him a chance or are the rangers sticking with him in that rotation i don't know but i think he's still on their roster like i don't think that they've like let him go yet the d-backs thing was funny because i imagine like brent strong was with houston for forever so i imagine that he and Keichel overlapped, right? They were there at the same time. Yeah, that's probably why. Yeah, maybe he thought he could fix him. He's like, I can fix him, and then he was like, oh, no, I can't. Sorry, I was wrong.

He could not be fixed. Yeah, the Roto-Wire update says Texas swooped in to sign Dallas Keichel. I don't know if it's a swoop. I don't know if they were fending off. Who are they swooping in front of? Who is swoops? I don't know. Yeah, a swoop. Who are they swooping in front of? Who is swoops? I don't know. Swoops and scoops.

Yeah, swoops and scoops. But yeah, I don't know how long a leash he'll have there. I guess they are sticking with him for the time being. But that was like, well, what did you expect, I guess, when you picked up Dallas Keuchel and gave him a start? I mean, I bear no ill will toward Dallas Keuchel. It would be great if he could get it back again. But I think at this point, there's a track record there where if you're picking up Dallas Keuchel and entrusting him with a start, then you've exhausted all other options, I suppose. But if you're not former Cy Young Warner winner Dallas Keuchel and you have

the same recent results and the same stuff. You probably aren't getting that call. Like, I don't know if anyone's swooping to pick you up. No swooping. Yeah. So it's interesting because, like, there's an argument to be made, I guess, that, like, well, if you did have Cy Young stuff at some point. And I don't know whether Dallas Keuchel had Cy Young stuff exactly or what we would typically. Yeah, I wouldn't. Not famous as a stuff guy. No. But, you know, he had Cy Young stuff exactly or what we would typically. Yeah, I wouldn't. Not famous as a stuff guy.

No, but, you know, he had Cy Young results. He was quite successful for a while. And teams, I guess, understandably think, well, if you were at that level at one time, then maybe it could come back. And maybe it's easier to envision someone who was once pitching at that level to get back to that level. envision someone who was once pitching at that level to get back to that level and if you could identify oh maybe the mechanics have gotten out of whack in some way and we can rebuild him and you talk yourself into it and you know things probably aren't going great for you if you are trying to talk yourself into that yeah like things weren't going great for the Padres last year when they tried Jake Arrieta and like things aren't going great for the Diamondbacks and the Rangers etc so yeah but it's interesting to see just like how many chances

you get if you were good once even if you're not good now Brent Strom was with Houston from 2014 to 21 so yeah he was yeah he was there he and Keiko would have overlapped I can't believe that you would say something so rude about the Diamondbacks who beat the Phillies 13-7 in Corbin Carroll's debut. The future in the desert is bright, Ben. Yeah, yeah. And didn't they just sweep the White Sox as well?

I think they did, in fact, do that. I think they did do that. Again, we talked about this before. They're not a good baseball team, but they have some players who would be on an active roster with pretty much every team in baseball. And that's a new, not a totally new thing, but the proportion of the roster that meets that criteria,

I think, is significantly higher than it used to be. Yeah. I know I'm going out on a limb here, but I continue to think that the White Sox could have used Carlos Rodon this season. Yeah, man. Maybe he would have come in handy for them. That just looks so bad in hindsight.

Like, what a— Yeah. That was a bad whiff, that one. That's a great— Bad whiff. Yeah. No. I meant to mention when I was talking about Joey Manessis and the surprising aftermath of the Soto trade—

You have more to say about Joey Manessis? No, but I have more to say about the Padres. Sorry, Padres fans. But the other big trade that the Padres made, which we talked about quite a bit in our trade deadline roundup, just because the closer for closer mid-season trade was unprecedented, as we discussed at that time. And the Brewers, Padres, Taylor Rodgers for Josh Hader and other players. Like, that was a weird one. It was surprising. And, boy, that hasn't worked out well for either side, or at least neither side has prospered since then.

I know Jay Jaffe just wrote about this for FanCraft. But, boy, Hader, I guess the Brewers got out at the right time there because, you know, he'd already had a blow up before they dealt him. And I know there's been a lot of analysis of like what has gone wrong with Josh Hayter here. And I know that his arm angle is different. And it seems like that could potentially be more costly for him because he had an unusual arm angle given the way that his pitches moved. And that seems to have been a big part of his success. And now his arm ankle changed early this year, I believe, even while he was still successful. So I don't know if it's solely that or not, but his arm ankle was higher. And then it seems to have come down a bit lately. Like maybe they've realized that that was what was happening. But he's been pretty wild and he's gotten shelled and he had a disaster the other day and he's already been removed from the closer role with the Padres. So like he's having one of these seasons now. If you look at his full season stats, like he's got 29 saves because he banked a bunch of them.

And so he now has like one of the highest ERAs ever for someone who has had that many saves. It's him, Brad Lidge in 2009, and the immortal Sean Chacon with the 2004 Rockies. Lidge and Chacon both had more than 30 saves and ERAs over seven. Lidge and Chacon both had more than 30 saves and ERA is over seven. Hayter now is not accumulating any more saves for the moment, but he's at a 6.52 ERA with 29 saves, which I think is still leading the league for the moment. But he has looked quite terrible. Meanwhile, the Brewers' bullpen has really been bad since they traded him, which obviously if they had kept him, maybe it would have been even worse, right?

So it's not like, oh, they traded Josh Hader and everything's gone to seed. Maybe that was a good thing to get out of the Josh Hader business while they could still get something valuable for him. But the Brewers' bullpen has been 28th in war since the trade it's been sub replacement level since then the Padres bullpen has actually been okay it's been top 10 despite haters blow ups like their issues have been other areas of the roster but yeah both of those teams and it's funny because they are competing against each other too too, for that last wildcard slot now. Like the Brewers and the Padres, it's coming down to those teams now, it looks like. And neither of them can get out of their own way since that trade. Like as Jay documented, the Brewers' playoff odds have plummeted, although that has as much to do with the Cardinals losing over the past several weeks.

It's them having two MVP candidates on their roster simultaneously yeah and albert pujols playing like one as well so so i feel for them i guess just kind of falling out of it i would like both of those teams to make the playoffs if possible just because they're two of the teams that have never won a world series so like the more of those we could get in a playoff, the better along with, you know, the Mariners and other contenders that haven't won one. But it's looking like it might be either or and it's looking like it might be like, which one is least bad. So neither team has had the results that they thought they were going to get, I guess, when they made their big moves at the deadline. Although, you know, you can't necessarily point to the trades and say that's why they've been bad

or why they've lost ground in the playoff race. But yeah, yeah. It hasn't helped, you know. Like, I think that if you're, you know, trying to apply relative weights to the things that have caused problems for the Padres, like knowing that they're not going to be able to bring Fernando Tatis Jr. back because he's suspended is probably at the top of that list, right? And, you know, Jay noted that their rotation has been sort of meh for the most part since the deadline.

Although, you know, you'll be shocked to learn that while, you know, he's nowhere near the talent of his replacement in D.C., having Juan Soto in the lineup means that their offense is produced better on the whole. Yeah, it helps. It doesn't help as much as getting Joey Manessas in there. I mean, he's no Joey Manessas, Ben, but he'll do in a pinch, you know. You got to have someone. But, yeah, it's been interesting.

I think that, you know, Jay's piece is worth reading. He quoted Michael Aheto from Baseball Prospectus at length, and he had a really good deep dive on Hader and sort of what's ailing him and the interaction between not only his release point, but like how that is interacting with the way that Hader has historically sort of pronated his wrist or not. Right.

And the role that that has on the angle at which the ball is coming in so there's like a lot that's kind of going together there i think that it's interesting to me that when i think about teams that are like good at helping pitchers to optimize like milwaukee's on that list for me right i think that they tend to do a pretty good job of identifying issues and then seemingly giving their players like an actionable way to address those problems and you know that he was not a that hater was not able to course correct entirely and sort of get that balance back between the

delivery and like how he how much he was pronating his wrist or not is interesting and i know that you know he he also like it sounds like everything is fine now despite maybe some bad reporting from mlb network but i know that like his wife had a difficult pregnancy and so like there's a lot of stuff that might have been going on there but it's interesting that they haven't been able to like dial it in again and i don't know if san if San Diego is the team to help him do that. Yeah, I guess you never know when there's a mechanical issue. Like, is it compensating for something? Is there an arm issue?

Is he dinged up in some way that we don't know about? Maybe he's not even aware of it. Like, it's not acute, but it's just a minor discomfort. And so he has almost unconsciously changed his arm. You know, that can happen or it could not be that. It could just be bad habits or something. But yeah. And I don't know, because I think that change to some degree started while he was still pitching well. So it could also have other factors are playing a part here. But it hasn't looked great great it has not looked good lately he's

been pretty wild and and he's always like gotten hit surprisingly hard when he's like through pitches in the zone right it's always weird but yeah it's just that sometimes he would do things and you're like how does anyone ever make contact against you at all hard or not you know right exactly yeah there are a lot of teams like if the the Padres and the Brewers I guess they probably like can't both make the playoffs now or it seems unlikely I mean I guess if they both overtook the Phillies or something like that could happen and you know the Phillies just lost 13 to 7 to the Diamondbacks who as we have established not yet a good baseball team so who knows yeah or if the brewers somehow overtook the cardinals i

guess that could happen it seems super likely but no but if those teams were in the playoffs plus the mariners plus the rays plus the guardians like that'd be a pretty fun field like you'd have half the teams either not having won a world series ever or having the longest title drought of anyone like that'd be a lot of interesting storylines. I mean, you know, probably like the Dodgers would win anyway. But like still. Shut up, Ben. There'd be a lot of fun outcomes for neutral observers to root for.

And I guess even if only one of the Padres or Brewers makes it, there will still be some fun ones. So that's something to look forward to. makes it there sure there'll be some some fun ones so that's something to look forward to so milwaukee is at the moment a game and a half back of san diego as we record on tuesday afternoon before other action has really gotten underway here there's also like not a lot of baseball yesterday i would like to register a complaint more baseball please so they're a game and a half back and you know it's it's possible that like philly really falls off although they're like getting all of their hurt guys back now you know although i guess castellanos just went on the injured list with turf toe right he's got turf toe seems like it would be one of those really

annoying injuries right in addition to being painful i mean it's probably less painful for a baseball player than like a football player where you're like allow me to balance 250 pounds of person on this for a minute it's like when offensive linemen get turf toe i'm like wow you're you know a hero you should be carried around 250 barely tipping the scales i mean that would be yeah that's like a teen a little teeny tiny it's so teeny tiny you know because he is a Seattle guy, I will just probably always have a soft spot for Corbin Carroll. But he is one of those guys where you see him next to other big leaguers

and you're like, you're teeny tiny. Which is ridiculous because when you see him in person, you can like see his muscles through his shirt. So what am I even talking about? But he's not very tall. You know, he's athletic, but he's not super tall. Yeah know he's yeah he's athletic but he's not super tall right yeah we're getting a little flurry of call-ups yeah related to what we talked about last time with the cpa incentives and all of that but we're seeing a bunch of those although

kate cavalli comes up makes his debut and then immediately goes on the il with shoulder inflammation which is not fun it's uh it's like the the marlins uh max meyer earlier this year except hopefully not as serious but sort of the same thing yeah just coming up and immediately getting hurt it's not the best what do you make of that record that albert pool holes just set with his 694th homer where he also hit that homer off of rostetweiler who was the 450th different pitcher whom he has homered off of which set the all-time record broke barry bonza's record for the most different pitchers homered off of is is that something you're interested in i don't know what to make of that as a as a record i mean i guess like as a piece of trivia it is it is a piece of trivia

but sometimes they're like comparing them to like guys who played 100 years ago and i was like right there were like three pitchers they threw every inning of baseball yeah yeah i don't think i like it because it's i mean first of all like it says anything really right does it tell you much that like the fact that he's hit 694 homers doesn't did but like if anything i i guess maybe it like just tells you about the difference in pitcher usage now even relative to most of bonza's career in that you just have more pitchers going shorter amounts of time and you're seeing pitchers for like multiple times in a game far less often so like the degree of difficulty i guess, is higher now than it was at any earlier era, not just because the players

are better and throwing harder and all of that, but just because of the lack of familiarity and you're just seeing so many different pitchers constantly. You don't get long looks at these guys.

So in that sense, I guess it maybe tells you a little something about the era, but also like you hit 694 homers. So like if you were drawing up a list of candidates for, well, who would have homered off of the most pitchers ever? Albert Pujols would be close to the top of your list just because he's close to the top of the all-time home run leaderboard. So I don't know. I mean, I guess it's worth like a tweet.

So maybe that's all it is. I mean, yeah. To be clear, you know, we at times wish that the bar were higher for what constitutes good enough to tweet, but we will acknowledge that it is in fact quite low. no qualifiers or anything it's not like some terribly tortured stat it just yeah like you know it's a little underwhelming i mean i guess like if you want him to pass bonds and something and he's not going to hit more homers than bonds did this is something he hit more homers off of different pitchers than barry bonds did and maybe it tells you a little something about just even poo holes his era relative to Banz's era. But yeah, I don't feel like it's terribly enlightening, really.

No, I don't think it tells. It's one of those fun facts where you think about it, you hear it, and then you go, hey, wait a minute. Does that actually tell me anything? Am I like, have I learned a thing here? Like, actually? I don't know that we, I don't think we have. Yeah. Just a couple other

things so ben clemens wrote about something john smoltz said on a broadcast so john smoltz and i'll just uh quote here from ben's piece maybe i can find the audio clip of smoltz but this was something that happened in saturday's bravesinals game, and the Braves scored four and then leading off the bottom of the fourth, the same inning, Tyler O'Neill, who has actually been hitting lately, walked on four straight pitches against Charlie Morton. And then there was a two-run homer, and that run scored. So Smoltz was upset even before the home run was hit. He said, the last thing you want to do is walk the leadoff hitter after the team gave you four runs. You don't care if he hits a 3-1 pitch for a homer.

Just don't walk him. And Aaron Goldsmith, who was doing the play-by-play, said, you're not being facetious. You actually mean that. You'd rather have a run on the board than a runner at first base. And Smoltz said, yeah, that he preferred the home run to the walk. And so Ben wrote thousands of words and did a lot of statistical research to try to give Smoltz some benefit of the doubt and figure out what he was saying without taking what he

said literally, essentially. And basically Ben's conclusion, which I think is fair, is that Smoltz was saying that like walking the leadoff guy on four pitches is it's like kind of an unforced error, I guess. You know, like you give up a home run. It's like, OK, you got to hand it to the hitter. Yeah, you got me. Yeah, that will happen sometimes. It's a fairly rare event.

But if you walk the guy on four pitches, there was maybe some like conscious avoidance of the strike zone there. Maybe you to give up the home run which is not necessarily making a mistake if it's a mistake it's a physical mistake right it might not even be a mistake because it might just be the sometimes you just get got yeah sometimes you just get got so i understand that interpretation and maybe that is sort of what smoltz is saying it It's almost like when we get upset or fans get upset about like a manager having some weird lineup decision or something where it's like it's not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but you had all day to figure out what your lineup was going to be. And then you ended up with this weird lineup that you didn't have to choose. And so you're hamstringing yourself essentially before the game even begins. So I guess this is sort of similar and it's like a player analyst

reacting to how a player would feel in that moment. I mean, Charlie Morton is a smart veteran pitcher who's made a ton of adjustments and he's pitching well again. He has just a fascinating career and probably knows about as much about pitching as anyone. So he's pitching well again he has just a fascinating career and probably knows about as much about pitching as anyone so he's not like some young rookie who doesn't know what he's doing out there but i accept that like smoltz you know he's smart about pitching he knows things he's a veteran he's highly accomplished in his field but like that kind of comment saying pretty explicitly even like after goldsmith gave him the chance to like clarify and elaborate he's like no no i'm in he's stuck to it he's like no i'd rather give up the homer like

it's sort of like when a rod or whoever will be like you know home runs or rally killers right right right and it's sort of the same in that they're reacting to like the emotion of the moment maybe where it's like yeah you're upset to give up a home run, but like at least you have a clean slate and you're starting with the bases empty. Whereas, you know, like it's not like a rally where you're under pressure and, you know, you're pitching under the threat of giving up a run. You've already given up the run, which is like obviously worse because like the worst outcome of the rally is that you give up a run. Yes.

So like a home run is already bad. You've already done the thing you're trying to avoid. Yeah. Yeah. But mentally, emotionally, maybe you feel like, all right, that's behind me, you know, clean slate. I'm starting from scratch here. I get it.

I get why you might feel that way. But like the fact that these announcers say these things, like I I guess what I keep coming back to is that, like. You sound so disappointed, Ben. I am. Because, like, even if you mean something different that is reasonable, still, I think we have to hold them accountable for not explaining themselves clearly. Right. Because that is the job. That's their job.

Yeah. That is the job. because that is the job. That's their job. That is the job. Yes, the job is to have been a former player and to be able to talk about the player's perspective and everything. But also, if you're a broadcaster

who's very prominent on a lot of national broadcasters, you should be able to give voice to what you're saying here and not say something that sounds as obviously absurd as, yes, I would rather give up a home run than a walk because like as ben wrote in his post like smoltz probably doesn't think that in the sense that like if you were to put him back on the mound and give him a choice of like do you want to be down a run here do you want to give up a walk like you know probably like give up a walk please

yeah so like explain yourself. Articulate this perspective, which is interesting. I don't know that it's the most amazing point anyway. Ben went through a ton of math to figure out is Smaltz right, even if we give him the benefit of the doubt there. And is it better to try to avoid the home run or to try to avoid the walk? And ultimately his conclusion was that it doesn't make that much difference anyway. So it isn't really worth getting worked up about. But even if it were, if you're John Smoltz and you keep getting these broadcasting gigs, a big part of the gig is to translate what you're feeling and thinking into like an insight that people can understand and

that doesn't sound just a complete counterfactual so i think if you're sticking to your guns there and you're just saying something that sounds nonsensical even if there's a kernel of like good insight there like you you have to put that kernel in the microwave and pop it. Pop it? Yeah. Then I was like, oh, we're going to do popcorn now. We're going to do a popcorn analogy. And then you did. I did.

Yeah. So that's all I'm saying. If you're getting these big gigs, a big part of that should not just be you were a good player, but also you can explain these things to a casual audience and maybe also to a more hardcore audience or explain it to a casual audience in a way that does not make the hardcore audience turn off their TV in anger. So yeah, there's got to be a way, like it took Ben thousands of words to translate Smults. And so I get that you don't have that much time during a broadcast, but you could still say, just say, well, this is how you feel as a pitcher.

You feel like you just made a mistake that you didn't have to make. Whereas if you give up a home run, well, sometimes you just have to hand it to the guy. So just say that and don't make it completely literal that you would rather have the walk than the home run. So even if you give the charitable interpretation of, okay, he has a point here, I still think he didn't do that great a job of explaining what his point was. I really love that at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is encourage a 55-year-old man to be able to give more accurate voice to his feelings which like i think a generation of millennials would be like yeah if dads could do that that would be useful to us in our lives so i i applaud that i think you're right like it's a hard job you know

i i do think that assuming that the person doesn't say something like wildly problematic, that trying to meet broadcasters with some kind of spirit of generosity, at least every now and again, it's like a, that's a nice thing to do because we would be, we sometimes struggle to be coherent for an hour recording this podcast. And so I can't imagine how hard it is to be in the booth for like a three and a half hour game. You're trying to say something, you know, insightful and accurate. And you're, you know, you're John Smoltz,

you're a Hall of Famer, you know what you're talking about. And so there's an expectation that you're going to be able to articulate that properly. And so that's hard. Now, I agree with you that the flip side of that is, that is hard. That's why you pay some people to do it and not other people, right? Like you are, you're in the booth because presumably you are viewed as having a particularly keen insight and an ability to translate that insight to a variety of audiences in a way that they will like come away knowing something that they didn't know before, or at least understanding the play on the field in front of them. And when your broadcast partner is like,

I'm giving you this out, I'm giving you this opportunity to clarify what you really meant. And then you go, no, yeah, like, yeah. And I,

I agree with you that part of why this is so flummoxing is that I do think that we, not you and I, I think we spend a lot of time on this podcast trying to think about how people feel while they're doing baseball but I think that that is an underrated insight that former players can offer right and if they can do it in a way that isn't like those nerds and their math like it does help us to understand why we see what we see on the field and you know I think that Ben's right that ultimately if you really pressed Smoltz on this and he was on the

mound he'd be like of course I'd rather give up a walk than a home run like what are you talking about but the feeling that you have while you're up there doing this and the the way that that maybe you know informs how the rest of your inning goes or the way you feel about how your innings going like it counts for something like I don't think that it is as important as having, you know, a really potent fastball or effective pitch sequencing. But it's not nothing. Right. And so it's good for us to be able to talk about that stuff. But you need to, like, be able to make it make sense, you know.

So I agree with you. I like that we met this with something approaching generosity because Smoltz is often easy to just goof on. He's an easy... He sets himself up for goofing pretty often. And so to try to be like, what do you really mean, friend? That's a nice

thing for a writer to do. But if I worked for Fox, well, I'd have a couple pieces of feedback for John, I imagine. But one of them might be, say more about that. Like articulate, you know, like in therapy, you have a whole toolbox. You got to use your tools, John. Yeah, I don't even mind.

There are some broadcasters or TV personalities who will say things that do not accord with my understanding of baseball. I mean, that can be good in some ways. I want to be surprised and learn things and find out that I'm wrong about things, but also will directly contradict things that seem to be fairly settled science. But that's kind of okay at times if I find the person personable, if I think they have a compelling personality, if I enjoy spending some time with them. Like Harold Reynolds, for instance, is someone who a lot of people of a sabermetric bent take objection to because of some things that he will say that seem to contradict sabermetric findings, et cetera, things we think we know about baseball. But I enjoy Harold Reynolds.

I think he's just kind of a fun presence and personality for the most part. He sort of enriches broadcasts or telecasts that he is a part of, I find, more often than he does not. Or even like back in the day when Joe Morgan and John Miller would be on Sunday Night Baseball and John and Joe Morgan would be spouting FJM bait and all sorts of ridiculous things. But it would be kind of fun to listen to those two regardless. I don't really get that sense from Smoltz personally. So he says these things that are quite questionable. I just I don't find him to be fun for the most part just because he can be kind of a baseball grump often and more of a get off my lawn type in a way that is not entertaining. I don't feel like I could forgive

some of these comments if it were like, well, I enjoy listening to these guys. It's good banter, good interplay here, fun commentary. I didn't agree with that. This doesn't make any sense to me, but at least he's cracking jokes or he's fun to listen to. And I'm not getting that so much from him. So I don't know, personal taste, I guess. I mean, if it makes you feel better, he often seems like he also hates being in the booth. All right. I noticed, oddly, that the Angels have the second most shutouts of any team. As in times they have been shut out? No, not that.

What? You might think that. Yeah, right. No. So the most shutouts by a pitching team this year, or I'm looking at StatHead here, most games with no runs allowed in nine innings or more. The Mets have done it 17 times this year. Okay, they've got some good pitching. It's a good team.

The Yankees have done it 14 times. Okay, they were good once upon a time. And then like even the other teams toward the top, the Twins, 13. All right, the Phillies, 13. I mean, these are contenders. The White Sox, 13. The Cardinals, 13.

The Astros, 12. The Dodgers, 11. The Padres contenders. The White Sox, 13, the Cardinals, 13, the Astros, 12, the Dodgers, 11, the Padres, 11, the Orioles, 10. Like all of these teams are good or at least like on the fringes of contention. The Angels have 16 shutouts this year as a pitching staff. I don't understand how that has happened. I mean, I guess Otani and they just happen to have like concentrated some of their good pitching performance in the same game. Like they're the only not good team here that has anywhere close to this many shutouts. So I was shocked when I saw this. I am shocked. Yeah.

Just not a lot of significance to it. I'm just sharing my shock. Right. Yeah. It's not. It doesn't really mean anything other than confusion. That's all it means, being confused.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, they're 11th in pitching war. So I guess they're just not a terrible pitching team, even though it sort of seems like they would be. I mean, they have Otani, they had Sindergaard, they have Sandoval, who's good. Reid Detmers has been quite good of late i mean you know i guess they've got some decent pitchers is just perhaps the point of this

but uh they're still bad anyway they're so happen to notice that ben they're so bad they're quite bad and spin rate is back sticky stuff seems to be back, apparently. So Rob Arthur just wrote about this at Baseball Prospectus. And he noted last year that after the initial crackdown and the dramatic decline in spin rate and spin to velocity ratio, there were huge changes. It seemed like, OK, the enforcement is working. Then those things started creeping back up again over the course of the second half. And so they put the stricter monitoring in place this year, right, where you're feeling people's hands instead of just patting down certain places. And yet it hasn't seemed to work because now the ratio of spin to velocity and spin rate, they've crept back up to the point where it's like basically not that different from before they put the ban into place in the first place. So either pitchers have somehow figured out another legal way to get a bunch more spin on the ball, or they have either the umpires have grown lax or the pitchers have gotten better about outsmarting them and hiding whatever it is that they're using. So it seems like this stuff is back.

And I don't know whether this is a coincidence or not, but offense is down quite a bit. And this month, typically August is like the hottest month and the hottest hitting month. And unusually, this August so far, the OPS league wide is lower than July, lower than June, lower than May. So weirdly, what should be the offensive peak of the season has been actually a decrease to like the worst offensive month since April. So that's odd. And I don't know if that is why that pitchers are cheating again more and more effectively.

But that's been a noticeable thing that offense has been down this month. And also the spin rates are back up again. So I don't know what to do about that. People say that like just maybe having the stickified ball, the pre-tacked ball will help if you just legalize a certain amount of stickiness, but I don't know what's to stop pitchers from trying to add extra spin and stickiness on top of the legal amount. So maybe this can never completely go away, but it does seem that the enforcement is not having the same effect

that it did for a little while. I can't believe that the brief touch of a hand is not enough to curtail. Yeah, apparently not. You know, they included as the feature image for this piece of BP a picture of James Karanshak, and I got to watch a fair amount of James Karans shack this weekend while he was playing against the mariners and he sure is in his hair a lot ben touching oh my god he's a fidgety guy on the mound anyway you know you look at him and you're like wow the pitch clock's gonna do a freaking number on you dude because it is so oh as molasses are

so much pre-delivery this and that. It's just like, just throw the freaking ball, my guy. But up in his hair a lot. Touch in, touch in back there. I don't know. Maybe there's an itchy spot. Maybe he's got a little itchy spot back there. But maybe he got something in his hair.

Anyone really wants to be like feeling up other people's hair. I mean, that's the right maybe i mean i wonder whether like the the hand inspections perhaps are not working as well as they should because like umpires and players are just like uncomfortable yeah the contacts it seems like but hair i mean oh yeah it's like hey you know we shake hands a lot sure that is uh somewhat normalized perhaps not like the rubbing of the hands perhaps that is just a bridge too far for some of these men yeah but hair like i don't know that i would want to be reaching into james karenchak's hair no and inspecting it for

stickiness yeah it feels that feels too much feels like it is too much feeling around up there but it does seem as if there's vulnerability in the system for this to get, you know, worked over. And who knows, like, what they have come up with since the enforcement really started. We had a whole off season, right? And it wasn't like they could report to a facility. So maybe they were coming up with new brews. Who knows? I don't know.

Could be. Yeah. And also I wanted to mention that this Mickey Mantle card sold for a fortune. And we've talked a little bit about like past record sales for cards or sports memorabilia. And I did an interview on episode 1162 about just like the ramp up in prices for sports memorabilia in general and not just sports. I mean all kinds of collectible cards and everything during the pandemic and after have really inflated in price. But this Mickey Mantle Tops 52 Mantle Card sold for $12.6 million and like more than doubled the record for a previous Mantle Card. And it's apparently like just the most lucrative sale of

any sports memorabilia ever and i think the takeaway is that like we if we had in our youths just bought mental cards i mean we would be rich beyond measure because like this was you know it's kind of a fun story about like uh there was a mint edition set of Topps 52 cards that was just in someone's attic. And they sold it in the 80s to this guy, Alan, Mr. Mint Rosen, who was a famous collector in New Jersey who would go around just buying up people's cards. And so he got this tip and didn't believe it. And it was true and just like perfect condition. And so Rosen paid $125,000 for the entire set, 5,500 cards with this mantle card among them. And then Rosen sold the mantle card for like $1,000. That's what it was worth in the 80s. Then he bought it back in 1991 and flipped it again for $40,000 to the owner who has had it ever since. So $40,000 in 1991, now inflation adjusted. That's like $87,000 now, more than double the purchase price then, but now $12.56 million. So the rate of return on this thing, and it's like the only one ever graded a PSA 9.5 or whatever it is.

It's like in the best condition of any 52 mantle that is known. So that's why. But even so, you know, and there was like a T206 on his Wagner card that was sold for seven and a quarter million earlier this month. And this just blew that out of the water. The rate of return on mantle cards, if this was like 40,000 or inflation adjusted 87,000 in 1991, you know, just like 30 years ago. I mean, buying mantle cards at that time would have been a better investment than like anything, probably. I mean, I don't know, buying a baseball team, that's generally pretty solid rate of return, but I don't think that could compare with a 52 tops Mickey Mantle rookie card.

So boy, I wish I had known we were around in 1991. I was maybe even collecting baseball cards by then potentially. So if I had known that it, I mean, I didn't have $40,000 when I was four or five years old. Yeah, I was going to say. But if you had had that then and you had somehow known you would really be reaping the rewards right now. I mean, this is, it's like when very rich people will like buy paintings or whatever, because you can just sort of put your money into that and it appreciates over time the 52 tops mantle that's up there with the t206 and masterworks of art in terms of things that you want to invest in i don't have the means for strategic investment though though. It's really upsetting.

Yeah. I mean, I think we've missed our chance when it comes to the Tops cards, the Mantle cards. I think we missed our window here to get in on the ground floor. But if you have $12.6 million now, who knows what these things will be worth 30 years from now so maybe it's still a good investment even after this incredible inflation but i guess the question is wouldn't you be better served to put that in to nfts ben oh yeah you're right yeah maybe it's the best opportunity yeah yeah and you know speaking of yankees outfielders the yankekees just retired Paul O'Neill's number. How have they only just now done that? Well, that's, yeah, you could have one takeaway, which is how to take them that long.

Yeah. The other takeaway for maybe non-Yankees fans would be, Paul O'Neill, you retired Paul O'Neill's number? Because I think he is clearly the worst player in terms of his Yankees career. Sure. Of anyone whose number they have retired thus far, other than, I guess, Billy Martin. But Billy Martin's retired in part for winning a World Series as a manager with that team. So if you put him aside, Paul O'Neill, he had a nice Yankees career, but he played for them for nine years, I think, and was a good player, not a superstar. I grew up watching him.

I enjoyed him quite a bit. I was more of a Bernie guy than an O'Neill guy, just temperamentally. I feel like I identified more with Bernie than with the guy who's throwing the water coolers and breaking the bats and everything. But Yankees fans responded to that, obviously. And Steinbrenner calls him a warrior or whatever. Like, I guess it's not just your war. It's like what you meant to that fan base and were you a fan favorite and everything. And did you win lots of World Series?

And he did. And it's amazing they have any numbers left at all, seemingly. I know. Because they've just, that's what I mean. Like, they haven't returned in so many numbers right well and that's the thing like there are a lot of better yankees players than paul o'neill whose numbers are not retired so if you wanted to use him as the standard it would be like you know if you use harold baines as the cooperstown standard it's like oh boy we got to put in a lot of other players we need asterisks yeah and like there are a lot of other players. We need asterisks. Yeah. And like there are a lot of Yankees.

I mean, like, you know, how is like Willie Randolph's number not retire or like Roy White's number or, you know, I guess it's it tends to be a lot of players who did not have the playoff exploits and did not win a ton of World Series or not part of a dynasty. And so they don't have that aura around them where everyone just wants to remember them and honor them. But I'm just saying if you're going to retire Paul O'Neill's number, you got to retire Brett Gard a 100 OPS plus as a Yankee, and a lot of his value came from defense and base running, and I guess he only won one World Series. But Brett Gardner was way better as a Yankee than Paul O'Neill. So I'm just saying that if you're going to plant a flag on Paul O'Neill's number, then you got to retire Gardie's number as well. And that would

be weird. I don't know what Yankees fans would think of Brett Gardner day at Yankee Stadium and retiring his number. Would people be surprised? I think people liked Brett Gardner, maybe not by the end, but generally he was a constant. He was there a lot longer than Paul Neal. He was more valuable than Paul Neal. I'm just saying, be consistent. You're going to retire Paul Neal's number. Retire Brett Gardner's number as well. Yeah, I mean, sure. But like, if I'm

fighting a Yankees-Jersey related fight, it's about names on the back, not numbers at all. You know, actually, here's the long game, Ben. They should keep retiring numbers until there are no numbers left, and then all that'll be on there is their names left and then all that'll be on there is their names that's all that'll be left to them is to put their names on there because they're

like look we just don't have any numbers left we retired all of them monument park is now just its own ballpark everyone likes it better and wishes that we played there yeah okay that's one way around it i guess if i'm giving the yankees grief for retiring Paul Neal's number, like the Mets just retired Willie Mays' number belatedly, which I guess they had pledged to do decades ago and never did. But not that distinguished a Mets career for Willie. Granted, he's a New York baseball icon and the Mets, I think, have sort of identified themselves with the National League legacy of the Giants and the Dodgers to an even greater extent. So I don't think you can go wrong retiring Willie Mays' number. He's Willie Mays. But yeah, I guess his Mets tenure was not quite as distinguished, although he's better

than I think people remember him being during that time. All right. And the last thing was that John Wackenfuss died last week. He passed away on August 19th. And, you know, one of the best names ever, Wackenfuss. Largely a tiger and a pretty good hitter for the Tigers. But just wanted to note, because Craig Wright just did a great edition of his newsletter about him, pages from baseball's past, that Wackenfuss, he started out as not a good hitter at all,

and then he completely reinvented himself and changed his swing. So just quoting from Craig here, this was, I think, after the 1976 season when Wackenfuss was like the third string catcher and he wasn't hitting. So that winter, playing in the Puerto Rican Winter League, John experimented with changes to his batting stance and settled on one like no one had ever seen before. He closed off his stance to an extreme degree and would stand near the very back of the batter's box with his back practically turned to the pitcher. He'd hunch forward in his shoulders as he waited for the pitch, and to break his habit of over-gripping the bat with his top

hand, he would start with his hands a little in front of his body and start fluttering the fingers of his top hand as he brought the bat up and back. I described his stance as playing peekaboo and the piccolo at the same time. And there is a YouTube video of Walkenfuss's revamped stance and also batting stance guy doing an imitation of Walkenfuss. And it's great and it's unique and it's wonderful and it worked. And he was a much better hitter after that. imitation of Walkenfuss. And it's great and it's unique and it's wonderful. And it worked. And he was a much better hitter after that. Now, he also had a religious awakening of sorts, and he credited, I think, his improvement to God more so than to the batting stance. But the batting stance at least coincided with his improvement as a hitter. And he was quite a good hitter for the rest of his career. And I wish that we got more of those wacky stances like that's something that people lament about today's hitters is that they're a little more regimented, a little more standardized. You don't get many walk and fusses out there. You do get like swing changes, but often it's just like I'm swinging up a bit more now than I used to or something or, you know, changing your hand position or something.

It's not like something as radical as Walkenfuss who was like in the very back corner of the batter's box and then was like totally closed off. It's weird. Like I guess you have like John Carlos Stanton who changed kind of in that way and he's pretty closed off. So that's something. But you don't have as many wacky walking fuss walkie stances anymore and even when hitters reinvent themselves as hitters it's not as drastic a reinvention so i miss that is all i'm saying i i'm generally on board with people who miss that uniqueness and those idiosyncratic stances and deliveries that we used to get when maybe

instruction wasn't quite as good or pervasive as it is now. And you might have guys just kind of doing their own thing without much basis to it. And sometimes it would work for them and we would remember it when it's walk and fuss. And who knows, probably 10 other guys would do something weird and just be bad and flame out. And we don't even remember them. So I don't know that it's a good idea to hit that way. And of course, like as every broadcaster always points out, like a lot of hitters basically look the same by the time the pitch arrives and they're in hitting position. So a lot of the weirdness predates the actual start of your swing. But still, RIP walk and fuss and RIP stances like walk and fusses, which are sort of an endangered species these days.

We could describe John Smoltz's entire broadcast objection the other day as walk and fuss. I feel bad making a joke because somebody died, but also. Yeah. You got to go for the joke when it's there. Walk and fuss. It's just such a, you know, it's just such a, like, no, I don't have another one. I was like, do I have, no, it's not there, but walk-in fuss. Okay. Walk-in fuss.

All right. Now we will end with the Pass Blast. This is episode 1896, and this comes from 1896 and from Richard Hershberger, historian, saber researcher, and author of Strike 4, The Evolution of Baseball. So this is a game of indoor baseball. Reported in the Chicago Chronicle of January 15, 1896, it says headline, Saguas beat Ramblers. One of the most hotly contested indoor baseball games of the season was played last night when the Saguas defeated the Ramblers 8-6 at Clare's Hall. The teams were well matched, though the Saguas got a good lead in the first inning, which their opponents could not overcome. A batted ball in the first part of the eighth inning struck one of the electric lights, breaking the circuit. The remaining two innings were played

almost in the dark. The pitchers were batted heavily, but each received good support from his nine. Evidently, the fact that it was almost in the dark was not an impediment to offense here. The ball was set out into the field repeatedly, but the men located there generally caught it. Each team had a home run to its credit, Blatton sending the ball into the gallery in the first inning

and Dorney following suit in the eighth. So Richard writes here, Indoor baseball, as the product of a search for a team sport suitable for indoor play in the winter, it was only modestly successful. Despite modified rules with a larger, softer ball and shorter base pass, few spaces were large enough and those only barely, as shown by the hit Taking Out the Lights. By 1896, indoor baseball was already being superseded by a new invention, basketball. Indoor baseball would survive into the 20th century by moving back outside, which is weird.

It's like we have indoor baseball. Let's play indoor baseball outdoors. Then what do we have? Hmm. Hmm. baseball let's play indoor baseball outdoors then what do we have hmm but actually not just baseball perhaps because they continued to use the larger softer ball and richard says that outdoor indoor baseball was one of the precursors to modern softball so how about that i did not know i didn't either indoor baseball was a thing i mean i played indoors, but I didn't know if there were like leagues and there was a movement to make indoor baseball a year-round popular sport. And I did not know that indoor baseball then migrated outdoors again.

Yeah, no idea. Yeah. Morphed into softball. So that's kind of cool. Yeah. Cool. Pass blast. Pass blast.

So that's kind of cool. Yeah. Cool. Pass Blast. Pass Blast. Now, I also had something else to add for this Pass Blast because we got an email from listener Dana Laughlin who said, I've been thinking of sending you this ever since I heard about your Pass Blast segment. This one is potentially for 1896. So he says,

helped my mother transcribe years and years of letters from my great-grandfather, Charlie Ordner, to his future wife, Lottie, written starting in the late 1890s and into the early 1900s when they eventually married. There is a lot to say about that project, but to make a long story short, Charlie talked a lot about baseball in his letters, and that fascinated me. In fact, the very first letter from him to my great-grandmother was from June 3rd of 1896. He wrote it from Balto, Maryland, Baltimore. And here is the second paragraph. Quote, well, yesterday I saw the great Dr. Pond pitch, and to please you, I said hurrah for the Baltimores. By the way, I think we should bring back just calling – Well, hurrah, yeah.

Definitely hurrah, yeah, definitely hurrah, but also just like calling teams by the city names. Just, you know, the Baltimore's. I like that. Yeah. The letter continues, the doctor is great. He struck out five men yesterday. The rooters think that there is no one like him. They cheer him every time he steps into the box. In the grandstand, they sell the celebrated Dr. Pond's scorecards and Dr. Pond's sandwiches. I enclose you my scorecard. It has the doctor's face on it. It is a very good likeness of him. I don't suppose you will be able to make anything of the score, as I don't know enough of the game to keep it properly. So our listener Dan writes most of his later baseball references in his letters were about games between his town in northern Minnesota and neighboring towns. But I found this reference interesting because of the way he talked about Dr. Pond. You may know of Dr. Pond. His full name was Erasmus Arlington Arley Pond.

He was not only an impressive pitcher, but he was, in fact, a doctor who served as a surgeon for the U.S. Army. He has an extensive Wikipedia page which chronicles both his baseball exploits and his medical career. And yes, he was in the Spanish-American War. He was in World War I. He had a long, eventful life and seems to have distinguished himself at times and also to have been sort of a white man's burden imperialist type. So mixed legacy for Dr. Pond. But he was not a bad baseball pitcher while he was pitching, which was just for a few years for the 1890s Orioles, which were very good in 1896. The year this letter was written was, I think, their third straight pennant. But of course, I got interested in this and just had to look up a couple accounts on newspapers.com of this game. And I wrote back to Dan that his great-grandfather's account does check out. He did have five strikeouts in the game. So he was observant enough to keep track of the strikeouts.

And this was notable at the time, I think, because the opposing pitcher in the game had zero strikeouts. This this was notable at the time, I think, because the opposing pitcher in the game had zero strikeouts. This was not a high strikeout era. So Dr. Pond striking out five, that was something. And he had a one hitter going through eight innings. And then he fell prey to a pink sweater in the ninth inning. So I got to share this story. So just from one account here, In the ninth inning. So I got to share this story. So just from one account here, Pond pitch magnificent ball today. The Pittsburghs being finally retired with but four hits. And another account says of the game that the champions experienced but little difficulty in defeating the Pittsburghs today. Pitcher Huey was hit hard while Pond had the Pirates completely at his mercy. So Pond was good. He was in the box for the champions until the ninth inning proved invincible, but a solitary hit having been made off him up to that time.

Now here's what happened. According to, this is from the Pittsburgh Press, June 4th, 1896. Headline, Pink was effective. Subhead, his sweet crimson sweater dazzled Dr. Pond. And it says, the visitors had a hard time trying to get some ginger into their work against such pitching as they faced, backed as it was by almost faultless fielding on Tuesday, says the Baltimore Sun. First, the attenuated and wild-mannered Connie McGillicuddy Mack, who manages our own, as the Smoky City Rooters call their ball team, dragged himself to the coach's box and tried to rattle Dr. Arlie. So Connie Mack, who was not the old distinguished-looking gentleman we think of from his later managerial days, but was kind of a cunning guy who was not above trying to get an edge, as people did at that time.

So he was on the Pirates back then. And it says that as Dr. Pond was pitching for Baltimore, Mack was saying he can't get him over, shouted our own manager as he danced up and down, dodging the shafts of wit from the bleachers that fell thick and fast. So he picked up the same refrain that Mack had here. This stunning loveliness had its effect on the Oriole pitcher, and he was at once hit for two singles and gave a base on balls. So according to the Pittsburgh Press, it all fell apart for Dr. Pond because of the sight of this intensely sweet crimson sweater, perhaps a pink sweater that he just could not stomach for some reason. Did he invent Pond's cold cream? I wondered whether it was the same Pond, but no, I don't think it was. He's like, no, I'm just an imperialist. So much worse.

Yeah, he had other things on his mind. Anyway, the pink sweater, Dan's great-grandfather, Charlie's. It was not mentioned in his letter, but I found out about it anyway, and nice to know that Charlie Ordner was one of the 3,744 in attendance that

day. It was a 10-3 game, and it was played in two hours on the dot. Yep. All right. That will do it. A few follow-ups for you here. First, Joey Manessis update.

In Tuesday's game, he went three for five with three doubles. Juan Soto hitless as I record this, although Josh Bell singled and each of them walked. This is just my favorite storyline of the season. Sorry, San Diego fans. Also, we talked about the AL Cy Young field at the start of the episode. We noted that Justin Verlander's injury opened things up a bit. Well, after we recorded Shane McClanahan of the Rays was scratched from his start. He has a shoulder impingement. It's not known yet how serious it is, but he is a leading contender, of course. And on the opposite end of the starting pitcher effectiveness spectrum, I mentioned that stat about Dallas Keuchel being the first pitcher ever to make starts for three teams within the same season and have a 7.5 or higher ERA for all of them.

Couldn't remember where I saw that stat. It was on the Effectively Wild Discord group where listener and user Clohinks posted it in our StatBlast channel. He used StatHead to ascertain that. I was talking to frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson about it. To find another starter who had a super high ERA for three teams within the same season, you have to lower the bar to 5.89

and then you get Phil Negro. So that sort of goes along with what I was saying. You have to be really good to get that much rope toward the end of your career despite ineffectiveness. I guess Necro never actually won a Cy Young award, but he finished second and third and was a Hall of Famer. So 1987, his final season, he had a 5.89 ERA in 22 starts for Cleveland, an 8.25 ERA in three starts for Toronto, and a 15 ERA in one start for Atlanta. There's also Willis Hudlin, who in 1940 made starts for four teams, and he had an ERA of 6.51 or higher for three of them, but then he started for a fourth team and had a mere 4.94 ERA for the fourth one. And then there's Byung-Hyung Kim, who in 2007 went from the Rockies to the Marlins to the Diamondbacks and back to the Marlins again, made starts in all four of those stints. He had a 10.5 ERA with the Rockies,

a 23.63 ERA with the Marlins, a 23.63 ERA with the Diamondbacks, and then a 5.42 ERA with the Marlins, but that was across those two separate stints. So he had a 4.16 ERA in one stint and an 8.21 ERA with the Marlins in the second one. Unsurprisingly, that was Kim's last year in the majors, and it was essentially Willis Hudlin's last year as well, though it looks like he pitched in one more game a few years later. Also an important update from our guest on our preceding episode, Chris Hannell, who talked to us about score bugs and about flames on baseball broadcasts to indicate fast pitches, he did some subsequent research and video watching, and he found out that the Fox National broadcasts,

which were at 95 for years and years and then went up to 99 in the playoffs last year, they're actually down to 97 now for flames this year during the regular season. That's the National Fox broadcast. 97. That's about national Fox broadcast. 97. That's about where I would set it, I think. So kudos to them on breaking new ground when it comes to Flames, raising the Flame threshold from 95 to 97. I think that's a pretty good place to put it.

And lastly, check out Dan Szymborski's piece for Fangraphs on Tuesday. He wrote about whether head-to-head regular season records matter in the playoffs. This is a question we get all the time. Does success against a certain team during the regular season portend success if you face that same team during the postseason? And does it matter whether you have been especially good against bad teams or good teams in the playoffs? Does that signify anything about October success? The answer in both cases seems to be, nope, not so much. Yet another instance of someone trying to find something other than just how good a team are you thing about October success? The answer in both cases seems to be, nope, not so much. Yet another instance of someone trying to find something other than just how good a team are you that

predicts playoff success and coming up empty. And on that note, and as Aaron Judge launches home run number 51, I will tell you that you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad-free and get themselves access to some perks. Glenn McDonald, Andres Puga, Ben, Cal Pringle, and Ryan Iwasaki, thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group that I mentioned just a moment ago, as well as bonus episodes, which we release every month. One of those will be coming up this week. We'll see you next time. You can also do so through the Patreon site. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. 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 effectivelywild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode soon.

Talk to you then. Joey, welcome. When once more it looks like snow. assistance. We will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then.