Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1898: One Award to Rule Them All

Episode Date: September 3, 2022

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and listener/Patreon supporter Nathan Valentine banter about Nathan’s dual team fandom, then answer listener emails (9:58) about Aaron Judge’s lead over the next-most-prolific HR hitter, handing out awards for all of MLB rather than each league, Jhoan Duran and defining an “off-speed” pitch, what constitutes actually visiting a stadium, and whether […]

So maybe everything is all for nothing, still you better keep it to yourself. Cause God knows it's not safe with anybody else. God knows it's not safe with anybody else. God knows it's not safe with anybody else. God knows it's not safe with anybody in hell God knows it's not safe with anybody in hell You can play along, but you just end up wrong somehow Won't you? Hello and welcome to episode 1898 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrafts presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangrafts. Hello, Meg. Hello. I have only two brief Joey Manessis updates for you. The first is that I blogged about him. Did you? I just had to get it out of my system. So you can go read about Joey Manessis and my feelings about him at TheRinger.com.

I will link on the show page. TheRinger.com. Yes. TheRinger.com. That's the one. Oh, my God. Meet Joey Manessis, the Juan Soto replacement going super scion on the majors. Wow.

Yeah. Not everything in there will be new to Effectively Wild listeners who have heard me waxing rhapsod Patreon supporter named Rick, who wrote in to tell us that he had a somewhat different perspective on that home run because he was on the receiving end of it. So if you watch the clip, you will see Rick says that an A's fan picks up the ball and skulks off. That A's fan was me, Rick being me. I'm actually happy, he says, that was a cool home run to get, and he's going to give him the ball if he wants it. He's trying to get in touch with Nationals PR to offer the ball to Joey Manessis. So that's a nice gesture. I'm sure he'd be happy to have it.

Aw, I just think that more effectively wild listeners should be involved in all of the things because, you know, they're the sweetest pecan pie well i've got good news for you because there's an effectively wild listener who is directly involved in this episode in fact his name is nathan and he's with us right now i don't know what transitions yes that was hi everybody i'm nathan hi nathan that's a little game show i guess where i didn't want to do Timmy Trumpet there? I finally got running up that hill out of my head, and now I got new beef. Speaking of which, you guys never disclosed your choices for what your walk-up music would be. That was discussed several episodes ago and just put off indefinitely.

Yeah, you're right. Thanks for calling us out. Appreciate it. I still have not made up my mind about that. So I'm going to punt yet again. But tell everyone who you are, including your full name, if you'd like to share that any other information you'd like to share. You're here because you are a Patreon supporter and you've been a Patreon supporter at the highest tier, the Mike Trout tier. And every now and then we have someone who is silly enough, smart enough to support us at that level. And as a perk of that support gets to join us on the podcast. And here we are.

And here you are. So tell us a little bit about yourself. My name is Nathan Valentine. I use he, him pronouns. All right. And really, this was going to be the only chance I would ever have in my life to be in the Mike Trout tier of anything. So I thought I should probably go for it. Yeah, that's a good reason. I used to be pretty active in the Facebook group,

less so now. If you see me on Facebook, my name is cleverly disguised there as Nathan McValentineski. I'd never know. Yeah, yeah. It keeps the CIA off my tail and all that. And I've been listening since sometime in the Sam era. My listener origin story is I was- Which Sam era? The original Sam era. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. I had just moved and I was a little bummed at having moved. I kind of had to give up on a dream of a certain sort of lifestyle and found myself living in a Midwestern suburb like I grew up in, which was never part of my life plan. And I was just going through a lot of self-pitying about that and decided to build a garden early one spring as soon as the snow melted.

So I was working on that with some earbuds and my very first pair of wireless earbuds that I ever owned. And I was getting back into baseball again and spring training and all that. So I just Googled, you know, coolest baseball podcasts and came up with a few. Well, yeah, I think you did. It was the only one that was actually cool. Excluding the ringer baseball podcast, of course. Although I don't know if that existed at the time. It might not have. It might not have been born yet.

Now it's already gone. So look at the longevity of Effectively Wild. The life cycle, I know. Yeah, so I enjoyed the unserious in tone, but serious in baseball analysis style. serious in tone, but serious in baseball analysis style. I really enjoy sports, but I don't particularly enjoy when people are super intense about sports and act like they matter. Part of the whole reason they're entertaining is because, you know, it's high drama, but it doesn't actually matter a whole lot who wins the World Series or who signs a free agent. Yeah, we decide that it matters. It doesn't matter in any sort of existential

objective way. It's high drama and low stakes, you know? Yeah. So, and then I especially fell in love with the hypotheticals. I'm a big science fiction fan. And to me, the draw of science fiction is you take human society, something with which we're all familiar, and you change some important variables. And the author tries to answer the question, well, would people still be the same? Would society still be the same? Would the sense of self still be the same? Yeah, how different would it be? Exactly. So that was right up my alley. And I think actually the question that Sam answered famously, I think was maybe intended to be a bit silly or absurd, I think actually is a very central question in science fiction.

Just, you know, if baseball were different, how different would it be? No matter how many variables you change in something, will it actually change or will people just still be the same? Right. So that's my long-winded answer to your very simple question. Get used to that, by the way. How would you describe your current rooting interests and viewing habits? Are you fixated on one team? Do you have a couple of players you like?

I have dual citizenship in my fandom. I grew up in the Kansas City area and I was a big Royals fan. I became sentient just around the time the Royals stopped being up in the Kansas City area and I was a big Royals fan. I became sentient just around the time the Royals stopped being good in the 80s. I have a very foggy memories of 1985. The most, you know, they'd say that remember things better if it's emotionally charged. And I remember being sent to bed before the end of game seven of the 1985 World Series that we were watching on tv together as a family because i had been swinging my little stuffed sock monkey that was my best friend around in celebration i

think knocked something over and my dad was pissed off and said i'll go to your room and i for years i i was so mad at him about that thinking he was being such a jerk and now i have a different perspective on it that you know was he was probably just trying to watch the baseball game when I was probably making it nearly impossible. And then I watched, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother in a retirement home. I didn't live in the retirement home. She did throughout the rest of the 80s and early 90s. And she was a big baseball fan and we would watch baseball together on her TV that was slightly malfunctioned, like old cathode ray tube TVs would get, where all the players looked like they were about 7'6 and 160 pounds.

Sure. And we also went to quite a few games back when there was a general admission section, and you could, it was same day only. I want to say the tickets were two bucks. Maybe they were a little more than that, but you could go to as many games as you wanted to. And if you showed up early, you could be in the first couple of rows. And then I've moved all over the place and kind of followed the teams where I've lived, but you can't, at least in my experience, you can't make yourself a fan of a team just

because of proximity. But the first time that I lived in Wisconsin, well, about 15 years ago now, I became somewhat enamored with the Brewers. And the timing was fun too, because just as I was kind of getting into the Brewers and kind of one thing I really like about baseball is following the prospects and the down on the farm reports and all that stuff. There was quite an exchange of players as the Royals and Brewers sort of perfectly matched up in competitive cycles. So, you know, Lorenzo Cain went to Kansas City for their big run and then ended up coming back to Milwaukee. So I claim dual Brewers-Royals fandom, which isn't as bad as it sounds, at least recently, because, you know, one of them's been at least interesting to pay attention to for the last several years. Sure.

Yeah. It's nice to have a backup, a spare, I guess, just in case one of your teams is not doing so well. And you can be happy about either outcome of the Zach Greinke trade, I guess. Or both outcomes. Yeah, exactly. Well, glad you found your teams. Glad you found this podcast. Appreciate your support. Happy to have you here. And we're going to do some emails and maybe some stat blasts and some pass blasts, and this is true as we speak as well, Aaron Judge is 15 home runs clear of Kyle Schwarber for the MLB lead in home runs. If the season ended with the same gap, it would be the largest gap since Jimmy Fox, who hit 58 and had a 17 home run lead on Babe Ruth, who had 41 in 1932. The largest gap of all time was, of course, Babe Ruth on the other end of the gap.

In both 1920 and 1921, he was 35 homers clear of George Sisler and Bob Musil, respectively. Ruth and Fox are the only players to match or exceed the 15-home run lead Judge has now. Babe Ruth's differential in the early 1920s seasons will almost certainly never be broken, but if Aaron Judge hits 60-plus homers this season and the rest of the field of leaders barely cracks 40, is this actually a more impressive feat than hitting 73 homers in a season where another player hits 64? Is he the most dominant home run hitter compared to his competition since Babe Ruth? Or does he just play at Yankee Stadium? Which I guess you also could have said about Babe Ruth, or does he just play at Yankee Stadium, which I guess you also could have said

about Babe Ruth, or at least part of Babe Ruth's career. So I think this is extremely impressive. I've been following this myself for a while, and I've made note of this in the past. I looked up these stats myself when I was writing about John Carlos Stanton's 59 homer season, which I didn't know would end in a 59 homer season. But I was tracking just how far ahead of the rest of the league and Aaron Judge, I guess, at the time he was. And Zach Cram mentioned this in his piece about Aaron Judge at the Ringer not too long ago. I think it is absolutely an indicator of how dominant he has been. And I am more into this record chase of his, whatever we're calling it, the American League record chase, the Ruth Maris chase, because it's not an extreme offensive environment, as we've discussed, at least not nearly as extreme as, let's say, 2019 or 2017. And I guess that goes hand in hand with what we're saying here, in that it's not an inflated home run era as much as it has been of late. And therefore, he is the player who is taking advantage of this.

He is hitting as if it is 2017 or 2019 when everyone else is not, is feeling the effects of the somewhat deadened ball. So the fact that he has this huge lead, that is extremely impressive to me. I mean, I don't know that I would not be impressed if he hit 62 and someone else hit 55 or something. I'd still be like, wow, 62 is a ton of homers. But the fact that he has a 15 home run lead with a month left to go, that blows me away. How about you guys?

Well, and that he has that home run lead on another bopper, right? Like, I think that the fact that he is hitting the way that he is in this offensive environment is like one layer of being impressive but then you think about you know who were some of the guys who benefited most dramatically in terms of like divergence from expectation in the years where the ball was really juicy and you know the guys who were like Aaron Judge who just can clear really clear the fence and I know that not all judges home runs are like that and he gets to play in yuki stadium and there's there's all of that but like you know my memory of that year was that like the big boppers were were bopping but what made that year so strange is that like little string beans were bopping too and not to the degree that like

an erin judge was but they were hitting home runs and that was when everyone was like what's going on with this baseball like D Strange Gordon shouldn't hit home runs that's weird that he's doing that because he is like a tiny string being of a man and so Aaron Judge is kind of to some extent he's sort of like offense environment proof in my mind which might be unfair to him but it's like he's so big and he's so strong that if anyone's going to be able to muscle balls out, even when the ball is depressed, it's going to be him. And so for him to have the distance that he does versus Kyle Schwarber, who can also just like hit the snot out of the ball makes it even more impressive to me that there's that gap. Does that make sense? Yeah, I would say so. I think on balance, I agree with you guys that it's overall the more impressive feat. I think there's one aspect of

the Babe that's in its own way more impressive and will never be repeated, which is... At home ring entire teams. Well, yeah, there's that. But every major league baseball player and every significant prospect today has access to Lock Lockheed Martin skunk works level technology to tell them how to optimize whatever they're doing, be it pitching or hitting or what have you. And in Ruth's area, it was it was just folklore and received wisdom, a lot of which was probably terribly wrong. And it's like fishing, you know, you go down to the boat ramp and everyone's saying, oh, when it's sunny out, you got to do this. And if the cows are laying down on the field, you might as well not try because it's all just folk wisdom that's mostly garbage. And he somehow figured out how to hit a lot of home runs, which people hadn't really

figured out before without the benefit of any, presumably without any reasonable or scientifically based guidance. So that aspect, I think Ruth is a little more impressive, but the judge season is pretty cool. Yeah. He's more impressive, I guess, in the sense that he almost invented hitting home runs in this way, right, to this degree and this distance. So yes, he was a trailblazer. I think you could say though that just the caliber of play is so much higher now and you were getting at it there, all the tools that are available to hitters, but obviously all the tools that are available to pitchers, maybe even more so now. So the higher the caliber

of competition is, the more difficult it is for anyone to separate themselves from the next closest competitor. So to be this much better than the second best home run hitter in 2022, as opposed to 1922, when you're playing in not even integrated baseball and just all the other ways in which the game is different. That's even more impressive, I think, that he is such an outlier in this season. And we just haven't seen that so much other than the steroid era, the PD era, whatever you want to call it. There was a tendency at that time for not necessarily the number one guy to separate himself so much from the number two guy, but maybe the top five guys would separate themselves, which was somewhat fishy and characteristic of that era. So to do it now, and I know the questioner asked about Yankee Stadium, that just doesn't really seem to be that

big a factor with Judge. We've mentioned this before, but you go to his expected home runs leaderboard or everyone's expected home run leaderboard at Baseball Savant. And right now he has 51 actual homers and 51.3 expected homers. And he doesn't have a lot of what they classify as doubters, ones that might not have gone out in most parks. 31 of his 51 are no doubters. 24 are mostly gone, which means that they're out at 8 to 29 stadiums, it sounds like. Doubters is seven stadiums or fewer and no doubters out everywhere. So he really hasn't been a product of Yankee Stadium. There are other players this season who have much bigger gaps between their expected and their actual in one direction or the other. They have many more doubters that have

just been wall scrapers that got out. So you can't hold that against him, I don't think. You can't hold the offensive environment against him. I don't want to call it the clean home run record because that comes with all sorts of other baggage, but it's clean in the sense that usually, I think Joe Sheehan has made this point, you set some record. It's kind of a confluence of talent and also opportunity and conditions and we tend to have some extreme environments when extreme results happen. And that's not so much what's happening here. So if Judge hits 62 this year, would you consider that the, without using loaded terms like clean, the best home run hitting season ever? No, I guess I would not say best. I would say he holds the American League record. I would say he, which maybe is less of a distinction than it once might have been. It's just kind of convenient lack of steroid suspicions but just also because

of the era and everything that we were just talking about it doesn't really seem like he's had a helping hand or a leg up other than the fact that he's seven feet tall i mean he's just like basically has done it on more or less a level playing field when you look at sort of baseball in a historical sense. I guess the home run rate is still higher than it has been on average, perhaps, throughout all of baseball history. But still, I guess I would call it maybe the most impressive home run season. I guess we could say that. I don't think we could call it best. Maybe we're splitting hairs here and we're ending up, you know, this is the most valuable versus best debate. Again, the most useless conversation that gets repeated every single season.

But in a way, most impressive, I think, just given the conditions and given the distance between him and the next best guy. That's maybe what I would say. Yeah. All right. Question from Robbie in Potomac, Maryland. And this is, I guess, somewhat relevant to what we were just talking about with league specific records. He says, with the balancing of the schedule and further de-separation of the AL and NL, do you think MLB will move toward unifying awards, as in no separate AL and NL MVPs, just one for all of MLB.

I have a few friends who follow the NBA, which has just one MVP award pretty closely. And even before the introduction of the Universal DH and expansion of interleague play, they thought it was ridiculous that MLB would have two separate MVP awards. What do you think about restricting ourselves to single awards? I don't feel a need to win now. Neither do I. I can understand that historically the basis for it might have been that there were different, some different rules in play. And so you wanted to sort of comp like to like, but I don't know. I haven't't i haven't sat there in the years where pitchers had to hit in the nl and thought well those nl cy youngs they got an you know the that boost from having to deal with pitchers hitting is such that they have to be categorically separate from the al

guys i just think it's in some ways easier. I think if we're going to make changes to the way that we do awards voting, I would concentrate those changes around minimizing the impact that writers have on, say, how much money and service time players are going to accrue rather than trying to standardize across the two leagues and have a triumphant MVP. Maybe this is me taking the coward's route, though, because if you think that MVP and Cy Young discourse is irritating now, just wait until you can only give it to one guy. Yeah, that's why I don't think that this will happen, because writers and people have too much invested in award debates and conversations. And so if you restrict yourself to one in each league, I guess that might improve the quality of the discussion sometimes because you might end up with a closer race because you have a bigger field potentially.

But you also just have fewer races to argue about and write columns about. And sure, maybe if you were starting from scratch now, you would not have a separate award for each league because the distinctions between leagues are even more meaningless than they always have been or long have been. Russell Carlton just did a piece this week for Baseball Prospectus called Were the Leagues Ever Really That Separate? And he shows how there was often a lot of overlap just at least in the past, you know, 70 years or so. Just the player pool would overlap and the style of play would overlap.

So it's not as if they've been completely separate. But there definitely were periods where the two leagues didn't play each other and fans of teams in one league would not even really be all that aware or get to see players in the other leagues. So there were greater distinctions and now they're basically broken down and I'm fine with that. I don't mind at all. I'm kind of okay with just the NBA model of conferences that are just names but no actual other significant differences. I think that's fine other than just the traditional value of having some kind of league distinction. But I'm okay with doing away with that distinction. But I don't feel a pressing

need to also do away with individual league awards. I guess I'm kind of okay with it. And maybe just because of the history and the precedent. And you'd also have to change the standards for what constitutes an MVP season, I suppose, because there would be only one MVP and you wouldn't get two in each league. So it would be kind of inconsistent with what has happened before. Nathan, you have thoughts on this? Yeah, it would totally screw up calibrating Hall of Fame qualifications for people who care about that kind of thing. Not including me. No, there's no rational basis to keep the league awards separate, but I think they should be kept separate anyway. It's fun. You get more awards. Baseball

is a very regional sport. Those of us baseball fans who follow the sport as a whole are in the stark minority to people who follow their team and you know it doubles your probability of getting an award on your team to have the league separated so i think it makes sense for baseball on it you know baseball is always about hearkening back to the olden days so pretending like the al and the nl are different even though they're not it might have some utility utility. Here in the greater Milwaukee area, we had a lot of fun a couple years ago with this whole city of MVPs thing, because there was Aaron Rogers, Indiana, Sandra Cumpo, and Kirsten Yelich, all MVPs

in a short period of time. Kirsten Yelich would not have been the MVP, I don't think, of all of Major League Baseball that year. So from a personal level, I think it's fun. Yeah, me too. All right. Here is a question from Jason. So you've probably seen or been emailed about 100 times regarding Yohan Duran's 101 mile per hour splinker. So let me just explain here.

So Twins pitcher Yohan Duran, he threw a really fast pitch. So Twins pitcher Yoan Duran, he threw a really fast pitch. And Dustin Morse, who does PR for the Twins, tweeted, Yoan Duran becomes the first pitcher in MLB history to throw an off-speed pitch 100 miles per hour. And he put, in parentheses, splitter. So this is kind of confusing for various reasons, I suppose. One, because the idea of a 100 or 101 mile per hour off-speed pitch breaks your brain. Also, a splitter, I guess, is technically a split-finger fastball, but it is an off-speed pitch. But does this actually count as that? So that just started a firestorm on baseball nerd Twitter about what is an off-speed pitch. So Harry Pavlidis, who is at Baseball Prospectus and has been on the show, and he is the director of R&D there and also the founder of Pitch Info, which does all the classifications that you find at Brooks Baseball

or on the Pitch Info sections of Fangraphs, and they classify pitches for a lot of teams and other clients. So he has classified millions and millions of pitches in his day. And he rendered his verdict, which is the pitch in question, he said, was a splinker. He has an actual splitter. This is just a wider or deeper grip on a sinker and acts like a one seam sinker with less spin over miles per hour than his four-seam fastball. So it's dot, dot, dot something. So Jason, the questioner, continued, some sources are claiming this is the fastest off-speed pitch in recorded MLB history. Are we in agreement that this is a ridiculous claim? Regardless of whether you call it a sinker, which is definitely a fastball,

a splitter, which is kind of a fastball, or a sprinkler, or a splinker, it's 100 miles per hour, that surely can't be considered off-speed. Which brings me to my question, what would you consider to be the definition of off-speed in this day and age? Is it capped at a certain velocity, a certain distance behind the pitcher's primary fastball, in this case just over 2 miles per hour? Do you always consider certain pitch types to be off-speed no matter how fast they're thrown? And would you consider a splinker to be one of them?

I wouldn't have considered that a splinker existed necessarily, so I don't know. I have to classify that in my mind. But I don't think that this particular pitch was an off-speed pitch, not just because it was super fast, but because I just don't think it was. If you look at his own repertoire, I was talking to Lucas Apostolaris, who also is at Baseball Prospectus and Pitch Info. And so he said that he is firmly in the camp of that's not an off-speed pitch, not even strictly because of the velocity. Pitch info has been tagging that pitch as a sinker. And the biggest delineation for us is that Duran also throws an actual splitter with more traditional metrics, low 90s miles per hour and roughly 1,000 RPMs.

He hasn't thrown it since spring training training but he does have it in his arsenal so i don't think that this counted i think lucas said you know it's a wide sinker grip that allows him to take off a little spin and speed and ride off his heater but when he really throws a splitter it's like 10 miles per hour slower than this or a little less than that. So that's my answer to that specific question. But the broader question of how we figure out what an off-speed pitch is, that's kind of complicated because even if this wasn't one, we do still have to deal with Jacob deGrom throwing 95 or 96 mile per hour sliders or whatever. And that's kind of an off-speed pitch, even though it's faster than a lot of pitchers' fastballs, right? So how do we handle this?

I guess, do we go by velocity? Like, do we just say, that's too fast? Like, at a certain point, that doesn't count as an off-speed pitch. It's too fast, you're disqualified. Or is it all relative? And so if you're throwing 103 and then your 95 mile per hour slider is your off-speed pitch, I think that counts for me. Do you ever encounter debates in baseball where you're like, I should feel more strongly about this than I do? All the time.

I feel like pitch classification is one of those for me. Like, I understand the various camps here, right? I understand the like velocity people and I understand the movement people and I understand the what is the pitcher call it people. Right, yeah. The grip people. The grip people and the relative velocity people. And I get that we need stuff to talk about, and I think that there are distinctions to be drawn here. I think it's useful for fans and for writers to be able to sort of narrow to a relatively specific definition so that when Ben Clemens wants to write about sweepers

and platoon splits like you have a sense of what he's talking about like it's not like the definitions aren't important but i also don't feel animated by it yeah i think it's nice for people to be able to watch a broadcast and like have some idea of what pitch they're seeing right like i think that that is is useful for like the viewing experience yeah i think harry and the folks at pitch info they do give some deference to what pitchers call a thing but they're also just looking at the characteristics of the pitch and if someone calls it something different from what someone else calls it, but it's clearly behaving in the same way, then from an analytical perspective and maybe from a fan engagement perspective, it's kind of helpful to have a blanket definition. And it always gets fuzzy because it's in-betweens. I mean, there are no absolutes necessarily.

It's sort of a spectrum and it's a range, right? Yeah. Is that where you were going to say nathan have you guys ever tried playing the the game on the mlb website where you guess the pitch type oh yeah yeah oh it makes me insane because yeah with the fastballs especially because apart from a very traditional four seam fastball fastballs can move all sorts of different ways with all sorts of different velocity windows and And I think it gave you options of like cutter, sinker, two seamer. So like you said, Ben, pitch types exist in spectra, not in quanta. And anyone who's tried to pitch like myself understands that you can move

a finger a little this way or a little that way. And it's not just one spectrum, it's several spectra. It's, you know, there's amount of spin, axis of spin, velocity, all that stuff, and you can mix and match those. So it's all an attempt to fool the batter, right? And you can fool the batter several different ways, and you can combine those ways that you fool the batter. So from that perspective, having a definition of an off-speed pitch beyond just making the game accessible to fans that are entering it, maybe there's not a whole lot of utility to having a definition for off-speed pitch. But if you're going to have it, it should be that an off-speed pitch is a pitch that is sufficiently slower than the pitcher's

max speed offering to fool the batter in terms of velocity specifically, in which case this is definitely not an off-speed pitch because it's in the same velocity band as other pitches. But there's other ways to fool the batter too. And it's a cool trick as people have come to understand tunneling and stuff like that better that you can not vary velocity a whole lot, but still be very tricky towards batters by having a pitch that does a different thing at the same speed so now you've got you're making the uh the batter think in you know two four eight

sixteen ways instead of just two ways well and it all assumes that you're like actually executing the pitch you want to sure yeah yeah like sometimes you're like oh you you just like that just backed up on you or that didn't finish where it was supposed to. Or it's just I don't know. Like it is a fun thing to talk about. But I think you're right that overly rigid definitions tend to not really serve anyone. Like it doesn't illuminate anything to us about baseball to be overly rigid. We need to acknowledge that like we are replete with edge cases these days.

that we are replete with edge cases these days. Yeah, Lucas said to me what he finds interesting about this pitch in particular is that it's just unusual. There are very few pitchers in MLB who throw that specific pitch, a wide sinker or narrow splitter grip that kills that slight amount of speed or spin off the fastball and throws it 100 plus miles per hour.

But he said generally he goes by situational cues. So if a pitcher is only using a certain pitch in specific counts or to batters of certain handedness, then they generally could be considered to fit into a certain class of pitch on top of the usual grip and release characteristics. And I also just think the difference from your fastest pitch is a big part of it for me too. And that's obviously individualized. So I don't know that we can say, you know it when you see it, because some things that are off-speed pitches now, no one would have believed and you would have been burned at the stake if you had thrown it

a hundred years ago. But I think that you can kind of, if you just compare pitcher to pitcher, like to like, and see how it stacks up to the rest of their stuff, if they're taking off a significant amount of speed, it's off speed. Maybe it's that simple. So now I have a cool idea. So someone needs to make a baseball video game or an add-on to the show or something like that, where instead of choosing the pitch type and then moving the little thing over the catcher's glove where you want it to go, you adjust the grip, you adjust the effort, you adjust the release point, and you make custom pitches that way in the video game. Yeah, that's interesting. That'd be complex, but kind of cool. be complex but kind of cool i will just shout out and link to on the show page our listener and patreon supporter in the discord group sir parsifal inspired by this pitch he made a matrix

of all of the possible pitch name combinations just inspired by splinker right so just like it's a cross-section where this pitch crossed that pitch. And some of these may not be physically possible, but you end up with some pretty fun names like chuckle balls and forkle balls and scrinkers and twerk balls and three seam fastballs, I guess. It's kind of clever. We'll see how many spaces we can cross off on this chart. But a screw up, I guess uh a screw up i guess a screw up pitch that's great yeah a lot of them sound like lawn games yeah let's go play splinker splutter yeah exactly adam says i just came off a bay area stadium tour to cross some stadiums off my list with some extended family before Before entering the stadium on the first day, my aunt was talking about leaving in the seventh inning,

which made me wonder how long you have to be in a stadium to say you have visited it. Technically, you can go when gates open, see all the stuff, eat what you want, and leave, and you have been to that stadium, which I think defeats the purpose of going. You would want to see a game. To say you saw a game, do you have to stay until the 5th to make it official?

Leave at the 7th inning stretch to beat traffic? If you show up in the 3rd because of traffic or Yankee Stadium security takes forever, do you have to stay for the full game to say you saw a game there? I guess this is sort of the same debate of what do you have to do to say that you visited a city or state, right? Like if you just drove through it and maybe stepped out and put your feet on the ground, does that count? Or if you just change planes at an airport, it was like you're catching your connecting flight at Denver or whatever. Does that mean that you have been to Colorado? Like people have different

definitions of that. So this is the ballpark version of that. I do think I agree that if you're there for non-baseball related reasons, if you're there to see a concert, if you're there to get faxed, if you're there to vote, whatever things happen in stadiums that are primarily for baseball but also host some other events obviously you've physically been to the building but you haven't experienced that ballpark when it was functioning in its primary capacity as a ballpark so if there's no game going on if there's no crowd for game, I don't think you can say that you have fully experienced it. You have experienced it in some limited way, but not the way that it was intended. But is there any kind of cutoff when it comes to how long you actually have to be at the ballgame in order to say that it counts?

The cutoff is did you have to use the bathroom? Well, see, I try very hard not to, if I can avoid it. I try to avoid just like all bodily activities at ballparks. Well, then you've never been to a ballpark. Maybe that's true. I don't want to eat. I don't want to drink. I don't want to wait on a line to get anything. I don't want to wait on a bathroom line. I don't want to go to a ballpark bathroom if I can help it. Not saying I never have, but ideally, if I can just sit in my seat the entire time, that is my ideal way to be at a ballpark. I certainly consider myself to have been to New York City having had several layovers at LaGuardia. So I'm fine with the most casual

definition possible. I'm also fine with other people having more restrictive definitions. And, you know, if you think you went there, you went there. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Yeah. I think that, like, if I were being, if I had to offer one, like, for myself, I think that you, I think for me to feel like I have been to a ballpark, you're right, Ben, I agree that you need to see baseball game action. It doesn't need to be big league game action, right? Or even like sort of big league game action that counts.

Like I consider myself to have been to Dodger Stadium, even though the big league action I have seen there was the All-Star game. And the bulk of the game action that I saw there involved either amateur players or minor leaguers. But I've been to Dodger Stadium, right? I think that so I think you need to have seen game action there, baseball game action if you go and see hockey or football I don't think that counts as having been there in a baseball capacity but you've probably been there you know I think for me for baseball games it would probably be I need to have seen four or five innings or two hours right because sometimes games are moving fast sometimes you're like wow I have been here for two hours and I've seen three

innings so I live here now like I think I own property in this ballpark so I think that that would be my my definition of of it right like I hadn't been to State Farm Stadium where the Cardinals play football until I had seen the Cardinals and the Seahawks play there even though I got vaccinated in the parking lot I didn't feel like I had been to the stadium until I had seen the Cardinals and the Seahawks play there even though I got vaccinated in the parking lot I didn't feel like I had been to the stadium until I had been inside it and like seen it put to its to its intended original purpose but yeah if somebody tells me they've been to all 30 ballparks I'm not gonna like pick nits and be like oh yeah well what name five of their songs because that's annoying yeah i think what nathan said is the right standard if you feel like you've been there

if you feel like you've seen it and experienced it then yeah you've been there and i would probably need to do more than just walk in and out i mean i would want to see some different perspectives i just said i'm happy just sitting in my seat one place the entire time. But if it's my first time going to a ballpark, I'd like to walk around a little bit just like on the concourses, just get a feel for the place, just see what it has to offer, what it looks like from various perspectives. So I think that like if I have a mental image, if I have concrete, firm memories of what it was like to be there, what it's like to be in that ballpark, what that experience was like for you set foot in the place you've been there, at least during a ballgame at least. But if it made an impression on you, I think that it has to have left some sort of impression on you, or else you're just kind of checking off a box without actually getting the enjoyment that one gets from being at a ballpark. And at that point, what's the point? I briefly had a project of visiting every minor league park in the little corner of the Midwest where I've often lived. I gave up on it because it was impossible. But I saw Willie Nelson and

Bob Dylan at the minor league ballpark in Peoria, Illinois. And I wasn't planning on counting it. And then after spending the weekend in Peoria, I decided that I'd earned it and that I was never going to go back. So I counted that. Sure. Yeah. All right. Also, candidly, I mean, no offense to the minor league games that are played there or the players who play in them, but you probably had a cooler experience than you would have just at a random minor league game, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, there was a thunderstorm with big lightning over the stage, too. It was great. Nice. Cool. Depends on the day with old Bob. Depends on the concert and the set. This was a good day.

He had a good band at the time, too. He always has a pretty good band. That's good. I've had variable experiences with him, as I think everyone who's been to multiple Bob Dylan concerts has. So have I. I have enjoyed seeing Willie Nelson in concert every time I've seen him. All right. Andrew says, I'm happy for Julio Rodriguez and agree.

He is a true natural talent who has the ability to be really great, akin to, say, Fernando Tatis. But isn't such a long-term contract potentially demotivating to some people? Not saying that J-Rod only cares about money, but is there not something to be said for working toward your next big contract? If you know you're already locked up for your prime years, your next contract isn't for some time, and you could conceivably chill out or do stupid stuff like wreck yourself on motorcycles. Not to say that players wouldn't do this stuff anyway, but curious to hear your thoughts. do this stuff anyway but curious to hear your thoughts is it possible at least with some players that it might not be the best thing for them to have a long-term extension because they might lose some spark some edge some little bit of motivation sure i mean i think i don't wanna you get this always feels so fraught right because i don't want to attribute feelings

or motivations to fernando tatis jr that don't exist for me like when i am trying to understand the behavior of someone like tatis given the long-term deal balanced against the motorcycle stuff and the peds like to me i categorize that as an error of judgment, not a deficit of motivation, which I think is importantly different in a question like this. I don't think that teams are perfect in their evaluation of even their own players, even players they know very well

who've spent significant time in their systems. I know Tatis wasn't initially signed by San Diego, famously, but had been around for a while time in their systems i know tatis wasn't initially signed by san diego famously but like you know had been around for a while before he even made the majors let alone was was given the extension that he was dead was a big leaguer right yeah right so you you have exposure to to these guys that doesn't mean that you have perfect evals of everybody but i think generally you know when you are trying to decide is this a player to whom we would give an extension of this length like one of the binary yes knows is around sort of motivation and commitment which again doesn't mean that there aren't exceptions and it doesn't mean that that

can't change for a person over time, particularly when you're giving an extension to someone this young. We don't really know what kind of person Julio Rodriguez is going to be long-term. I bet Julio doesn't totally know what kind of person he's going to be long-term. He's 21. We've gotten some, I think,

really loud and positive indicators, but people change and sometimes quite dramatically over the course of their lives. But I think that one of the first things you're trying to assess if you're a team and you're saying, you know, do we want this player to be a face the franchise? Do we want him to be a forever insert, you know, team name here? One of the first things you're trying to determine is, is the motivation present to contribute in a meaningful way for a long time? And then you just have to hope that that motivation remains relatively consistent over time and that

other factors like injury, judgment, and just, you know, consistency of performance don't undermine that motivation. So I think that's the way I think about it. But yeah, you just have to, I mean, I'm sure that there is a like holding of the breath that goes on for a while. And we know what it looks like when things go badly, even if it is a matter of judgment rather than want, right? You know, there are definitely people in San Diego who are pretty pissed at Tatis and how he can salvage that I think remains to be seen so yeah it's a lot to deal with at any age probably to get a windfall like that oh yeah i don't know what kind of dumb things i would do if i suddenly had that kind of money but i'm sure there would be a

couple and i just hope that they wouldn't be you know meaningfully harmful to myself or other people yeah oh meg i have a list of all the dumb things i would do oh yeah money and and you know you'd have you would have things that wouldn't occur to you now because you know not that people's like class identities or understanding of what money can do for them is is fixed over the course of their lives but i think that that stuff starts to congeal pretty early like you know when you're a little kid and it's the holidays or your birthday, like, even if you don't know what money is, I think that kids start to develop a sense of like, oh, that's too expensive for me to ask for. So I imagine it's like profoundly disorienting to suddenly become a very wealthy person and be like, oh, I don't know. I don't have those same fixed points of reference

that I maybe grew up with. So I think you'd probably find you'd have your list, but you'd find a whole new list of things that you could do that would be really stupid. Yeah. Well, there was an interesting Players' Tribune article a couple of years ago from a former NBA player. I'm not going to remember his name, who had lost all of his money. And he said, you know, people say these athletes, they just, you know, do this and they do that. He said, you can only buy so many Ferraris. If an athlete loses all their money, it's because they got ripped off by people, unsavory people, you know, pitching investments and stuff like that. But anyway, if you're concerned about the welfare of your team, I would much rather my team invest in a young player with the risk involved

in that than be, you know, overly pecunious. Is that a word? Overly pecunious about signing young players. And, you know, even if Julio washes out, I'd rather he have the money than whoever owns the Mariners. Sure. And I'm engaging with other sports fans on Twitter who are expressing anxiety about a team giving a player money. I was reminded it's not your money. Right. Who cares? If he washes out, he washes out. And the Julio deal is kind of an interesting template, I think, for balancing the risk on both sides when you have a really phenomenal young player with all the incentives and stuff like that.

You know, the player gets a guarantee that they're set for life and the team gets to mitigate their risk a little bit, but is still going to pay the player superstar money if they turn out to be a superstar. I think it's within the admittedly horrible bounds of how sports economics work. I think it's a pretty reasonable compromise. Yeah, I guess penurious is maybe the word there. What did I say? Did I say pecunious? Pecunious, which that might be a word too. Pecuniary.

Yeah, let's just make it a word. Well, pecuniary is a word, and it means related to money. It's good enough. I mean, language evolves, right? Right. It's a word now. It just evolved dramatically on this episode. It's on a podcast.

It's a word. Yeah. Let's go with penurious. But I think that if you're going to commit to someone for that amount of time and that amount of money, I think probably teams want to feel like and usually do feel like that player is motivated by something other than those external factors, is driven by their own internal ambitions and holding themselves to a high standard and just being driven. They might be wrong about that in their evaluation, but that would probably make them feel more comfortable about being in business with that person for so long. And I'm sure that there are players who are more motivated by money than others, and there's nothing wrong with that either. It is a job. It's kind of a cool, fun job with some prestige, but it is still a job. So that's okay. But I think that there are also a lot of other external factors, not just the money and the salary, but also you will be beloved. You will get the kind of respect and adulation that money really can't buy in a sincere sense, right? So you do still have to

play well to make people like you. In fact, the more you're making, probably the better you have to play to make people like you. So that's something if you care about other people's opinion and you don't want to get booed, then you want to play well. And there are all kinds of perks that come with just being a good professional athlete and being successful that are not just your salary. And I don't even mean just endorsements, but your level of fame. And maybe you don't even want that, but just sort of how respected you are and how good you feel about yourself, right? Hopefully, ultimately, it comes down to not just what your

paycheck is, which is maybe one way of measuring your worth, but not the only way. So if you had some values instilled in you that you just want to do a good job regardless because that's how you'll feel happy about yourself, then that's something that could sustain you even if you're financially secure, right? So I think there are a lot of people who are driven even long after they could retire. I mean, why does Paul McCartney keep recording and keep touring the world? Why do the Rolling Stones keep going out there?

Why does Stephen King keep writing books, right? It's not that they need the money. They have oodles of it. They just like doing what they do and they're good at it and they like that people enjoy it and it gives them pleasure to share that gift with the world, I think. So a lot of that applies to being a baseball player as well. So I'm not saying that there aren't sometimes players who might be a little more lax, might let themselves go a bit, might not have that same edge. But I also think that if you're a big leaguer, you have a competitive drive that got you to that point. How many times have we heard the stories of players who were intensely competitive just playing table tennis or playing cards or whatever it is, whether or not there's money at stake, they just want to win at all times.

They're just wired that way. They're competitive people. That's probably part of why they got to that place. Yeah, it gets into how hard it is for us mortals to understand the mindset of professional athletes. They are very different. And I agree most of them are going to keep trying. They might get discouraged and at some point give up or have life problems that make it hard for them to put forth their max effort,

but they're different types of people. Yeah. Speak for yourself. I mean, I'm very much like that too, but, you know. Well, clearly you're the Mike Trout of podcasting. No time to sleep. No, I'm not at all competitive in that kind of way. All right.

A few or a couple pedantic questions here. It's been a little while. So here's one from Yakov who says, I have a possible pedantic baseball note. I was watching a 0-0 Yankees game in the bottom of the ninth inning. This is not going to be about whether there was no score or whether the score was. I was about to say, didn't we already answer this question? Yeah, I think we did that one. This is a different question.

Michael K., the TV play-by-play announcer, requested viewers stick around for the post game after the final out. However, if the game was won by the home team, there would be no final out as the game would be won via walk-off, which was a whole other question about what a walk-off is. Perhaps then the final out is the last out made in the game. But by the time the game ended, it would be impossible to start the postgame after the final out because the game would have kept going. the postgame after the final out, because the game would have kept going, I suppose technically the postgame would start at a time later than the time that the final out was recorded, though I don't think that's the spirit of what Kay said. I'd imagine the Yankees aren't the only team to announce their postgame this way, but I feel the broadcast is making a promise it may not be able to keep. Not sure if this has already been brought to your attention but figured i'd pass

along so they're definitely not the only team that does this and i know because i've had this exact thought oh really okay yeah i'm like but that's not quite right yeah i guess what i would say is that maybe broadcast should like home and away proof their message because there are times where that could make sense for them to say, right? Yeah. Like they could be the road team and they could win as the road team and then they would be after the final out as the road team. But it doesn't make sense when they're at home. So, yeah, they should say, I guess, upon the conclusion of the game, I think sometimes what happens with baseball...

That really rolls off the tongue. Yeah, it really is smooth. I mean, they can workshop it. They don't have to go with my first pancake or whatever, but I think that sometimes what will happen is that baseball broadcasts forget that we already know that we're watching a baseball game and they got to baseball it up a little bit. And's like no no we're here we understand the project yeah when

does the post game come again when right yeah that's the other thing i'm like just say we'll see you on the post game show i think it's pretty self-explanatory it's that's after the game right oh i didn't miss the post game was that what happened maybe they they're worried that we will think that post game is again some sort of lawn game and then what would we even yeah that's my reaction to a lot of the pedantic uh category questions is is there is there any risk of any person anywhere on earth misunderstanding what is meant nathan you might have noticed that we do fewer of them than we used to. And it's because this started to be the theme where it was like, it's fine. I get it, but also it's fine. I like that this one at least occurred to you though. Oh yeah. No, I've had this thought before. I'm fun at parties. Why would you ask that?

Yeah. It's like when my wife says, I'm going to jump in the shower and I say, oh, that sounds dangerous. You should just stand in there. And you're still together? That's great. Well, yeah, we are. So I think that while it doesn't matter in the sense that we all know what they mean, A, they don't even have to explain this. But if they are going to explain it and they say after the final out, we get it.

But why not just say after the final play, right? Might as well just say after the final play because that will always be correct right could say after the final pitch i suppose you could say after the final play might as well be precise might as well not spark this thought in meg's brain and yakov's brain. If you don't have to, you can just be extra precise and it's not any more awkward. You don't have to say any extra words. It's not inscrutable to anyone. We all understand what a play is. So I would just say after the final play or after the game is over. No, but are there situations in which a game ends on something other than a play? You've probably had off future questions, so I'm glad you asked. Yeah, is that a play?

I mean, you're reviewing a play. I think on my local broadcast they say after the conclusion of tonight's game. I don't know if that's correct or not, but I'm just remembering that. It's a little formal, but that works. Yeah, I think play is fine. If you're reviewing the final play it's still a play that concluded the game you just aren't sure whether it's over or not yet there's always the end of the game is always going to be a play i think i guess you could say that the game is not

over until you review the final play and therefore just the reviewing that ends the game, not the play. But I think it's more that you are determining whether the play already ended the game or not. So it already has, in a sense, you are just trying to figure out whether it did or not. Oh, yes. I'm fully in agreement. I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of a pedantic about baseball question asker. Yep. Here's another one. David says, I have a pedantic thing to flag. I got an update on the MLB app when John Connor Stanton returned

that he was in the lineup and would, quote unquote, play DH. Now, I don't want to go so far as to say that DH isn't a position, but in some sense it isn't. If anything, it is the demarcation of an absence. It says this person will not play a position in the field. I'm okay with players playing shortstop or centerfield, etc., but in my mind, a player merely is the DH, but does not play DH. Is this just me?

Can you guys get a soundboard that has a clip of Jeff being like, no, no, wait, wait, what? That would be a handy thing to have. Because this would be one for that. Yeah, sure, you can play DH. If you're starring in a community theater production about a famous designated hitter, and you are in that role, you are playing the DH. And if you are inserted into the lineup as a designated hitter, you are playing the DH because you are playing a game. You are playing the game of baseball. And your you are inserted into the lineup as a designated hitter, you are playing the DH because you are playing a game. You are playing the game of baseball and your role in that game is to go up

to bat every ninth hitter and do nothing else other than run the bases should you reach base. But you are still playing the game of baseball and you are playing as the designated hitter. Ergo, you are playing DH. I think you're right yeah yeah i think you're right nathan i think you're right i think it's this is one where i'm like it's fine it's okay yeah yeah this is okay it's obviously a different type of position than the other positions you're not playing defense. You're not playing the fields. You're not playing a defensive position, I would probably say, but you are playing baseball and your role as a baseball player is to be the DH. So I would go so far as to say that you are playing DH. I think that's okay. Oh, no. But now I've been infected by the pedantic brain worms. Would you say someone is playing pinch runner?

No, I'd say they're serving as a pinch runner. Yeah. I don't think of pinch runner as a position in the same way that I do DH. Yeah. And you don't have to, you're not going to designate it beforehand. Right, right. Exactly. You're not going to designate it beforehand. Right. Right.

You're not in the lineup as a pinch runner. I'm cured now of the pedantic. Well, I mean, see, look, this is these are the proofs that you have to work through so that you can find peace on the

other end. All right. Last one of these is from Tyler, Patreon supporter, who says, not sure if this general topic has been brought up as a how can you

not be pedantic about baseball? But on tonight's Mariners broadcast, they had a graphic that said, all nine batters hit safely tonight, which brought up the question of how can you hit unsafely? And it credits Lydia Cruz, who tweeted this at the Lydia Cruz and just tweeted a screenshot of this graphic on the Mariners broadcast that says all nine batters hit safely tonight and said, can all nine batters hit unsafely? I feel like I would like to see that. So Tyler says, obviously, certain hits might be unsafe for the fielders, but that isn't what is meant. I have generally assumed that when someone is said to reach safely, that means that they got on base without an out or error being made. So any hit should inherently be considered getting in safely. Obviously, I think a walk would be reaching safely.

I'm pretty sure I've heard that used before in broadcast. But if a walk is reaching safely, is a hit by pitch reaching safely? Because that seems like one of the least safe ways to reach base. Potentially, yeah. So what does it really mean to reach safely? And is hitting safely just redundant? Hmm. I guess it is meant to distinguish between hitting the ball and getting on base maybe,

but not having it be a hit. Right. So I hit the ball. I reached base, but I didn't hit safely. It was an error, whatever. It was a fielder's choice or something. Well, you can also hit unsafely. You can hit unsafely, yes. You can get a hit and get cut down at second,

or you can do that really annoying thing where you beat out an infield single and the throw is a little bit off, and you just barely deviate to the runner's left as if you might be thinking about going to second, and then you saunter back to first, and the defense touches the bag and they call you out. Yeah. Is that not safe?

I guess you've strayed. I mean, you have a hit, but you're not safe. True. You were safe. Briefly. You were provisionally safe. Yeah. Provisionally safe.

I think we probably do use this more often than we need to, I guess. This has to be an old-timey term, right? Yes. This has been around forever. For sure. Yeah. So if we say that so-and-so hit safely in 70 games, I'm just Googling hit safely, and I'm seeing, you know, Stephen Kwan has now hit safely in 26 of the last 29 games.

Because didn't they used to say hit out more commonly than people say that now? Right. So it makes sense in that context that, you know, the player hit the ball. They hit a fair ball that was in play and they can either hit out or hit safely. And they can either hit out or hit safely. You know, the modern equivalent would be in play parentheses out or play parentheses no out. Yeah. Isn't that what they say? Yeah.

Yeah. So I think we might still need it in the sense that I'm just looking at this tweet that came up when I Googled it and it says Cleveland Guardians outfielder Stephen Kwan has now hit safely in 26 of the last 29 games. Now, if you take the safely out, you cannot really just say Stephen Kwan has now hit in 26 of the last 29 games because that could be interpreted as he batted, right? He came to the plate or I guess you could say he hit the ball, but we don't know what happened after he hit it, right? So you could say that he has gotten a hit in 26 of the last 29 games, and I think that would be fine. But you can't just say hit, right? So if you want to use that construction, I think there is still some utility to adding the safely. I think we need a new word.

Because even on that Mariners broadcast, if you said all nine batters hit tonight, that wouldn't work, right? It's like, well, yeah, that's how baseball works. You have a batting order and everyone comes up, right? And I guess we've answered a pedantic question about that probably too and whether you're a batter or a hitter or whatever. But I think you need the safely unless you want to say all nine batters have a hit tonight. You could say that and we would understand what you mean.

But if you want to say hit, use the verb, then you need the adverb safely to convey that they actually got a hit. It's not just that they were at the plate or that they made contact with the ball or put the ball in play. So I've kind of come around actually to safely. I think maybe it is somewhat overused. Perhaps there are times when we don't necessarily need it

and it's more of a relic of vestigial limb from an earlier era of baseball. But I actually think we would miss safely if we stripped all the safelies out of our language I actually think we would miss safely. If we stripped all the safelies out of our language, I think we would miss safelies. There would be some confusion. The brain worms are back now. So if in the course of a game, eight of the batters in the lineup collected a hit and the ninth batter in the lineup collected a hit but was cut down trying to stretch that hit and had no other hits, would you still say all nine batters hit safely?

I think I would. I think I probably would. Yeah, I might just prefer have a hit or got a hit just in general to the hit safely construction. Maybe that's even clearer. I might just opt for that. I've always collected a hit because it just sounds so nice and fun

like you're walking around the woods picking up little leaves and stuff. Going leaf peeping. Although this is probably going to invite some listener question about whether you can really collect a hit. Yeah, do you possess it?

Steal it. Oh no, we already used steal for something else. All right. I think we answered that one in a satisfactory fashion. So let's end here. I've got a couple stat blasts. So let's cue up the song. for us in amazing ways.

Here's to days still past. Nathan, you now know that when you're on the podcast, you don't hear the song. You don't hear the song. You just have to imagine the song, but everyone else hears it. I was just starting to hear the beat. I hear it every time.

We should make it a condition of the Patreon appearance on the podcast that you then have to sing. No, I should tell you, when you did the thing about recording your own cover of the Stat Blast song, I actually did one, and I never sent it in, and you should thank me for that. No, no. I was going to send it in, and I heard the first two or three listener submissions, and I was like, oh, I am out of my league here. Yeah, we got some talented listeners. I'm in a Wilco cover band,

but I can't handle the Stat Blast song. Are you saying that Wilco's not proficient with their instruments? I'm saying that my Wilco cover band was not proficient. I see. Okay. It's called Wilconson, by the way. Oh, that's great. It's on our Facebook page, even though we haven't played in since before COVID.

All right. Here's a question from Liz who says, In tonight's, this was July 27th, Yankees-Mets game, David Peterson appeared in the eighth inning, faced only three hitters, and achieved the three true outcomes in the minimum number of pitches. So four-pitch walk, one-pitch home run, three-pitch strikeout. How many times has a pitcher had this kind of three true outcome outing? Is it rare? Put this question to frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson, whom you can find on Twitter at rsnelson23. And yeah, it is rare.

In fact, maybe it had happened one time, at least on record, since we have pitch-by-pitch data going back to 1988. So Ryan says, June 20th, 1999, T.J. Matthews of the Athletics went one-pitch grand slam, four-pitch walk, and three-pitch strikeout to end the inning against some players who are much more famous non-players than they were players. Not so much Dean Palmer. Dean Palmer hit the home run. But then Tony Clark drew the walk and Gabe Kapler struck out looking. And Ryan notes that this could have happened in the non-pitch tracking era, but three true outcomes were less common then. So perhaps not, although there was more baseball before pitch tracking than since pitch tracking so far. So yeah, this is quite rare. Well spotted, Liz.

I answered a question here that comes from Michael, who says, as I'm writing this email on the evening of August 30th, Yadier Molina has a 36 WRC plus as a 40-year-old player with 202 plate appearances. What is the highest number of plate appearances accrued in a season by a player whose age was higher than his WRC plus? Sorry, Yachty, to pick on you here. You've had a long, illustrious career, but it's not going great these days.

So there are quite a few players, actually, who've had more plate appearances while having a higher WRC Plus than they have an age. And he is, by the way, at 34 WRC Plus right now. And he is a 40-year-old player, although this is his age 39 season. So that's what I went by, just your baseball age, not necessarily your actual age at the end of the season or at some point in the season. You can answer this with the Fangraphs leaderboards and a few minutes in Excel. And the answer is 1933, Jim Levy, I assume Levy, not Levy, L-E-V-E-Y, of the St. Louis Browns. So he had a long season, 567 plate appearances, and he was a 26-year-old. He was in his age 26 season, and yet he had a 23 WRC plus that year.

Wow. It's not so good. So different era, 26-year-old player, 23 WRC+. As you might imagine, that was not an immensely valuable season. That was a negative four war season, according to fan graphs. He was a significantly sub-replacement level player over the course of his career. You would expect that if he was playing, not hitting at all that he must have had a great glove and maybe he did maybe he had a reputation for having one but boy he does not

have good defensive metrics at all so in that season he's negative eight according to baseball references uh total zone i suppose and negative 14 the season before that and negative 17 the season before that. Somehow he got MVP votes in 1932 or he had a 19th place MVP finish in 1932 when he did hit better but not well. So we would have to dig a little bit into that. So we would have to dig a little bit into that. Perhaps he was a popular fellow or a team leader or had a great reputation as a defensive wizard or something. But yeah, that's your 1979. And he was just in his age 28 season then, but he had a 20 WRC plus. Not so good. So there's some other seasons toward the top or the bottom, depending on how you sort from Dell Young, Kurt Manwaring, and then Bill Bergen, unsurprisingly,

shows up a couple times there. One of the worst hitters of all time, if not the worst. So there you go. That's some consolation. Yachty actually doesn't show up here until number 58 on the list it looks like and in fact he's not even the first melina on the list because jose my favorite melina in 2014 he showed up on this list because he was in his age 39 season and had a 21 wrc plus i think so yeah there there are some worse ones, I will say. All right. Here is a question from Brent, who says, I'm watching the Jays-Angels game. This was on August 28th, and it took Ross Stripling only 16 pitches to make his way through the Angels' nine batters across the first two innings. He gave up three singles off of first pitches and got Andrew Velasquez to ground out on a first pitch to end the second inning. Four of the other five at-bats only lasted two pitches,

and the longest at-bat was Kurt Suzuki in the eight hole who flied out to left on the fourth pitch he saw. So this made me wonder, what is the fewest number of pitches that a starter has needed to make his way through the other team's order to start a game. So this is kind of a complex one because we get into data quality issues here where we have what would be some record-setting performances, but it's not clear whether we can trust them because especially early on in the pitch-by-pitch tracking, sometimes the data can be a bit shoddy. So Ryan found that supposedly Les Straker went through the first nine batters on nine pitches in a game. This was the A's at the Twins

on June 3rd, 1988. Ryan says that doesn't seem particularly likely, especially given that it is in the first year of official pitch counts, but there are no obvious data inconsistencies to give it away as a data issue. I did a cursory search. I didn't see anyone writing articles about how amazingly Les Stryker went through the first nine batters on nine pitches, but people can feel free to do their own research on that. For instance, he also shows a game from 1995 that shows nine batters on nine pitches,

but there's some obvious data errors, such as a zero pitch strikeout in the bottom of the first. Now, there is a game from 1994, Astros at Dodgers, July 29th, that shows 11. There's a game from 1990 and a game from 1994 and another game from 1990 that show 12. There's a game from 1995 and another game from 99 and a game from 96 that show 13. Some, if not many or all of these games are probably attributable to data eras. So the lowest number Ryan found that he would feel reasonably certain is correct and not a data error, is from the August 31st, 2011 game between the Royals and Tigers. In that one, the Royals' Nathan Adcock faced the first nine batters on 3-1-1-1-1-1-1-4-2 pitches in that order for a total of 15. Regardless, this data shows that former Effectively Wild guest Ross Stripling's outing is somewhere

between very rare, perhaps tied for 10th or so all time, to nearly record-breaking, tied for second all time. And Ryan says he would lean toward the second option. There have been 21 examples of 16, but of those, only maybe three or four are strongly verifiable. And, of course, this is all just since 1988. And in earlier baseball, there may have been many more. We didn't have the pitch-by-pitch. Right.

You've got to feel pretty good if you're sailing through the order the first time on 15 or 16 pitches the way that Ross Stripling did. Let me look up what he actually ended up doing that day and how many pitches he threw, whether he got bogged down at a certain point, because you must just feel like I'm so ahead of schedule here, I can afford to waste a bunch of pitches. I'm proceeding through this game more quickly than I am accustomed to. It must feel quite empowering, I would imagine.

Yeah, it has to feel like you have to feel like you're flying, right? Yeah, right. Literally. giving up three runs on seven hits, six strikeouts, no walks, and he threw 77 pitches. So, yeah, it was a pretty economical outing, although I guess if you were to subtract out his first time through the order, perhaps the next couple times through the order would not have gone nearly as smoothly. You got to imagine that there will be less smooth sailing ahead when you start out that well all right mitch patreon supporter says here's a stat blast idea what's the most home runs hit in a season to match the number of the player who hit them that is a player who wore number 37

and hit 37 home runs for instance now yeah this, this is my kind of stat blast right here. Yeah. I can't wait to hear the answer. Okay. Well, if you want to hazard a guess, feel free. I don't know whether you're better with uniform numbers than I am or that Meg is, because as we've discussed, we sort of have uniform number blindness and just do not retain this. Okay.

All right. Well, Mitch actually guessed the answer himself, but Ryan reported that the answer is Willie McCovey, who run king and the home run runner up. I think in recent years, no one has finished with a lead larger than Willie Mays in 1965, who hit 52. And second place was his teammate, Willie McCovey with 39. And then you have to go back to Jimmy Fox and Babe Ruth to find a lead larger than 13. But yes, that's the answer. And Mitch did come across it himself. William McCovey wore and hit 44 in 1963. Some other contenders and close ones. Cecil Fielder hit 44 while wearing 45, almost.

Mark Trumbo hit 47 while wearing 45. Jose Canseco hit 46 while wearing 44. Dave Kingman wore 48 in 1977 for the Yankees and hit 48 in 1979 for the Cubs. But by then he was wearing the number 10. So, so close. Mo Vaughn hit 44 while wearing 42. Eddie Matthews hit 41 while wearing 41. That is the second highest that actually matches. So, yeah, that's a pretty fun one. And the last stat blast question comes from Jason, who says, I was watching a European youth baseball game last week. I'm from the UK and someone from our local team was playing in it. And one team batted around with two outs in the inning. It got me thinking, has that ever happened in MLB? I'm assuming it probably has. To be clear, I mean, and we're getting into dangerous territory here when it comes to batting around,

the batter who was at bat immediately after the second out of the inning was made then went on to have another plate appearance in the same inning. Or to put it another way, the team had at least nine plate appearances with two outs in the same inning. This team went on to have 14. Has this ever happened in MLB? And what's the record for number of plate appearances with two outs in the inning? I guess the longest two-out rally ever. A follow-up question that might be interesting too.

What's the record for the fewest runs scored in an inning with at least nine plate appearances, regardless of the number of outs? Theoretically, with three bases and three outs you could do it while only scoring three runs actually he said whilst only scoring three runs which i should have read it that way because he's from the uk so let's bring in the uk color here so ryan first of all notes that despite clarifying what he meant by batting around jason seemingly still contradicted himself on the definition. So the spiciest—

No, no, we're not going to do this again, are we? No, we're not. Okay, okay. But Ryan just wanted to note that the debate continues. Even if you think you have defined it for yourself, you might still screw up. But we have opened that Pandora's box before and we have expressed our opinions and we will sure do it again no not right now no not right now but i mean just like hypothetically in the future about another someday perhaps if called upon so not surprisingly ryan says batting around

with two outs has happened but it's not super common i see 122 times since 1916 that a team has batted around with two outs defined as having 10 plate appearances with two outs. That is one player bats twice with two outs. That is an acceptable definition to me. That is all I will say. If we go by the definition that every player bats with two outs, but not requiring that someone bat twice.

All right, we're just, we're satisfying everyone here. However you define this, we will provide the answer to you. Then that boosts it all the way to 369 times. The most recent example was the August 5th, 2021 Cardinals-Braves game. In the top of the eighth, the inning started with an Ozzie Alsby strikeout and a Jorge Soler flyout. Then Atlanta went single, homer, double, hit by pitch, walk, walk,

walk, walk, walk before a Freddie Freeman lineout. Ryan says I recall this game because I definitely watched it and I think we may have stat blasted it. The Braves scored six in that inning to take the lead and win 8-4. The most players ever to come to the plate with two outs in one inning was 16. That is a two-out rally right there. On August 8, 1954, the Dodgers started an inning with a pitch, single, walk, home run, walk, single, walk. And finally, a fly out. You'd hate to be the guy who ended that inning, I think.

Would you? Well, maybe it's merciful at that point. Yeah. Like, i guess someone has to do it the dodgers scored 13 runs that inning the minimum run scored for an inning where the team bats around nine plate appearances is indeed three and it happens all the time 6124 times since 1916 if we use the 10 plate appearance definition, however, then the minimum is four. And that happens too. That has happened 2,429 times. So there we go. Stats have been blasted.

And as always, the Stat Blast segment is brought to you by Stathead, which is powered by our friends at Baseball Reference. Go to stathead.com, sign up for a subscription. It doesn't have to be a baseball one. We are partial to the baseball one, but they have other sports as well. You can get a complete package of all of them. You can just get a single sport. And you can sign up using our coupon code WILD20 to get a discount of $20 on the one-year $80 subscription. So go check it out, stathead.com, highly recommended. Okay, let's end with the Pass Blast. So this is episode 1898. This episode's Pass Blast comes,

appropriately enough, from 1898 and from Richard Hershberger, saber researcher, historian, author of Strike for the Evolution of Baseball. So the Chicago team is in Waycross, Georgia for spring training in 1898. How are they enjoying their southern sojourn? Not much, as reported in the Chicago Tribune of March 20th. Quote, the sensation of the day was the club's revolt against the food served. They have been murmuring and exploding at intervals during the I hope not, literally. The men filed hungrily out of the dining room today and held an indignation meeting i hope they officially called it that let's let's have an indignation meeting oh man this could be life-changing ben if they introduce indignation meetings this

forget life-changing for just us it could be civilization altering indignation meetings cathartic for everyone just everyone understands coming in this is an indignation meetings. It would be cathartic for everyone. Just everyone understands coming in, this is an indignation meeting. I think a substantial proportion of meetings are indignation meetings. Yeah, that is true. Fair enough. Whether or not they're intended to be. If you declare it beforehand, it could save a lot. Yeah, right.

It's an airing of grievances. So they decided to telegraph President Hart asking for relief and appointed Bill Lang a committee to visit manager Burns. I believe Bill Lang came into our bathrobe past blast last time. So they appointed Bill Lang a committee to visit manager Burns. Mr. Burns is himself a weary of the rations served under aliases. weary of the rations, served under aliases, and he said he would write President Hart stating the case fully. The matter is really serious, and the men are in a state of hungry discontent. They threaten a bread riot and mutter savagely. They really needed that indignation meeting. Yeah. Everybody is getting to wait rapidly under the heat and lack of edible food.

The way of amusement consists in watching the fruit trains go north and the meat trains pass south, neither dropping anything at Waycross. This is just a food desert, evidently, but they could see just trains heaped high with food passing in every direction. Even Everett is losing appetite, and the foraging gangs find nothing better than the hotel affords. The men tonight wired President Hart, they were really blowing up President Hart here, praying him to sucker them and permit them to move to Thomasville for practice. Better grub in Thomasville, I suppose.

Today, almost all the men are going down into the Okefenokee swamp to fish and catch alligators, perhaps to find something to eat. That's how desperate they are. They're just trying to catch alligators. They're in extremis here. And that's the end of the story. This does not sound like ideal spring training conditions, I guess, unless the point was that you wanted to make weight. So, like, it does say they were getting to weight rapidly under the heat and lack of edible food. Now, that doesn't sound like the best way to drop weight. But I guess if you put on some pounds over the offseason while you were working your second or third job and you just needed to slim down a little bit,

or third job and you just needed to slim down a little bit, then perhaps President Hart chose this location because he knew the food was so bad that they'll have no choice but to slim down a bit by opening day. But again, it doesn't seem ideal. You would want to give them greater portions of healthier food, perhaps less filling, but more nutritious than they were getting here. perhaps less filling but more nutritious than they were getting here. Barnacles as a way of describing crummy tummy is so evocative. It is, yeah. Are you guys familiar with the anthology of American folk music?

Yeah. Yeah. Harry Smith was his name. There was an edition of that that came out sometime in the 90s with the liner notes written by Grial Marcus, the music critic. And he titled it, The Old Weird America That We Have Lost. Right. This is it. Yeah, this is it.

And I'm glad that the players have actual food to eat at spring training now, probably scientifically balanced, you know, Osmo appropriate, whatever meals. But boy, there's just something about a bunch of ballplayers in Florida sending frantic telegrams and catching alligators. I mean, what have we lost as a nation? Yeah, what have we lost? Sounds like it was a special time. Yeah, well, that's why we passed blast. Probably a worse time in most respects but

but quaint to read about so that's why we do this segment so thanks as always to richard and for what it's worth the team recovered well enough to have a winning record that year the chicago orphans as they were known or known at baseball reference, they went 85-65-2 a couple of ties, finished fourth in the National League. Oh, that explains it. They were just trying to feed them like orphans were fed at the time. Apparently, maybe so. They were just trying to be consistent with the name. All right. Well, Nathan, I think you've gotten your money's worth here, hopefully, at least time-wise. So thank you very much for your support. I always ask what possessed people to support us at that level, and you explained yourself. And I'm glad that you could join us and that you if there's anything that you want to plug or direct

people towards or any sort of social media or anything. Oh, sure. You don't want anything to do with my social media. I'm just an obnoxious reply guy, but I am an addiction psychiatrist. That's what I do. So I will tell you there were 110,000 overdose deaths in the United States last year, which is an all-time record, not a record we want to set. It's a whole lot of people, largely younger people. So get your friends and loved ones into addiction treatment if they need it or yourself if you need it. Narcan saves lives and is available without a prescription at any participating pharmacy. So pick some up, keep it in your car, keep it in your house. And my other plug is protect trans kids.

They need us to protect them. And there's a lot of people coming for them right now. That's all I got. That was a very selfless plug. That was a nice little PSA. You're going to make future Patreon guests feel guilty when they plug their personal accounts or anything instead of trying to make the world a better place.

Just because I'm not creative enough to actually produce anything. Well, thank you. This was a pleasure. Nice to have you on. Yep. Thanks, guys. It was a blast. A pass blast or a stat blast?

Oh, just a blast blast. It was a pedanto blast. I guess all of the above, all of the blasts. A pedanto blast. All right. That will do it for today and of the above. All of the blasts. A pedanto blast. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon, not necessarily at the Mike Trout tier, though

you're welcome to if you like, but you can go to patreon.com slash effectively wild and sign up to pledge any monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free aside from from our StatHead sponsorship. And get yourself access to some perks. The following five listeners have already done so. Graham Clendenning, Matt Quinn, Timothy Waldner, Sean Monagal, and Lauren for our Cartwright. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to our exclusive monthly bonus episodes.

As if we don't do enough podcasts already. We've got 10 bonus pods up there now. So if you sign up for Patreon now, you can just wild the long weekend away with 10 more pods with me and Meg. You also get access to the Effectively Wild Patreon Discord group, which never sleeps. Tons of great stuff on there. You hear me cite it from time to time on the show, but that's just scratching the surface. You also get access to other excellent perks, including discounts on merch, access to playoff

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at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a great long weekend, if you have a long weekend, or just a wonderful weekend of whatever length it is, and we will be back to talk to you next week. Summertime We could run and play like summertime With storybooks and nursery rhymes

so be my valentine