Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1902: Bat Albert

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the old-and-improved Albert Pujols, Mike Trout’s homer streak, the White Sox winning, Elvis Andrus making the A’s pay, James Karinchak’s inconclusive hair inspection, the Dodgers prematurely celebrating a clinching (and the concept of clinch creep), the puzzle of Cody Bellinger, and the retrospective puzzle of Edwin Díaz’s 2019, […]

Hello and It's logic, stop war, give them food How they adored till it cried in its boredom Hello and welcome to episode 1902 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. Let me give you three player performances over certain spans. Somewhat arbitrary spans, but interesting nonetheless. Okay. Best hitter in baseball since August 10th.

Minimum 80 plate appearances. So there are 212 players who have had 80 or more plate appearances since August 10th. Would you care to hazard any guess as to who has been the best of them offensively in that span? Mike Trout. Close. Albert Pujols. Former teammate of Mike Trout's. Albert Pujols has out-hit Aaron Judge and everyone else since August 10th.

I don't understand what is happening here. It's wonderful. He has hit 346, 393, 802 with 11 home runs since August 10th. Wow. Albert Pujols at this point, but still, it's incredible. And not only has he been the best hitter in baseball on a per-plate appearance basis, he's actually hit righties over that span pretty well too. We talked about how he had become an ultimate lefty masher, and he still has a big platoon split on the season. His TOPS plus against right-handed pitching is one of the 50 lowest ever minimum 150 plate appearances. Thank you, Stathead. But his most recent homer, 697, the one that vaulted him above A-Rod on the all-time home runs list, that was off a righty, and he has a 125 WRC plus against righties over

that same span. And it really is like the old Pujols is back, or the old Pujols is gone and the young Pujols is back. I was trying to find a similarly torrid stretch earlier in his career and I almost couldn't. I looked at 30 game spans, no particular reason why I chose 30, just seemed like a good number, and I went to his Fangraphs game logs and looked at his rolling WRC plus over his past 30 games. And so the high point this year was on August 23rd. At that point, his rolling WRC Plus over the past 30 games was 251. So I looked back over the rest of his career, and it just goes back to 2002, so it doesn't have his rookie season.

But post-2002, the only 30-game stretch I could find where he had hit that well was in mid-July of 2009. That was his last MVP year when he had a 254 WRC plus over a 30-game stretch. So basically the same. And that's it. That's the only one I could find when he was as good as he was over those 30 games this year. Granted, he was probably getting to face more lefties and getting fewer plate appearances over this most recent 30-game span. But still, he's just been rejuvenated somehow.

It's like looking at the old Albert Pujols again in his last month or two as a regular season Major League player. It's unbelievable. So he's three off 700 now, right? Is that correct? That is correct. As we speak. There's no stopping him so by the time people hear this but yeah we are recording on monday afternoon he's got three more to go so i ask you again ben you're out where pool holes final day of the regular season rolls around

of the regular season rolls around you are a home run shy do you try to stick it out for for a little bit next year to get a nice round number again i i think i would try to stick it out more so because i've just like been transported back to 15 years ago somehow more so than that i need the one more home run but i guess so i mean he does have a bunch of postseason home runs i know we pretend that those don't count but he does have 19 of those it's not that they don't count they counted very much at the time it's just that when we you know when we cite his career stats we're not gonna we're not gonna cite those you know yeah how many heads maybe they count just as much yeah i wonder how many hitters there are i mean there are pitching milestones too so why do i have to restrict it to hitters other than that we're currently talking about albert

pools like i how many uh how many baseball players are there that have round numbers when you include their postseason stats? I don't know the answer to that question. That's a good question. Like players who are short of 500 or 3,000 or 300 wins or something if you just lump in the postseason stats. Yeah. I mean, I guess it would probably be the obvious guys who were kind of close to it. Sure. So we could figure it out.

But yeah, there probably are a few. Anyway, I don't think I would come back for one more home run. And really, if he wants to go out just riding off in a blaze of glory, then I guess this is the way to go, especially depending how the postseason goes. But it's just unbelievable. I think passing A-Rod is actually more significant than 700. I think you're right. And I don't mean that just out of A-Rod rod spider pettiness or anything. I just mean like getting above someone on the leaderboard seems to be to be more of a milestone than just getting from 699 or 697 to 700, which is kind of just an arbitrary thing because our brains like round numbers. But actually being

fourth instead of fifth, that's pretty significant, I would say. Yeah, I agree. Anyway, it's been awesome. Like, really, I had no inkling that this could happen. It's just like, it's some kind of, I think Joe Posnanski said it, it's like the rays of the sun to Superman are St. Louis to Albert Pujols. It's like he's having a better offensive season this year than he had in his entire time with the Angels, which has got to make you feel just great as an Angels fan. But it's amazing.

He is hitting better than he did since he was on the Cardinals last time. I just did not see this happening. He started the season hitting okay, and then he slumped. I remember before he went on this tear, looking at his numbers, and at some point, like he had slipped to below average again, I think. And it was like, okay, well, that was kind of fun. That was nice. He gave us some memories. And now he's sort of running out of steam. And then, phew, man, he's been the best hitter in baseball again. Just like, it's especially great because it's been so long since he's been a great hitter in baseball again just like it's especially great because it's been so long right since he's been a great hitter right that's the thing like he's had a unique career really in terms of just like how long he has stuck around and not been a very good player or a good player at all after being basically the best player in baseball over a long period. Like he's just had an extraordinarily long tail to his career during which like a whole new generation of baseball fans has come of age and has gotten to know the older Albert

Pujols, the post St. Louis Albert Pujols. And so what made him so special was probably lost on that whole generation. And they just looked at the numbers and thought, this guy, this guy did that? Really? I have not seen that at all. Yeah. But man, just so much fun. And especially with Wainwright and Molina and the whole 40-something trio and those guys just riding off into the sunset potentially together. Some great storylines in the postseason this year. Teams that have never won a World Series. Teams that have a bunch of old guys going back for one last ride. I'm really kind of looking forward to the playoffs this year.

But first, I'm hoping that Albert Pbert racks up a few more dingers yeah i think that we have talked about this before that one of the the great tragedies of his tenure with the angels was that there was this generation of fans who like like really he was really good like you guys used to get amped for pools and it made you know it made it sad for us because it made us feel old. You know, we had this like, it felt like a more meaningful gap in time even than it was because of how dramatic the fall had been. Right. And so now I can, we can say to the youths, you know, this is what we meant. Like, yeah, this is what he did.

And he did it for so long. Yep. And then he didn't, again, for so long. But here it is. You're not young anymore either. Now you're old because you know good pool holes. It's like a marker. It's like when you can rent a car without paying extra for insurance or buy cocktails.

I mean, you wouldn't know about that, but it is a thing that happens. Yes. The other one was actually Mike Trout. You guessed it. So I was going to give you Mike Trout's updated stats because I had mentioned the other day that at that point, he had hit about as well since coming off the IL as he had prior to going on it. And I said that was encouraging. Well, now he's hit a whole lot better since coming off the IL. He's hit homers in six straight games or at least six straight games he has played in.

He got Sunday's day off, which is interesting. Like give a guy a day off when he's hitting a home run every day. That's a bold move. But I guess they're being careful with his health. Anyway, he's up to a 209 WRC plus since his return. And he was at 168, I believe, before he went on the IL. So again, he's not like permanently out of the woods with this thing. But the fear that his career would just be over, that he would never be the same player again.

He has certainly been the same player since he returned. So I just hope that he's able to maintain this, that he can stay healthy for the rest of this season, do whatever he needs to do over the offseason to take care of this lingering issue and go into next year healthy. But really, when he's been on the field this year, he's been as good as ever. I mean, Mike Trout has declined in the sense that he's not as durable as he once was. But when he's in the lineup, he is still very much Mike Trout. There is basically no one better at baseball than Mike Trout when he is playing. It's just a matter of how often he's playing. Well, he did have that long slump, Ben. Right before he went on the I.L. And I think he said or acknowledged that that issue was bothering him at that time. So he was somewhat hampered by it at that point. So we saw that stretch. But yeah, it was it was really nice you know over the weekend

jay jaffe was like i think it's time to write about mike trout and like in a good way and i was like yeah it is you're right jay got a good sense for topic selection that jay jaffe because you know who's good at baseball right now pretty cool yeah and the last little streak i wanted to give you so i mentioned last time that the White Sox had been playing well in the absence of Tony La Russa. They were seven and three to that point under interim manager Miguel Cairo. They took two out of three from Oakland over the weekend. So they're now nine and four. Now, La Russa was present at the Sunday game in Oakland because the A's were honoring Dave Stewart and La Russa was well enough to

fly out there just as an observer. Yeah, reportedly he got a pacemaker. He says that he is fine and feeling good and just hasn't been completely cleared to return to managing, although he was cleared to travel. So he was on hand for his team's game on Sunday, and he said, though La Russa has been cleared to travel, he's not sure if he'll be at every White Sox game while he recovers, insisting he doesn't want to be a distraction as the Sox continue their playoff push. But there may be an element of good old-fashioned superstition involved as well. And remember I mentioned last time that baseball superstition, if the White Sox keep winning without him, then it might actually be harder for him to come back, even if he is physically able to,

because you just don't want to change anything. Well, he said on Sunday, if we lose today, I won't get on the team plane. You think I'm kidding? I'll get a car and then I'm going to drive back slowly. Well, they did lose. I did not hear whether he actually drove back. I hope not. But that was somewhat interesting. But what really propelled me to bring this up, Elvis Andrews is on the White Sox now. Yeah. Now, we talked about Elvis Andrews when he was still on the A's. Yes. And there was a bit of a controversy that came up because he had a vesting option and the A's pretty transparently just stopped starting him and then released him altogether, which really only could have been because they did not want that vesting

option to vest. It was a playing time, plate appearance based option. And clearly they just did not want to give him more money because they are the Oakland A's. Even though, as we noted, to that point, he had been, I think, the second most valuable Oakland Athletic on the season. Or at least the second most valuable who was still on the team behind Sean Murphy. So I thought it was quite embarrassing for them to not play him and then to also release him. And he wasn't thrilled about it either. I don't know whether any grievance actually happened or whether it might still. But, you know, he had some comments at the time.

He was clearly upset about not starting because his play justified a starting role, particularly on that team. Right. And it really was like one of the more transparently non-competitive moves that the A's have made and they've made many yeah I was gonna say the list isn't short yeah it's hard to narrow that down but just deciding yeah we're not gonna play one of our best players who is under contract and on our team because we just don't want this option to be triggered. That was really pretty bad, even by A standards, I think. And since the White Sox picked up Alves Andres, presumably for the league minimum when he was just out there for anyone to have, he has hit 293, 337, 511 in almost 100 plate appearances.

He's been excellent. You know, we got an email from someone who wondered, like, well, why would he even just be available for the league minimum? Why wouldn't there be a bidding war for Elvis Andrus? And at the time I noted, you know, there aren't really any contenders who are projected to have worse shortstops than Elvis Andrus over the rest of the season other than the White Sox who were without Tim Anderson. Even though Andrus had had a bounce back season, his projections weren't great. There weren't any teams that had very obvious vacancies where their shortstop solutions were way worse than you would have projected Elvis Andrus to be. So it made some sense to me that there wasn't a huge bidding war for him.

There wasn't as far as I know. But he has a 141 WRC plus for the White Sox over that period. And on Saturday, he had a huge game-winning hit for the White Sox against the Ace, his former team, which just, you know, I don't know if he felt like that was payback or karma or anything but personally i did because i got invested in his whole plight here so that was appropriate i think that that he kind of drove the nail in the coffin on the ace on that day you know it's just the funny thing about baseball is that good teams lose when they should win and bad teams win when they should lose. And there's all this variance game to game between what you might expect and what actually ends up happening.

And that's just baseball, right? There's no narrative thrust to that necessarily, except when you cut a guy so that you don't have to pay his vesting option. And then it stops being random variants and starts to feel kind of like justice, you know? Yep. Yep. And furthermore, so since the day that the A's released Andrus, that was August 17th. So I went to the Fangraph Splits leaderboard. I looked at shortstop offensive production since August 17th by team. At the top of the list, you have Toronto with Beau Bichette, who has been on fire lately. So Toronto shortstops over that span have hit 374, 426, 687. That's a 216 WRC plus, and that is mostly Bichette.

187. That's a 216 WRC plus, and that is mostly Bichette. That's the hottest hitting shortstop team, the coldest hitting shortstop team since Alessandris was released by the Oakland A's. Guess who? It's the Oakland A's. Is it the Oakland A's? It sure is the Oakland A's. They have hit

179, 198, 214 over that span. That's a 17 WRC plus. 17. Seems bad. That's a 17 WRC plus. 17. Seems bad. That does seem bad. That is primarily the rookie, Nick Allen, who is, I suppose, the heir apparent to that

position. And the only defensible case for playing Andrew Celeste was we just want to see the kid. We want to give the kid more playing time. Well, that's what the kid has done with the playing time thus far. So 17 WRC plus while Elvis Andrus has posted a 141. So just saying, things are coming home to roost. What comes home to roost? Chickens? Chickens. Yeah. So that's what has come home to roost for the Okanays lately.

Yeah. Chickens do come home to roost. I would imagine that most birds probably come home to roost for the Okanese lately? Yeah, chickens do come home to roost. I would imagine that most birds probably come home to roost. I haven't made a study of it. I don't know a lot about birds, but I would imagine that you could pick the fowl of your choice and probably have a home roosting habits. But yeah, whatever bird you're picking, I think that it has taken up residence along with the feral cats. Isn't there a possum now too?

Aren't there possums? Yep. Or at least one possum. There's a press box possum. Probably not anymore. I bet they kind of took care of that. They may have addressed that. Hopefully.

Maybe they just released them. Maybe the possum had a vesting option too. To follow up on another thing that we discussed recently, didn't we say or you say that someone should inspect James Karanchak's hair? I sure did. And you know what? Somebody did. Yeah. So twins manager Rocco Baldelli was evidently listening to the podcast or reaching the same conclusion independently.

I mean, look, I like to be right about things. was evidently listening to the podcast or reaching the same conclusion independently. I mean, look, I like to be right about things. That is one of my better known attributes. But I don't think that it takes special pointing out or clairvoyance to the pod to know, like, that guy's touching his hair every time he goes to pitch. So maybe someone should root around in there. See what's, you know,

does he have a family of field mice that he's concerned about? Or is he trying to reach for some goop? So on Friday night, umpire Ted Barrett at the prompting of twins manager Rocco Baldelli went out there and he really ran his hands through the locks, the luscious locks of Cleveland reliever James Karinczak. To his credit, I mean, you know, it was pretty sensual. Yeah. It was not just a cursory inspection. It was intimate. Yeah.

It looked like he was inspecting for lice, possibly, or maybe it was more of like a styling thing. Like he had just gotten his hair cut and it's, you know, your barber, your stylist runs their hand through your hair. Oh, to make sure it's like everything's yeah laying flat or right just to spruce it up before they give you the little mirror in the back to to confirm that it's okay or ask you if you'd like some product or whatever it is but it was pretty thorough i would say and ultimately i suppose karen check And ultimately, I suppose Karinczak passed the inspection because there was no sticky stuff detected. Right. Now, he was very much going to his hair after almost every pitch, it seemed like. And Ben Clemens wrote about this for FanCrafts.

I mean, highly suspicious, we might say. Very suspicious. Not just based on the constant hair touching, but also the spin and the spin to velocity ratio, which really cratered for Karinczak last year when the spin sticky stuff ban went into effect and his effectiveness cratered too. And then he was demoted to the minors. We talked about it at the time. Well, he's been back and his spin to velocity ratio is almost back to where it was last year. We talked about how that's really happened league wide, how spin and perhaps sticky stuff seemed to be back. And with Karachak specifically, his numbers are more or less back where they were. He's maybe not quite peak Karachak, but he has been highly effective and has also been really spinning it and also been

going to his hair an awful lot. So Baldelli finally decided enough is enough. I'm going to call for an inspection. And either he is innocent or he's hiding the goop so well in the hair that even this inspection could not turn it off. What's your confidence level that you would be able to detect sticky stuff in James Karinczak's hair if there were sticky stuff there? Because there's a lot of hair there. Yeah. And he's sweaty, like naturally sweaty. So can you distinguish between...

He's naturally sweaty. Yeah. So can you distinguish between natural and unnatural sweat or stick in hair i don't know either yeah i'm not sure and i'm curious like what guidance the umps are given around this like are they you know do they come in to a room is it like when um when it's you know it's halloween and you stick your fingers in something you can't see and they're like, it's eyeballs and it's just peeled grapes. But you don't know that necessarily. It could be eyeballs.

What do you know about eyeballs? So do they get an opportunity to touch different gooey substances? Yeah, I wonder. And be like, well, this is spider tech and this is pine tar and this is this mixed with that at this percentage of that versus this you know i i don't know i don't know how much confidence i would have i mean it does seem as if you would maybe want there to be some amount of regular testing of these things just because you know like what if you have what if you are naturally sweaty you know some people sweat more than other people.

Now, sweat on its own. I know when sweat is mixed with rosin, then you can get tacked. But like just sweat. Yeah, and he's doing that too. It seems like he's going to the rosin bag after every hair touch too. Oh, it sure does. It sure does seem like that, doesn't it? Which is legal.

You're allowed to do that. Yeah, you are allowed to do that. I think that that is important to know but i do wonder because like you wouldn't want just sweat because famously if you have if it's just sweat it can make things hard to grab so you wouldn't want just that i don't know as a person who has like styled her hair and put various you know styling products in it i think i could probably differentiate between like just sweat and something else so i know that when guys were loading up the ball really loading up the ball with spider tack like it wasn't just spider tack because if you put spider tack in your

hair and then try to get it out of there i think you would end up with kind of a bald spot right yeah like is anyone i guess the question is, in addition to the scalp massage, we need a lifting of the hair to find the bald spot that would give away that Karen Shack is indeed loading up the ball with some substance. I mean, I don't know the answer. I don't want to further impugn him,

but it does seem, even given the other aspects of his repertoire which make him hard to hit and has been noted like it's not as if he was purely a creation of sticky stuff right like he has a really intense delivery that's hard to time and his stuff moves a lot still and you know like it's like i get i get that there's other stuff going on but it does seem strange that he would be able to sort of have this uptick in spin almost back to pre-enforcement levels without some kind of assistance it's not impossible i don't want to like be more certain than i am but you know of all the explanations, it doesn't strike me as like the most likely. Yeah. As I recall, when they implemented the inspections and the ban

last year, just midstream, I think one of the rationales for not distinguishing between substances and saying, well, this type of sticky stuff is banned and that type is not, is that they did not want to impose that burden on umpires, that they did not want to force umpires who had not really trained for this to distinguish between sticky substances. They did not want to place the burden on them of having to distinguish in real time between, oh, this is one of the worst sticky substances and this is one of the not so bad, not so sticky substances. Yeah. So they just said they're all banned except for rosin and some sweat.

And you can't even do rosin and sweat, right? Wasn't there? Was that part of it? Like you weren't even supposed to mix those two things, which was weird because like how do you even avoid mixing those things? Right. Anyway, I think it would be a lot to ask of an umpire to distinguish between sweat and something else sticky that is more than sweat

or to distinguish between types of sticky substance so right i think rocco baldelli was justified in calling for an inspection here and maybe he was frustrated that no sticky substance was detected. But it's not conclusive, I guess, that it wasn't actually there. Or, you know, he could have been hiding it somewhere else, I suppose. And maybe the hair touch was just a misdirect. But... Oh, yeah. Ooh, I like that as a theory. I mean, again, there might be innocent explanations here, but the combination of just how often he is going there with the uptick and spin makes you think that it's something that if I were an opposing manager, I would keep an eye on. I know that Terry Francona took exception to the timing,

the timing of the inspection. He was careful to say not the inspection itself, but when, because he was in the middle of an at-bat. I don't know. If you think a guy's going back there and really gooping it up, it's a close race that they're in, in that AL Central. You got to press your advantages. People should check out Ben's piece.

I know that Ben linked to a piece that we had previously discussed on this pod by Rob Arthur about the uptick and spin. So check that out, too. But I don't know, James. It looks like something fishy is going on. Do you have a bald spot? Who could say? Yeah.

Well, if he does, it's well hidden because there's an awful lot of hair. There's so much hair. Yeah. I mean, I feel in some ways like I can relate to, you know, sometimes when you have all that hair, because like I have a lot of hair. And sometimes you're like, I have to get this hair off my neck. It's so hot. You know, every time I step outside here in Arizona, I'm like, get my neck. But, you know, I'm not loading up a baseball with goop.

So that's maybe where the comparison stops. Right. I was going to say speaking of close races, but actually this is not a close race at all. However, it is a close thing deciding whether a team has clinched or not. And it's more complicated than ever, really, with extra rounds of postseason and 12 teams. And so the Dodgers were said to have clinched a playoff spot. The Dodgers were said to have clinched a playoff spot, and they sort of celebrated clinching a playoff spot, a wildcard spot specifically, although they're quite close to clinching an NL West title as well. But they beat the Padres 11-2 on Sunday, and so MLB said that they had clinched, that they were the first team to secure a postseason berth. But it turns out they hadn't actually clinched.

So MLB admitted that it had miscalculated. There was an internal error in determining the Dodgers' postseason clinching scenarios. I'm reading from ESPN here, meaning Los Angeles still has a magic number of one to secure a playoff spot as of Monday morning and as we speak on Monday afternoon. So MLB failed to account for a potential scenario in which the Padres, who are 77 and 64, overtake the Dodgers for the NL West title and Los Angeles finishes in a three-way tie at 96 and 66 with the Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee would win the NL Central in that scenario, while St. Louis would win the wildcard tiebreaker with Los

Angeles based on head-to-head results this season. So they had to retract the clinch. They had to say that in this extremely unlikely scenario, it was actually still possible for the Dodgers to miss the playoffs. And so now they are going for the clinch again on Monday against the Diamondbacks, and they could also clinch the division as early as Tuesday. So when MLB said that they had clinched, they were using the Dodgers' 4-3 record against the Brewers as a head-to-head tiebreaker, but they were not factoring in the possibility of a three way tie. So in order for this scenario to happen, the Dodgers would have to lose their last 23 straight games while the Brewers would need to

win their last 21 straight games in order for both clubs to finish with the same record. So I don't think that's going to happen. But they did jump the gun on celebrating the clinch. And there was a postgame toast that manager Dave Roberts led with sparkling wine. So I guess it was a somewhat restrained clinch, which is appropriate. I think if you're the Dodgers, act like you've been there before because they are there every year yeah because you've been there quite a bit yeah and it's not even the division title clinch it's just a wild card clinch so they had a nice little refined sip and see sort of situation here with the sparkling wine they got caps with the post season logo so what do you do if you have a false start on the clinching and then you technically officially clinch the following day or in a future game? Do you do the wine and the toast and the postseason caps again? Do you take back the postseason caps and say, sorry, too soon. You didn't quite clinch yet. What do you do in this situation? Oh, I imagine if you're a baseball player, you definitely take the caps back.

You chill some news. Did they make a point of saying sparkling wine instead of champagne? Yeah, the story, the CSPN story says sparkling wine. So they didn't have champagne on hand, and so they had to default to sparkling wine. I don't know. If it's not from the champagne region i'm fine but given how superstitious ball players tend to be even ones who play for organizations with as strong an analytical bent as the the dodgers have i think you take the hats back you put new

sparkling wine and or champagne on ice and maybe some Martinelli's for those who don't want to imbibe and then you wait and then you do it again because you don't want to I think especially as if you're a team like the Dodgers where you you very frequently are in the playoffs deep into the playoffs often you don't want to like mess around and mess around and fly too close to the sun on wax wings. You got to take this stuff seriously every single time, lest you invite some angry baseball god to try to use you as a parable. You don't want to be a parable. You want to be a World Series champion.

So yeah, I think you just do the whole thing again. Plus, I tend to be of the mind that if you have an excuse to drink sparkling wine like why not do it again that's not unpleasant it's not like you're you know getting whipped creamed in the face or something you're just getting did they they didn't do like to shake up the bottle and spray each other stuff with it or anything like that doesn't sound like okay because that positive that would be the only circumstance where i might say let's alter our our typical trajectory because like you should really only make your clubhouse folks clean that up the one time. That's just disrespectful of other people's frequent contact with sticky stuff, speaking of, right? Because once you get champagne on the floor, it's sticky for at least a week so yeah i would do i would do the whole thing again i understand the circumstances that led up to this miscalculation on the part of mlb now that you have described them but it doesn't seem great that the that the system is so complicated that the league itself can goof that

stuff up right you know like i don't think that this actually changes our perception of the expanded format. We all have our takes and perceptions of it, but it's the kind of Eastern time by Reddit user Medical420 who posted that the Dodgers had not actually clinched for the very reason that they had not actually clinched. MLB, as far as I know, did not cite this Reddit user. I think they should because I guess it's possible that they had independently discovered their error, but it seems likely to me that they probably saw it because of this popular post on the baseball subreddit. And if so, I think they should have reddit user medical 420 had it first really i mean it's only right that you issue the correction there and your sources yeah so kudos to to medical 420 for keeping mlb on its toes but yes the mlb has to be fact-checked by

the baseball subreddit maybe not not the best, but amusing. I mean, congrats to you, Medical420, both on your discovery and for getting to use the shorter line at the dispensary. I also think that if you're the Dodgers, like just in general, there might be too many clinching celebrations that happen now. I think there's been a bit of clinch creep. Clinch creep. That's hard to say. Yeah. There's just so many opportunities to clinch something or celebrate something now, which

they're going to be even more because there's an extra round of playoffs. Although I guess if you're the Dodgers, you don't celebrate having a bye necessarily in the first round. But do the Dodgers celebrate when they clinch the playoff spot and then when they clinch the division a day or two later? Are those separate clinching celebrations? And do you do spraying some sort of beverage every time you advance? Like, I don't know.

I feel like with the Dodgers specifically, I doubt that they were able to muster much excitement for the clinching a wildcard spot because first of all, they win the division basically every year. I guess they did not actually win the division last year, but they win or make the playoffs every year. And so it's no big deal to the Dodgers to clinch a wildcard spot or, frankly, even to win a division at this point. I mean, it's still a great accomplishment and they should not just take it for granted. It's special. You should celebrate that even if you've done it a billion times in a row. But they have done it a billion times in a row. So at least the Dodgers have been around that team for a while.

I doubt they're getting super amped about, OK, we cannot miss the playoffs now, especially because they've had such a huge lead in the division for so long. There was never any suspense. If it came down to the last week of the season or something, sure. And if you falsely believed that you had clinched a day early and it was really coming down to the wire and it was like the last weekend of the season or something, I'd be all for celebrating twice because you did it and it was close and maybe it was even closer than you thought. But when it's been predestined basically for months at this point, I mean, you know, almost since opening day, you could say that the Dodgers were going to make the playoffs. But clearly for quite a while, the question has been more, are they going to win more games than any team has ever won? That's been the question more so than are they going to sneak into the playoffs? So I don't know what the heart

rates were in the Dodgers clubhouse when they're celebrating this. Probably not that elevated, I would imagine. So I don't know. I feel like we need to do something to distinguish these occasions. And maybe the sparkling wine was one way to do that. Like I've heard Joe Pesnitsky and Mike Schur talk on the podcast about maybe there should be a different beverage that you celebrate with for each round or each time you clinch a different thing or advance in the playoffs. You should ramp up to champagne. So champagne should be the ultimate celebration. You have to start with Bud Light and then you get to work your way up to champagne. It seems like a sponsorship. I think they said start with tap water.

Oh, come on now. Yeah, no, you could start higher than that, I guess. You could start with something carbonated. It could be sparkling water at least, let's say. Perhaps you could start with the official cerveza of Major League Baseball. Exactly. Yeah, you could do the official beer, the official cerveza. Yeah, you could work your way through the official beverages. But that'd be kind of cool if there was a different beverage for each time that you could clinch. I'm just saying, let's say the Dodgers win the World Series this

year. You got potential celebrations after you clinched a wildcard berth, after you clinched the division, after you win the first round, after you win the pennant, after you win the World Series. We're talking a handful of clinching celebrations here. So I guess it makes sense that they did not start with the champagne. You got to build up to that, right? And I don't even know if they did the spraying. You should probably build up to that right and i don't even know if they did the spraying you should probably build up to the spraying as well huh i think that i'm i'm

trying to see if i'm going to articulate this um as precisely as i mean to i think that if you're a team like the dodgers like your post-season celebration should be when you clinch the highest possible thing you can have heading into the postseason. If you're the Dodgers and you're firmly in command of your division lead, you should wait until you win the division to have a postseason celebration. If you're the Marinersers once you've secured a playoff spot you should have a crazy party yes you riot you turn over cars no don't do that but yeah i think having a sense of like what is the highest thing we can achieve heading into october let's clinch when that has happened and then like if you get passed up you know if something wild were to happen and the Dodgers were to lose

the NL West, then you don't feel silly for having already celebrated because you're like, oh, I'm in more of a dogfight than I appreciated. So I think you should wait. I think you're right that there might be postseason creep, although there are only so many teams where this is really a problem because there aren't a ton of teams like the Dodgers where their postseason presence is considered to be something automatic at this point. So I don't know that we really have to worry about it with, I don't know. Last year, if I had been the Giants, for instance,

I probably would have celebrated prematurely because I wouldn't have thought, oh, I'm going to win. Although that division kind of came down to the bitter end for them, didn't it? So, you know, maybe they didn't celebrate all that prematurely, but you'd know what I'm trying to say. Yeah. Look, maybe you could say that you should seize any opportunity you have to celebrate something. Sure.

Life isn't fair. Sad things happen. Yeah. If things are going well for you, then celebrate it. What's the worst thing that could happen? You celebrate too much. You're too happy. Too many occasions. shrub this and that. I still don't know about that. I don't know if I understand what a shrub is, but I'm given to understand that they are delicious. So I think that, you know, there should be a wide variety of options and you should celebrate with whatever strikes you as celebratory. You know, like for instance, if Baltimore manages to sneak into a wild card, I think they should celebrate the instant that happens, right? Houston, you should wait until you've clinched the division because you're gonna, right?

Like, it's not a given, but it's pretty close to being a given at this point. Yeah, it's like the dress for the job you want, not the job you have. I don't know if that's actually good advice, but like celebrate for the postseason berth you want, right? Not the one you have if those things are different. So I guess everyone wants to win the division title. But some teams, they set their sights on a wildcard berth because that's really the only option available to them. So if you're the Dodgers, you don't really like what are you celebrating? Like, yes, we could lose every game for the rest of the season and we would still squeak into a wildcard spot. That's not what they want to happen. They want to win the division and

they expect to win the division. So on the one hand, yeah, okay, making the playoffs by any means, it's an accomplishment even in a 12-team playoff format, but that's not the way that you want to get in. So maybe just wait until you have sealed the way that you want to get in. So maybe just wait until you have sealed the way that you want to get in. Yeah. All right. Speaking of the Dodgers, by the way, I want to mention they have done this despite the fact that Cody Bellinger is still broken, basically, like less broken than last year, both physically and performance wise.

But he has a 79 WRC plus on the season. Now, that is a big improvement over the 47 from last year. That's also bad. Different kind of bad, but bad. Right. He is, as far as anyone knows, healthy is the difference. Whereas last year you could kind of write it off like 2020, he wasn't great, but he was still an above average hitter and whatever. It's 2020. It's a short season. He had a 245 BABIP. You don't think that's real coming off the 2019 MVP year. Then last year, he has a whole succession of injuries and there was just never any point where you could feel confident that he was completely physically healthy and 100 percent. And then he looked pretty good in the postseason and you thought, OK, maybe he'll be back. He'll be the good Bellinger again. And no, he has not. He looked like that early on in the season, but it just hasn't kept up. And the start of 2020, 245, 196, 242 for a guy with some speed. That is wild because he was a 300 BABIP guy his first few years in the majors. And boy, he's got like Pujols-esque, like some of the worst Babbitts ever if he had kept this up, I mean, over the past few years, which I don't know if that is a product of not hitting the ball quite as hard or just

pulling the ball more predictably or what. I haven't looked into the splits. I guess it's partly that he hits a ton of pop-ups, which are basically automatic outs. So that'll get you a low Babbitt. I guess that's part of it. Although, I don't know. It's just, it's not great. Like he is still a very good defensive player in center. So he's still playable pretty much. But like if it were anyone else, you would think change of scenery candidate maybe.

Except that this is the Dodgers. And so like the Dodgers are the team that you would identify as the change of scenery for a struggling hitter, right? One to fix someone. Yeah. So if the Dodgers can't fix him, I mean – It seems bad. It seems bad. I guess it's possible that despite being great at hitter development seemingly,

they might have some sort of weakness when it comes to Cody Bellinger or like maybe he's not receptive to input from them because they're his original team and he was an MVP for them and everything. So I guess he could still be a change of scenery candidate. But really, if he can't be fixed with the Dodgers, that does not bode well. And it's one of the most shocking career arcs for someone who started as well as he did to be down in the dumps the way that he is. And they've had guys like Muncie and Turner and players who had slow starts and you wondered whether they had anything left and they have turned it on. And Belger just has not. He's just kind of an out now. Yeah. You might've been on paternity leave last year when I asked this

question. So if it doesn't sound familiar to you, that's why. You were in the haze of having a new baby. But I remember at one point last year, I was like, is Cody Bellinger a non-tender candidate? And I felt like I was being shocking and controversial. And now I'm like, I think Cody Bellinger is just a non-tender candidate. Because he's still going to make significant money in ARB. So I do find it funny, though, that you said, it's amazing they're doing this despite Cody Bellinger being bad.

And like, yeah, but also, Ben, here's some facts about the Dodgers for you. So this is with a minimum of 400 played appearances. Freddie Freeman has a 158 WRC+. Mookie Betts has a 152. Trey Turner, 134. Will Smith, 129. Gavin Lux, 126. Justin Turner, 124. He really turned 129. Gavin Lux, 126. Justin Turner, 124.

He really turned it on after a very slow start. And Max Muncy's at a 104, but I still think of Max Muncy as a little bit hurt. So, and he's been much better of late. So, yes, but also, oh my god, the Dodgers. Yeah. They're just really stacked.

They're just really, really very stacked. You just have to wonder, like, is he still hurt in some way? Or did one of those injuries, like, hamper his mechanics in some way that has not been easy to correct? It's just, man, it's not how I expected things to go. It's concerning. And I think that the part of it that has made me the most sort of nervous on his behalf, because he's officially like moved into that segment of the player population where i'm like buddy like i want

better things for you than this and i don't know man is that like even in seasons where he has had like a terrific performance and his like top line numbers are great like he has had stretches where you're like huh breaking ball recognition is just not there for you and so the fact that he has had that even at times when he has gone good and look there are plenty of guys who have like a bad stretch for a while and they're great again it doesn't matter but it's like maybe this was just always in you and then something happened with the injury and you couldn't adjust back like sometimes guys just can't do that and it's really a shame because he was literally the mvp yep remember when cody villinger was the mvp i do it wasn't that long

it wasn't that long ago i would just like to point out for all of the Dodger fans listening to this who are somehow fixated on the fact that I have cited Max Muncy's season long WRC plus. I would like to note that he had a 149 in August and a 198 so far in September. So it's going good for Max Muncy right now. And yeah, that's exciting. But it has not rubbed off on Cody Bellinger, which is sad for him. Yeah. Friend of the show, Eric Stephen of True Blue LA, he tweeted on Sunday, beginning June 30th, the day Padre starter Joe Musgrove said of Justin Turner, when he's in the box, I don't feel like he's a huge threat. Turner is hitting 371, 440, 616 with eight homers and 12 doubles in 43 games. The only higher OPS in MLB during that time is by Aaron Judge. So I like the idea that it's just driven by spite, by petty desire to prove Joe Musgrove wrong that Justin Turner has turned it on. I know that's not what Eric is saying. It is just a fun little coincidence.

Turner has turned it on. I know that's not what Eric is saying. It is just a fun little coincidence. But yeah, he looked old and slow and maybe like he was losing it at the start of the season and he's bounced back to being one of the best hitters in baseball. Not that the Dodgers needed the help. Right. Wait, did I say Justin Turner when I meant to talk about- No, you did not. You said Muncie. I was like, oh no, now I'm really going to get emails. No, no, I understand. In addition, Justin Turner. Gotcha. I'm really going to get emails. No, no, I understand. In addition, Justin Turner. Gotcha. I'm picking up what you're putting down.

As I was looking at Bellinger's 2019, it was making me think about Edwin Diaz's 2019 because that was in its own way as confounding as Bellinger's recent trajectory has been. And I remember potting about this then because that was such a mystifying season. So look, Edwin Diaz is back to being unhittable, right? And he has the entrance song and the whole thing. And he has a 1.5 ERA and his FIP is even lower than that. He has a 112 FIP on the year. So basically, Bob Gibson's 1968 ERA is what the deserved performance of Edwin Diaz is essentially this season. So he's been unbelievable and lights out and probably even better than he was in his best season in Seattle at this point. He's been amazing. So that's kind of cool. But it makes me even more confused about what happened in 2019, because the weird thing about 2019 was that he was still striking out tons of guys.

per nine innings than he had the year before when he'd been totally dominant, I guess not on a percentage basis, but he was still striking out almost 40% of the hitters he faced and had a 30% or higher K minus BB rate. He still peripherally was really good at least strikeout and walk-wise, except for the fact that he gave up 2.3 home runs per nine innings. He was just an absolute gopher factory. And it was so weird. He had a 377 BABIP that year. He had a 27% home run per fly ball rate, which is double his career rate, essentially. It was so weird. He was still throwing hard. He was still missing tons of bats. And yet somehow he kept serving up all these home run pitches too. And so he had a 5.59 ERA that year.

He was blowing tons of saves. And I just, I could not make sense of that season at the time. And now that that season is sandwiched between two sub-two ERA seasons with this further sub-two ERA season this year, it's like, what was going on that year? Was he actually worse or was that just like the worst run of luck of all time? Like, what was happening? I mean, his peripherals were worse that year because of the homers. But if you look at like his ex-fip or his expected ERA, those were still pretty good. Not quite as good as they have been in other years, but not bad. So I look back at that year when he's like a replacement

level pitcher who is still striking out tons of hitters and yet just serving up dingers with great regularity. And I do not know what to make of that season. I guess it's possible that his command was just a little off at certain times and that's what did it. But it didn't make sense to me then, and it makes even less sense to me in retrospect seeing what he's done since. Yeah, it's a good reminder that your reaction to who has won a trade can fluctuate wildly season to season. Because I remember at the time being like, oh, no, the Mets sure Mets that up.

And now I'm like, I don't know if they did, though. I think it ended up being fine because really what it cost them was money. And a prospector didn't end up being that good. What? All right. Let's do maybe an email or two i i had actually one follow-up or perhaps two follow-ups to things that we talked about last week so the saga of the twins consulting carl's korea for his input on trade deadline moves so we got an email from Jscape2000, listener, Patreon supporter, who says, listening to you talk about Correa, isn't they asked me fodder for staying?

Yeah. No hometown discount, but makes sense to me in a LeBron James saying, we want your input, right? Making him feel like part of the team, like he has some voice on the future direction of the team. And maybe that would make him more likely to stay. Or at least that could be the thinking. So, yeah, that's true. I find that convincing. I mean, I don't know that it'll be more convincing than, you know, a truck full of money. But it might be among the things that are convincing.

So, yeah. Yep, good point. And another follow-up from Milner in Indianapolis who said, I think we may have missed something important by scoffing at the increased base size and its effect on base stealing specifically. He notes, while the increased base size will almost imperceptibly shorten the distance between bases, I do think it will help base runners by providing a larger target for the runner to touch. As base runners have become increasingly good at getting to bases while avoiding tags, giving them an extra three inches per side or 99 square inches total makes it more difficult for defenders to tag them out. It's like increasing the size of a goal in hockey.

The defender now has to cover more ground. It might not make a huge difference, but I can imagine sliding wizards like Javier Baez, who's also a tagging wizard, will appreciate more space to maneuver toward the base. And he notes in Baez's case, he will have to work a little harder to tag runners out when he's on defense. So that's a good point, right? And I think, I forget whether I read this, but I think maybe the surface of the base is shaped a little differently too, to maybe make it more likely that you will safely touch the base instead of skidding off it in a way that could injure you. But maybe it's a little grippier too,

where you're less likely to slide off after having made contact with the base. But that's a good point that it's not just that they have shortened the base pass very slightly, but also they are presenting a bigger target for base runners and more ways to touch the base and evade a tag. Yeah, I find that persuasive as a potential benefit i still think that it would be useful for us to clarify a zone of of sort of safety over the bag to to prevent us from having to spend more time on like irritating replay reviews of a guy coming off temporarily but absent that like something toward being i don't know Spider-Man gripped to them. Seems like that's a good idea. Yeah.

Then again, we got another email from listener David in Riverhead, New York, who said 18-inch bases mean the batter runner will have one and a half inches less to run, but the first baseman will be three inches closer to the other infielders. So will 18-inch bases increase the rate of outs at first? Maybe infinitesimally. It will probably be pretty tough to tell. All right. And, you know, when we talked about the shift last week and I expressed my misgivings about it, I think it is important to note that in addition to all the other things we expressed there and just the uncertainty of whether it would make a huge difference to

actually ban the shift in terms of the effects that we might see given just the track record in the minors and sort of the uncertain evidence about how effective the infield shift specifically has been. Rob Arthur had an article at Baseball Prospectus on Monday where he essentially argued that this wouldn't make much of a difference because even though maybe it prevents four player outfields, there's still a lot of shifting and shading you can do in theory within the strictures of these new rules. So like, yeah, you have to have at least four infielders and you have to have two on either side. Mike Petriello of MLB.com had a thread about this the other day, and Mike's no big fan of this rule either, but he noted that there is still a little leeway. You can still do certain things. You can still move an outfielder in dramatically,

not all the way in necessarily, but you can. You could still have a five-player infield. Essentially, you just have to have a minimum of four infielders, at least two on either side. So you could bring in another outfielder if you wanted to. You could still kind of load up on one side. So it's really like you can't have a four-player outfield because you must have at least four infielders and you can't leave half of the infield to one player or no players because you have to have two on a side. But within those boundaries, you can still do some stuff. You can still play around a little. Just the fact that fielders have played deeper and outfielders specifically have played deeper lately and that they've shaded maybe more or better from pitch to pitch and player to player, that that has accounted for more of the BABIP decrease than just the infield overshift, the extreme overshift that will be banned by this rule. So I'm just saying there are still some ways to play with the space here.

I'm just saying there are still some ways to play with the space here. You're restricted in certain ways, but there will still be a little bit of variation from team to team. So that's kind of interesting. And, you know, he noted that it also changes the calculus for defense right now. People say if you go opposite field, they'll stop shifting, which isn't necessarily true. If you can turn Bryce Harper into a singles hitter, you do it 100% of the time. But if now it's an opening for an extra base hit, not a single, that changes a lot. Maybe you don't shift. So there's more risk reward. One person on Twitter who Mike quote tweeted said that they basically introduced true risk and reward into the shift

instead of banning it, which is one way to look at it. I'm still against it, to be clear, but it won't be totally uniform defense. They haven't completely taken the art or the science out of positioning. Yeah. I mean, I think that like anything else that is meant to sort of shift the game in a particular direction when it comes to the offensive environment it is probably useful for us to think of this as like i don't know fencing terms do you start with the parry and then they do a post you went to a private school aren't you supposed to know this yeah we didn't have fencing though we didn't have fencing, though. We didn't have fencing? Isn't that one of the only sports you have room for in Manhattan is fencing? You know, like, imagine I know fencing terms.

It's like you do the one fencing thing and then your opponent does the other fencing thing. And so I think it's probably useful for us to think about shifting the same way, although more clearly stated in what the actual terms, same way although more clearly stated in with the actual terms because surely even given the league's best efforts to counteract shifting and its effect on offense like teams are going to look at what the rules are and then they are going to figure out how they can within those confines still try to press an advantage and so i think that that like directionally some of this stuff is pointed the right way and maybe a touch more optimistic about some of it than like Rob is

but I think it would be naive to assume that we're not going to end up with some like unintended consequences we're going to be watching a game and go oh okay well you know now they can do that so that's the thing they're going to do yes I think the critique that they're still not necessarily addressing the idea that you want to somehow corral the pitchers more so than address what happens after the ball is put in play.

I know that they're hoping that there will be kind of a bank shot effect here where they just incentivize hitters to hit differently. But again, they're sort of presuming that a lot of this has to do with the hitter's approach more so than just the pitchers forcing that approach. And there's maybe a little bit of truth to that, but I don't know how much truth to that. Anyway, we got a couple emails just about things that they could have done instead, I guess, to address some of these supposed ills that these new rules changes will address. For instance, Brian said, in the past, I have been a supporter of moving the mound back to decrease strikeouts. I would still like to see that explored further, but I feel like I may be in the minority. I was thinking the other day about making the baseball slightly bigger. My thought was that the bigger baseball would be heavier and also have more surface area

to create drag. These could both decrease pitcher velocity and decrease the travel distance of the ball off the bat. A bigger baseball would also be easier to make contact with, even if just to foul it off. I have no idea if this has ever been discussed before as a possible solution. I also don't know what intended consequences this change would have. Would more surface area and more stitches cause more movement on breaking pitches? Would there be increased injury risk? Have you heard of this discussed or studied in the past? Am I not thinking of something obvious that would make this not work? I think I've heard this floated just because everything has been floated at some point.

Sure. I think he is essentially right that a bigger baseball would create more drag because it would have more surface area and it would not carry as well. I wouldn't be able to say what the effect that the stitches might have and the movement and all of that. And I guess that is maybe one reason why you wouldn't do this versus just the tempering with the ball. It's pretty serious business. As we have learned of late, when MLB has either changed the ball intentionally or had it changed unintentionally, just tiny changes in the ball really can You could argue whether that was a good idea to do that at this point, but they did intend to do that, and that has happened. I would argue that the effects have not been great in that we've had just less offense and the other offensive problems haven't necessarily fixed themselves. We just have the ball carrying less. have the ball carrying less, but they did set out to make the ball better and they did achieve that goal, which maybe gives you a bit of confidence that they could actually achieve whatever effect

that they intended if they were to make the ball bigger. But it is playing with fire a little bit. When you mess with the ball, when you mess with the strike zone, it is a great way to achieve some results because a small change to those things really can change big things about baseball and about the baseball. But it's dangerous, you know? And so you might say, well, it makes sense. Just go straight to the baseball. And why mess around around the margins here? We could just fix the baseball itself and govern the way that we want the game to be played that way. No muss, no fuss.

But it is a little scary, I think, to tamper with the thing that this sport is named after, the most central piece of equipment. So if there's sort of a more elegant way to achieve that goal without messing with the baseball and possibly courting some sort of disaster. You know, I don't know how big a deal is. Like pitchers can be pretty finicky about the ball and how it feels and understandably so. So if you were to actually change the size of the thing in a noticeable way, pitchers would probably have some notes about that.

Oh, yeah. way pitchers would probably have some notes about that oh yeah i mean like can you imagine how many even if they're all the same size some starter would just keep throwing them back being like no not that one no not that one no not that one no not that one i mean in some respects it would be it could be an opportunity right for the league to say like let's all come together and we're gonna have you you know lab league it we're gonna have you lab league this ball and find something that is sort of a nice middle point between the offensive environment we want and something you actually feel comfortable throwing but it would be you know the size of that baseball that just feels like big stuff to change and they know they'd be quirky even still

be able to use it as a comp for the toilet right you know never think about the knock-on effects of these things until it's too late and suddenly you don't know what size toilet flap to get or what a grape versus a grapefruit is you know we're just out here flying blind about fruit and baseballs. Yeah. Got to be careful when you mess with the ball. But I agree. Like it might have the intended effect, but then again, it might backfire horribly. And what would happen if you manufactured all of the balls and you put all your balls in that court, so to speak, or your balls in that basket?

They come home to roost. Yeah, right. Eggs in baskets, chickens roost. I guess those things go together. Birds in hand versus the bush. Yeah. You would definitely want to have a lab league situation, I think, before you change the ball in that sort of significant way. of significant way. I just saw in the baseball subreddit that if two baseball games in which Albert Pujols homered had not been rained out, he would actually have 699 now because in 2003 and

2008, he hit home runs in games that were rained out before the completion of five innings. And then they never made them up. Right. And now, of course, those would count and you would have just continued those games. They've changed the rain suspension rules. Yeah. So I guess there's precedent for this in that there used to be certain types of balls that were homers that are not now or that weren't homers that are now. Like balls that went fair past the foul pole but then landed foul used to be foul balls, I believe, at one point. And balls that bounced on the warning track and went over the fence, those used to be homers at one point.

So you could play this game with Babe Ruth and others as well. But even with Albert Pujols, who did not play like a century ago, they have changed the rules within his very long career in such a way that, you know, if they played the whole thing over with the current rules, maybe he'd have two more dingers and then he'd just need one more, which would be well within reach. Although three seems pretty within reach

the way that he's going lately anyway. All right. Also a question along these lines from Jscape2000, again, Patreon supporter. So we just talked about the ball. He says, we're spending so much energy on fixing the balls, but maybe we should fix the bats. He says, slimmer, more flexible or less flexible. I don't know. I know I've read about how unwieldy

Babe Ruth's bat was. Maybe we're due for another revolution there while we're moving second base and adding clocks. And Mike Z, listener, says, in listening to the recent discussion about what the effects of shrinking gloves would be, it reminded me of the different bats I used growing up. As I progressed through Little League and into high school ball, the rule regarding weight of the bats would change, but also the diameter. If I remember right, the under 10 leagues were allowed to use two and a quarter inch barrels. 10 to 14 could use two and three quarter�4-inch barrels, and over 14

would use 2-5⁄8-inch barrels. I could be remembering the ages wrong, but the idea of different barrel sizes is pretty commonly accepted and people don't think twice about it. What if we allow major leaguers to use bats slightly bigger in diameter? I don't think they would have a problem adjusting and, in theory, would help them make more contact with the absolutely nasty pitches we see today. One hesitation I had initially was that it would just produce more foul balls and we've got enough of those already. But the more I think about it, I think we would trade some foul balls for balls in play and some whiffs for fouls, which might end up in a net zero change in foul tips.

Has this idea been proposed before? I'm definitely in Ben's camp of trying to fix baseball without making an obtrusive on-the-field rule change. This, to me, would be similar to the pitcher limit, love the idea, in how little it would seem to fundamentally change the rules. I liken this to when the mound was lowered. Although not usually considered a piece of equipment for the pitchers, one could argue the mound is just that. Is it time to alter the hitter's equipment to give them back an edge? I guess this is why things are complicated. It's like when you talk about fixing baseball, even if we agree on what we mean by that and what we want baseball to look like, which people don't all agree about that, there are a zillion ways you could theoretically achieve that. So MLB has picked some ways. And yeah, you could make the ball bigger or make the bat bigger or any number of ways that in theory could work potentially, and all of them have some sort of risk or drawback. So what do you think of the idea of just changing the bats? Because as we speak,

the rulebook says the bat shall be a smooth round stick, not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood and no laminated or experimental bats shall be used in a professional game until the manufacturer has secured approval from the rules committee. And that's basically it when it comes to bat rules. There are also some rules about the cups at the end, the indentation and the bat handle diameter. But really, it wouldn't be. Did anyone know it was 2.61 inches if we just bumped that up a little bit? Would anyone notice? Probably not. Probably not. I mean, I think I would probably look to equipment before I would look to

positioning changes. I still think that you're probably getting the most bang for your buck by altering things on the pitching side to be more conducive to hitting than you necessarily are monkeying with the hitters equipment to do the other thing because it still doesn't you know it doesn't solve the problem of everybody like being able to throw 96 with a wipeout slider right like an improved quote-unquote bat doesn't change that piece of it right so i it wouldn't maybe be the first place that i would start but it probably would be a place that i would look at prior to messing with the rules and it seems like the sort of thing that you know you could probably simulate in controlled settings fairly well to get a sense of what the impact would be

so yeah and like we know that it makes that the bat obviously makes some amount of difference like i remember when they were doing the home run derby broadcast this year there was a lot of discussion about julio's bad and like how they had thought about what bat he should use and and then like he did julio stuff and some of that is that he's julio rodriguez right so like you know he's got a pretty wide margin of error around the bat i would imagine but even a a really good hitter like him thought here is a place where i can press potentially a small advantage so yeah yeah, it's probably worth looking at. I guess that like the thing, the other thing,

and I don't remember if we mentioned this when we were talking about the rule changes, but I know we talked about it when we were talking about their sort of experimentation with the rule changes in independent ball and in the minors, like try one thing at a time. You know, like try, if you're gonna try stuff with bats like do that and leave the other stuff constant i just have questions about the experimental design that

they are engaging with sometimes i feel like i'm in like my research methods class in grad school again yeah there has been more of an effort to tailor bats to players' strengths and really have sabermetric bat design. Sure. You know, Saris has written about this, that there are companies that at least purport to give you a slight edge, you know, working within the rules and the allowable specifications. looking for just the perfect length and weight and balance and dimensions just based on the individual hitter's swing done in sort of a scientific way. I can't vouch for how much of a difference that makes, but hitters are paying more attention to that. So it's not just Ichiro who has his special carrying case and treats his bats in a very particular way. More hitters are getting in these days. So there's that. But again, that is working within what's allowed.

And there's been variation in these things. I mean, it's been a while, I guess, since the bat rules have been changed or the major ones. But I'm reading this page here about in 1885, the National League made some changes to the bats. It was then legal to have 18 inches of the handle wrapped in twine and one side of the bat was allowed to be flat. So that's what they allowed for a period there. The American Association adopted this rule when they followed the same rules as the National League in 1887. In 1893, the bat was no longer allowed to be flat on one side, but was required to be round.

And the length was still limited to 42 inches. And the thickness of the thickest part was two and a half inches. And then the thickness was increased to two and three quarters inches in 1895 and hasn't really budged. But for a few years there, you could have kind of a flat bat on one side, which really helped with bunting. I bet. Yeah.

So not saying that we bring back flat bats, but- You're advocating for bunting. I get it. And sacrifice bunting in particular. Specifically, yeah. Yeah, you're like, look, I haven't seen enough of this lately. Let's get on it.

Really miss those sack bunts. Bring them back. But yeah, you can tamper a little bit and tinker with the bats. It has been done before. So it's not like, you know, from the day that the rules were laid down, bats have been exactly the same. And so they must remain the same forever. I think there's a little room to tinker with those and that might not be the worst idea.

You'd have to be careful because it's kind of like the whole cork bat debate where it's like, well, does this actually help? Because there's a trade-off where, well, if you have a heavier bat, then you can get more force behind your swing and impart more force to the bat. But also you might have to compromise on bat speed a bit and you might not be able to whip it around quite as quickly and you might not have as great control of the bat. And so there's the thought that maybe corking your bat doesn't actually help because, yeah, maybe you can swing a little faster, but you're swinging a lighter bat that is not actually delivering and transferring the same force to the ball. transferring the same force to the ball. So there's kind of a trade-off there between weight and just like how fast you can swing it and how much force you can supply as the hitter. So if you were just to make it heavier, let's say, then that might not actually help you because you

might have some sacrifice swinging-wise. So how much can you actually change it without changing the materials in some way? I don't know exactly. So there might be a bit of a limitation there, but maybe they could just make the bat bigger without actually being heavier and without compromising so much in how much force gets imparted to the ball. I don't know, probably. So something to consider, gets imparted to the ball. I don't know. Probably. So something to consider, I suppose. We were talking last time about what the new low stakes situation to boo players would be now that you won't be able to boo for just incessant pickoff attempt throws because those will be capped at two. Maybe it is what you just suggested, just the pitcher asking for a new ball over and over and tossing yeah balls out of play is unacceptable to them yeah although i i guess that's kind of at the empire's discretion

probably too right like you can't just do that indefinitely forever but like so is uh like so i mean i know this is about to get stricter but like at the moment like so is calling for time we still do that sometimes although that's about to change so yeah maybe this is the new maybe this is the new hotness when it comes to stuff that we want to boo so that we can you know fill the the discordant vibe hole that's weird we still have mound mound visits. I know that they're limited in quantity and also in length. Yeah. But you can still boo a mound visit

I guess for now. Alright, well let's wrap up with the past blast and this is the first solo past blast provided by new past blaster, Jacob Pomeranke. So Jacob, I teed him up last time when

we had Richard Hershberger on. There's been a changing of the guard, a passing of the baton here, and Jacob is taking us through the first half or so of the 20th century, at least, after Richard took us through the last half of the 19th century. So Jacob, as I mentioned, is Sabre's Director of Editorial Content, and he's also the chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. He is an expert on the Black Sox. So when we get to the 1919 period, he will have plenty to choose from for Pass Blast. But today we are talking about 1902, because this is episode 1902. And Jacob says the relevant newspaper quote is not very long or detailed, but it's the only contemporary mention of this really cool moment that's never happened before or since. So 1902, he says, is the first and only MLB matchup of two deaf players. MLB matchup of two deaf players.

So on May 16th, 1902, a historic meeting took place at Cincinnati's brand new ballpark called Palace of the Fans. Two deaf players appeared in the same game for the first and so far the only time in Major League history. In the bottom of the first inning, red center fielder William Hoy led off against Luther Taylor of the New York Giants. As the Cincinnati Inquirer reported, when Hoy stepped up to the plate, he paused for a minute and used sign language to mark the occasion. This is the quote. Hoy signaled, I'm glad to see you, to his brother Mute, the newspaper says, and then soaked a leadoff single to center. Hoy was almost 40 years old, and in the final season of a decorated 14-year career, he went 2-for-4 and scored a run, but Taylor

and the Giants won the game 5-3. Hoy and Taylor were friends off the field and would remain so for the rest of their lives. Cool. They were part of a small baseball fraternity of deaf players. In that less sensitive era, nearly all of them were saddled with the unfortunate

nickname of dummy because of their disability. Baseball reference has since changed the display name for Hoy. I believe I recall reading that he used that nickname himself, that he did not seem to object to it, or at least he went along with it. But who knows? Yeah. Certainly sounds derogatory to modern ears. Sure. So you will usually no longer see his name displayed that way. That way, yeah.

Yeah. Jacob continues, after winning more than 100 games for the Giants, Luther Taylor went on to teach and coach at schools for the deaf in Kansas and Illinois. One of his students, Dick Sipek, made it to the big leagues with the Reds in 1945. Sypek was the only fully deaf player in the major leagues for 80 years until Curtis Pride joined the Montreal Expos in 1993. Well, all right then. Good pass blast.

Yeah, good pass blast. All right. Thank you, Jacob. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. By the way, we talked about Mike Trout's streak of six consecutive games with a home run. Well, he made it

seven on Monday. He's now one short of the record set by Ken Griffey Jr., eight games in a row. Trout Notani just battling for second place in the AL home run race. Really wish we could see Trout's numbers if he had been healthy this whole season. Then again, we could say the same about last season too.

And some other seasons. Point is, he's still awesome. And if you want to be awesome, there's a segue. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, themselves access to some perks and help us stay ad free hector rodriguez doug graham jason nasi graham stewart and melissa danielson thanks to all of you our patreon supporters get access to the patreon discord group which is a wonderful forum they also get access to monthly bonus episodes that

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