Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1906: Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the ethics of returning or selling a valuable home run ball, a dilemma involving Aaron Judge on Apple TV+, selling the opposing team’s gear in a ballpark, the Tigers hiring Scott Harris and the Royals firing Dayton Moore, the Mets and Reds setting hit-by-pitch records, Canada dropping its […]

I got out and you kept singing to me Like it's really gonna set this free So give it up, throw your hats in the air And change us as they let you stay And we'll get out of here But something tells me that you're too scared But something tells me that you're too scared to go. Hello and welcome to episode 1906 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Let me know where you stand on this ethical debate here that was being debated by a couple former Effectively Wild guests, although I guess it was started by someone on Twitter, Joe Pompliano, who said, let's pretend you catch Aaron Judge's 62nd home run of the season, the one that passes Roger Maris' American League single season record from 1961. Are you giving the ball back? And if so, what are you requesting in return?

So two former Effectively Wild guests gave polar opposite answers and stances on this. So Eugene Friedman tweeted, anyone who gifts a valuable object that they own outright to someone who will soon have a $300 million contract or to a team worth billions of dollars is a fool. Get the full market value for the item, sell it directly based on an estimated auction value, change your life. Other former Fetual guest Joe Sheehan said, it's not your accomplishment. It's the player's accomplishment. If the player wants the ball, give it to him. He did the work, signed bats, tickets, meet the guy the guy sure i'm a fool for many reasons just not this one i thought you were gonna bring craig into this and i was like this

i didn't even see craig this is i was like we should just call this a craig goldstein theme week i think that his his take was sort of along the lines of of joe's i mean he occupied actually what i will what i would say is like a middle position between these two and not in like a both sides-y kind of way. But I think Craig's position and mine are sort of aligned, but you can direct all of your comments about that to his mentions, not mine, you know, just to those listening. I think that if you catch a ball that has historic significance

and you wanna keep it to sell it, that's fine. And I think if you wanna give it back to the guy and maybe get like a signed bet and a really cool story, that's also fine. I don't think that that makes you foolish. I think I definitely agree with Joe that if we are attributing the notion of work and work product to the ball

and saying whose is it? It's Aaron Judge's work, right? That is his work product. But also, part of our social contract at the ballpark is that if stuff leaves the field of play and ends up in your hand or your glove or your cap or your glass of beer that it can be yours and then you know then there's like a negotiation i like the idea of saying like there is sentiment in this moment sorry Sorry, I have a cold. I'm not emotional about Aaron Judge.

I just, you know, spent a couple. Sentiment just overcame you. Yeah, I'm not emotional about it. I just spent a couple of days around children and they're back in school. So of course I'm sick. Parents are, you're all heroes. Every one of you, every single one.

Yeah, mine's not in school yet. So I'm still healthy. You're still a hero, Ben. I don't know like keeping a tiny personal life so like it is a sentimental moment and i think that we have sort of figured out as a society like the happy medium that allows you as the fan to mark that moment, right? Because the only reason that Aaron Judge hitting 60 home runs or 61 or 100, he's not gonna do that.

That would be wild. Is because we have all agreed that him doing that matters. And so it's not that the fan's perspective on it is immaterial, right? The only reason him doing that means anything at all is because we've all gotten together and said that means something. And it means something that we should be able to like invest sentiment and potentially money into, but also it means something to him. And so I think

that we've, we figured out the nice exchange, right? You bring the ball and then you get a bunch of stuff and like the coolest story right we talked on a recent episode about how if if we had like a designated emergency reliever in the ballpark the person who was called upon to act in that role would talk about nothing else at family gatherings for the rest of their lives and i think that the same applies here like i't know, maybe I would wake up the next morning and be like, I should have just like taken it to the baseball auction people. Like, do you go to Christie's?

I don't know how auctions work, but you know, maybe I would sit there and be like, ah, I made a terrible mistake. I could have bought a house. But I think that like, if you want to say, hey, you accomplished this incredible thing and I was a witness to it. And here's the ball back.

And now I have an Aaron Judge signed bat and some tickets to future Yankee games. And he gets to have the ball. That's a nice moment. But again, if you're sitting there and you're like, wow, I have a golden ticket and you want to cash that in. I think it's fine. I think that there are a lot of ways to feel about stuff. And none of the ones we've described here seem inherently wrong to me. I know which one maybe tugs at me,

but that doesn't have to be what tugs at everybody. So that's what I'd say about that. I also wonder, Ben, like how much money do you think, you know, when he ties Maris's record, which Aaron Judge seems like he will almost certainly do, and that he will probably break Maris's record, but he's not going to break Bonds' record, right? And I know that that's an asterisk-y record for some people, but the odds of him doing that are very low, and it's still like the, it is the standing record, whatever asterisk you want to apply to it. How much money do you think his you know 61st and 62nd home run ball really will go for yeah i don't know what things are worth in general

they're worth whatever one person will pay for it right suppose we agree that this thing has value and then the negotiations start from there i guess yeah i i think it would probably be worth more than it would maybe if there was no question about bonds's record or all of the other players frankly who've hit more than 62 you know sure so that probably is part of it that some people will view it as a clean record quote unquote and therefore that they will think that there's more value attached to it. Sure. And it's just a historic season and it's been a long time and on and on.

So I'm sure it's worth a lot, but I don't know if it would be worth as much as some of those other record balls were going for back in 98 or when Bonds was doing it, inflation adjusted. Sure. That was a lot of money. And I would guess that it probably would not be as much now for this ball. It would still be a decent chunk of cash, I would think. And I think if you're even considering this question, probably you maybe don't desperately need the money. Like if you really, really need the money, I don't know that this

would even be a tough call. Like if you're just like living paycheck to paycheck, if you're like, how am I going to put food on the table for my kids or something? I don't know that like Aaron Judge's feelings would be the prime consideration. So in that kind of situation, I would say, sure, go for it. Maybe even Aaron Judge would say, sure, go for it. I don't know. Judge would say, sure, go for it. I don't know. But if it's more of a, well, it would be nice to have this amount of money.

If it would be life changing to any real degree, I think most people would probably go for it. I think I would probably go for it. You might have to earn the ball in a sense if you have to fight off a bunch of bleacher creatures. If you have like a rabid Zach Hample charging you, maybe you deserve some money for being the one to win that ball. And I think it's a little bit different for someone like Judge, right? I mean, if it's someone who's hitting their 60-second home run, then presumably it's going to be someone who's quite good at baseball and probably makes a good amount of money to play baseball. So that would affect my calculus. If it were Joey Manessis hitting his first walk-off, the dilemma, if it

was a dilemma that our listener Rick faced, that's a little bit different, I think, because it's his first one ever. It might be his only one ever. He's a 30-year-old rookie, et cetera, et cetera. He's not Aaron Judge. He's not about to make something close to probably $300 million and already making a lot. So I think if it were a player like that, I would be much more inclined. Whereas if it were a very wealthy player, I would just say, well, he could buy it himself if it's really valuable to him. He could be the high bidder and it would barely make a dent in his earnings. And maybe a middle ground, I don't know, maybe you could kind of, instead of putting it up for auction, maybe

you could get a sense of what it would actually be worth on the open market and then offer a little bit of a discount and just say, hey, I think it would be nice if you had this thing because you hit it, but also I need the money. So pay up, but maybe pay up a little less or I'll give you first dibs on it or whatever the high offer is, I'll give you a chance to match it or something. Just it can end up in your trophy case instead of some collector's case. So that might be good just because it seems like teams and players, they don't usually make an offer that would rival what you would get from the top bidder, right? No, they definitely don't. It seems like there should be a middle ground between like, here's a bet and here's hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It's like, meet me in the middle here. Yeah, I'm open to that as a potential solution. Because you're right. that as a potential solution, because you're right, like, you know, I don't want to diminish the sentimentality of a signed bat, and particularly one, like, given to you personally in exchange for a meaningful ball, and you get to meet her and judge and take the picture and tell the story, right? Like, that is the non-monetary, like, psychic value of that to you is significantly, I would imagine, greater than, you know, oh, my, you know, partner got me a signed judge bat for Christmas. Like, those are different. There are a lot of signed judge bats. Not an infinite number. There's still some value to that. There's

still some scarcity, but there are a lot of signed judge bats, you know? Yeah. And I don't know how excited I'd be to meet Aaron Judge. I mean, maybe if I were a Yankees fan, if I were in a different line of work, maybe I'd be more excited. There are other players I just enjoy talking to more than Aaron Judge. I mean, I don't know, maybe Aaron Judge in person is very engaging. He's just not the best quote. Right. But he's no Joey of Derek Jeter's 3,000 hit ball and the fan who caught that gave it back to him. But there was a pretty nice package he got. It wasn't anything what the ball's value was estimated to be, but it was some number of tens of thousands of dollars worth of value based on tickets and other merchandise and everything. And some people thought that guy, I think he said he had like $100,000 of student debt or something. Sure. Just get what you can for this. Derek Jeter will be fine. Derek Jeter will be fine.

I feel like you're not a chump if you give it to the player and say, boy, you made a major mistake. I mean, I don't know that I would do that, but whatever helps you sleep at night and makes you feel good about yourself, I guess. I'm not saying that I would feel great if I sold it, like great job by me, good day's work. I mean, it's like winning the lotto, basically. You just happen to be in the right place at the right time. So I'm not saying I'd feel proud of the accomplishment of having corralled the ball and sold it but i don't think i'd feel bad about it either just because you know once you have the

ball it's yours that's how it works in baseball that's how it's been for a long time so it is your possession and your property and right you can do with it as you will but yeah i would say follow your heart i suppose yeah i feel better about giving it to the person. Great. I wouldn't say you're a fool. No. Yeah. I think that wouldn't be the verbiage I would use either.

And I don't want to like downplay how meaningful like, you know, even if you think it's going to be a couple hundred thousand dollars like that, you know, for a lot of, for most people, that's like meaningful money. I don't know if it's generational wealth, which is sort of how the direction this ended up going on Twitter. I was like, they're not going to give you $100 million for Aaron Judge's ball. But maybe you get a down payment on a house. Maybe you are able to pay off all your debt.

Maybe you can help a friend. You can take care of a family member. Like, I don't want to downplay how meaningful, like, even small amounts of money can be for folks, especially if they're in bad shape, which, you know, unfortunately happens a lot. But like, it was funny, the discourse was like, it's life, it's generational wealth. And I was like, okay, well, hold on a second. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, assert an overly privileged position. But like, what does that mean exactly? Like, and I just don't actually know. I don't want to assert an overly privileged position, but what does that mean exactly? And I just don't actually know.

I don't know what the going rate on the ball will end up being, but I think your approach is the right one. Follow your heart and what feels right. And the odds are that the person who catches that ball is not a listener of this podcast, so they're going to have to find their own way. But I feel confident that they'll be able to do that because there's not a wrong answer seemingly. Yeah. And I don't know how much having the ball actually affects your happiness as a player.

Like I'm sure it's nice to have the trinket, right? But like you hit it, you know, it looks like any other ball. I mean, maybe if it's Aaron Judge, there will be like a hole in it or something or just the cover will be coming off. But, you know, it's a baseball. And are you going to spend long hours staring at it in retirement and reminiscing? I mean, you have the video. You have the memory. Everyone knows you hit it. The actual material object, it's sort of special. But for a lot of players, they might have a whole room full of stuff, things that they did and things that they collected and various mementos. And I'm sure it's kind of nice to have it. But how often are they really just reveling in having all that stuff as opposed to just the satisfaction of having hit the 60-second homer. That seems much more important than possessing.

I mean, you possess the home run. You hit the home run. It's on your baseball reference page. The ball is a bystander almost. I mean, it was a pretty important player in the play. But you hit it whether you have the ball or not. So you probably just have it in a case and you're not even like holding it. I don't know. To me, like probably overrated to possess the actual object, especially if were wearing and your batting gloves. I mean, you have all sorts of things that were on your person when you were hitting that home run. So I don't know.

I wouldn't be heartbroken, I think, if I were someone like Aaron Judge and I didn't get to keep that ball. Well, that is a good question, though, Ben, because, you know, you do anything momentous on a baseball field and those authenticators swoop in and then that stuff goes to Cooperstown. So I guess part of the question is what does, maybe we'll need to dispatch in the most polite way possible, Emma Batchelary to go ask the authenticator. She has talked to you previously this.

I'm sure that there is an understood thing that you as a player get to keep for yourself when those moments happen. We are not without sentiment, right? But a lot of that stuff gets swooped up and taken to Cooperstown and then you get to go look at it somewhere else. So I wonder, you know,

and I bet there's a lot of variation player to player in terms of how important it is to them to have a particular artifact of that achievement because i bet there's gonna be you know when he breaks ties or breaks the record like i bet there there's gonna be a plaque he's gonna get all kinds of you know very special swag from the yankees i would imagine but maybe he does care a lot about it you know hitters want the first ball that is their first major league hit, right?

Sure. Pitchers want the ball associated with their first strikeout. So who could say? I don't know. I guess mainly my takeaway from it was, like, perhaps we're not well-served by trying to enforce our own notions of sentimentality on other people.

Like, you know, there's a lot of different ways to be. So maybe we should allow those because otherwise, you know, we have to fight about them on Twitter. I will say, I was like, Craig, you know, you've had a week and you're getting right back on that horse, buddy. A true poster if ever I saw one. Waiting back into the Aaron Judge discourse. No fear. No fear at all. Get right back into the airing judge no fear no fear at all get right back on the horse yeah i think personally what i would do is get it appraised i would hang on to it in the moment

and it'd probably be tough with the peer pressure of of that moment you know you might have like other yankees fans some might be telling you give him the ball back and then probably they would dispatch security people or whoever to be like hey hey, can we make you an offer? And so you'd have to like refuse in that moment. But I think I would say I'm going to hang on to this for now and think about it when I'm not in this ballpark. Right, because they authenticate it either way. Yeah. And then I think I would get it appraised and then come back to the team or the player and say this is what they say I could get for it.

I'll give it to you for this much for some slightly lower amounts. All else being equal, I'd rather have it reside with the person who hit it. But also, I need the money. Yeah. I've got a down payment to take care of. There's another dilemma right now involving Aaron Judge and historic homers because Aaron Judge's Friday game is an Apple TV special. Yeah.

So Yankees Red Sox on Friday is slated to be on Apple TV. And we're running the risk here of this potentially being out of date by the time people hear this. being out of date by the time people hear this, but the Yes Network, the Yankees, RSN, has been trying to make a trade of some sort or persuade Apple and MLB to give them the game or simulcast it maybe and run the Apple TV broadcast on Yes or some way of providing this to Yankees fans who are watching on Yes Network normally normally because there's a significant chance that a historic homer could be hit on Apple TV with presumably a smaller audience and with the in-venue odds gracing the moment.

Oh my gosh. Which would be very special, I think, if Aaron Judge hit a home run and the odds were like some ridiculous number as he hit it. That would be very perfect and special. But this is interesting because I guess you could say, oh boy, chicken's coming back to roost. Didn't we just run into that issue the other day? But you could say that this is an example of that happening.

Someone pointed out there was dialogue on Sports Night, the old Aaron Sorkin show that almost mirrored exactly our exchange about chickens coming home. Oh, was there really? Yeah, which I forgot about. Yeah, me too. I haven't rewatched that in a while because it was on Netflix and then it wasn't anymore. Yeah. Oh, man. It took a long time for them to get rid of the laugh track on that show.

It did, yeah. A little too long. But this is kind of the conversation that we had earlier in the year about the pluses and minuses of MLB diversifying its broadcast partners and putting games on all sorts of streaming platforms. Well, we didn't anticipate that someone would be going for 62 home runs, But there is a possibility that that game will be seen by fewer people because of that. So that's not ideal, I guess. And again, there's a bit of a dilemma there because the contract says that Apple gets those games exclusively and MLB agreed to that. And I'm sure that MLB would probably prefer for more people to be able to see that game. But from Apple's perspective, a big part of why they wanted to do that deal

was to increase their subscription numbers and drive eyeballs and attention to Apple TV+. And so why, given this gift that they've gotten now of maybe getting Aaron Judge perhaps hitting a 61st or 62nd homer against the Red Sox. Why would they give that back now that they've gotten it? It's like the home run ball fell in their lap, right? So this is the best way for them to get attention and for people to sign up because they really want to see Aaron Judge. So why would they want to surrender their exclusivity here? But this is kind of the downside. We weren't really thinking about record chases necessarily, but this is kind of the downside we weren't really thinking about record

chases necessarily but this is a big one and it just so happens to coincide with an apple game right yeah it feels like the kind of thing where and i had wondered how this worked it feels like the sort of thing that they should like be breaking in on espn you, like it should just be on every, it should be on, like, it should be picture in picture for every baseball game that airs that day. Every time he has an at-bat, it should just be, well, I'm gonna take you live to the air in Judge Cam because, you know, you wanna watch history if you can. Yeah, chickens, did we get emails on chicken?

We solved the Lodestar Lodestone mystery thanks to several nice emails and I believe an assist from the Effectively Wild Discord that Lodestar, Ben, is a word that means what I thought that word meant. So I was not weirdly harboring Final Fantasy references that my brain had squirreled away somehow. weirdly harboring Final Fantasy references that my brain had squirreled away somehow. I think that what should happen is that Apple TV should decide to be magnanimous and have that be like a free signup game or something like that game is. I think they all are still. Are they all still? Yeah. I think they're still, even though it's a subscription service. That makes

it less bad. It's like you can watch it. I mean, it's extra trouble if you don't have the app, but you're not barred from watching it. So I think that's a pretty decent argument. You have to have cable to see Yes Network, right? So in a way, the barrier to entry is higher there, assuming you have some device that can stream Apple TV+, which most people probably would so yeah yeah i think if you had to pay to do it that would be worse obviously like there's some segment of the baseball audience which is not young across the board that is just like apple tv plus what is that how do i find that right where do i put it so they might not be enthused about having to figure all that out for this one game. Right. What are those odds in the corner? Why are they going in the wrong direction on stuff? I enjoy every Friday night in my mentions. Yeah. People.

It's like every Friday night since we had that interview. There's always someone who is questioning the odds and someone else is like effectively wild had the CEO on. Yeah. Thanks for spreading the word. But yeah, so you can watch the game. It's just it's an extra bit of trouble if you don't usually watch it that way. Not a disaster, I don't think. Here's one more ethical dilemma for you.

Oh, boy. Yeah. There was a little controversy at Oracle Park the other day because there was a Giants vendor that was selling Dodgers gear when the Dodgers were a visiting team. And Giants fans were upset. They were not happy at all that inside Oracle Park, the enemy was having its own gear sold. And I guess maybe there's some sensitivity because there tend to be a lot of Dodgers fans that it is. So now it's like a takeover of our territory. And a giant spokesperson

said that it was a mix-up with a third-party vendor. And the organization assured everyone that this would not happen again, that rival merchandise would not be sold inside Oracle Park. It was a vendor that sells historical apparel and Negro Leagues apparel, typically it sounds like, and vintage stuff. But this was not just purely vintage stuff. It wasn't just Brooklyn Dodgers even. It looked like some current Dodgers apparel. There were sweatshirts and such and caps. And I don't know what they meant by mix-up because I assume they meant that it was a mix-up allowing that to happen. I assume it was not the vendors mixed up. We didn't even realize we were selling Dodgers stuff. I doubt that was the case. They probably, I assume, realized that they could turn a tidy profit on these things because there are a lot of Dodgers fans in the stands there.

And it actually kind of surprises me that this does not always happen, that you can't get gear of any team anywhere. Now, I got to say, I have not been in the market for team-specific gear for quite some time, and even when I was a fan of one team, I was not typically buying gear at the ballpark. So I don't really know from personal experience. I haven't really browsed the team stores at Yankee Stadium or Citi Field lately. So I don't know what the selection is. And I know that there are some general MLB shops at ballparks, right?

And you can get some gear that is not just that team branded. But I have not actually checked to see what is available and whether you can get other teams gear. All I know is that my mom always tells a story because I think she thinks it will needle me about how when I went to my first Yankees game, which I barely remember my first major league game of any kind. I must have been, gosh, I don't even know because I remember really the first time I remember watching baseball was like the 93 World Series. So I'm not sure that it was before that or after that. It was probably slightly after that, I would think. But she says that I bought a Blue Jays hat because the Yankees were playing the Blue Jays. And so especially when I was a Yankees fan, she'd always be like, remember you bought a Blue Jays cap? We gave you a choice of what gear you wanted and you said you wanted a Blue Jays cap. So that was whatever the earlier mid-90s. But at the time, at least, I guess it was possible to get a blue jays

cap at yankee stadium when the blue jays were visiting so i don't know do you know any better than i do about what is actually there i think that my understanding of this is going to be imperfect so yeah they don't sell gear in the press box so i'm a little rusty on this so here are some things that i have observed first of all i think there's probably some variation ballpark to ballpark right i think i remember i think that i remember being able to buy caps of other teams at one of the team stores or stands at what is now t-Mobile. Although I don't feel confident in that.

I don't remember ever being able to buy like a T-shirt or certainly a jersey or anything like that. So I think that is kind of unusual. So there's that part of it. I will say, and it sounds like your answer to this is going to be no, I will say, and it sounds like your answer to this is going to be no, but have you tried to buy MLB gear online lately? No, but yeah, I gathered from your tweets that it's not great. It isn't the best, Ben.

It's gotten kind of rough out there if you want to give a major major corporation your money online it's weird i think that there's always been a bit of a gap between what you can get in the ballpark and what you can get online like it it doesn't strike me as strange or unusual that there might be a little bit more available in the ballpark than there is online but like especially since fanatics got involved it's pretty it's pretty bad it has very like corporate retreat vibe like there's nothing weird i know that for mariners stuff like you can't at least until last week or the week before i don't know if this has changed since then but you couldn't buy like you couldn't just buy a pre-done Julio jersey in a women's size.

You had to get it custom done. Like there was just custom done and then like, you know, clearly inventory that was left over. So one explanation might be that the existing incentive to sell stuff to Dodger fans in person is heightened even by the relative scarcity of stuff online.

I don't know. I haven't looked at the Dodgers team store online and that might be wrong, but it does strike me as kind of like, do that stuff outside the ballpark. I get why people would find that annoying. I think you can still make your money. That's fine. But it does seem like, okay, we shouldn't have to deal with this in ballpark it's sort of how like you know mariners fans get a little irritated that t-mobile gets sort of taken over by blue jays fans during you know their their whole blue jay series because everyone from british columbia who likes baseball comes down and like watches the blue jays and then there are very few or on a relative basis few Mariners fans so I get being a

little perturbed by that it feels like this should be you know this is our home park I should feel comfortable here but maybe people are just saying look this isn't about rivalry this is a tacit acknowledgement on the part of the league and their teams that Fanatic sucks maybe it's just about that it amuses me kind of because it's like well you can come in the ballpark if you're an opposing fan if you must right can't prevent you from purchasing a ticket but we can prevent you from buying a t-shirt right logo while we're here that we will not stand for you can buy a T-shirt somewhere else and bring it into the ballpark here. But I'll be damned if you're going to be selling sweatshirts in the ballpark.

It just sort of surprised me, I guess, because generally when there's money to be made, I feel like someone will make it. And obviously there is money to be made here. And it's not just Dodgers fans on Giants turf. I mean, you're telling me you can't get a Yankees cap at the trop or something? Sure. There's got to be a market for that. I guess in the interest of general baseball, you would want people to be able to buy stuff that would represent their team wherever they are, wherever they go to a ballpark. We will find a way to spend some money, A, and also just display our affiliation and

deepen our attachment to baseball. But I guess I get it that also you want to feel like you're protecting your turf. Sure. If the team is sanctioning the vendor, and clearly it is, that the team can decide who gets to sell stuff in their ballpark and what they get to sell, then I certainly understand why they would say, hey, don't sell stuff that is our rivals so that everyone will be walking around in our rivals gear and showing up on tv in our rivals gear right showing us up yeah i share your surprise that it is a place that has proven itself to be somewhat immune from like the capitalist impulse but i think that that's kind of that's kind of

nice you know that you get to you know it adds to your sense of place that that is not a place where you see your rivals stuff being sold right that it is this is this is our place this is home and we get to say what it is here are the players the featured players on the mariners team store website ichiro fine felix fine kyle seager kind of weird adam frazier excuse you a ohanio suarez great season but what luis castillo cool carlos santana really and then you have the like players section which is somehow different than future players don't know ken griffey jr mitch hanniker robbie ray ty france logan gilbert all of those are fine dylan moore i mean sure carlos Santana, again, Kurt Casali,

Jake Lamb, who was just DFA'd, and Marco Gonzalez. You know who is notably absent from both of those lists? Didn't hear you say Julio. I'm going to say Julio. It's kind of weird that there's no Julio in that list, don't you think? It's also weird that there's no J.P. Crawford

in that list, right? Anyway, I just, I think that you wanted to talk about the feeling of home and I was willing to indulge you, but mostly this has become an opportunity for me to say, fanatics do a better job. Like all of this stuff looks like you're at a corporate golfer treat and it bums me out.

Right. So those are today's ethical, philosophical dilemmas about baseball. Yeah. In other news, well, first, a quick Joey Manessis update. Still good. Still out hitting Juan Soto and Juan Soto and Josh Bell combined. Really did not think that would continue. Really thought that we would have to just like mention that while it was true and and hope that it didn't change immediately like i wrote about him my piece was published on september 2nd and i was like well this has been fantastic but how long can this keep up i've got to get this article out before he slumps or so it gets hot and the fun fact is not true anymore that vanessa's has outplayed both of the players who were traded and whom he was replacing when he was called up. I mean, it's still true.

And people are treating him with some respect, some fear. Yeah. So as people were tagging us on Twitter to note that the Braves were intentionally walking Manessas, they free passed him a couple of times in the past couple of games to load the bases in front of Luke Voigt. And then when they finally decided not to do that with a run around first, he homered. So they should have intentionally walked him that time too, I guess, just based on the results. And he is still handily out hitting Juan Soto as a Padre. So that's pretty great. I did not think that would actually last throughout the season. I was like, the fact that this has lasted even since the trade, like for the first month after the trade is amazing and miraculous. It can't continue, but it actually has to the point where they might actually finish the season with that continuing to be true so love it it's a really it's just a very fun and silly remarkable thing and it lets me tweet exclamation

points at you so i'm i'm all for it i think i hope it i hope it continues forever i guess i hope it continues forever but but only if i hope the menaces of it continues forever, to be clear. Yeah, I'm not rooting against Juan Soto. Yeah, no, I want Juan Soto to be like Juan Soto as we know him and as we have come to expect him to be. And also, it would be so cool if we look back and we're like, you know, Juan Soto as advertised in the long term, but get a load of this Joey Manessis. All he needed was an opportunity and

he is one soda 2.0 that would be delightful yeah luke voight has also handily out hit josh bell which is also sort of that's so funny poor padres poor padres they're in better shape than the nationals overall this is what the nationals have you just got to let them have this for now because there's not a whole lot else to be happy about on that team right now yeah you don't know this uh ben but i am three for three in in not doing screaming sneezes into the microphone so far as we're recording it's really great done thank you yeah you're welcome dylan appreciates it i'm sure yeah so i want to talk a little bit briefly about the al central we should probably probably do an AL Central leadership update. Yeah.

Just because we've had a couple change of regimes. Yeah. So the Tigers have a new head of baseball operations, Scott Harris, who was poached from the Giants and also formerly of the Cubs. Giants and also formerly of the Cubs. And then the Royals also have a new leader, although it was someone who was already there because what happened is Dayton Moore is out the door. So this is on the one hand, not surprising. On the other hand, very surprising because it seemed like that might very well be a lifetime appointment for Dayton Moore. So this is notable news. We lost John Daniels, lost his job this year, one of the longest tenured leaders of a baseball operations group. And then you had Dayton Moore in that group as well.

And he's gone now. So it turns out that just being bad at baseball for quite a a while can actually get dayton more fired yeah yeah it's you know it's an odd it's an odd thing because on the one hand you feel like i kind of thought he'd outlast us all right yeah we have talked a lot about how it hasn't felt like they have a great sense of like where they really are in their competitive window but we have appreciated their can-do attitude and you know there have been some some weird aspects of date there were some weird aspects of date moore's tenure yes in casey you know related to porn so not him enjoying it famously no opposed right quite the opposite um so like

that was weird like that's a weird thing to do at work weird to be enthusiastic about it one way or the other at work i would argue you know let's stay away from it as a topic not a unless you're like in the industry and then i guess you kind of have to grapple with it daily. But anyway, so that was weird. And also, they, as we discussed, treated their people really well throughout the pandemic and treated their minor leaguers very well during the pandemic, especially on a relative basis. And so that was a very... And they're not an org that has, in this stretch, especially when they've been kind of trying to compete, even though we don't know if that made a ton of sense,

they have famously not monkeyed around with service time. They've been an org that has said, if we think you're ready to contribute at the big league level, you're going to be in the bigs. We're not playing those games. And so there have been treating people well aspects of the Dayton Moore regime that I really admired and I wished were sort of the industry standard. And then there were parts of it that were weird. And then there were parts of it that just seemed like they were sort of a misfire, a misstep from a baseball ops perspective. And so I'm really

curious where they go next. I hope that the spirit of if we treat people well, it will redound to our benefit in the bigs will remain an animating principle of their roster construction. But also, from a baseball perspective, we should probably say that this has not worked. They have had guys who have been really highly touted and who have not performed well in the big leagues, particularly on the pitching side. You know, they have this like crop of young pitchers who were all thought to be, you know, maybe not like super commanding from a fastball perspective, but like possessed of good secondaries and highly doubted and then none of them have really been able to actualize on that in any kind of meaningful way at the big league level and then when you couple that with like spending that was clearly meant to supplement that core but didn't actually do that because it didn't address the needs that that core floundering had presented like it wasn't working baseball wise and i think that that both of those things can be true simultaneously right that there were admirable pieces to the way that they have treated their people.

And that also, like, even though it felt like they had, you know, players who should be able to really herald the next good competitive era for the Royals, that that hasn't really happened. So I'm really curious to see where they go. I hope that their ownership looks at kind of what worked and what didn't and is able to properly diagnose that the treating people well wasn't the impediment. Right. There were other issues that seemed to be present in the way that that organization has assembled a roster that can be addressed without, you know, being, you know, hedge fundy private equity e financey so yeah but i can't believe kind of can't believe it it's sort of amazing really yeah he was pretty deeply entrenched there so yeah his second in command jj piccolo takes over for him and i think you have to give him some credit for yeah yeah, turning around the organization, which was really just a joke at the time he came on board back in 2006. I mean, it was just in shambles, basically, not only competitively, but just the way it was run.

And he changed that. And he did construct teams that won back-to-back pennants and won the World Series. Now, that was kind of an island when you look at his whole tenure from a competitive standpoint compared to what came before and after, but he did do that. So if you're a Royals fan, you probably have pretty mixed feelings about Dayton Moore, I'd imagine, because he gave you those teams, but then also the surrounding teams, which were not so good. But would you do it over? Would you replay it if you could hire someone else, even if it was someone else who, on the whole, might have been better at the job? You

still don't know whether they would have put together back-to-back pennant winners in a World Series. It's like when we were talking about the Jason Hayward contract with the Cubs, we were talking about like, well, can you say it was a bad contract because they won that World Series? He didn't play up to expectations, but they won that World Series and people give him credit for his inspirational speech during the rain delay in the World Series. So are you going to take the chance of spending that money on someone you know who might have been better at baseball, but also having some butterfly effect of not having him there to deliver that speech? It's sort of the same thing with winning the World Series, because winning a World Series is hard. Even if you put together a great team, you still might not win one. So you might be hesitant to

change anything just given that outcome. And not only were those winning teams, they were extraordinarily fun teams to follow, even for people who were not Royals fans. Certainly for me, those teams going to change direction a little bit. I saw a John Sherman quote, owner John Sherman, who said something that sounds kind of out of character for the Royals. I think sometimes the data isn't as prominent in this organization as it should be. We need to make more data-driven decisions. Not that the Royals haven't had data people for quite a while now, and they might have quite good data people. But it does seem like, you know, Moore was more of a scouting-centric executive just from his background in Atlanta and everything else. So maybe with someone else, you prioritize the sabermetric side of things perhaps a bit more, which in a way, like, okay, great. They'll be like every other team, you know?

Right. It's kind of nice. It's like we talk about the diversity of player types and how we don't want every player to look the same way and play the same way. In a way, it's boring to have every front office follow the same sort of tenets and philosophies and tactics too. So it's nice to have some outliers. It gives us something to talk about, at least when you have a Rockies and a Royals and a Nationals and some teams that maybe do things a little bit differently, but at the same time, yeah. Joe Posnanski, who covered Moore, he wrote about how Moore had his plan for turning around the Royals when he came on board and for some time after was like a five-point plan.

Loyalty, accountability, character, enthusiasm, and respect. And as Joe wrote, you have to notice right away that none of those words are power or outfield defense or fastball command. So it was all about who you are as a person. And, you know, you do need both. Right. And I'm sure that Moore would allow that you need both. He was obviously trying to get people who were good at baseball too. But there was a culture there that was good in some ways and maybe not the best in other ways.

Not just the porn, but, you know, I hope people know what we're referencing here. Because otherwise it's like, what was going on with the Royals? He's very anti-porn. He was anti-porn. He just told his players to be looking at porn. He had seminars about it. They had seminars about that. Yes.

And we also talked about just the disproportionate number of anti-vaxxers in the clubhouse this year. And that was kind of weird. But you can build your team around character and respect and all of that. Those are all good things to have. But you do have to find some balance, I guess, if your priority is putting a good baseball team on the field. So hopefully you can do both. I guess that's the idea. Not that he wasn't trying to do both, but maybe it was a little too much on one side of

the ledger i don't know but maybe you you can have a better baseball team while also doing those things hopefully yeah i mean ideally what you're striving for is like let's try to find high character good baseball player folks and and i think some of it and i don't want to knock the you know the folks that work there but like there are a lot of ways to achieve that, right? And one of them that I think a lot of orgs that we tend to speak very highly of in terms of their ability to help players sort of reach the highest heights are like being able to look at a player who has some traits that are really intriguing and help them to actualize those to a profound degree, right? And it's such a cop-out thing to say to be like why can't you just be the dodgers because it's like well yeah everybody's trying to do that meg you know everyone's trying to be good in a lot of

different ways obviously a team like kansas city isn't going to probably be able to bring the same financial heft to bear but that would make you think, okay, well, what else can you do? Well, right. And I think that they have had, you know, stretches where they have been good at talent identification and they have been good at drafting and they have been able to find guys, but it doesn't seem like they're always able to help them put it all together. And they aren't able to help them adjust in quite the way that they need to. Like you you said you want to have teams that are sort of iconoclastic is probably too strong but maybe like zig when other people zag but like sometimes when you zig and other people zag you like fall in a ditch and then you're like not good for a while and sometimes you win a world series so

you know uh zigging and zagging it very complicated. I feel like the congestion is getting worse despite having had three screaming sneezes. How do parents, how do you do it, Ben? I don't know. I'm not looking forward to the contagious part of parenting. Not there yet. Yeah, I think you're just going to be sick all the time. Like you're going to be at least low-key sick all the time.

Okay, I'm going to mute again so that I don't do a screaming sneeze into the microphone. Okay. Okay, so say words while I... I apologize. It's a test run for my future sniffles that I suffer. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, we'll figure it out.

But here, you say words while I mute, and then it'll be seamless, you know, except that I've talked about it. But otherwise, it'll be seamless. Well, the one word at the top of the Dayton Moore list, loyalty, I think that can be a good one. It can also be a valuable one when you're running a baseball team because, yes, loyalty, I think, is good. I mean, it shouldn't be unconditional loyalty. People should earn loyalty. Agreed. So it's nice to have more loyalty in some ways than other baseball teams have to their employees, to their minor leaguers, et cetera. But you have to make tough decisions. Yeah, you do. Being disloyal is part of the job, really.

Like, you know, you have to cut people who are good people because you're running a baseball team, right? So loyalty often is kind of in conflict. Right. So loyalty often is kind of in conflict, not saying that you have to be mean about it, at least when you're talking about players on the major league roster. Players shouldn't be excessively loyal to their teams either. And I don't think teams should be excessively loyal to their players. You have to earn your roster spot. So that is a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing. And look, if the Royals, with this core that they're developing, if the Royals turn into a contending team and if they win again in the near to medium term future, then a lot of Dayton Moore's fingerprints will be on that roster. Yes. Because there are a lot of young, exciting, promising players who were either in the majors already or close to it. You can sort of squint and see a good Royals team again. Oh, sure.

Right? Yeah, he probably held on to the core and pieces of those contending teams too long and tried to extend that window a little longer than it could be and perhaps lengthened the rebuilds. Right. But there's a lot of talent there. I mean, just to tie this to the Tigers, I feel like we don't have to talk about the Tigers as in depth because we talked about them when they made their change with Alavila. Now they've just hired someone else. But we kind of played this game when the Phillies and Angels fired their managers named Joe. And I think we discussed which organization you would rather have or take over or which one was in a better spot long term. And you could kind of play that game with the Tigers and Royals too, especially because they're in the same division. And you'd probably have to go with the royals right now right like prior to this season i probably would have said the tigers but this season has been pretty disastrous for the

tigers not just for this year but even looking long term and i might be more confident about kansas city now long term with the players that they have. Where do you stand on that? Where do I stand on that? I don't know. They have such similar problems, right? Which is like getting the young pitchers to actualize. I hate using that word, actualize. I need to have better, live up to their potential.

That's better than actualize. I don't work for a hedge fund. I guess I like a lot of the pieces of the position player core i don't like using the word pieces either struggling because of this cold i'm hoping i'm like getting it out of the way before october hits and then i'll be like perfectly healthy for all of october it's like how i do all my doctor's appointments in september get your flu shot folks and your booster for that matter got that too so hmm hmm ben i guess i i think i agree with you i think i agree with you because some of the some of the guys who i like the best on the tigers are hurt and will be like unavailable for

a while or at least we can feel less sure about, right? Even Scooble, who is having a good year, he needs surgery or had surgery, right? And then on the one hand, you look at the Tigers, and you're like, well, they demonstrated, at least for one offseason, a willingness to spend. But then you think about what ownership said after they moved on from Avila,

and you're like, are they going to spend more? I don't know. Did they spend well? I'm not sure. So there's that piece of it. I really like, I like MJ Melendez. I know that Bobby Witt Jr.'s season has been sort of ho-hum, but I think he'll be fine. I don't have a ton of confidence in their pitching, but the pitching I have confidence in for Detroit is hurt. So, you know, what do you do with that? You just sit there and say, congratulations, Cleveland, I guess. I guess a big part of what you say is, well, congrats to you, Cleveland. And also, you know, Minnesota and Chicago, for that matter,

because it does feel like it's going to take a long time for them to sort of course correct here even though they have young guys and they have young guys who I have a lot of confidence in at least to figure it out long term even though they're not really hitting particularly well except for Vinny Pasquitino who was a 126 WRC plus. But Bobby Witt Jr. is hitting about league average.

Yeah, that's the thing. I guess you have to feel better about Bobby Witt Jr. than any Tigers position player probably. You probably have to feel better about Brady Singer than any Tigers pitcher at this point. I guess, yeah. He's not super young. He's 26 now, but still. So, yeah, those are building blocks maybe that you can count on a little bit more than some of the other question marks. And I don't know. I think that people were upset with Cal Eldred, the pitching coach.

Royals fans have wanted him gone for quite a while and were not thrilled with the Dayton Moore quotes earlier this year about how he's doing a tremendous job as far as his attitude is concerned. They didn't really care about Cal Eldred's attitude so much as the fact that the pitchers were not performing and were not developing. So one would imagine that there will probably be some changes. I would imagine some evolution in the field staff in Kansas City that seems likely. But yeah, I think there are some things to feel good about when it comes to Kansas City's emerging core. Yeah, I think that that is largely true. And I think that you never want to say definitively, like, what is a new regime going to be able to do here? Because we don't know. And there are definitely parts of Detroit's new front office that I think sound really promising.

So I guess mostly my reaction to both of these teams is, it's too bad that you're going to be in flux again when we were supposed to be gearing up for the new Royals, the new Tigers. I guess, I don't know, I was going to make a really bad joke about Royals. And I'm not going to do it, Ben. I'm not going to do it.

It's a tacky joke. I'm not going to make that joke. But anyway, I don't know. I was going to make a really bad joke about Royals. And I'm not going to do it, Ben. I'm not going to do it. It's a tacky joke. I'm not going to make that joke. But anyway, I don't know. It's a weird time. I wish that I still feel this way about the AL Central and even the NL Central, although I think maybe less. It's like you really just want one of those teams to be like, no, we're going to be really good and go all out in all of the ways to

be like, we are good at player dev and drafting. And also we will spend money. Basically, I guess I want the guardians to spend money. Yeah. I think you got to give more credit for coining the term, the process when it comes to sports teams, at least. Sam Hinckley gets all the credit for that. Dayton Moore was way ahead of him with the process. His process was probably pretty different from Hinckley's, but he did kind of popularize that term. Yeah, dramatically different. We've talked about the Tigers maybe having issues with pitcher development lately, although it looked for a while like they might not. But he's coming from the Giants. It seems like they have a knack for making players better, pitchers better. I know things have not gone nearly as well for them this year as it did last year. But they get a lot of acclaim for making players better at the major league level and below. And obviously he's familiar with their methods there, coming from the Cubs, coming from the

Giants, working with some pretty good leaders of baseball operations departments there. The resume is impressive. I couldn't tell you anything about him on a personal level. Not even one thing. Yes. All right. Yes. All right. So before we end, I wanted to note that there has been an update to the vaccination policy in Canada, right? So it sounds like as of September 30th, you will no longer not be able to go if you are an unvaccinated person here or Major League Baseball player for that matter. And so from all appearances, it seems like any Major League player who has held out this long and refused to get vaccinated will be able to go to Toronto as an unvaccinated person when the playoffs are happening. So

congrats, I guess. You deprived yourself of a vaccine successfully that might make you healthier, but will not cost you playoff games, seemingly. where when the playoffs roll around, some players will not be making that trip, and their teammates will tie themselves into knots trying to say that they're not bad teammates, which I was, in a sense, sort of looking forward to what sort of quotes we would get about players who did not make that trip. But I guess we will not know now. Yeah, I don't know how to feel about that. Like, I don't know, man. It's weird. It's a weird kind of caving that we're doing, I guess.

But I mean, we're not the ones doing it. But yeah, I guess like congrats to Robbie, right? And, you know, potentially further down the line, like Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Aranato, I guess. But yeah, I don't know. I guess in some ways, you're happy to be spared the conversation, but also you're not because it seemed like it might be a powerful incentive to make different choices.

And now that incentive is no more. So I don't know. And related to the playoffs, we talked close to the start of the season. I think it was episode 1856. This was May 31st. We talked at the time about how it seemed like we were possibly heading for a season that would lack some suspense or some stakes from a playoff competitive standpoint. And I don't know whether we were prescient there or whether that just turned out to be the case and we didn't know

what we were talking about the whole time but it seems like there is something to that because there was a fun debut post at fangrass by one of your new contributors chris gilligan yeah who looked at this from a championship leverage index perspective yes and he looked at it at this point in the season and he looked at it across the season as a whole. And it turns out that in fact, it has been sort of lower stakes, which is probably a product of the expanded playoff format and maybe just how things shook out this year with the teams that happened to be in contention or not, or some of the gaps between the good teams and the bad teams. But basically, if it's felt like the playoff race here, the stretch run is not as exciting as you're used to, or as it has typically been in recent seasons, or if the entire season as a whole has not grabbed you in that sense, there seems to be something to that. Chris has backed

that up objectively here the numbers seem to support that idea yep they sure do i thought that was a very nice little debut piece we've had a couple we had a couple today and we'll have some more tomorrow these two contributors are sure clever as a group yeah it's i guess on the one hand i am comforted to know that my sense is supported by the data because this has largely been my sense. And you sit there and you think, how would this season have washed over me in terms of my sense of suspense is hard to say on a fully healthy day, let alone one where you're dealing with a cold. But where my sense of the stakes of the season have been that they've been somewhat absent relative to prior years. And I wonder if we didn't have the judge home run race with that, how would this season have washed over us? Because I think that that has buoyed the excitement. And there are individual, obviously,

like individual and team stories that are wildly exciting. so it's not as if there's nothing to be had here if you're like i want to feel i want to feel something but in terms of the competitive atmosphere it has it has seemed pretty settled although you know uh mariners might be trying to make it interesting so if they can stop phillies too like yeah they could cut that out you know great you asked me like do you feel comfortable and i was like no when i stand i got comfortable and now i'm back on guard so you guys can start beating literally the ace like any time you want to julio take my back just take it it's not as muscular as yours but just a quote from chris here he noted after play play on September 14th

with three weeks left in the first regular season with six wildcard slots up for grabs, there were 16 teams with a less than 10% chance of making the playoffs and another 10 with a chance of 90% or better, leaving just four teams, the Padres, Guardians, Brewers, and White Sox, somewhere between despair

and a near certain postseason berth. That number was just five with a full four weeks left in the season. By comparison, with three weeks to go last year, eight teams fell between 10 percent and 90 percent in terms of playoff odds in the last five full seasons. An average of seven teams have fallen in that range with three weeks to go. So just not as many teams as usual that are kind of on the bubble. And again, he looked at it just on a full season across the whole league level, too. So just not as many teams as usual that are kind of on the bubble. And again, he looked at it just on a full season across the whole league level too.

And it was supported there also. So yeah, I guess we sort of saw that coming just with the shape of the standings this year. I don't know how much of it is related to the playoff format and how much of it is just a single season blip. It's kind of complicated to figure that out. Yes. Of course, the playoff format and how much of it is just a single season blip. It's kind of complicated to figure that out. Yes. Of course, the playoff format did change. And so it's tempting to say, oh, no, what have they done? But maybe it's something that you could easily come up with a scenario where it would still be more exciting.

So I don't know that it's a permanent problem or it's just a one season problem. But I think you're right. I haven't really bemoaned this or even noticed it so much because I've been so absorbed by watching your judge or watching Shoya Otani or watching just some of the other fantastic individual seasons. player level more than I used to. And this is all dependent, obviously, on like, well, how is the team that you personally root for doing? So if you're a team that has just had things sewn up forever or has been out of it forever, then you're probably like, yeah, I noticed this. But if you're one of the few teams that is actually fighting for something here, then you're like, what? This is super exciting and suspenseful. I wish it were less so. So it's very dependent on that.

And there aren't maybe that many baseball fans who look at things like this and just like experience the season through this lens of like, how competitive is the league as a whole? I think it would be sort of nice if people cared about that, but it is kind of a local regional game typically. So I don't know that this actually matters all that much other than the fact that obviously if the the average is lower than there are fewer local individual races that are super exciting by this metric too right can i interest you can i change gears entirely man yeah can i interest you in some probably meaningless small sample theater

sure have you noticed how denelson lamette's been pitching for the Rockies lately? No, I've not. He's been much better, you know? 17 whole innings, so definitely worth something. But he has a 3-1-8 ERA and a 3-4-6 FIP with the Rockies. Good for him. Yeah, the strikeouts, yeah. Yeah, fewer walks.

Striking out 34% of guys, only walking 9.6, which is down from 14.5. Anyway, I just was looking at stuff that doesn't matter at all, and I thought I'd shout out to Nelson Lament because his whole thing was weird. It was, yeah. I mean, we were not low on Nelson Lament when he was traded. No. Part of the reason we were. We thought that could be cool.

Yeah. We were like, okay, you know, Brewers got back someone who has been good. Right. And maybe will be good again. And then they instantly let him go. Yeah. So that was surprising. But I guess it didn't take the Brewers to fix him.

The Rockies could fix him too. Or he fixed himself. Right. And some of that might just be he's healthy now, you know. Yes. Some of it could just be he's healthy now. Yes. Some of it could just be that. Oh, I don't know. Jared Kelnick just had a home run.

The Mariners are still losing, I would note. But at least Jared Kelnick had a home run. Oh, and speaking of people saving commemorative balls to mark historic occasions, I noted that the Mets saved their record-setting hit-by-pitch ball. Buck Showalter wanted to keep their, like, whatever it was, 106th hit batter, which set a major league record. I don't know if he kept it or the player kept it or what. They laid it on fire. Yeah, right. It's interesting because the Reds have now hit the most batters as a pitching staff and the Mets have been hit the intersect. But also this is very much an era effect thing just because there are a lot of hit-by-pitches now, as we've discussed. But also, like, the Mets, they've been getting plunked all year, and often they're not pleased about it. And sometimes there have been brawls or at least some angry milling about and some controversies and retaliations and such.

They've kind of been mad about that most of the season as far as I can remember. And I guess I get why, because it hurts to get hit by baseballs that are thrown at major league speeds. But also, it's a high hit by pitch era. And the Mets have been hit a lot in recent seasons, which I guess you could say that could only add to their irritation. But they just have a lot of players who get hit by pitches in general like yeah it's part of their game yeah they acquired more of them this past offseason they were like we don't get hit enough

we should go get more guys who get hit let's go get Mark Canna who gets hit all the time like all the time Starling Marte like let's get players who part of their on-base game is getting plunked by pitches. So I don't know if it's weird. I think the Mets have felt somewhat victimized by hit by pitches, and they have been, literally. But also, it seems like they have kind of collected players who have track records of getting hit by pitches. So it's not a one season phenomenon or that they're getting picked on necessarily. Or if it is, it's that these particular players have always gotten picked on. So it's kind of like, well, what did you think

was going to happen if you went and got all the guys who get plugged constantly? But maybe it builds on itself if you're on a team with a bunch of other guys who get hit a lot, then there's probably a lot of commiserating and like, why they hitting us all the time right well and you're gonna do like you're gonna compare and contrast your hit by pitches right you're gonna be like i got plunked here here's how fast it was here's what the bruise looks like yeah i bet there's a rainbow of bruises i bet there are a lot of bruises being shown to each other like, look at this one. And that's probably weird. And I think the last thing I wanted to note, I've been wanting to mention this fun fact for a bit. And I guess it's not actually technically a fun fact yet, but it's about to be, which is that at least going by baseball reference war, this is about to be the first season ever with six rookies who have

four or more wins above replacement. So we're just a tenth of a win for Spencer Strider away. So as long as he has a half decent start next time out, he will be over the four war threshold. He's well above it, according to Fangrafts War, I believe. But it's Strider about to be there. And then five rookies are already there. Adley Rutschman, Julio, of course, Michael Harris II, Stephen Kwan, who is just great these days. And Jeremy Pena is there, at least according to Baseball Reference War, although I think not Fangraphs War. So once Spencer Strider crosses that threshold, this will be a first to have that many rookies who have been that valuable in a single season.

And I think that's kind of a cool accomplishment collectively. Yeah. And this has been a season when we've seen just a lot of fun new blood in baseball. We started the season with a record number of top prospects making their Major League debuts. We've continued to see a lot of prospects making more Major League debuts throughout the season, whether that's the CBA or other factors or just a confluence of lots of good prospects being Major League ready. It's been fun to see all those players show up. all those players show up. And I guess if you increase the number of players who are making their debuts and highly touted players, then it stands to reason that you would get a record number of good rookies as well. But we talked about the difficulty of the rookie of the year

races with Strider versus Harris and Rutschman versus Julio. And it's not just those guys, it's a couple other guys in that mix as well. So it's a historic crop of productive rookies. So enjoy it. It's a pretty great time. So, you know, I think that we should be excited about our time. We should just hope that the competitive picture, you know, can keep pace with the individual excitement that these players can bring. Because, like, if it can, then watch out. You'll never want to do anything else. Just watch baseball.

We've met so many major leaguers this year. It's a record number of debuts. I think it's 286, as we speak, Thursday, have made their major league debuts this year. And that's up from the record of 268 last year. And we still have a couple of weeks to go in this season. And the record prior to last season was 2017, 262. So 286 and heading closer to 300 by the time it's all said and done. Gosh, that's a lot of new baseball players. That's sort of why we started the Meet a Major Leaguer segment. And we probably have some good major leaguers we should meet and catch up on sometime soon. Yeah, we have a backlog.

I wonder if this will be the high watermark for that because it's been really high for quite a while now. And part of the reason why it's so high this year is because of the expanded rosters probably at the start of the season with the health and safety protocols at that point still. So I wonder whether this will be the most we ever see because assuming we don't have any more pandemics coming along, hopefully fresh pandemics that will cause expanded rosters. Between that and between some of the other measures they've taken with limiting the number of pitchers ever so slightly on the active roster and then some of the other things with optioning players and how long you have to remain in the minors and that sort of thing and only expanding from 26 to 28 in September, etc. I wonder whether this will recede at all or at least plateau. It's got to plateau. I wonder whether this will remain the record for some time.

I kind of hope so. Not that I want to bar anyone from being a big leaguer, but it's just hard to know who everyone is. It's really, it's hard to keep track. Yeah, it can be a little disorienting. You're like, you turn on the TV and I'm like, I feel like I'm obligated to know who all of you are, like for my job. I should know, I should be able to look at all of you

and be like, you're meh. And I know these three things about you. And I, you know, my hit rate isn't bad or anything, but I do feel like this year I'm like, who are you again, though? It's like when you go to your high school reunion and I'm like, we went to school together for four years? Who are you? Right. I just got an email from Major League Baseball about Judge and the Red Sox-Yankees game. So it says that there will be live coverage.

Let's see what it says. National broadcast partners, Fox, Apple TV+, MLB Network, and ESPN all feature live game coverage from Yankee Stadium. All eyes will be on the Bronx, et cetera, et cetera. All four games will be available nationally across MLB's national broadcast partners. But it looks like it is still Apple TV Plus on Friday. It does not look like that has changed. It's Thursday on Fox, and then it's Friday on Apple TV Plus, and then it's

Saturday on MLB Network, and then it's Sunday on ESPN. So four different places to watch Aaron Judge over the next four games. Yeah. I mean, it's appointment viewing. And I think the cool thing is he's not likely, as we've said, to set the actual single season record. He's not going to sniff that probably, but it's not impossible. So it'll still be exciting to watch even after he surpasses Maris because it could happen. If he keeps up a good pace, it could.

It's not likely, but it pace it could it's not likely but it could so it's you know it's exciting to the extent that 62 is a record everything after 62 is also a record right so exactly yeah yeah alright I will close I guess with this stat I forgot to

read from Foolish Baseball Bailey about Joey Manessis players with 57 or more hits and 10 or more homers in their first 43 career games since integration, the famous 57-10 club in their first 43, really the 57-10-43 club that we talk about all the time. It's Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Albert Pujols, Ryan Braun, Bo Bichette, and Joey Manessis. Wow. Good company for those guys to

be with Joey Manessis in that club. I've got to read The Past Blast. Past Blast. This comes from Jacob Pomeranke, Editorial Director of Content for Sabre and Black Sox expert and tweeter from at Buck Weaver, his personal account,

and also from at Sabre, the Sabre account. So this is episode 1906. Pass Blast comes from 1906, and he's given me little headlines for these. So this one is play me or pitch me or pay me. And he writes, like Shohei Otani, Johnny Lush of the Philadelphia Phillies knew how it felt to be a two-way player on a bad baseball team. On May 1, 1906, the 20-year-old left-hander threw the first of his two career no-hitters, striking out 11 against the Brooklyn Superbas. He also spent time playing first base and outfield in between his 35 starts, batting.264 in 227 plate appearances. By the end of the year, Lush was pretty tired and fed up with the Phillies, as the Kentucky

Post reported on October 6th. And the quote is, Another Philadelphia player who would like to get away from the team is Johnny Lush, pitcher and general utility man. He is sore at the Philadelphia management because he hasn't been given a cent extra for overtime work he's done in the infield and outfield during the past two months. He was signed as a pitcher, and all this time has been taking his regular turn in the box.

He got no rest on the days between, but has covered some other position, generally first base, center field, or right field. He feels that he ought to get something more than his pitcher's salary for all his work, but the management rules otherwise, and Johnny wants to get away. Jacob says the Phillies finished in fourth place, 45.5 games behind the Chicago Cubs, who won a record 116. Lush did get his wish to escape Philadelphia the next year, traded to St. Louis for pitcher Buster Brown.

He played out the rest of his seven-year career with the Cardinals, although he was never quite as good as he was in 1906. More than a century later, Johnny Lush remains the last player in AL or NL history with 200 innings pitched, 200 innings at other defensive positions, and 200 at bats in a single season. The 200-200-200 club. Hall of Famer Bullitt Rogan also performed the feat in the Negro National League twice. So Johnny Lush, a somewhat significant two-way player from 1906, and he argued that he deserved a raise for being a two-way player. He was hired as a pitcher and they were using him as something other than a pitcher as well. He's like, hey, pay me more money, which I guess is reasonable. You're doing more work. It's like I was a writer and now I'm

an editor. So give me a raise. And the ringer did. Otherwise, I would probably be complaining like Johnny Lush. So I guess that Shohei Otani, maybe he should have just said, I'll be a one-way player. Yeah. And then when he showed up, he's like, actually, I'll do both. But you got to make it worth my while. Yeah. I don't think that would have worked, but it will work when he's a free agent. Oh, yeah.

Somebody's going to back up a Brinks truck yep all right well now i guess you can go blow in your nose and sneeze to your heart's content i can't wait i'm gonna do some screaming sneezes all right that will do it for today seems like the red socks may have listened to our episode about not throwing her and judge so many strikes because they walked him in his first three plate appearances on Thursday. And then he got a pitch to hit in his last one, and he almost hit it out. He hit it like 113 miles per hour to the edge of the warning track. It fooled everyone for a second there. Would have been out of 13 parks, just not that one.

He's just so locked in right now that the second he sees any hittable pitch, he will hit it hard. He's gone two games without homering, which seems like a lot, except in each of those games he reached base three times and had a couple extra base hits and hit another ball hard, had an outfield assist as well. He'd be an MVP player if he just did what he's doing on the days that he does not homer. It's very much a you-can't-stop-Aaron-Judge-you-can-only-hope-to-contain-him type situation.

And on the subject of hitting balls hard, Brendan Donovan hit a grand slam for the Cardinals. And I'm glad he did because it reminded me that I meant to mention him among the list of rookies having strong seasons. In fact, he may actually get to that four-war threshold at baseball reference and he would be a seventh rookie to do it. So the record might not just be broken, but broken wide open. But didn't mean to slight him because he's only about half a win away and there's still time for him to get to four. Also, some people reminded me that when we talked about Shohei Otani potentially switch hitting because there's that crypto ad where at the very end they show him hitting right-handed for some reason, or at least left-handed and flipped. I speculated about whether he could switch hit given that he him hitting right-handed for some reason, or at least left-handed and flipped. I speculated about whether he could switch hit, given that he is a left-handed hitter and a right-handed thrower and also an athletic marvel.

Well, he does golf right-handed. He swings righty when he golfs. There's video of him golfing. Not particularly well. It's an old video. I don't know if he's a good golfer now, but he does swing from that side. So just saying, he can swing some kind of club righty. It's not like he can't hit lefties anyway as a left handed hitter.

I think he'll be fine. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. And the following five listeners already have. They've gone to patreon.com slash effectively wild. They've pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Jojo, Meherab Amaria, Max Hokit, Elizabeth Baldwin, and Yo-Yo. Thanks to all of you, Jojo and Yo-Yo.

Our Patreon supporters get access to a whole raft of perks, including the Effectively Wild Patreon-only Discord group. Just a great group. Can't recommend it highly enough. Wonderful community. You can be part of it for just a low, low monthly amount. You also get access

to monthly bonus episodes and playoff live streams coming up next month, plus discounts on merch and other excellent bonuses. You can contact me and Meg via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter,

or if you are not, via regular old email at podcastthefangraphs.com. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon.

Oh, come on, do your worst, boy That's the way, that's the way Hit me where it hurts, boy That's the way, that's the way Put fun to your first, boy That's the way, that's the way But I'll never you your first boy. That's the way. That's the way. But I'll never give it up. I'll never give it up.

I'll never give it up. I'll never give it up. But it's not impossible. So even after he, oh wait, screaming steez. Give a false alarm. Oh no.