Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1958: I Can Be Center Field?

Episode Date: January 21, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about 53-year-old Dae-Sung Koo 구대성 pitching in Australia, provide a final(?) update on Brandon Belt’s beloved Toronto chicken tenders, discuss the invisible strike zone as a feature that sets baseball apart from other sports (along with listener responses to other differentiating factors), bemoan the results of a Reddit poll […]

I'll give you an answer if I can catch one passing by. It feels right for you. Anything you want to know, just ask me. It's worth every cent it costs, and you know it's free. Hello and welcome to episode 1958 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Riley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So just this week, we talked to Chris Oxspring, the 45-year-old pitcher in the Australian Baseball League for the Sydney Blue Sox,

and mentioned that he was the oldest pitcher in the league. No longer. He has been displaced. There is always a bigger fish and there's always an older ABL pitcher. Dae Sung Koo is back. Remember Dae Sung Koo? Yeah. How about that?

Much like Chris Oxspring, Dae Sung Koo pitched one season in the majors, 2005, the very same season. And much like Chris Oxspring, he has pitched in Korea, where of course he is from, and Japan and Australia. I think he may have moved to Australia. He's actually a former teammate of Chris Oxspring's because he used to pitch for Sydney in the ABL also when Chris Oxspring was there. And he came out of retirement and pitched a scoreless inning just this week. He is pitching for a team called Geelong Korea, which is in Geelong. It's in Victoria in Australia. And the Geelong Korea team, which was an expansion club a few years ago, is populated almost entirely or entirely by Korean players. And he had been managing, but he came out of retirement and he pitched and he got a couple strikeouts. He is 53 years old. 53. 53 years old. Yeah. People may remember Dae-sung Koo, especially Mets fans who knew him as Mr. Koo, because he had a famous incident where after not having batted for close to 20 years, he stood in there against Randy Johnson.

to hit, but then he doubled deep to the outfield off of the big unit. And then he came around to score on a sacrifice bunt, which was just wild that he hurt his shoulder in the process. But you still see that play sometimes, but he's still out there plying his trade. And he said in an article that he'd been working on his body and he thought he could throw 130 kilometers per hour, which is about 80, 81. As it turned out, he threw 117, which is more like 72, but it was fast enough. He got the job done. So yeah, now Chris Oxspring has to stick around for, I guess, another eight years or so if he wants to reclaim his title of oldest pitcher in that league. And technically, I guess, Koo held that title already. I said that Oxbring was the oldest and he is this year. And there were some sources that said he was the oldest ever. But Koo actually pitched an inning in the 2018 to 2019 season, too, a scoreless inning when he was

a mere 48 or 49, I guess. So he's the oldest, and he's still got it. I think maybe he has glasses now. He just, you know, he's just, he's a lefty at least. So it makes some sense that he would do that. But I love it. I love it. Yeah. That's remarkable. I mean, on the one hand, I will say I would hope after a baseball career that you could just be done if you want to be when you're in your 50s. But if you don't want to. And even though they're at a lower level than they once were, it happens less than it used to, I think, just because major league players, they make enough money now that if they're not in the majors anymore, they can quit playing. But it used to be like when you had to get a second job or you had to have a whole career after your baseball career, then sometimes players would kind of kick around

in the minors for a while after they lost their major league jobs. That doesn't happen so much anymore. But sometimes you see this type of player, obviously Koo and Oxspring and their ilk were not long for the majors. And so they didn't get to make a ton of money while they were there. But still, like clearly playing for love of the game at this point which is it's really nice i think it's just you know we struggle to know what to to do with ourselves when we've been doing one thing for a really long time right yeah how do you orient your life around this like vast expanse of available unc unclaimed time. It's hard, you know? playing and keep making a living around the world, especially if it's your home or your adopted country and you get to have your family with you and everything and you just get to come out of retirement and school players who are 20 or 30 years younger than you from time to time.

It sounds like the dream. I love it. Yeah, I think that that would be pretty great. Another follow-up here. We got to close the book probably, hopefully, maybe on Brandon Belt and his famous chicken fingers. Got a few updates on this developing story. Oh, boy. Friday show. Yeah. We're not the only ones who have been semi-obsessed with Brandon Belt's chicken fingers. No.

He'll vindicated. Tenders, that is, not fingers. But he has been asked about this, and he actually did an interview on KNBR, the San Francisco station, the other day on the Papa and Lund show. And he actually, they were talking about how he's a picky eater,

but he brought up the tenders himself. So I will play a quick clip here. So a big deal up there, I guess, this offseason, they found an interview I did where I said the chicken strips were so great over there at the Ritz. Yeah, I heard that. And I don't really remember that, to be honest with you. But I ended up getting them again, and I remember why I said that.

They were pretty awesome. So any place that's got chicken strips, it's good enough to me. So he was a doubter. He didn't immediately recall how great the tenders were when that quote of his was dug up. But then he went back for a second helping and confirmed that they were, in fact, incredible. However, when we were informed of this clip by listener Michael, I had a pedantic objection. Yeah. How can you not be pedantic about chicken?

I wondered whether chicken strips are the same as chicken tenders. Right. Because in his initial quote, Belt had called them tenders, but here on the radio, he called them strips. Right. And according to some sources and some serious research I did, those do seem to be different things. They are different things. Preparations, even if they're sometimes used interchangeably. And I got confirmation of that.

And I've got another clip here because the Tim and Friends show on Sportsnet. So this is a show that is recorded in Toronto, I believe. So this is a show that is recorded in Toronto, I believe. And they actually brought on the executive chef from the Toronto Ritz-Carlton the other day to serve them the chicken tendies in person and confirmed that they really were as great as advertised. Did they call them tendies? No, I don't think they did call them tendies. Again, I'm just editorializing here. But they actually asked because maybe someone had brought this point up to them before while they had the chef in the studio. They actually confirmed that tenders are different from nuggets or strips or other

preparations. So here's a quick clip. The second voice you will hear is the executive chef of the Ritz confirming as much. So PJ wrote it. Hold on. And I want to get the executive chef of the Ritz confirming as much. So PJ wrote in, hold on, and I want to get the executive chef. Hurry! All right. Nuggets and strips are most often the same stuff. Ground up frozen breaded chicken. The tender is a part of the chicken breast, an unprocessed piece of meat. They're not the same. Is that a good explanation of what the difference between a nugget and a tender is correct okay yeah these are tenders these are tenders yeah they're a whole piece of the chicken so there you have it so they are in fact tenders and they are in fact great yeah i mean i just uh

it would be such a weird thing to be a baseball player that's an obvious statement allow me to say more you know it's like you make this offhand remark you probably don't i mean clearly think another moment about it until it is presented to you as like an organizing fact of your psychology and one of the bigger decisions of your professional life and two weirdos talk about it on their friday show and the chef gets to go and like be on the radio and the reputation of a hotel kitchen is on the line yep it's such a weird it's a weird life that they live you know it's a really weird one blown outably blown out of proportion, the impact. We've never done that before, very first time.

That the tenders have played in his decision-making and his happiness about being in Toronto. But it's a source of some fascination, clearly, not just for us. I mean, at least when he had them again, he was like, yeah, you know? Now that I've had them again, I realize why I said that. I remember them to be good. I was right the first time, yeah, you know, now that I've had them again, I realize why I said that. I remember them to be good. I was right the first time, yeah. You know, at least he didn't come back and say, you know, those are kind of overrated. Because sometimes you think you know a thing, you know.

And you have it on vacation somewhere maybe. And then you go back and you search for it and you find it again. And then it kind of underwhelms because it, you because it wasn't really about the tenders, Ben. It was about the great vacation you had. And that's really what you're tasting in your memory is the great vacation. But no, he had them again and deemed them good. So I'm happy.

I'm mostly happy for the chef at the Ritz-Carlton because he probably had a really stressful morning. He's not used to having to talk to weirdo sports media folks. Right. I guess. I count myself among that. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Price and Company included. But yeah, it could have been the chef was having an off day or a great day that day or the ingredients were special. You never know. So it's nice.

Something got got like tipped funnily in the in the spice blend. Yeah. And you wouldn't necessarily know. And then what? Then what, Ben? But you can count on these tenders day in, day out. The only problem, as noted, is that you can only acquire them if you are staying at the Ritz. Now, maybe they'll change that to capitalize on this wave of publicity, perhaps. But as of now, as one of our listeners confirmed, you have to be staying at the Ritz or at least have a room. If you really, really want the tenders, you could presumably just have a room and pay for the room and the tenders. But I don't know that that would be worth it. They might not be that good. Anyway, we'll let you know if anything else comes of this. Another update, I have to pass along some sobering results of a Reddit poll this week

about people's preferred term for the extra inning runner. And I can say this now because voting has closed a few hours before we are recording here on Friday. You have to maintain the integrity of the Reddit voting process. You don't want to have undue influence. Yeah, I don't want to stuff the ballot box here. I voted one time, but I did not attempt to exert any influence to sway the results of the poll. And clearly, I don't have that much influence,

or the results of the poll would have been different because this is dismaying. So there are five options here for the responses. Automatic runner, which is sort of the official technical term. Ghost runner, which as we have talked about ad nauseum is an absolute abomination and a crime against the language because that is not what the extra inning runner is. That is an entirely different type of runner as even dictionary.com has acknowledged under pressure from me. Then, of course, there's zombie runner, our preferred term,

Manfred Mann, and other. Now, I hate to report that zombie runner finished second to last, barely ahead of other. We could barely beat Other. Now, the good news, the silver lining is that Ghostrunner did not win. So it goes Manfred Mann, Ghostrunner fairly close behind Manfred Mann, then a big drop to Automatic Runner, then a small drop to Zombie Runner, which got only 459 votes out of almost 6,000 and then other after that. So this has thrown me, this has shaken me because I thought we were making more progress than this, especially on the baseball subreddit, which I think of as a very effectively wild, friendly place. We get shouted out there. I mean, our people are there, a lot of our people.

I don't know whether the results would be even worse if you were to do this offline with kind of casual, you know, real life baseball fans, not extremely online ones like us. But I'd imagine that it might be even worse in that group. So the fact that Zombie Runner did this poorly in this poll, it has really upset me. And there are people who have noted that we would be upset about this in the comment thread. The people noted that the sub needs to listen to more Effectively Wild. Someone posted Ben Lindbergh in shambles, which is true. I am. I was in shambles.

So this is tough. This is a real wake-up call for me. The market penetration of Zombie Runner is so low. And look, I favor Manfred Mann over Ghost Runner because at least it's not the wrong term. It's not a pre-existing term that is something different from the zombie runner. But look, people like that. I mean, when I heard Manfred Mann for the first time, I chuckled. I thought, okay, that's clever. I don't dislike Manfred Mann. My objections to Manfred Mann are along the lines of, first of all, I'm not sure that everyone would get the reference, although the fact that Manfred Mann are along the lines of, first of all, I'm not sure that everyone would get

the reference, although the fact that Manfred Mann is so popular in this poll suggests that maybe they do. I don't know. I mean, in my music collection, I have a whole lot of Manfred Mann. I have like, not just Manfred Mann, the band, but multiple other bands that Manfred Mann was in, that Manfred Mann lent his name to. So, I mean, I'm probably in one of the top percentiles of Manfred Mann awareness. And I guess baseball, you know, has an older there are out there these days so so there's that and then there's also the fact that manfred didn't invent the extra inning runner right he he implemented it in the majors a crime for which he should be punished in perpetuity and you could say that he should be saddled with this like it it should be his legacy, like we should hang this around his head, Manfred Mann. It's like shaming him.

But I wonder, because in a way, is it a tribute? Is it honoring him? Like, would Manfred be flattered to have this named after? I probably, I think he would probably, even if that's not the intent. So I don't know that I want this burnishing his legacy, especially because he didn't invent this. It existed for decades at other levels. Yeah, I think that when evaluating whether a term is understood to be appropriately pejorative, it is useful to understand how the person who references would

understand it. And I think you're right that Rob Manfred would look at this and go, to quote myself, no notes. He quite likes this change. So I think that unless we shift it to man Fredman parentheses derogatory I think we're not conveying the great sense of betrayal you know yeah than anything that we experience when watching this and so given that it does not communicate that feeling I think that zombie runner remains remains good as and the best option really because it is clarifying it does not replicate a term that has a prior long-standing definition it i think will stand the test of time like if we if we go with manfred man even not caring that he won't know that we are saying how dare you right that the tone is rob you baby that sucks you know yeah in 28 years people aren't gonna know and people

be like why did i call manfred man and he won't be the commissioner by then i would imagine and um who knows if we'll be doing this podcast because we'll be old enough to play baseball in australia but you know like uh i think you want to keep zombie run it's just such a perfect it's so perfect it's so perfect it's just like a perfect. It's so perfect. It's so perfect. It's just like a, it's so tidy, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's tidy. Someone commented, zombie runner simply makes no sense, but people around here like to use

it because that's what Effectively Wild calls it. We call it that because it makes perfect sense. We call it that because it makes good sense. Although I love this idea that we are like the architects of a shadowy cabal of baseball nerds who can exert our influence. Well, not nearly enough influence, clearly. We'd be doing better in the poll here. I just, I don't see it. I mean, it's perfect.

Like everyone knows what a zombie is, except people on The Walking Dead show who never call them zombies for some reason. What do they call them on Walking Dead again? Well, walkers. Walkers, right, right. But also like a million other names, everything except zombie. Well, sure. When you live in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, you got to come up with some slang because the slang you had, it doesn't seem to meet the moment. Yeah.

But again, it's perfect. Everyone understands the reference and the runner was out. They were dead. Then they were reanimated right they were put back on base and it also it's it conveys the the derogatory tone i think yeah there's something unnatural and unholy about this that this runner was brought back from the dead and just put back to shamble on second base and eat our brains as baseball fans it's perfect on every level so i just i don't understand the objection brains was there a movie one time about um a good zombie and he fell in

love with a non-zombie wasn't that uh yeah nick holt guy in that nicholas holt nick right yeah yeah so i don't know i just i don't know what know what problem people have with this. But we just we got to keep doing the work. I guess we just got to keep putting the message out there and hope that it resonates at some point or that they do away with the rule. We don't have to call it that. But I think that we're going to have to keep fighting the fight then because the odds that they get rid of the rule. They seem quite low to me. They do. Yeah.

Warm Bodies, by the way, was the name of that movie. Oh, Warm Bodies. I didn't do The Walking Dead. Like, I tried it because everyone was like, back when it premiered, you know, 20 million years ago, they're like, this show's great. And then I was like, I think the quality to gross out ratio is wrong for me. And if you like it, that's fine. But it wasn't quite right for me.

And then I was shocked to learn, I think, isn't that show still on or like just concluded? It just went off the air. Wow. Isn't that show still on or just concluded? It just went off the air. And there are several spinoffs and sequels and prequels and such that are still running, which I would know because— It's based on a comic book, right? Yes. The comic, the graphic novel series is completed, but the TV franchise shambles on and I somehow shamble along with it because I did not make that wise decision that you did to check out at some point, which almost everyone did at some point. And I stuck it out to the bitter end. But I got some content out of it for TheRinger.com at least.

So that was something. Well, if you did it for content, it's like it went from being a figurative zombie to being a literal zombie, right? Yes. Right. Exactly. Persisting forever. Well well sorry to report that news but i i had to like we have to rile up the base here we have to tell them like our work here is not done no there are there we have to proselytize there are many out there who are not convinced i i look at manfred man people as like fellow travelers, I guess, you know, like their hearts are in the right place.

Yeah, they're rejecting Ghostrunner. Yes, that's the important thing. That's the first step to getting to the promised land is admitting that there's a problem with the existing social order. We can form some kind of coalition here, the zombie runner people and the Manfred Mann people. We're on the right side of history, I think. But there's still a divide between us, a smaller but significant divide. Politics is so complicated. which baseball is different and weird and strange and unusual. And thanks to Raymond Chen, the primary keeper of the Effectively Wild Wiki, for putting together a page on the wiki to keep track of all of these different submissions for ways that baseball is different. So today's comes from listener Jonathan. Now, we talked about one way that the strike zone sets the sport apart, we believe, in that it is adaptive to the

dimensions of the hitter, which is odd, as we noted in the NBA. If you're a shorter player, you don't get to shoot at a shorter hoop, right? You have to just conform and make do with the dimensions. They're just fixed dimensions and everyone has to play with them. Whereas in baseball, the strike zone, which is quite important, conforms to the height of the hitter. It's odd for such a central feature of the sport to vary like that, to be player specific. thing about baseball, the strike zone, it isn't even real. And yet most things, quantitatively speaking, that happen during a game depend upon the subjective determination of an umpire as to whether or not the ball was in or out of the invisible box. That's pretty weird. So the fact that a central feature of the sport is essentially invisible is sort of implied. I think that is odd. Now, if you were playing tennis or volleyball or table tennis or whatever, and the net was imaginary and you all just had to be like, was that over that or not? I don't know. That would be kind of weird. Like there's actually

a physical thing there that tells you whether it was high enough or not. And the same for, you know, baskets or goals or whatever, like they're fixed dimensions. Everything is corporeal and tangible, and you can see whether it was in or out. Now, I responded to Jonathan with one possible comp here. I said, I guess it's not that different from the first down line or the line to gain, I guess is the technical term in football. I love it when Ben does a football. Yeah, I know. It's rare for me. But as I said, that's also an invisible target that players either are aiming for or trying to protect. And then the officials just sort of eyeball it and judge whether the ball crossed the implied plane. And the superimposed yellow line, the first down line on a football broadcast on TV, is sort of like home plate, I think, in that it kind of marks the borders.

But then you have to extrapolate from there really to see, OK, so was that did that cross there? The plates down there, the ball was up there. And you sort of have to do the same thing with the ball to determine whether something was a first down. It's very odd. I mean, I don't know if this is like, do football people want to preserve the human element of the chain gang? Oh, it's really very silly. It's very silly, especially because they have chips in the ball now, right, that tracks the ball's position. I believe that that is correct. So in theory, you could use that maybe. And I guess it's like the center of the ball, but you could figure out maybe where the tip of the ball was when the ball came to rest. Because otherwise it's just, you know, you're sort of

just ballparking it really. So I think that is a fairly close comp. So I don't know if this is unique but it is it's weird it's close i would maybe say that the that home plate is maybe less akin to the chains and more akin to the field markers right like you're right that the the line that we see on tv is superimposed by the broadcast. It's on the field. But it is in reference to... There's like a pole, right? Like a chain pole that's on the sidelines. Well, sure, but you're also using the markers on the field.

You're using the yardage markers on the ground that they paint on. So that maybe feels like a slightly closer comp to me than the chain or maybe they work in tandem right they're both providing a referent to something that moves and is sort of situationally determined right like what your line to gain is is going to depend on a lot of stuff related to the drive although you know how much yardage you need is like set in the rules so yeah that's i don't know i think that those those might be sort of cousins you know they're not exactly the same but they're yeah they're kind of they're kind of cousins and like in basketball don't you have like you can't do goaltending and don't you have the space above true yeah yeah that's a good one that's sort of kind of the same too right it's less impactful

right like that isn't it's not like every offensive possession in in basketball you see the players like oh yeah they're gold they're goaltending like it's not like that rule comes to bear every possession is brought to bear is what i'm trying to say every possession but it's sort of in that same category of like you have a physical referent for a thing but the referent is sort of pointing to space empty amorphous space and then you have to triangulate between the physical referent and the space yeah is that similar to offsides maybe where in? Yeah, or wherever there's offsides. Ben, you're going to ask me to know about soccer? I do know about soccer.

I think I understand offsides now, actually, after the World Cup. I feel more confident about offsides in soccer than I do in hockey. But that's like there's a physical object, like there's a person, you know, there's a body. Or there's the puck, right? Isn't that in reference to the puck in hockey? The ref has to decide whether this was past that or whatever. Yeah. And it's all, it's very subjective. I mean, there are a lot of subjective decisions that umpires, that refs make officials in almost every sport, I would think. So the subjectivity is not that unusual. I guess what's unusual is that there's just kind of an

invisible line, but maybe there are often invisible lines. Is the line of scrimmage invisible? I guess, I mean, that's where the ball is, right? Like, I don't know. I mean, it's invisible in that it's not marked on the field but like it's knowable right it's yeah it's unlike the strike zone which can feel more amorphous because you have like the rule book definition of the zone and then you have the zone that gets called and those are not perfectly lined up with one another so i think that there's greater So in this respect, in this respect, baseball remains sort of singular in that it is less reliably knowable, right, than it is in football. And, you know, we have all experienced, you included, huge football fan that you are, watching a game and being like, that measurement was wrong or like that spot was bad but in theory that is a that is a a pretty knowable thing within the confines of the game now it can be in baseball too but that's just not how the zone is always called so right cat's trying to hawk up a air ball right now you okay i don't know if you can hear that she She seems fine. It's always great when one of your cats guests on the show.

Yeah. Yeah. Every now and again. Sometimes my dog, maybe my baby. Who knows? Just all sorts of creatures, small, cute creatures just appearing unscheduled on the podcast. Yeah. To throw up.

I guess if we get robozone or at least partial robozone, then that obviously that takes some of the subjectivity out of it, though not the invisibility. Still, it's sort of implied and you kind of have to just define where it is based on your own sense of the strike zone and you're seeing many pitches. So it's still sort of unusual. There's something there. We can add it to the list. Yeah. Thanks, Jonathan. And people write in to respond to any one of these that we talk about, which is good. That's the point. But we talked about the multiple surfaces on the field, the grass and the dirt, and how you can go from one to the other or even be on both at the same time. And some people pointed out, Dave said that in bowling, that also there's a raised platform in baseball we talked about, right? That the mound, it's odd to have multiple levels. And Dave said in bowling, thinking of non-planar playing surfaces, bowling alleys and crown

green bowls are crowned intentionally to add complexity to the games. And John also wrote in to say, well, I'm not sure this technically counts in bowling. Oftentimes the person bowling will step onto a six inch raised surface to bowl while his team and the opposition is waiting. This struck me as a parallel to baseball in that the remainder of the players are waiting their turn at offenses. Only one can attempt to score points at a time. And also that the person throwing the ball is on an elevated surface. I guess we didn't explicitly say this, but maybe just the, I don't know if this counts as one, but sort of the one-on-one nature of baseball is weird for a team sport. Obviously, it's par for the course for an individual sport. You're just facing one person at a time. But in baseball, I guess it's not so much that as it's sort of the discrete

plays, which we talked about. Baseball is much more suited to, conducive to in-depth analysis. And one of the reasons for that is that it's separated into these discrete plays with stoppages. So it's not really one-on-one in that, yeah, you have the pitcher versus the batter, but there's also the catcher there's more continuous motion and more of the entire team matchup versus the entire team. So maybe that goes hand in hand with the ease of analysis. Yeah, it's a little unusual. Again, not unique, but still. And Alana wrote in Patreon supporter to say, does the balance beam in gymnastics count as an elevated terrain in a team sport? Which as we were talking about that, I was thinking about gymnastics. I was thinking about- I was not. That's a great point.

Yeah. I had the pommel horse in my head for some reason, but balance beam- Or like a vault. Yeah. Beam is right. Yeah. The beam, like you're on the beam for most of your routine, but you still have to mount and dismount. And that's part of it. So famously one of the harder parts of it, seemingly. Right. Now we were talking about team sports. Technically gymnastics is a team sport, but it's a team sport in the sense that all the scores of the people on the team are factored in, but individuals compete individually, right? So it's not quite a team sport in the same sense as baseball is where you have multiple people playing at the same time. And I guess bowling is kind of the same as gymnastics and that maybe you have a bowling team, but but each of you is kind of going in sequence. Right. So it's a team sport technically, but it's sort of a different type of team sport, I suppose. And also Craig wrote in to say professional football fields

are generally crowned also such that the middle of the field is a foot or two higher than the sidelines. This allows water runoff rather than pooling, but also especially at the college level, teams will manipulate the level and slope of the crown depending on their desired offensive style running teams generally favor higher crowns quarterbacks who are used to a more flat crown field can have a lot of trouble adjusting to a higher crown constructing the crown starts well before the grass is laid so it's not something that teams can manipulate from week to week but someday possibly but it is one of my arguments against the all football fields are the same, all baseball stadiums are different because most football fields actually are different in terms of the slope of the crown. Baseball fields are somewhat sloped too for runoff or for similar reasons to favor a certain type of offense or defense.

So that sort of thing happens, the length of the grass or the slope of the lines to encourage or suppress bunting. That sort of thing has happened in the past. So that's a good point too. And lastly, friend of the show of The Ringer, Zach Cram, he wrote in to tell me about a sport that I was not aware of. It's a Japanese sport called botaoshi. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that completely correctly. Pronunciations varied from Botaoshi to Botaoshi on videos I watched. But this is a it's like a capture the flag type game that's traditionally played by cadets at the National Defense Academy of Japan on its anniversary, and you have two giant teams with like 150 people total vying for control of the opposition's poll. Yes, I said poll. And you have 75 attackers and 75 defenders, and there's a poll. And when the defending team's poll is brought lower than 30 degrees to the horizontal, it

starts out perpendicular, then they lose. So the match is like two minutes long. And if your pole gets tilted to a 30 degree angle, then it's all over. So you have people like climbing on the pole and other people who are sort of at the base and people are climbing on them to try to tilt the pole and it can get very violent. So this is maybe more obscure to American audiences, but there is a verticality to that too. I wonder if domed football stadiums are crowned. Oh, I don't know.

Like, do they need to be? You're not worried about runoff, right? And they're an artificial surface most of the time. Anyway, yeah, lots of, you know, the sports, they're a land of contrast, Ben. Yes, they are. Yeah, that's the whole point of this segment. So keep them coming. And I wanted to just shout out some research I saw. Tom Tango has been blogging up a storm, TomTango of MLB.com, who's always working on StatC cast stuff at Baseball Savant. And he also is one of the co-authors of the book. And he has a site, TangoTiger.com, where he posts research and he's been busy over there

lately. And this one thing he did really threw me for a loop because Tango saw a video where Robbie Ray was talking to Rob Friedman, the pitching ninja. And Robbie Ray said that he holds the ball with the signature side away from the batter. The idea being that he wants the batter to see the white or the light side of the ball and keep the signature out of sight because he thought that allowing the batter to see the markings might benefit the batter. So he just wants it to be a blank slate, basically, that the batter is seeing. And so he will hold the ball differently depending on who he's facing so that they will see the blank part, the white part, instead of the signature side.

And this is something that in the past I would have said, oh, that's a really interesting idea. I wonder if there's some kind of competitive advantage here, whether pitchers are really deriving an advantage from doing this and others are not, and they should be, and they're just giving away an edge here. And Tango actually answered this question or was able to really look into this question in an in-depth way. And first of all, he found that it's true that Robbie Ray does this because StatCast can track the point on the ball that it spins around. So you can see the orientation of the ball. And he found that Robbie Ray, who's a lefty, when he throws to a righty, he does keep the signature in the dark side, as Tango called it, of his 1,010 pitches to right-handed hitters, 96% spun with the signature in the dark side of the ball invisible to the batter.

Now, because of that, you can't really tell whether it's benefiting Robbie Ray or not, because he's doing that all the time. If he were to do it sometimes and not at other times, then maybe we could see whether there's an advantage. Give us a control group. Exactly, right. But there are some natural control groups in that there are pitchers who don't vary this. They don't care.

They just, whoever is hitting, they will hold the ball the same way. So he found 50 pitchers among lefties who seemed to just have the signature, the Rob Manfred, just randomly positioned. So Carlos Radon, for example, threw 751 pitches with the signature hidden and 673 with the signature in the light side of the ball. So it's just sort of randomly varied seemingly. And he found other pitchers like that. With Radon, he pitched much better when the signature was obscured, which is the point that Robbie Ray was saying. And that's also true for the next pitcher with the most number of pitches thrown, Julio Rios. And Tango said for all six pitchers who threw at least 800 pitches split about evenly between dark side and light side, each of them performed better in the dark side.

So it sounds like, wow, Robbie Ray is onto something here. There's a hidden advantage. Then again, Tango writes the next six highest thrown pitchers after that did better in the light side, going directly against Robbie Ray's thesis. He said the overall average of these 50 pitchers does slightly favor keeping the signature in the dark side, but the median is on the light side. So basically we're back to square one. He noted that there are 14 lefties who throw with the signature predominantly visible. So there's no good reason to do that maybe, but it might be a superstition or a comfort thing. But there's not enough evidence to suggest really that they should be doing something differently. And he looked at righties against lefties too. And so Garrett Cole, for instance, appears to have no preference. And when the signature is on the dark side, Garrett Cole does better. But Christian Javier is the opposite. He does better when the signature is visible, and on and on it goes. So it doesn't look like there's a very clear pattern here. And it could, of course, be true for individual pitchers or for Robbie Ray specifically. It doesn't seem to be true across the board. But whether it's true or not, it amazes me that we can kind of answer this

question. Because until very recently, this would have been firmly in the realm of science fiction. Like to figure out whether the signature was visible to the batter on the way to the plate in the very brief time when that ball is spinning and going 90 something miles per hour. Like that would have been inconceivable that that could have happened. Or like that would have been inconceivable that that could have happened. It's just like the fact that you could kind of casually look into this and Tango has access to data that we don't in the public. But that this data even exists, that anyone can determine an answer to this kind of question. And just it boggles my mind, even as someone who's super into the technology and the data of baseball and the stats and everything. into the technology and the data of baseball and the stats and everything, every now and then there's something that just kind of rocks me back on my heels and makes me feel spoiled or just amazed at the progress that has been made in being able to quantify things or track things and be

able to answer questions like this. And I don't know whether it's good or bad. Generally, I like being able to answer questions and determine the truth of things. On the other hand, it would have been kind of fun not to know the answer to this and just be like, oh, I wonder if Robbie Ray's onto something here. This is really fascinating. Now we can kind of investigate and see, well, at least across the board, it doesn't seem like there's that much to it. But I don't know. It's just like within our lifetimes, even within our times covering the sport, there's just been such leaps and bounds in being able to look into things like this that you kind of wonder, where does it end? How close are we to where it ends? Are we better off this way? And also,

it's just kind of like, wow, we can actually answer that question. That's incredible. But what is the preferred logo orientation if you want to get Jordan Alvarez out? Well, there probably isn't one, I would imagine. Well, then what good are these answers at all, Ben. What good are they? Yeah, I don't think there's one weird trick to get Jordan Alvarez out necessarily. But that's the thing. I would have entertained the idea that this was one weird trick, that doing this would be some significant advantage. And again, it could be on an individual level, but it seems like many pitchers thrive not paying any attention to this whatsoever. But still, the precision is available to be able to see how the ball is oriented on its way to the plate.

I don't know. Maybe I'm coming off like a country bumpkin here, but I'm just like, wow. I'm just like slack-jawed about the fact that it's possible to investigate these things now. I mean, it's pretty remarkable. It's a pretty remarkable thing. Yeah. And for some people, it's probably TMI, right? And it's like, I don't want to break my brain thinking about things like this, right? It's too complex. It's too nitty gritty. The minutiae, I don't want to have this on my mind. I'm overthinking it. I'm overloaded with information

here. But it's there if you want it. You don't have to have it. So it's just, I don't know, I'm just marveling at this, even as someone who is pretty plugged into the latest baseball advances. And Tenko also, he did a little study that surprised me and surprised him, which is that he was under the impression, as is Bill James, who has written about this too, that ERA on a career level, or at least once you get past a certain point, ERA tells you more about a pitcher than FIP does. We've talked about how FIP is more predictive of future ERA in a single season, and we've talked about how I think at least that FIP is more predictive of future ERA in a single season, right? And we've talked about how I think at least that FIP isn't just a predictive stat. It's actually also a retrospective stat that

tells you how that player performed as an individual, separated from some team factors and also sort of alighting some things that might actually matter at times. But still, I think it sort of drills down on how that pitcher did as an individual, which is why it's more predictive of future results, because it's more aligned with the true talent of the player performing there. Anyway, the idea is that ERA would be more telling eventually because FIP suggests that no one has any control whatsoever over batted balls and the ability to prevent them from becoming hits, right? It just takes that out of the equation entirely.

So if you're able to induce soft contact, for instance, then maybe that's a skill that FIP doesn't capture, that ERA, given a significant enough sample size, would be. And it's not just that. ERA, given a significant enough sample size, would be. And it's not just that. It's like your ability to hold base runners well or not well or pick runners off or field the position yourself or throw wild pitches or, again, get weak contact and ground balls and maybe pitch assumed that if you look at a big enough sample, that at some point ERA would be more predictive of future ERA than FIP is. And it turns out, according to Tango's research, at least for the period that he looked at, 1998 to 2021, that that never actually happens. That ERA never outperforms FIP in its ability to predict future FIP, that FIP is always more predictive and more telling in that sense than ERA is, which surprised him and surprised me.

And he did the same thing with BABIP, and it's more or less the same deal. Like just tossing the BABIP out with the bathwater. There are maybe certain times when that could cost you insight and information and discount what a player is actually doing. But on the whole, it certainly seems like not even factoring that in just tells you more about the player's future performance, at least, than factoring it in, which is odd. Yeah. All right. So we do have some emails we can do here and maybe a little stat blast at the end and a pass blast as always, but we'll see how many emails we can get through here. I guess I will start with a pedantic question. How can you not be pedantic about

baseball questions? This is from Jamie in Richfield, Minnesota, Patreon supporter, who says, I've been stewing over this a while and have finally decided I needed to unburden myself. You've come to the right place. Back in episode 1857, you rightfully mocked the quote unquote home run robbery by Aaron Judge of Shohei Otani. Judge, in that instance, did not take away a home run. But more importantly, Jamie suggests, Judge did not commit robbery. Now, we have talked about the idea that we look at these things, these robbing hits, taking away hits, because we tend to. He quotes from the New York Penal Code that defines robbery and says that robbery is forcible stealing. A person forcibly steals property and commits robbery when, in the course of committing a larceny, he uses or threatens the immediate use of physical force upon another person for the purpose of preventing or overcoming resistance to the taking of the property or to the retention thereof immediately after the taking or compelling the owner of such property or another person to deliver up the property or to engage in other conduct which aids in the commission of the

larceny. So, Jamie suggests, if Aaron Judge were guilty of what he was alleged to have done, he would have been committing larceny, not robbery. Can we please, please stop calling the taking away of home runs robbery? He stole a home run. Okay. He took something that belonged to someone else. Stealing something is committing larceny. The definition of larceny is a person steals property and commits larceny when, with intent to deprive another of property or to appropriate the same to himself or to a third person, he wrongfully takes, obtains, or withholds such property from an owner thereof. person of something, they're not doing it forcibly. They're not using physical force or threatening physical force. There's no violence being done here.

It's just larceny, not robbery. Okay. I mean, he's right. I think he's right i think he's right sure yeah that that is that is technically true which is the first bar that we ask these to clear yes so you know so there's that i think that we can attribute the preference for robbery over larceny in this to be one of sound and also mouthfeel. Right. There is an alliterative aspect to that. Because home run robbery is satisfying to say. Right. And home run larceny sounds clunky. And most people don't know the difference. They don't

know the difference between robbery and larceny because they are neither regularly committing or being subject to either of them right so you know i mean and also when it comes to aaron judge if one is ever going to make an argument for robbery on technical terms isn't he an imposing figure isn't he intimidating? An implied threat just by his very being in person. Yeah, like the wall, the outfield wall in Yankee Stadium is like enough, I submit. So there's that piece of it too. People use these terms pretty interchangeably in non-baseball context. It's sort of like jail and prison, right? Right, or psychopath and sociopath. No

one knows the difference between them. Right. Yeah. There are differences. Yeah. So, right. This satisfies the technically correct, which is the best kind of correct condition of the pedantry segment. And I support saying, I mean, maybe what if we switched it from home run robbery to like long ball larceny or something just to get the same sort of flow? No, you don't get the same sort of flow because- Not entirely, no. The only people who use long ball with any regularity are desperate writers and editors who want to say anything other than home run again yeah so you

know fly larceny yeah no i i guess home run robbery is pretty cemented in the lexicon and and i do enjoy saying it but jamie has a point here so we have let him air his grievance yeah and that's i think what our our most valuable service is to the pedants who write in here. Yeah. I mean, like, I think that most people, rather than expecting to affect real change, are wanting to vent the spleen, as it were. Right. Yeah.

When I complain about Zombie Runner, I do expect to affect real change. You're engaged in a political campaign. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Importantly different, you know. Yep. All right.

A couple little service journalism type questions here. So Brian asked us a finance question, but a baseball finance question. He said, when calculating the competitive balance tax, and I think as we speak, it's the day when teams have to pony up for their competitive balance taxes from the previous season. Brian says when calculating the CBT, the average annual value used to be a straight division of the guaranteed contract value divided by the years. But now we're seeing reports that various contracts, including Rafael Devers' extension, have the AAV lowered by deferred money. Lowered by deferred money, Alex Speer reported that the CBT number for Devers' 10-year $313.5 million extension, if you want to call it that, is just over $29 million. So that's a little bit different from what you get when you divide 313.5 by 10. I asked Alex about this. I just went straight to the source because Alex Speer, he knows a lot of things about baseball. went straight to the source because Alex Spear, he knows a lot of things about baseball.

And he told me that, and you might know this as a CBA reader, but he said that the average annual value has always accounted for more than just the size of the guarantee and the number of years. Deferrals have always been a factor, lowering the net present value of deals, thus resulting in a lower AAV. Deferrals peg Mookie Betts' deal as having an AAV of less than $25 million per season. Chris Sale is driven down from $29 million to about $25.6 million. Option structures, likewise, have long factored into average annual values, the language surrounding the calculation of AAVs in every CBA since 2007 to 11, when I first really started digging in on this shit for reasons that I still don't fully understand,

has been incredibly dense and complex. Yes. Reporters and the public just hadn't paid as much attention to the nuances as they do now. Correct. I think that as per usual, as expected, Alex is right. He very often is. Yes. I think that most fans, to the extent that they had a sense of team payroll at all, historically

have been concerned with real, quote unquote, real payroll, not CBT payroll. And so they have mostly cared about that stuff they hadn't cared about the luxury tax payroll because it was less central to our understanding of the likelihood of any given team signing a free agent or keeping a player they might be considering non-tendering or anything like that than it is now. And now it's quite central. I long for the days, Ben, when we could know a great deal less about the luxury tax situation of a given club and have it be so intrinsic to our understanding of just how likely a team is to play or not play in the free agent space for instance but it is clearly driving the decision making in a great many of the league's front

offices so right we have to know these things but we gotta know these things and then you're sitting there and you're like you got these you got all kinds of stuff besides salaries and even benefits that can go into determining that number, right? Yeah. You know, all kinds of fun, fun little this's and that's. Yep. Here's another, the more you know, kind of question from Sam, Patreon supporter, who says, I'm a lifelong Guardians fan and often find myself at odds with some of the consensus sentiments the fan base shares. I constantly see fans defending ownership as well

as bad game calling by Terry Francona on the grounds that their regular season winning percentage has been good in the Francona era. After years of listening to this podcast, I've been able to take off my fan goggles and view baseball through a macro lens instead. And I think the regular season winning percentage argument is complete BS. I would say, I mean, the Guardians, they have been more successful than one would think based on what they've spent, right? At least very recently, they've done quite a good job of developing players and winning trades, etc. And being competitive perennially one way or another, if not necessarily one of the best teams in baseball in most years. Sam continues, the AL Central has been one of the worst divisions in pro sports for most of Francona's tenure. I believe a lot of their success,

both in terms of playoff appearances and overall winning percentage, is bloated by being lucky enough to be in that division. Okay. There's some validity to that, I suppose. I mean, I guess teams maybe tailor their effort level to their surroundings to some extent. So if you're in the AL East, then you know you've got to pony up to compete with the big dogs. If you're in the AL Central, you might have less incentive to. Continuing with the every team plays every team schedule rolling out this season, though, is it possible to determine which teams compared to their 2022 schedule will see the biggest increase and also decrease in difficulty? I wish I could answer this myself, but I'm a data dummy. Well, you can, I think.

And in fact, Mike Petriello has today as we discuss this. He has saved us the trouble of trying to figure this out. So Dan Szymborski, he took an initial look at this back in August. has today as we discuss this he has saved us the trouble of trying to figure this out so dan simborski he took an initial look at this back in august yes using the 2022 schedule and just saying if we had had the more even schedule that year then what difference would that have made to certain teams mike is looking at the more balanced 2023 schedule and is saying, what's the difference in terms of playoff odds or just strength of schedule, I suppose, comparing the 2023 balanced schedule to a hypothetical 2023 unbalanced schedule that we might have had if not for this change. And the results sort of surprised me, I think, because I, as Sam was, I was sort of anticipating that this would hurt the central teams, right? Because we've said as much or suggested as much, right? Because central teams, they will have to play tougher opponents,

one would think, or they would have had to. And Mike concludes, I mean, first of all, it's not that huge a difference in terms of the expected strength of schedule or projected winning percentage of your opponents collectively. It's not that huge a factor. But to the extent that it is a factor, he found that in the American League, it will benefit the entire AL East and the entire AL West. OK, he found that it won't actually matter much for the AL Central, so it will help the other divisions. It won't necessarily hurt the Central, I guess, in the sense that for seeding and that sort of thing, it might hurt them if it's benefiting the other divisions, but not that division. But he concluded it'll hurt no one meaningfully. He wrote, by this method,

all 10 teams in the East and West will benefit to the tune of between 15 and 30 points of opponent strength of schedule. So the way to read that is like this. The Orioles would have had a 517 projected opponent schedule strength, the hardest in the game. Now they'll have a 490 projected opponent strength of schedule, the ninth easiest. So that's a boost of 27 points for them.

He writes, it makes all the sense in the world that the AL East teams would be pleased because it's baseball's toughest division. And now they get to play less of one another. So the Blue Jays, for instance, get to slice off 24 games against the East. So the Blue Jays, for instance, get to slice off 24 games against the East. They were going to have to play four against Atlanta either way and would have already been scheduled against the NL West. But now those 24 games that would have been against the Beast of the East now come against the weak NL Central and the four remaining NL East teams, two of which aren't much good anyway.

It's the same in the AL West, which currently has four teams projected 500 or better. But for the relatively weak AL Central, it doesn't seem like it'll matter so much. That's because these five teams had already been scheduled to face the NL East in 2023. So those games aren't new. And instead, they'll pick up games against the equally weak NL Central and the NL West, which features a somewhat depleted compared to previous year's Dodger squad and the very poorly projected Rockies. So he says we project these five teams with almost no change at all. So it was already hard to see a central team winning a wild card given the strength in the East and the West.

And I guess this exacerbates that. But it's maybe not as dramatic as one would have thought. Now, in the National League, he says it'll help no one meaningfully. It won't matter much for the NL Central or the NL West. It'll hurt perhaps the NL East. So the NL East benefits in a similar way to the AL East. If you take the Mets, for instance, they would have played 66 games against the NL Central and West. Now they're playing 64, so there's not much difference there.

Same for the four games against their previously scheduled interleague opponent, the Yankees. But instead of playing 76 games in their own division, it's now only 52. And that's something of a wash because while they do get to avoid the strong Braves and Phillies more, they also lose the benefit of playing the weaker Marlins and Nationals as much. So those missing 26 games have to go somewhere, Mike continues. A dozen of them come against the AL East. 15 more come against the AL West. That sounds harder. In the Central, almost identical to the AL Central, not a strong division. They were already going to play the AL West in 2023. So the trade is in-division games for more games against the AL East, which is a bad thing, and the AL Central, which is a good thing. And that's almost a wash, too.

And then the difference is the NL West, which doesn't benefit as much as the AL West might. That's in part because it was already scheduled to face the difficult AL East this year. That's in part because it was already scheduled to face the difficult AL East this year. And so 24 of the in-division games will be against the AL East, which is a bad thing, and the AL Central, which is a good thing. And that kind of comes out in the wash, too. So he notes that it might help the wildcard contenders in the Central and West in the NL who were staring at a Mets-Braves-Phillies trio and wondering if two of the three wildcard spots would already be spoken for. The road out of the East just got slightly harder. So that's what it boils down to, just using projected team strength. So I like the balanced schedule, just conceptually and fairness-wise

and even-handedness-wise. It's more balanced, at least, so I think that's progress. But in terms of swaying the the results it may or may not by any great extent and if you want more guardians content check out our very long prospect list yeah my live fangraphs today oh boy there's some good good baseball players in that system ben good yes yes although maybe not as many as uh theoles system because some sites have put out their top 101s and there are a lot of Orioles on those lists. Like eight, nine Orioles. I mean, I'm sure that'll be the case when Eric puts out his top 137 or whatever it ends up being. Are you making fun of us for going too long on this stuff? How dare you? But you're people after my own heart. I'm known to go too long on this stuff. How dare you? But you're people after my own heart.

I'm known to go too long on things as well. Well, the thing that happened is, you know, BA put out that study about how many guys in a system end up being relevant at some point. And I was like, oh, we're never getting shorter than this now. Right, exactly. Yeah. But the Orioles, they've got, I think BA said it's the first time that they've had number one prospects in consecutive years from

the same draft class in the Orioles case what a fun little what a fun wow what a fun little thing to say yeah so it's right I mean number one prospects in in back-to-back years and and they have uh I forget what it is eight or or nine guys on the top 100. I think it's eight on the BP top 101. Yeah, it's actually both lists have eight in the top 100 or top 101. You know, they haven't really made any moves of great significance this offseason, but at least, you know, they have a lot of really good prospects, and a lot of them are quite close to the majors.

So, yeah, Nathan Ruiz of the Baltimore Sun, he tweeted and wrote that the Orioles are the first organization to have one draft class produce consecutive number one overall prospects in the 33-year history of Baseball America's preseason rankings. And they have eight in the top 100, and seven of them have reached AAA. So it seems like a pretty positive sign. Yeah. All right. Zeke asks, if a team composed entirely of normal talent level baseball playing 15 year olds could field as many players on defense at a time as needed. What would the minimum number be that could hold an MLB team to a number of runs that is not eye-popping? How many more fielders for a team of 10-year-olds?

How many more for a team of 5-year-olds? So this is basically like the home run derby scenario. Yeah, I was going to say. When you just have a bunch of kids on the field. Kids in the outfield. Shagging flies and colliding with each other. So like if you could just. They do sometimes really run into

each other don't they yeah it's sort of scary but if you could just uh pile a bunch of 15 year olds onto the field or 10 year olds or five year olds the thing is below a certain age level i don't think you're actually helping right you put more players on the field you might be hurting right because they're just going to run into each other and they're not going to know whose ball it is. Right. There's a certain age also at which like the talent level is just the capacity to field cleanly and throw and record and out. Yes. Like you could have as many five-year-olds as you want.

Yeah. None of them is going to throw out MLB player. Right. Right. Like, I mean. you want yeah none of them is going to throw out mlb player right like i mean so it just it wouldn't help there's no no quantity i don't think of five-year-olds like you could have a five-year-old on every square inch of the field and they still probably would not make the catch and they would fumble the ball and then they would run into each other and even

if they fielded it they would not be able to make the throw unless they happen to be standing on the base, basically. So I just now when you're 15, you know, there are some pretty competent 15 year olds out there. Far from being drafted, depending on when they engage in that process. So the place you'd really see the problem, I think, even at that stage, would be on the pitching side. It's like, forget the fielding part. You're probably, even when you're doing your very best, approximating a batting practice fastball, probably, for a lot of them. Not for everybody, right? Not for the guys who might end up getting drafted.

But if you just were to pick a representative, you know. Yeah, the question said normal talent level, right? So if you have the best pitching prospect in the country who can throw 90-something, then that's maybe a little bit different. Yeah, then maybe. But otherwise, I think you're looking at a lot of true two outcomes situations where you're just walking everyone and then giving up a bunch of bombs.

So a 15-year-old, again, it's an average talent level baseball playing 15-year-old, but a 15-year-old can make a catch on a routine fly at least. They can probably zip the ball across the infield with reasonable accuracy. I don't know if it'll come with as much right it might not come with the right force but i think you'd you'd be able to to do something whether it would be in there you know i don't know but yeah i kind of i mean a grounder to like third or short with a major league player running even if it's not a particularly fast one and the arm strength of a particularly fast one, and the arm strength of an average 15-year-old and the fielding mechanics, I still don't know how often

you would actually be able to throw someone out. I would accept never as the answer potentially. But if you were able to blanket the outfield with 15-year-olds and space them out enough that they don't run into each other, but enough also that a ball is always within range of someone. Then I think you would catch a lot of balls. Like if you had, I don't know, like an 8 or 10 player outfield or something like that and everyone can kind of catch a routine fly at least. a routine fly at least. And almost every play would be routine if you had enough outfielders, because no one would have to go that far to make the catch if they actually coordinated, which they wouldn't probably. And we're just talking about holding an MLB team to a number of runs that is not eye-popping. Yeah, I'm going to say you need to double the number of fielders

at least. And there's a point of diminishing returns. And then there's a point of you're actively harming yourself and backfiring by putting more fielders on the field. So I don't know exactly where the sweet spot is. And I think you could at least keep balls in the infield if you're stationing someone at the infield holes, right right so that even if they don't have great range they can at least maybe knock the ball down most of the time and even if it gets through the first line of defense like you could have intermediate you know not infielders not

outfielders but like pitchers helper types and then like shortstop helpers you know so like if someone doesn't ole and it just goes through their legs or something then maybe the next guy gets it so you could probably do a pretty good job of of minimizing hits to the outfield i would think yeah i think that that's right yeah yeah you're not going to score any runs oh oh god no oh. But this is just about suppressing the big leaguers' runs. So, yeah. And then there's the pressure and the intimidation. That's going to be a factor here, too.

Just the anxiety of going up against big leaguers. These players have not been through the crucible of clutchness at lower levels. So, yeah, I'd say if you could double the number of fielders and probably just, yeah, just like stagger them just like kind of so that one is behind the other. They're not necessarily getting in each other's way, but it's just kind of a contingency plan. It's like layers of redundancy. If it gets past one one guy then you can minimize the damage right thing is they might just hit so many home runs that you'd be out of luck there because uh no matter how many fielders you have if you hit it over the fence you're sort of screwed yeah so that's that's

gonna be a problem yeah yeah ben i'm here to tell you it would all be a problem. Yeah. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Maybe they could like stack themselves up on each other's shoulders and like they could grab home runs. Oh, wait. Or commit larceny. Commit. Yeah. The other problem is that there's no verb form of larceny, right? Like you can't larcen.

Yeah. You can't larcen. You can rub. You can rub. That's that and the sound, the mouthfeel. I think that's why. That's a compelling argument. Yeah.

David, Patreon supporter, says, I'm always so floored at the number of arbitration cases that come down to less than a $1 million difference. The Angels just got Hunter Renfro a really nice pickup and they're going to trash him at an ARB hearing over $650,000. 26 of the 33 cases have differences of less than a million. 19 are at or under half a million. Shaking my head, just needed to rant to someone. So I would say, first of all, some of these cases will probably still settle before they actually go to hearings, right? I mean, they're

violent trial type teams so that if you don't come to an agreement, they are really just, they are going to hold the hearing. But there are some that get settled sort of at the last minute as they find some common ground and compromise and decide not to trash the player and have the player have to sit through that and hear that and wage war financially over a relatively small amount of money. I think part of it, though, is just about holding the line in a way in the sense that it's almost like you have to draw a line because if you always compromised, if there was any kind of difference, if you are always just like, oh, what's a million between friends or between team and outfielder or whatever, then you might encourage players to raise the number that they file at because they would feel like, well, what's the harm? I will file with a higher number. And if I don't get it, then maybe the team will just give me that, right? Because you have to, I think, factor in sort of the value of keeping

the precedence just because over one case, it doesn't make that much of a difference, but over many cases and many teams, it could cumulatively make a fairly big difference over a period of years. So I guess there's something to be said for just kind of anchoring the number by keeping it somewhat low and then not just saying, okay, well, we'll give you that, right? Because it's close enough, right? Then you might kind of give players a little more rope and leeway and then the numbers would edge higher. I guess that might be one way that teams would think about it. It's also, you know, it's not a lot of money in terms of player payroll. It's a lot in terms of other team expenses, other non-players that are on the payroll and administrative costs and paying for various vendors and technology and operating academies

and such. So I guess on that sort of scale, it's not an insignificant amount of money. And I guess maybe it comes down to, is it worth it? Like, is it worthwhile, whatever amount of labor we're going to spend? Or if we're outsourcing the ARB prep to someone, like, are we going to spend less on this than we would win if we were to win a hearing. And then there's sort of the unquantifiable cost of, does this damage our relationship with the player or does it demoralize the player to have us be sort of slagging them off and deriding them as a player and suggesting that they should get less money while they're listening to us make those arguments. And it's been suggested sometimes that maybe a player would hold a grudge and be less likely to say, sign a long-term extension if they've been through that process. And it sort of soured the relationship and there's a bit of bad blood. I have looked for that at times and I couldn't really find a strong signal to suggest

that there is something to that. A lot of times you see contentious ARP hearings and then it's all sort of water under the bridge by the time the player is a free agent or is ready to sign an extension and you can just kind of make up and accept that it's a business and this is just how it's done. But it's kind of along the lines of it's weird to be a baseball player

and it's got to be weird to sit in a room and have the team tell an arbitrator that you don't deserve this amount of money. I guess people in regular jobs might go through something similar to that if they have performance reviews themselves. So it's not as far as some aspects of the profession, but still got to be unpleasant. Yeah. but still got to be unpleasant. Yeah, I imagine the rationale is what you're saying, where it's like even guys who, you know, we have heard instances of players being quite displeased with the case that was sort of presented against them

getting what they thought was a reasonable salary. But I think that it doesn't seem to end up having significant effects on their ability to retain those players probably in part because every every team is approaching arbitration the same way and a lot of teams on every team but a lot of teams are then approaching free agency the same way right and so there isn't as much you know you kind of know like i'm a middle reliever. Here's the band of possible outcomes for me in free agency. Or I'm a first base limited thumper. So here's kind of what I can expect in the market.

And there are years where that's different. This being one of them, obviously, where everyone got paid more than we expected them to, except for Carlos Correa, famously. them to except for carlos correa famously but yeah it's i think that they view the knock-on effects as being either small or far enough down the road that it doesn't matter and from their perspective holding the line means that they will continue to sort of accrue benefits into the future as they set smaller precedents for future players so So it kind of all stinks though, Ben. You know, it would make me feel lousy. I think if I were a player, I don't think you're suggesting the opposite, but I was sort of surprised that we didn't hear more

about ARB being a problem last season in terms of the vibes, right? Because typically arbitration decisions are resolved well before opening day. You know what you're going to make well before opening day. And last year, because of the lockout, those hearings were proceeding into the season. And I know there were individual instances of it being a problem,

but I was kind of surprised that it wasn't like we didn't get a long reported thing about how how much acrimony it was introducing in the team player relationship because it's like you don't have any months to get over that you just have to like hear the arb hearing and then go play like the next day so that might feel yucky yeah yeah all right question from andrew patreon supporter i was recently watching rookie of the Year over the holiday weekend. Rookie of the Year turns 30 this year. In the scene where they have him try out for the Cubs, the manager is using a radar gun and you can see that Henry Roan Gartner throws 101 and then 103. Seems odd to me. Even back in 1993, 103 miles per hour wouldn't be enough to bring a young kid into the majors, would it? 103 miles per hour is definitely the fastest pitch for that era.

But I don't think it's so remarkable that you'd call up a kid, right? It's a different era, but today it's not a herd of for a high school kid to throw 100 miles per hour. We're talking about a movie where a kid fell on his arm and through devil magic suddenly could throw 100 miles per hour. Surely they could raise the velocity of his fastball to explain why they let a 12-year-old suddenly start for the Cubs. I know the premise of the movie is basically that the Cubs are trying a Bill Veck stunt in order to increase attendance and signing a 12-year-old is a perfect stunt for that. But then he comes out and gets them to the playoffs. So my question for you is how fast would Henry have to actually throw in order for him to be as effective as he was in 1993? What about 2022? This is assuming that the only thing that changes when he injures his arm to gain these magical powers is fastball velocity and not control or anything similar.

So, I mean, it would certainly get you signed if you were eligible to be signed at that point, if you were throwing that hard at that age. And he's effective. I mean, it's not like it backfires to promote him to the majors. And 103 is still among the fastest pitches thrown even now, right? I mean, someone might get up to 104, but I mean, you're close to the limit at that point. Even now and 30 years ago, that would have been more extraordinary. That might have even been still when they were using the radar guns that didn't measure the ball out of the hand. It measured the ball on the weight of the plate after it already had lost a little velocity. And so that would suppress the average reading. So it may have been even more impressive given that. So I think it's extraordinary enough. You might have to raise it a little higher if you were to remake this movie now, just given how much the average velocity has increased. Not that it would be any less incredible that a 12-year-old was throwing 103. But, you know, if you wanted to, like, have it be completely unprecedented, then maybe you'd bump it up to 106 or something like that, right?

But, I mean, he proved that he deserved the spot. And it was also good publicity. So I don't know that I would look at that and think it's not fast enough. Yeah, I doubt strongly that we would be like, oh, this chump, this child, this loser. We wouldn't do that. I mean, we probably wouldn't refer to anyone that way because it's not nice and we try to be nice a lot of the time. But even our internal monologue, the nastier version of yourself that you then moderate for public consumption. Even in G-chat, Ben, we wouldn't go, ah, loser.

We wouldn't say that because it wouldn't ignite that instinctive response. Like 103 is still really hard. Yeah. And that's before you get him in the system and you have the big league coaches working on him. four you get him in the system and you have the big league coaches working on him you know imagine you're the cleveland guardians and you come across a high school talent and that guy is throwing 103 and you go wow and then you like really teach him how to pitch and then he's a perpetual young winner and he leaves after six seasons yeah Yeah, right. So you get him on the velocity program. Plus, this is like the first pitches he's throwing at a tryout, right? So get him in

a game situation, the intensity of that and warming up and the practice and everything, then he's probably flashing some higher numbers at that point, I would think. So yeah, I mean, you know, if you could sign a 12-year-old without running afoul of child labor laws and who knows what else. Right. I mean, like, I think that I, look, to be clear, I think that hopefully what a major league organization would say is, hey, we know this kid's around, see ya in a couple, right? Right. Yeah. He'll be the number one pick a few years down the road. Right. you know on a watch list probably like if we're being realistic about stuff but like in a hey catch you at the million showcases you're about to go through yeah exactly if this were

an international prospect you might have some under the table handshake deal. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, that would probably be the case. But if it were Henry Rowan Gartner, I don't know. Anyway. Yeah. So, yeah, I think you could error adjust the reading if you were to make this today. Just bump it up by a few miles per hour. But even now, this would be pretty impressive. And depending on your control and your secondary stuff, obviously, like, it's more than sufficient to get by with 103 miles per hour now.

It's not solely sufficient. It's not all you need necessarily to be a good pitcher. But if you can throw 103 with some semblance of control and you have any sort of second pitch, then you can walk onto a big league mound right now, even if you're 12 and you'll be okay. All right. Okay. And let's see, maybe we can squeeze in one or two more here.

We've been talking so much about ways in which baseball is different from other sports. Julian says, a lot of thought has been dedicated to the ways in which baseball is different from other sports and the ways in which we could change baseball to make it different from how it is. This got me wondering, what are some rules that other sports could borrow to make them less different from baseball? That is, if we decided we wanted to make baseball less unique as a sport or less unusual, what baseball rules could we add to other sports?

What baseball rules could we add to other sports? I think most of the results would be silly, like having basketball coaches wear baggy shorts and a tank top during games, or requiring the football quarterback to clearly come to the set position on a little piece of rubber before attempting a pass. That's a balk, five-yard penalty, replay first down. Others could be a little more interesting. What if every non-scoring turnover in basketball or football counted as an out and the game ended once X number of outs were recorded instead of being dictated by a clock? So yeah, that would be one of the big ones. If we could somehow get the clock out of things and you had, I don't know, only a certain number of downs or a certain number of drives or something, right? And it wasn't about the countdown. It was just about how many opportunities you had to score. That would be very different and more like baseball. So that's one possibility. And yeah, I mean, everyone could wear pants and belts as we covered full length pants. And yes, you could have your coaches, your managers wear the same things

that the players did, which would be absurd, of course, just as it is absurd, but also just kind of quaint and endearing in baseball that that happens. Anything else come to your mind as very obvious baseball things

that we could port over to other prominent sports snacks no oh snacks yeah sure snacks are hard to do though difficult yes i think put the football coaches in uniform basketball coaches to you know do that right yeah or if we uh make the the hoops and the baskets uh invisible as we were just, if it were just like you throw it roughly in the area and then you have the refs decide whether it would have gone in if there had been an actual hoop there, then that would be something you could do. We talked about the ball not being what scores points in baseball. This inspired some controversy. Yes, because some people suggested that the Roger Angel idea that in baseball, it's not the ball

that scores, it is the runner and the ball can be elsewhere. That is not really different from another thing we had discussed, which is that in baseball, the defense controls the ball and initiates the action. And so maybe these are two sides of the same coin or two ways of expressing the same idea. I don't think they're identical, though. I think they're different enough. I think they're different enough. Yeah. So, I mean, other sports are catching up, I guess, if you had multiple surfaces on the basketball court or the hockey rink or the ice, it's not just ice, it's only part ice or whatever, or if it's asymmetrical, right? So it's not just different dimensions, but also just

weird asymmetrical dimensions of ice or fields or courts or whatever. That would be very baseball-esque. So, yeah, or maybe less forgiving substitution systems. I mean, I'm just kind of going down the list of things that we've talked about for baseball here. But if you're removed from a basketball game or from a football game, you can't come back in again. So that would be more analogous to baseball. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know. Let's just let the sports be themselves, you know? We want the individuality. Yeah. We cherish this. I like it. Yeah. I don't know.

Yeah. I wouldn't want them to be more homogenous. We've lamented the increasing homogeneity of baseball in some respects. So we want to preserve the differences between the sports. I mean, it's an amusing thought experiment. It's what we do here on Effectively Wild email episodes. But yeah, I wouldn't want this to happen. I have been distracted, Ben, because while you were talking, some news broke. What was that? Are you ready? I hope so. All-star second baseman Luis Arias is going to the Miami Marlins, and right-hander Pablo Lopez is headed to the Minnesota Twins,

sources tell ESPN. Deal is done. Players are being informed right now. More are involved. That's per Jeff Passan, although I will say it appears that Dan Hayes and Ken Rosenthal were first on the scoop. All right. So I'm being informed at the same time that the players are. Well, all right.

The Marlins, they finally made a trade involving a pitcher for a position player. We were wondering when or if they would do that. Yeah. for a position player. We were wondering when or if they would do that. Yeah, the day that we ran, do you think that the zips that we ran for the Marlins today really pushed them over the edge? Were they like, oh.

Although Dan said, just spend some money and keep Pablo Lopez. So very disrespectful of Dan, really, I think is the main takeaway. And they should respect Dan. He's got good ideas. So it's not a one for one. No, we don't know what the rest is yet.

The twins are getting prospects, it sounds like. And maybe also the Marlins are getting a prospect too. Yeah, it could be guys here and there coming and going, Ben. Yeah. Well, I mean, we were kind of waiting for Pablo Lopez to go somewhere, right? Because he seemed to be one of the more tradable players that the Marlins had, one of the more appealing pitchers that they had with their potential surplus of pitching. And he's getting up there in his RBers, so he seemed like a likely candidate. I love Luis Arias. I mean,

how could you not? We were just talking about homogeneity love Luis Arias. Yeah. I mean, how could you not? We were just talking about homogeneity. Luis Arias is one of the antidotes to that in that he's very much a throwback and a contact guy and just won a batting title. Now, he's not necessarily a superstar. I mean, he was like a four-war player last year, at least according to baseball reference. It's a very nice season. He was an all-star. He won a batting title. He won a silver slugger. He was on MVP ballots. So it was a really good year and he stayed healthier. He's defensively limited is the thing about Luis Arise.

And so technically he can play multiple positions, but not particularly well. And he played primarily first base in 2022. So I guess the Marlins, they have any number of places where he would probably be their best player at that position. So it's not really a limiting factor for them, I suppose. for them, I suppose. And age-wise, what, Lopez is 26 and Arias is right around there. He's turning 26 in April. And I guess he's a little further from free agency than Pablo Lopez is. So it's kind of a like for like in the sense that it's mid-20s players who have established themselves in the last couple of seasons, really. Maybe a slightly longer track record for Lopez, who debuted maybe a little bit before Arise did, just a year before, I guess, but roughly the same age. Anyway, interesting trade, right? Interesting trade. Kind of weird trade. It's kind of a weird trade. Yeah. The twins, they needed pitching though. I mean, it's one of those makes sense for both sides to some extent. I mean, most trades are. It wouldn't be done. These

wouldn't be consummated if they didn't make some sense for both sides. So I guess we'll have to see what the prospect packages are and everything. But I guess I'm glad that the Marlins finally pulled the trigger on a trade. I don't know whether it was the best return that they possibly could have gotten, but Arise is a really nice and fun player. And they just had to do something to address their roster imbalance. So it doesn't necessarily make them that much better, I guess, in the short term, but it makes them a little less lopsided. It's progress. ending up short relative to the rest of the division but i guess you have to start somewhere man you gotta hope that everybody stays healthy on on that pitching staff like dan's point was well taken in the zips which you should still read because i think it is uh it is worthwhile to think about like you know a lot of guys with long injury histories on that

marlin staff and uh you, now there are fewer of them with innings to spread around. So what are you going to do? Twins rotation. That looks a lot stronger in my eyes with Pablo Lopez than without, though. Maybe they might be, you know, we're going to have to reassess them.

I was sort of not thinking about them for a lot of the offseason because they were Correa-less. And then they were Correa-full, but then I still wasn't thinking about them as much because it was like, well, okay, you had that before. Now what? Well, now we have Pablo Lopez, so that's something. Transition with this one. Very short. I don't know whether anyone will come to your mind, but Brian says, who is the best player you instantly forgot about the second he retired? Let me explain. I was listening to a podcast from 2019 that mentioned Nick Markakis. I had forgotten about him and he had a great career. He was famous for being forgotten about while he was still active on this podcast, we talked about him being the best player without various honors, without being an all-star, although eventually he did get an all-star appearance or ever appearing on an MVP ballot. So he was kind of forgotten in his own time. But Brian says, who's our player like that? Jeff Francoeur, Alex Gordon, do your jobs keep this from happening to you? I think they do to a certain extent, because I'm always reading about baseball and looking at leaderboards, right? And so no prominent name is ever very far from my mind.

You know, I mean, forgotten about, it's not like you have no memory of the person existing, I assume. It's just like, oh, I haven't thought about that guy for a while, right? I'm remembering a guy. So you'd probably have to go back further than than nick marcakis to to get to that level although when we got this email i was like oh yeah nick marcakis okay well there you go maybe it's nick marcakis for us too yeah it's i i was i just i looked at a leaderboard just trying to look at like players in our lifetimes who kind of made me go, oh, yeah, right? Yeah. I don't know.

Like there were a few who kind of like probably the best player who made me think I hadn't thought about him for a while is Mike Cameron, who maybe you you've probably thought about more recently as a Mariners person. But again, perpetually underrated and in retrospect, extremely underrated, really great player. But just, you know, it's not like I forgot about Mike Cameron, but I just maybe hadn't thought about him recently. Travis Freiman also stood out and is like, oh, yeah, Travis Freiman. I kind of liked him. He was good. Alex Gordon is not a bad one, actually, because I haven't really thought a whole lot about Alex

Gordon lately. He was very good, too. You know who might, might ben really be kind of in that group for me who's that mike moustakas you know couldn't you see i imagine mike moustakas still has designs on playing but like when he goes you know someone's gonna say like hey remember mike moustakas and i'll be like oh yeah when mike moustakas played like improbably good like infield defense here's a question are we just naming kansas city royals yeah maybe yeah and moustakas i mean he wasn't as good as as nick marcakis right i mean he was maybe as celebrated as nick marcakis he was like a three-time all-star moustakas but on a career level he was not the player that nick Marquecas was. So maybe we thought more about Moustakas than we should have relative to Marquecas. Marquecas, Moustakas, man.

While they were there, we probably paid a disproportionate amount of attention to Moustakas relative to Marquecas. But I had to go down the leaderboard. The first name where I was really like, oh, wow. And this was maybe because he played less recently. But Robbie Thompson. Robbie Thompson. I just like I had to be like, oh, right. Robbie Thompson.

Robbie Thompson. Who was, you know, quite a good player. And I think maybe the confusion is that you got your Bobby Thompson and your Robbie Thompson. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, they're both most notably giants and almost identical career value. Robbie Thompson, 33.8 war. Bobby Thompson, 33 point. Wait, hold on. I'm doing a Jeff Sullivan.

Wait, what moment here? They have identical wars, according to baseball reference. They're both 33.8 war, Bobby Thompson and Robbie Thompson. Wow. Yeah. You got Robert Brown Thompson, Robert Randall Thompson, identical wars and most famous for being giants. So I think- That's spooky. It is. So what with their having like identical values? I mean, they were different types of players and they played at different times. But I feel like Robbie Thompson has just been sort of subsumed. You know, it's like I think of Bobby Thompson as a giant and then Robbie Thompson's like, wait, that's a whole other guy. stopped playing in like 96 and I was still pretty young then, so I didn't get to see prime Robbie Thompson, but he was a really good player too. So I think that would be the best answer for me. But I took that one just because I'm going to wrap up with a quick stat blast here and Markekis and Bobby Thompson will both be relevant. So I mentioned earlier this week, Adam Duvall signed with the Red Sox, seemingly to be their

primary center fielder. And it's just such a weird career progression for Adam Duvall because he never played center field in the minors. He played center field in the majors for the first time in 2020 when he was already in his age 31 season. That's weird. And he played one inning that year in center and it came about because of Nickcakis. It was the bottom of the eighth in a game on August 11th. And Nick Marcakis moved from, he had pinch hit for Ender Inciarte, who was the starting center fielder. And Marcakis, after pinch hitting, moved to left. And then they figured, ah, we just got like one inning to go. We'll move Adam Duvall from left to center. And that was just the first time that Duvall had

ever played center professionally, I guess. And I don't think he had a ball hit to him. And then the following spring, April 25th, he got his first ever start in center. And it was like news. It was like MLB.com, offense first, Duvall gets first start in center field. And it was like extreme circumstances. The lead is, with three starting position players on the injured list and the lineup struggling to score runs, the Marlins may temporarily sacrifice defense for offense. Such was the case in Sunday's afternoon's 4-3 loss to the Giants at Oracle Park, where Adam Duvall started in center field for the first time in his eight-year career. So it was like, everyone's hurt. We need some hitting.

Whatever. Let's just roll our best lineup out there and put Adam Duvall in center. time in his eight-year career. So it was like, everyone's hurt. We need some hitting, whatever. Let's just roll our best lineup out there and put Adam Duvall in center. And so he goes from never having played to one inning. Then the next season, he gets some starts in center. In 2022, center field was his primary position. He played more games at center field than at any other position. And everyone just accepts this now. It's Adam DeVol. Yeah, I guess he's a center fielder. The Red Sox signed him to be a center fielder. Again, in somewhat unusual circumstances, Trevor Story gets hurt and maybe Kike Hernandez

has to play short and we need someone and it's late in the offseason. And to Adam DeVol's credit, he's more or less held his own out there. It seems like he is capable of playing a passable center field, at least on a part-time basis. So good for him. Maybe he had this ability all along and no one knew it. But it's really weird because center field is a young man's position. I just did a weighted average of the age of players at every position in 2022. And so like DH has the oldest players. Okay. That's probably not a shocker, but the average age of DHs in 2022 weighted by plate appearances, 29.8.

After that, first baseman, 29.1. Then catcher, 29.0. Catcher is just kind of its own sort of thing, really. Then left field, 28.3. And then third base, 28.3. Right field, 27.8. And then you start getting into the more premium up the middle infield and outfield positions. Second base, 27.7. Shortstop, 27.2. And center field, 26.8. So the youngest average age center fielders, like there are very few regular center fielders who were 30 and up. It's odd. And Adam Duvall has joined their ranks at a fairly advanced age, historically speaking. So I just wanted to see how weird this was or what precedents there are for this. And Ryan Nelson, frequent StatBlast consultant, find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. He was able to look this up for me. And Adam Duvall, he's the 10th oldest player

ever to have their first primarily centerfield season. So technically, it's Rich Amaral, who had his first primary centerfield season at age 38, but it was just 12 games he played. And like Sean Dunstan, he played 27 games in his age 36 season, and that was his first primary centerfield. So this is like late in a career, not really regularly playing the position, but it just so happens to be their most commonly played position. There are only two centerfielders to be older than Duvall in their first primary centerfield seasons and play more games than Duvall did. And the first one is second on the list after Rich Amaral. And it's a big name, Craig Biggio, who had one of the wildest career progressions.

Defensively speaking, he did the Dalest career progressions, defensively speaking. He did the Dalton Varshow, started at catcher, then started playing some outfield. He got his first games in center young, but he didn't become a primary center fielder until his age 37 season with Houston, 2003, when he played 150 games in center because the Astros had signed Jeff Kent to play second base. So they asked Biggio to play second base. So they asked Bichio to move out there. And that was his only primary center field season because the next season he was primarily a left fielder, although he continued to play some center. He was five runs below average in center, according to DRS, which is not so bad considering he played so many games and it was his

first time doing that on an everyday basis. So that was one example. The other player who's also well-known was Bobby Thompson. Not Robbie Thompson, but Bobby Thompson, who in his age 34 season played center primarily for the first time and played 145 games out there. And I don't know, maybe there were extenuating circumstances. Obviously, he was a teammate of Willie Mays for a while, and you're not going to displace him from center. And I think it was the first season that Bobby Thompson was with the Cubs, 1958. That's when he switched to center first time, and I guess they had a need there. So that was weird, but that's really the only precedent, I guess, for someone who is older to do it on a regular basis than Adam Duvall. So it is quite extraordinary.

By the way, Bobby Thompson does not have a P. It's just T-H-O-M-S-O-N, whereas Robbie Thompson does have a T. So that's one way you can tell them apart. It's also confusing, though, because there's a third Bobby Thompson who does have a P, who was an outfielder very briefly, played one season for the Rangers in 1978. It's just, it's very confusing. Anyway, if you want to tell Robbie Thompson and Bobby Thompson apart, one way you can do it, do they have a P in their last name or not? and Bobby Thompson apart. One way you can do it, do they have a P in their last name or not? So that was one way you could look just first primary season at that position. And I'll link to the list, but really it's rare for this to happen. And he also looked up shortstops for me, another premium position. And I guess technically the oldest to be a primary shortstop for the first time would be Mark McLemore in his age 38 season.

He played 38 games at short and played short more than any other position. Jamie Carroll, also his age 36 season, played 69 nice games at shortstop. And really, like you have to go down the list. Mike Lansing played 76 games at short, his age 33 season. So it's the same sort of range. And just before I end here, Ryan looked at it in another way, not just with age, but with experience. So for this, we divided the positions into tiers, basically, according to the defensive spectrum. So as you may have noticed, when I was reading out the average ages by position, it basically followed the defensive spectrum, the old Bill James idea, or maybe even predated Bill James conceptually speaking. And you have different

formulations of the defensive spectrum and it maybe shifts a little depending on the era, but basically we know the premium positions and the less premium positions. So we did Tier 1, which is center field, shortstop, and catcher. Tier 2, which is second base and third base. And Tier 3, which is left field, right field, and first base. And then Tier 4 is DH. And of course, catcher, you know, you don't have a lot of late career catcher conversions. Catcher is just, it's its own entity, really. You kind of lump it in with the other premium positions, but you don't have players who go from one to another at catcher as freely as you do at other positions.

Dalton Varshow says, losers. Yeah, right, exactly. Although probably even that is endangered at this point. The only downside of him going to Toronto is he'll probably play even less catcher than he did. Let him be weird, Toronto. Please do. Let him be weird. Yeah, he didn probably play even less catcher than he did. Let him be weird, Toronto. Please do. Let him be weird. Yeah.

He didn't really even catch down the stretch with Arizona. So I guess those days were numbered anyway. All right. So Ryan says the most games in a career played below tier one. So below one of the center field shortstop catcher positions before playing their first season with a game at a tier one position is Daryl Evans, who played 1,556 games at first, third, and left before playing 13 games at short in his age 35 season. So this is just playing any games at that position, not having it be your primary position.

The most games in a career played below tier two before playing their first season with a game at a tier two or better position is Kendris Morales, who played 1,314 games at first right and DH before playing one game at third in his age 35 season. The most games in a career played below tier three, so DH before playing their first season with a game at a tier three plus position is Raul Abanez, who played four games at DH before he started in the outfield the next season. So it's pretty rare to have many games at DH before playing a position in the field. The most games in a career played below tier one before having a season with a tier one primary position. That's a tie at 1,586 with the aforementioned Mark McLemore, primarily a second

baseman, third baseman, left fielder, and right fielder before starting 38 games at short in his age 38 season. And Hall of Famer Tony Lazeri, who is primarily a second and third baseman before starting 25 games at short in his age 34 season. And just to wrap up the most games in a career played below tier two before having a season with a tier two primary position, John Mabry, 1115 games primarily as a first baseman, left fielder and right fielder before starting four of six games at third base in his age 36 season,

a backup with more sample size, George Kelly, 796 games primarily as a first baseman before starting 108 games at second in his age 29 season. So that's that. That's the story. And I got great data here and multiple spreadsheets from Ryan. If you want to dig into this, I think the Duval comp for the most experienced player to have their first game at center ever is Ray Durham, who played 1508 games at second in DH before playing his first game at center in his age 33 season. Then he never played center again.

Mark Reynolds had a single game at center in his age 34 season after 1,486 games elsewhere. And David Justice, 1,423 games in right, left, and DH before playing three games at center in his age 34 season. Also, Jason Hayward had his first primary season in center in 2022 as a 32-year-old after 1,594 games. Claudel Washington up there to 32 after 1,488 games. So Adam Duvall, it's strange. It's very strange. And if he actually sticks at center with the Red Sox this season, it would be weird. And if he holds his own there, I'm happy. I mean, old dogs learning new tricks or people who had those skills all along being valued.

Don't be boxed in. Don't be typecast. Yeah. Don't be defined by what you've done before. Maybe we can all play a position that we have not previously played. It's inspiring. Be the Adam Duvall you want to see in the world. Exactly.

All right. Meg had to run. This has just been here to finish up. I've got to give you the pass blast and also some additional details on the Luis Arise-Pablo Lopez trade. As we learned after our initial reaction, it is a four-player deal in which the Marlins only acquire Arise, and they send two prospects to the Twins, a top infield prospect, Jose Salas, and outfield prospect, Byron Churrio. The latter is very young, but is a ranked prospect on the Marlins team list or was on the Marlins team list. Just a projectable lottery ticket. Whereas Salas was fourth in Miami's system,

according to Baseball America. He is a shortstop for now, but hasn't even turned 20 yet. Still, given that, I think things look a little more favorable for Minnesota. I would say that on the whole, the reaction has either been more positive for the Twins or not that positive for either team, frankly. I know the Marlins wanted to increase their contact rate. They struck out a lot last year and they also wanted to get more left-handed. So Arise helps them with both of those things, although he doesn't help them that much in the power department. There was some initial consternation about where Arise would play. I figured he'd probably just stick at first base, where he had played primarily last year, or maybe even DH, because of course the Marlins had Jazz Chisholm and signed Gene Segura. Well, what we didn't know when we were initially reacting is that the Marlins are planning to move Chisholm to center field. So it's not just Adam Duvall doing it.

Chisholm is moving to center too, obviously a lot younger and less experienced than Duvall when he made his move, but still notable for basically the franchise position player to make that move. Chisholm turns 25 in a couple of weeks. There's always risk with any kind of position switch. I think he has the tools. He has the speed certainly to play center and arguably didn't really have the arm to move back to short. So I could see it. You never really know until the guy gets out there. And then that makes room for a rise in the infield at second base where he is passable, let's say. I don't know. It's a lot of moving parts. Both Arise and Lopez have had some injury issues considering the talent that they gave up. I don't know that it makes the

Marlins better enough. And really what it comes down to is that instead of trading Pablo Lopez for a pretty good position player and then moving one of the few good position players they already have, they could have, of course, just spent some money and signed someone and held on to Lopez and just acquired some position players. That was apparently not within the realm of possibility. So you can't really hold Kim Eng responsible for that if the Marlins just aren't willing to spend. But gosh, they could have gone and gotten a center fielder. There were a few on the free agent market. It's not a deep group.

As we have discussed, center field is a pretty thin crop these days. Maybe that's why the Duval's and Chisholm's of the world are moving out there. But there were options who could have been had just for dollars. But that is seemingly not the Marlins' way. So I sort of see what they were thinking here. I'm just not sure it gets them that much closer to contention. Arise is really fun, though. And that takes us to the Pass Blast, which is from 1958 and also from Jacob Pomranki, Sabre's Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. And this Pass Blast will pair well

with our interview on our last episode with Dan Moore about teams threatening to relocate and extracting sweetheart deals. Jacob writes, 1958, step right up and meet the Reds. Yes, in 1958, for the first time in more than 75 years, the National League did not have a team in New York City. With the Giants and Dodgers having announced their moves to California, but before they played a single game on the West Coast, one major league owner had already started using New York as leverage for public funding to help improve his own ballpark. Earl Lawson wrote about this threat in the Sporting News on January 8, 1958, quote,

The city of Cincinnati is in grave danger of losing its National League franchise to New York. The warning comes from a man who should know, owner Powell Crosley Jr. In a statement that created an even greater furor in Cincinnati than the launching of Sputnik, Crosley revealed that he was very discouraged with the city's complacency in solving the parking problem around Crosley Field, the home of the Redlegs. And he added menacingly, a sufficient amount of discouragement on my part and bang, I'm liable to move. Ever since the Giants and Dodgers decided to cast their lot on the West Coast, rumors that the Redlegs will move into vacated New York have been rampant.

These heretofore have been taken in stride by Redleg fans who hold that a city which cradled professional baseball is entitled to a lifelong membership in the major leagues. Jacob concludes, Cincinnati officials quickly passed a $2 million bond to add more parking at Crosley Field, but that was only a temporary solution. A decade later, after Crosley's death, the city built a multi-purpose stadium on the riverfront downtown, and the Reds moved to the aptly named Riverfront Stadium in 1970. New York remained without National League Baseball for three more years until 1962 when the expansion Mets began play at the Giants' old home, the Polo Grounds. They moved into Shea Stadium in 1964. And of course, as we covered last time, the Rosie Reds, the Reds supporters group that Phil Castellini was addressing this past weekend, arose out of fears that the Reds would move. Later threats in the 60s after this very explicit Crosley threat. So this is a very old

game. It's been going on for a long time. And when Castellini last year was saying that if you want to look at what you would do with this team to have it be more profitable, make more money, compete more in the current economic system that this game exists in, it would be to pick it up and move it somewhere else. Be careful what you ask for. In that, Castellini was just following a long tradition of MLB owners in general and Reds owners specifically. And a little light extortion tends to work. We will not extort you to support Effectively Wild, but we sure hope you will anyway. You can go to patreon.com slash effectively wild and sign up to help us keep the podcast going and help us stay ad-free

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You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectivelywild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance today and this week. That will do it for this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week. I wasn't getting through. I'd go on if I could. I don't like this era. But that doesn't mean I'll stop living it. Who doesn't think they're at the center of the universe?