Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1975: Backdoor Curve

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley begin with a little loose talk about Kiké Hernández’s revelation that he sharted during the 2020 NLDS, and pin down the precise instant of the accident with audio evidence. Then (23:59) they banter about whether it’s oxymoronic for MLB to have multiple “co-exclusive” official betting partners, MLB hiring local media […]

🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 1975 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm pretty excited because a job has arisen that calls for our very particular set of skills. calls for our very particular set of skills. This is why we're here on this earth. This is why we have a podcast. Maybe why I'm here on this earth? Maybe so.

Are we thinking about the same thing? Yes. In this case, it's a collaborative effort. So a player pooped himself. Yeah. Now that's not news necessarily because the pooping happened years ago but it just came to light

by the admission of the pooper and that is Quique Hernandez who was talking to Justin Turner. Justin Turner was interviewing Quique Hernandez and was asking him a question and the question was,

what was the most embarrassing in-game situation that Kike Hernandez has faced? And the Red Sox official Twitter account tweeted this video with the caption, we're sorry we asked. And I am not sorry they asked. I am quite pleased that they asked. So I'm going to play the clip here. It's a short clip of Hernandez's response. It's a little bit muffled, but I think you should be able to understand it. What's the most embarrassing thing that's happened to you during your game? 2020 playoffs. I had a tooth infection so I was taking some antibiotics from my infection and one of the side effects was diarrhea

and we got a big out in a big situation during the NODS and I screamed, FYEAH! I was VH'ing and I thought I'd farted. I went out to lead off the inning. I struck out in three pitches. I went in the dugout, went straight to the bathroom, put my pants down, completely started. So you're saying you misjudged the fart? I know.

What I'm saying is I sh** my pants. During the game, in the playoffs. So this calls to mind one of your most notable investigative journalism feats. One of your trademarks, your hallmarks, which is your investigation of Archie Bradley. Yeah. And when he experienced a similar incident, which was, I think, more daunting because Bradley didn't offer nearly as much detail as Hernandez did here. I mean, he just laid it all out for us.

He made it easy. You had to do some digging and you did ultimately determine with some high degree of confidence when that fate had befallen Archie Bradley. But here, I mean, Kike, he can't really complain about us pinpointing the pooping moment because he gave us all the necessary details that we need here. He could have kept it vague if he had wanted to, but he gave us more than enough information. I mean, he laid out down to the moment. I mean, it's 2020. It's the NLDS. He was DHing. He was leading off an inning. It was following a big out that the Dodgers had gotten at the end of the previous half inning he said it was a three pitch strikeout he said that his shart accompanied his yell of f yeah that followed the big out that the dodgers had attained all the ingredients are here for us to pinpoint this moment and we have yeah Because there's really only one moment that it could be.

Yep. The only problem is that it was a four-pitch strikeout, not a three-pitch strikeout. But given that it's been a few years and given what he was dealing with at the time, I think he can probably be forgiven for that. Although I guess at the moment he was hitting, he did not yet know what he was doing, what he was about to find out. But this was NLDS game one. And the only other moment it could possibly be is World Series. Like if he had gotten enough details wrong in World Series game three in 2020, he did lead off an inning and he struck out in three pitches, but it just didn't fit the other criteria. He was not DH-ing then, and it was not a close game so that there wasn't really a big out. And also, there was no audible F- yeah, which sealed the deal here because we can hear the moment.

Oh, yeah. We can actually- To be clear. Yeah. We can identify the moment based on what he says. We cannot hear the- It's not an audible- It was not so explosive that-

Sharting. No, it was not. No. But you could hear the F yeah, which is just incredible. So this was NLDS game one, Padres at Dodgers, October 6th, 2020. And in the top of the sixth, Dustin May was pitching for the Dodgers. And this was a 1-1 game. And Dustin May got a 1-2-3 inning, and he struck out the last two batters he faced in the top of the sixth. And that was the end of his outing, and he was pumped.

And this was 2020, so the fake crowd roared. Right. And so did Kike Hernandez, just intestinally, but also audibly through the mouth he roared and he said, F yeah, as he recounted just recently. And we can actually bring you that audio right here. This is like, this is the smoking gun. I mean, this very much reminds me of when the banging scheme first came to light and everyone looked up the audio of the bangs and it was like, oh, wow, there it is. It's right there. We can confirm that there was a banging noise. That's the feeling I got when I went back and watched the video and I heard the F-yeah, and now we know what was happening at the moment when the F-Yeah just rang out. Yeah. And we can hear the F-Yeah. It's audible because it was 2020 and there were no fans in the stands, right?

Right. I mean, look, the pandemic was terrible and the 2020 season was weird and bad, and it was not good that fans could not be in the stands to watch these games in person. However, there is one silver lining, which is that we can hear the F-Yeah that Kike Hernandez shared about this's not pristine audio because there was announcing going on. And so the F-Yeah just happens to coincide with some other words. But you can hear the F-Yeah. So here it is. Those long limbs whipping through. A lot to look at and a lot to like for Dustin Mays. Scrubs himself off of the mound after another one, two, three inning. To look at. To look at. To look at. And so you can hear it more clearly.

I will play it several times back to back just so you can hear the F-yeah. And this may be maddening, but it will only last for a few seconds. I just want to make sure we can all hear the F-yeah clearly. To look it, to look it, to look it, to look it, to look it, to look it, F yeah clearly. To look it. To look it. To look it. To look it. To look it. To look it. To look it.

To look it. To look it. To look it. There it is. So this is, it happened exactly as he said. I mean, as you said, we can only assume that the rest of the story happened as he said. Right. Everything else lines up here except for the fact that it was a four pitch strikeout instead of a three pitch strikeout.

Ben. As I expressed to you off-air, I am, on the one hand, comforted and also horrified by this incident. Episode? Shirting? Because, look, one of the things that I feared was that we would identify when this moment had taken place. And we would watch the at-bat that followed. And we would be able to discern in a way that we might have dismissed in the moment as a bit of dirt or other grit but that we would be able to look at

hernandez and say those are poop pants i can tell that those are poopy pants because there is obviously poop on these pants right right and i am comforted that indeed there is no visible poo on the pants. You know, these are... Yeah, he even turns his rear toward the camera. He turns his whole behind toward the camera. And as he started to turn, I was like, no. And then there they were, pristine, pristine white pants, you know? The kind of white on a baseball uniform that one only gets if one is dhing right like right you know this these are these are pants that have not seen the

smudge of the fields even for a moment in this game so i looked at that and i thought to myself well that's a relief you know because well first of all it you know if you if you've ever spent time as a teenage girl you know you've probably had a period mishap or two. And you live in fear of this moment, particularly in middle school when everyone is a cruel gremlin. Yes. Right? So there's that piece of it. It kind of-

Unlike now that we're in our mid-30s and we're very, very mature and clearly would not devote 10 minutes in counting on a podcast. Here's the thing. We work from home now. So, you know, if that happens to me these days, nobody's going to know but me, you know? So it's a sight unseen, right? Right. But when you are 12 and precocious and surrounded by cruel gremlins,

you live in fear of just such an incident. Different substance, obviously, but you live in fear right and as adults you know it's not as if we are immune to the vagaries of our intestinal tract you know clearly not clearly not and so i looked on this moment and thought wow that could happen to me i mean not the playing major league baseball and and hopefully not confusion about whether there had or had not been shirting but you know that could happen to me like out at target or something you know i could get an intestinal bug or have some crummy tummy of a different sort and and suddenly find myself exposed in public right you? You know, you just, you never know.

And so part of me was like, oh, maybe there is hope for us that even in, again, the whitest of pants, that we might escape notice in the event of an unexpected shirting, that we might be able to retire to the comfort of our homes and, you know, clean up and not have any tiny children point and laugh at us, right? Which would almost certainly occur if you were, like, say, in a Target and this happened. Because, again, Target, a place for terrible gremlin children, much like a middle school. So, so, I thought, oh, big sigh of relief but then ben yeah then the

terror took me yes because this suggests and this is a point that i i think i made when i wrote some length about archie bradley pooping himself at the time it struck me as like a a source of potential empathy right you never know who's pooped their pants. You never know where the poo pants are. A guy might have pooed his pants and you should afford to him some grace and dignity as a person and try to bear in mind that when we struggle,

as we all want to do, that perhaps we struggle because we have pooed our pants and you cannot tell. But then I was like, right, this is a second data point. There might be poo pants all around you. There could forever be.

There's no way to tell. Yeah. You never know. You never know. And I guess I should try to get back to the place of empathy that I found for Archie Bradley where I thought, you never know what's going on with someone. And that's true.

But I do worry about there being more poo pants, maybe, in the general population than I. It is a little disconcerting, yeah. Yeah, you know? I mean, maybe the most dismaying part of it is that Quique Hernandez himself did not know. He didn't know. I yelled, sorry. I yelled. So did he.

Yeah? I mean, no one in his vicinity knew, but even he didn't know. Now, he may have suspected, in which case I really can't blame him for striking out because, I mean, if that's in the back of your mind, do you even want to reach base? Well, sure. struck out on purpose, but that isn't the mindset that you want probably when you're up there in a playoff game and it's close and you're trying to get on base. But the back of your mind is thinking, but if I do get on base, what if something did happen down there? What if it becomes visible? What if I have to slide?

Things could get bad. So he wouldn't have had time to do a self-inspection between because he was due up first the next inning he couldn't check until he got back to the dugout after batting so he may have sensed that something was released that he did not want to be released because as he said like extenuating circumstances he's on antibiotics for a tooth infection and diarrhea was a side effect. Right, and you know, look, there are all kinds of conditions that people have to live their lives with

that, you know, affect how their downstairs works. So, you know, we're not here to judge any of those. It's the reality of the human condition that there are, you know, some downstairs issues sometimes. Yeah, I feel for the guy. I don't feel for the guy enough not to make fun of him a few years later on a podcast. But, you know, he put it out there. He's a good natured sort.

Oh, yeah. Seemingly. You know, he's fine with poking fun at himself. And I imagine he would take this in the spirit in which is intended, which is that we identified the precise moment at which he unintentionally evacuated some substances and we can hear it for posterity preserved on this podcast and on YouTube for all to hear and not see, but imagine. And again, not to hear specifically.

No, but... Because we don't need to hear that. This isn't like a comedy of the late 90s. It's not like one of those player mic'd up sounds of the game. Oh, no, Ben. No. It's a very personal moment. Well, and of course, I'm inspired to ask additional questions i want to

be i want to be clear i don't actually necessarily want answers to all of them you know because like what's going on in your downstairs doesn't feel like my business fundamentally but so he he comes to realize that this was not just a a usual toot you know this was um juicier toot yes um so he comes to realize that and uh you know he's in the clubhouse and i assume that the players have you know they have like spare drawers lying around for not for just such a moment but you know for for other moments because like sometimes you slide maybe your drawers get ripped maybe um you know uh you just have extra drawers right it's like when you go on vacation and you're like why am i bringing 10 pairs of

underwear for a three-day trip i don't know but if i ever need them here they are i got all 10 so i assume that they have extra drawers what did he do with his soil drawers right because yeah you know like um clubbies have to deal with a lot of stuff right and and her name strikes me as like a kind guy like he seems like a conscientious guy in what we've been able to glean from his personality publicly and so did he think to himself these are not the drawers that a club you should have to deal with but then you know they were in the bubble so it wasn't like yeah you know they're in the bubble i don't know what the laundry facilities in the hotel were i don't know if those were open it's 2020 everything was upside down was he compelled to say i have these particularly soiled drawers did he throw

them away did he just say you know, I have followed Meg's rule. I packed extra underwear for what could have been a brief trip. And so, you know, I shall simply discard these drawers. Yes. And then what garbage does he do that in? You know, what is that garbage proximate to? And like when he's sitting there and he does his F yeah, and the moment occurs, is there a palpable smell to

other people how long did it linger did the catcher have a sense in the moment when he came to the plate there's some stink there that seems wrong like and you know like there these are there was the umpire like hmm what's up with that smell what's where did that come from you know what's going on here so these are some questions that i have yep i don't know that i want answers to any of them because i don't want to put the guy on it on the spot like he might have just put them in the laundry and not really thought much about it or he might have put them in the laundry and in a panic i mean it was the middle of the game and he's got to get back out there

he wasn't in the field but still he batted later in the game sure yeah i think you got to get back out there. He wasn't in the field, but still, he batted later in the game. Sure, yeah. I think you got to give someone a heads up in that situation. I think you just throw him away. Yeah, you could discard. I mean, you can't just put that in the regular laundry and just have it be a stinky surprise for whoever's handling that next, right? Stinky surprise. I think just common courtesy. Yeah, or do you stand there and think, well, I could rinse them.

But then where do you do that? And maybe this is me not having an appreciation, a sufficient appreciation for what the laundry facilities are like in that ballpark. Because I assume that they have on-site laundry. And maybe they have a big industrial laundry industrial laundry sink is still putting gross in a place that doesn't belong but like maybe you know he like surreptitiously snuck down to the laundry room and was like here i'm gonna rinse these drawers and then he put those drawers yeah i don't get the sense that uh he's you know too ashamed to own up to this because he didn't

just voluntarily offer this information to the world now he's had a few years to come to terms with it and maybe it's funnier in retrospect than it was in that moment it is almost certainly funnier in retrospect than it was in that moment yes i think we can kind of guarantee that yeah but but if he's the type to come out and share this with the world then perhaps he would not have minded sharing it with one person, let's say, in the moment. So I think he has a healthy attitude about this. Well, yeah. And hopefully he doesn't regret it now that we have discussed this in some depth.

Yeah. I mean, again, like, you know, human bodies, sometimes you got stuff happens with them. You don't have to feel badly about that. Nope. body sometimes you got stuff happens with them you don't have to feel badly about that nope and and i could imagine in the moment you know perhaps he also had horrible gremlins at his middle school i could imagine flashing back to a time in one's life where one feels vulnerable where one is not a major league baseball player, where one is not playing in a postseason and having a panicked, I have to hide this.

And then it becomes a caper of what happened to the soiled drawers and who else had to engage with them. But yeah, I've said drawers a lot downstairs. It seems like an underrated part of this for me is that i think that like head pain that one would have like with an infected tooth or with a headache i submit to you ben that like pain that is concentrated in your head is the worst kind of pain because you're like really not able to to or at least i am not as a migraine sufferer suffer like able to operate

at a remove from it. You know, it's never good like to, you don't want to break your arm, but like if you break your arm, it's not where your brain is, you know, famously, that's not where your brain lives. And so you can like have a clarity of thought provided you're able to like manage the pain of the injured, you know, digit or ligament or whatever in a way that I think is easier than if it's in your head. And so I hope that the antibiotic curbed whatever pain you might have had from the tooth because those can really hurt. I can't imagine trying to play baseball with an

infected tooth. I think I would really struggle to do that. I mean, I'd struggle to do that with all my teeth at tip-top shape, but, you know, underrated part of that. And then, like, imagine going to see the dentist in 2020 when you're like, you know, you got your whole mouth open, and you're like, this is where the corona comes from. You know, I'm not saying he was sick, but, like, I would feel stressed about going to the dentist in 2020.

And so it seems like a lot. It seems like the people who think that that wasn't like a real world series because it was a short season. You know, there's a lot of things that folks had to navigate that year. The teeth and the pooping. Yeah. And the pandemic. Well, he had a good NLCS. He hit well.

And then he won a ring. Yeah. So happy ending to all of this and this was our our hard hitting reporting for the day hard shitting reporting no i guess it was the opposite of that that was the problem oh no but that's the worst thing you've ever said on the podcast posted in our discord group on thursday Look, designated shitter was right there. Whoever posted it said, someone's going to find out exactly when this was because he offered too many details. And I decided that someone would be us.

Yeah, I dropped everything and swung into action. It's just it's rare that you can pinpoint with this level of precision when someone suffered a mishap such as this. So I wanted to take advantage of that opportunity. And thanks to Kike. I just, I've come back around to it being, you know, it should be a reminder to us all that we never do know what's going on with folks. And sometimes they themselves don't know. So we should, you know, treat each other with care and compassion.

Although it is a little disconcerting that there might be surprise poop pants around you. I don't know. I find that a little- Best not to think about it, I guess. But we have forced everyone to. Here was the foremost matter on my mind before this news broke. Yeah.

I can't believe you invoked soft poo. It's the worst thing you've ever done on this pod. I demand restitution. Your Patreon dollars at work, everyone. Thank you. So we got a press release from MLB on Thursday morning, and it was about a topic that I'm not particularly interested in. It was MLB's new official sports betting partner in North America is FanDuel.

Yeah. Fine. So they've switched from DraftKings to FanDuel. So we will probably be bombarded by the same number of ads with the same frequency, same volume, but it will be for FanDuel instead of for DraftKings. But here's the thing that caught my eye. So remember how last year, I think it was, we talked about how MLB had an official beer and an official cerveza? Yes.

And they were different brands, even though those words mean the same things in different languages. So they're just like looking for ways to shoehorn in an additional sponsorship somehow so here's what the press release said as fans eagerly await the return of baseball major league baseball and fan bill group the premier online gaming company in north america today announced a multi-year partnership making its industry-leading sports, a co-exclusive official sports betting partner of MLB. Co-exclusive. So I had to clarify what was meant by co-exclusive because that sounded like an oxymoron initially to me.

I mean, how can it be co-exclusive? Usually when someone's an exclusive partner or an exclusive sponsor, it means they're the only one, right? So I was wondering, well, could co-exclusive mean that the exclusivity works the other way so that FanDuel is the official sports betting partner of MLB exclusively and also MLB is the exclusive sports betting partner of FanDuel or something? Is it that the exclusivity works both ways? Or is it that there are multiple official sports betting partners of MLB that are co-exclusive? And so I replied to the email and I asked for clarification on that. And the clarification was that it's the latter.

BetMGM is also an official sports betting partner of MLB. So it's FanDuel and BetMGM that are the official sports betting partners of MLB. So they are the co-exclusive sports betting partners of MLB, according to this. And the MLB person I was emailing with said, these contractual terms can be interesting, which I would agree with. So I was trying to puzzle out, I've been thinking about this for some time now, whether co-exclusive is a crime against the language or whether that can be correct in a certain sense. And I don't like it. I've definitely decided that I don't care for it at all. And it certainly sounds oxymoronic to me on its face. But I guess you could say that exclusive, it doesn't necessarily

mean that there's only one. It's just like excluding all others, potentially. And so if BetMGM and FanDuel are the co-exclusive official sports betting partners of MLB, then they are the official sports betting partners exclusive of every other partner, right? That, I mean, okay. But also, that's not what they want you to think of. No. Well, I don't know what they want you,

because if they say co-exclusive, I was like, what does that mean? That seems meaningless. It is meaningless. That seems like a contradiction. You can't be co-exclusive. If you're co-exclusive, then neither of you is exclusive, and I don't even know what you mean by that.

So that's what I thought when I read that. Now, if they had announced that each of them individually was the official exclusive partner, then I think co-exclusive probably would be incorrect. I think technically it's not necessarily incorrect because it's just, you know, like the first definition of exclusive is excluding or not admitting other things so it doesn't admit other official sports betting partners but it admits these two they are co-exclusive together cooperatively they are excluding every other official sports betting partner of mlb no No. I'm not persuaded by that. I mean, I think that your read is right.

Like, that is the way that someone somewhere was like, it's fine. Yeah. That was what they got to that let them go, it's fine. But I'm here to say it's still goofy, you know? It's extremely goofy, yeah. It can be fine, but it's still goofy. Yes, it is.

It is, however, not new. It was new to me, but I found that they use the same term to describe the previous deal in 2021 between DraftKings and MLB and BetMGM. So they used the co-exclusive back then, too. It is not a new coinage, but it's certainly not in common use. And I wholeheartedly reject it. coinage but it's certainly not in common use and i wholeheartedly reject it i also just think that like have we talked about how fan duel is like a very aggressive it's like very aggressive as a name for a thing that's true fan duel fan duel you know like are they dueling each other exclusively? Are they dueling MGM? Are you in a fight with the casino

which always wins? Really, I guess it's supposed to be fans dueling each other for money, but it is probably more like the company dueling the fans and winning most of the time. That's how these things tend to work. A lot of layered and nuanced

meaning here. It's layered. Like, you know, Kike Hernandez's pants in the, hey man. We're going to go there, but I started it, I suppose. Mystery do all around us, potentially. In other MLB press release news, a little executive hirings mini segment here. We also got a release that MLB had hired three executives to local media positions. So earlier this year, MLB hired Billy Chambers to head up its newly created local media department. And Billy Chambers is a longtime media industry executive who's worked with RSNs and local media and everything. And so MLB a department here seemingly to take over, essentially, for if the Bally teams and the other teams that are defaulting are bankrupt and are offering or being compelled to hand over their rights back to the teams or back to MLB.

Yeah. could be good in a sense if it leads to uh getting around blackouts and these things being available on mlb tv let's say but it could also potentially be disastrous i'm sure so like if they get the rights i mean you still have to figure out like how do you produce the broadcasts and and who does the like actual broadcasting and whose cameras are used and all of these just details to work out on a pretty short timeline here so they're staffing up to hopefully not lead to a time when we cannot watch baseball when no one's broadcasting baseball games so i don't know i'm i'm hopeful that in the long run this might lead to baseball being more accessible but i'm also scared that in the long run, this might lead to baseball being more accessible, but I'm also scared that in the short term, it will be the opposite of that. And also, who knows what the prices will look like? If we do get to stream all of these games in local markets, will they just jack up the prices? Who knows? And what will the broadcast be like? There's just so many unknowns here. And then if there's less revenue coming in from RSNs in the short term, then will team owners seize on that as a reason not to spend and a justification for not spending? So a lot of things suddenly up in the air about the whole

broadcast model for the sport. Yeah, I think that there are a lot of scenarios where in the long run, this actually ends up being better for fans in terms of what you're able to access on your preferred platform. But I think you don't ever want to give owners a reason to say they can't spend because they don't always have to be real. They don't always have to be true is the thing about them they will grasp at whatever straws are within reach so that part does make me nervous but i i guess you'd rather that the league be like hopping to than not right yes right exactly so the other executive news

is a team announcement which is that the blue jays hired James Click. Yeah, they sure did, didn't they? And he's what, their vice president of baseball strategy is, I think, the title, one of these new age baseball operations department titles. And he's going to be involved in all aspects of the organization, it sounds like. And Click, of course, former Rays executive and more recently, former Astros GM, who just won a World Series with the Astros but clashed with owner Jim Crane who clearly did not want to bring him back and gave him a one-year offer just for show basically and Click was then kind of cast to the winds at a point where there

weren't GM jobs open and the offseason had already started. So it's not surprising that he is caught on in this kind of role. But I always wonder what it's like for a team to hire someone like this who's clearly going to be in demand for other top jobs in baseball operations departments. And this is probably just, hey, let me not be absent from the game and I'll get some experience with another organization and I'll kind of keep my hand in as soon as some other job opens up. I mean, I don't know exactly what his thinking was, but it was a tough time to be kind of cut adrift and you can't, unless someone's going to just fire someone and hire you, then you might have to bide your time and wait a while for another desirable job to open up. And this is a pretty good way to pass the time, probably. But I wonder from the team's perspective what that's like, given. Like the only way really that Click could stay, I guess, is if he took the job of, you know, Ross Atkins or Mark Shapiro or something, which doesn't seem likely.

No, not particularly. understood that this is just, well, here's a smart person who's had experience with successful organizations. And so we'll bring him in in the short term and we'll benefit from his knowledge. But do you give him access to everything knowing that very shortly, in all likelihoods, he'll be moving on? Because you've got to think that he would be on many teams shortlist as soon as some new position opens up. And then you just know that that person's going to take all that intel with him to your next team. But how can you not do that? I guess if you actually want to get the full benefit of this person's knowledge and input, then you kind of can't cordon them off.

So it's always an issue for teams because people move around. Right. You know, you're not supposed to take actual tangible intellectual property with you, but maybe sometimes that happens. Right. But also you can't really just do the neuralyzer from Men in Black and make someone forget everything. So they're going to know what was going on.

They're going to know. It's not that unusual a situation it's like alexanthopolis leaving the boojays and going to the dodgers before he joined the braves but still seems slightly awkward yeah it's a tricky it's tricky weird thing yeah i guess like maybe you just figure well we'll get the benefit in the short term and and we'll learn things that the ray is new and the aster is new and then when inevitably he goes on to run some other team well he'll be pretty familiar with our operations which will be kind of strange but then maybe we'll gain some slight advantage against the other 28 teams at least so it's worth it on the whole. Unless it's like you're bringing someone in sort of a

kind of consultant role and maybe a little less visibility. Maybe you don't give them a login into every aspect of your internal system or something. And it's more of a case by case, hey, what should we do about this? But from the sound of it, the way it's been described, it is more of a sort of holistic, we want this person looking at everything kind of position. So I guess you just deal with it, maybe. It's a strange business. It is a strange business. talented people are always in danger of moving, particularly if they might graduate to, you know,

a previous or a higher position somewhere else. But yeah, I think you tend to expect they'll stick around for a little bit longer. But maybe, maybe they're like, well, I don't know if he's going to move to Toronto. But maybe they're like, if you're moving internationally, even if it is just up to Canada, maybe you think you're going to stick around for a little bit longer or maybe he's like uh i have sufficient decision making authority here and i can manage fewer people and i want to do that you know maybe that's maybe that's in the cards too who could say yeah totally possible maybe after putting up with jim crane and and the conflict there for a year he's's like, maybe I just want to take a little bit of a gap year here. Yeah, just want to hang out for a little bit. I want a World Series, like I'm at the pinnacle here. Maybe this is not such a bad time to have a slightly lower stress

job for a season. Or maybe he just wants to sample some chicken fingers recommended by Brandon Belt. Yeah, he heard about the tendies and he couldn't resist. Well, and I think there's probably something to the idea that it's March. I guess it was probably, what, February when timing of me being let go relative to the rest of the hiring cycle just wasn't conducive. Or maybe he thinks, you know, people didn't want to hire him for some reason. I don't know. I don't know James Click at all. So I don't want to impugn the guy. But he did go through an offseason without getting a different job. So maybe he's really excited about this one.

Could be. And then the last little bit of MLB-related front office type of news. So you see this report about MLB and its lobbyists and Florida and minor league pay and exemptions to minimum wage laws. So this was initially reported by Jason Garcia of the Seeking Rents newsletter, and then Evan Drellick of The Athletic followed up on it. But it's not surprising, right? It's MLB and MLB owners kind of doing the thing that they do, which is trying to pay players as little as possible, right? And in this case, trying to pay players sub-minim minimum wage in Florida and other states. And what caught my eye, though, just in light of the recent conversation that we had about the possible book bannings and Rob Manfred sort of not very visibly interceding and reaching out to Ron DeSantis's office, governor of Florida's office, to try to ensure that those baseball books that were on the list of books under review would be approved and back on shelves.

That kind of looks in a different light to me now after reading this report about how cozy it seems like these lobbyists are with that administration because MLB hired a lobbying firm run by a top fundraiser for Ron DeSantis. And then the roster of lobbyists includes DeSantis' former chief of staff. So maybe this wasn't so much like a special call to sort out this book business. Maybe it was more like, well, while we have you, you know, while we're talking about other matters, can we just, you know, maybe sort out this possibly banned baseball book stuff, you know, like one of the agenda items, an ongoing conversation. And then also, the day after this legislation was filed, Joe Ricketts, the patriarch of the family that owns the Cubs, donated a million dollars to DeSantis. So all this stuff is kind of going on. It's not particularly

surprising or out of character for MLB. And people might wonder, well, why are they going to this trouble now that minor league pay is going to be collectively bargained, which is true. But as Evan lays out in his piece, this may still give MLB greater leverage in those CBA negotiations if there are exemptions to the federal minimum wage laws. So that might be a reason for them to do it, although MLB insists that that has nothing to do with it and they have other motivations here but anyway just wanted to note that this was not the only connection between mlb and the commissioner and uh owners and florida lawmakers it was not solely book related but also minor league pay related i can't decide like what what scenario i think is worse here like did they think that're going to be able to do stuff like this

and then not have anyone know about it? Or did they know that people will know and they just don't care? Because like the optics of it are bad. Like what they're asking for seems obviously bad to ask for an exemption to minimum wage laws. There's been a ton of backlash to their efforts to curb the pay of minor leaguers at the federal level. People don't...

Successful efforts, other than a lawsuit that went against them recently. Right, but people have been, I think, appropriately critical of those efforts because it just strikes people, particularly when you're dealing with guys at that level who aren't, you know, they're not going to be making big, big money potentially ever and certainly not for a long time. Like the best that you can hope for is that they got a reasonable signing bonus and have the cushion that that affords them. But like that piece of it looks bad. And then the donation piece of it looks bad and then the donation piece of it

looks bad like it just is it feels like quid pro quo and we can look at campaign donations you can go look those up right now if you want to go see what your favorite team's owner has done in the last couple of election cycles it's all on the fec's website like it's it's easy enough to find that stuff so i don't know which scenario I find more disconcerting, that they think that they will successfully sort of obfuscate those efforts and keep them from the public eye or that they know they'll come out and are like, whatever, it doesn't matter. We're just going to do what we're going to do

because it might end up making us more money. I think they're both icky, Ben. I don't particularly care for them. Yeah, I would probably go with the latter. I would guess that the latter is more likely. And then the only other actual on-field observations here, first of all, it's been a brutal week when it comes to injuries. Yeah, man. And we will be doing the Dodgers preview next time. So we will, I'm sure be talking about Gavin Lux, which is just a devastating injury for him and for the team,

but Lux and Glassnow and Joe Musgrove and Brendan Rogers. It's just like, can we just please pause? Suzuki's dinged up. Yeah. Just stop. Yeah. Just please.

Yeah. I mean, it's not new. This happens to some extent every spring. But it is always just as upsetting when it's like, just get to opening day. And then if guys get hurt, well, at least it was a worthy sacrifice because the games counted. You know, like I know they have to get ready for games that count. And it is inevitable that they're going to get ready for games that count and it is

inevitable that they're gonna get hurt sometimes during that process but it just sucks it sucks when your season is derailed or ended before it officially begins and and with lux like it's just one of those weird things where like yeah man he didn't he just he landed oddly just on a fairly routine play i mean it wasn't so routine yeah it's just like you know you you plant your foot in the wrong way and there goes a crucial season in your career before it even gets going it's just it's the worst yeah it it really stinks they're all bad like i don't want to downplay the impact that any of them will have either on the player or their team but with Lux in particular you just you feel so bad for the guy like you know his his first year in the big leagues 2020 and it was weird and he didn't play the way he wanted to and you know he's been sort of moved around off his natural position and you know the

the bloom was sort of off the rose and then he looked like he was really starting to turn things around at points last year and we got the you know the hope springs eternal reports of like increased bat speed after going to driveline and all that stuff and so you thought here here's the chance like we're gonna maybe we're gonna see the guy who like we had like a 60 future value on at one point. And then to just non-contact injuries are the worst because you just, yeah, this is not supported by medical science. What I'm about to say, I want to, I don't mean that I'm going to like, you know, try to sell you ivermectin or anything,

but I don't know that this is like an actual thing in terms of the ability of players to recover or what their long-term prognosis is in terms of you know how likely they are to be re-injured but whenever a guy whether it's baseball or football or anything goes down with a non-contact injury i always just feel more protective of him and more nervous for him when he comes back right because when like the force of your own body is enough to damage you yeah it just feels like you're vulnerable and i don't know that that is remotely correct but that is my sort of experience of watching those guys where i'm like are you okay are you okay what about now are you still okay are you okay because it feels like they could just come apart at any moment and so there was that view down sort of the like over third base down to second where

you saw like the buckle. And you know what? I'd say to people, if you haven't seen it, don't watch it. You know, it's yucky. It feels gross. It's not like Dak Prescott, but it kind of makes you go like that's not supposed to bend that way. So it's just sucks.

It's super sucks. It super sucks. It does. On a lighter note, I did enjoy the umpire-less inning. Yeah. Did you see that? I didn't see it, but because I, Ben, I don't know if I've bragged about this enough to you, but you know who I got to watch pitch this week in person? Well, Sean Ohtani.

So I was on my way home from Ohtani. Yeah. So I didn't watch it. That's a good reason to miss it. But I heard about it. Yeah. It was the Orioles and the Pirates, right? And they just decided to play an unnecessary bottom of the ninth, even though Pittsburgh,

the home team, was leading and the umpires had departed and they just played on. As we've discussed in the past in the early days of major league baseball they used to play unnecessary bottoms of the ninth sometimes until they decided oh we don't actually need to do this but in spring training weird wacky stuff happens and we get ties and we get uh innings ending early and then we get an unnecessary bottom of the ninth that because the umpires had peaced out was just balls and strikes called by the orioles catcher who's named maverick handley amazing maverick hand no notes perfect no no and uh he did a good job apparently he was uh pulling double duty here catcher slash home plate ump and seemed like

he was calling pitches pretty accurately and people weren't too upset with him granted the stakes were not super high given that this was spring training and the game was already decided so it was essentially a scrimmage at that point but he pronounced himself 100 accurate on his ball and strike calls are you contemplating his jersey now like does he displace who's umpire who had the perfect game oh uh pat hoberg does he displace pat hoberg for you in the pantheon of perfect games probably probably not no yeah there's one questionable uh outside pitch that he he sort of framed for himself i would say and uh gave himself the strike after framing it yeah so he estimated it would be a call to strike most of the time anyway 85 percent of the time i don't know but it's uh one of those only in spring training sort of episodes so that

was fun that was fun yeah i will say i heard about it first from our friends jake and jordan on twitter but then it actually made sports talk radio driving home wow and i don't know who the knuckleheads were who were on the radio but um they were like what's wrong with those umpires that they left and it's like do you know how baseball tends to work when it actually matters? Because the home team is ahead and on top of the line, they don't have to play the bomb.

They were like, these lazy umpires. And I was like, no, you leave the umpires alone. That is not why this is fun. It's not fun because you get to dunk on the umpires. It's fun for other reasons. Clue in here. Come on. Yeah, come on. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So let's answer a few emails here because we get so little time to answer emails during team preview season, especially when Kike Hernandez confesses a shart and then we have to devote some attention to that too. But let's try to get through a few here. So here's a question from Myth, Patreon supporter. This is spring training themed.

Could a AAA team in peak midseason form defeat a team of MLB All-Stars before spring training? Let's assume the MLB players are just sitting on their couches in mid-January and do not get time to warm up or practice as a team and that these are games that count for something, which I think is an important stipulation because otherwise the MLB players would just be like, I don't want to hurt myself, so I'm not even going to try here. So for some reason, they actually all have to try, but the MLB players have not ramped up. They have not been doing, well, they've probably been doing something

because players are in pretty good shape year round these days. So the answer might be a little bit different now than it was decades ago. But what do you think? Mid-season AAA team and a totally out of practice, not at all prepared team of MLB all-stars. I mean, we could even go with just like an average MLB team or something to make it more interesting. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, that might change my answer. Yeah.

Ben. Oh, Ben. Because look, a AAA team, you might imagine that, you know, maybe not every single one that maybe not every single one, maybe not every single one, but I would imagine on average that a AAA team has at least one, it probably has a couple guys who could be playing in the majors if either there were room for them or you know their their club wasn't saying don't you need to work on some defense though so that we can keep you around for a

little while although that's less of it they have less incentive to do that now i don't know i find myself pushed and pulled by this question because on the one hand if they're really like big league all-stars you know it's an entire team of big league all-stars, including the pitching. Yeah. You know, that feels like the deck stacked against them. But if they're average big leaguers, it's just one game. Weird stuff happens.

I don't think it's impossible. I think the team of big leaguers, even if they are, you know, not familiar with each other in terms of their play, they're probably winning more often than not. I don't think it's impossible the AAA guys would win, though. You know what I mean? It's not possible. It seems unlikely, but not really unlikely.

It seems pretty unlikely. What are these gradations I'm introducing to this question? Who could say? If you're only playing one game, then I think it matters less that the pitchers aren't built up, right? It's not like you need them to go deep into games. So if you have a whole all-star pitching staff, then each guy just has to face,

I mean, you don't even need anyone to go an inning, right? It can just be rapid fire. You can bring them all out. One after another, you're toast. So many big leaguers these days, they're going to driveline. They're training with some private coach. They're working out constantly. Most of them, they don't have off-season jobs where they get out of shape and then they have to use the entirety of spring training to just melt off the weight or anything, which was sort of the initial purpose of spring training to get back in shape, melt off the weight or anything,

which was sort of the initial purpose of spring training. And everyone's always saying, well, now that everyone's in great shape year round, can't we just shorten spring training? And I think we could from a physical fitness perspective, but then would we get even more injuries, right? The pitchers still have to build up. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know what this would do to the pitcher's arms long term. But if they just have to win this game for some reason and they're going all out, I mean, they're not going to have their peak velocity, obviously. So the difference between like a triple A team's average velocity when they're in midseason form and a January average MLB team when they just haven't even been throwing in any serious way. Maybe it's not as huge as you would think.

Maybe it's not significant at all. But I would think that the MLB All-Stars would still take this game. I don't know. I kind of think they could just roll out of bed and win one from a AAA team. I don't know how much your timing is disrupted. You've had a whole winter off at that point, and you may or may not have been training in a really deliberate way. So I could see just everyone's timing being so off and just out of sorts and not being in peak physical condition that you could steal a game from them. I think you could beat an average MLB team.

I think that is overcomable. Yeah. All-stars. Yeah. It's harder. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, even maybe the difference between the all-stars and the average team is less than it would be at that time, too, because neither of them is at their peak.

They're not functioning at full capacity. But I just I think the gap would probably be too great. But I could absolutely see a AAA team that is in midseason form beating just a completely cold team of average mlb players yeah yeah i mean i will say that like i have been to i have been to exactly two uh spring training games in person i've watched more than that ben i've watched a couple in fact but i've been to two in person which is i think important to getting the sense of like hey that guy is clearly a big leaguer and that guy is not from like a physicality perspective that's even more arresting in person than it is on tv and sometimes it's like wow they're different you know those guys are built different now some of those guys play for the

oakland athletics so is it a totally representative sample who can say although that team is arguably in some cases just like a team triple a guys it was fun when the a's took on the angels and you know otani was throwing in fujinami through so that was that was fun to get to see uh him in person and um you know it was like it was the lineup that had tony kemp and jesus aguilar and let me see us and you're like oh this is the please don't file a grievance lineup that's what this lineup is you know that's what that that's what they're up to out there you know

how divisive it was great fun you know the vibe in that ballpark super cool unsurprisingly like there were a lot of Japanese fans there and it was nice. It was a good day at the park. And then I sent you a picture to be like, hee-hee. That's right.

I didn't hee-hee. It was a bloat. Here's a question from Julian. The Parable of Lavan Soto. Not sure if this was ever on your radar or anyone else's except Die Hard Angels fans, but the Angels started the 2022 season with an already lackluster infield. I recall that. By the time mid-September rolled around,

the Angels were playing meaningless games, and both the starting shortstop David Fletcher and his replacement Andrew Velasquez were injured. From the depths of the Angels' farm system comes LaVon Soto, who despite never hitting above.295 at any level of pro ball, proceeds to hit.400 over 60 Major League Plate appearances and puts up a.181 WRC+. any level of pro ball, proceeds to hit 400 over 60 Major League Plate appearances and puts up a 181 WRC+, better than all qualified hitters except Judge and Alvarez on a full

season basis. On a rate basis, he was on track for seven wins above replacement over a 600 plate appearance season, more valuable than the other slightly more famous Soto. Of course, he achieved this by pure luck. He posted a 500 BABIP, 15% hard hit rate and 0% barrel rate. He walked only 3.4% of the time and his single home run is a certified wall scraper down the right field line. By all peripheral and scouting indications, he will spend the rest of his career bouncing around as a sub-replacement level player wondering what angels in the outfield type magic possessed him in the final days of the 2022 season i could go on about the beauty of levon soto's 2022 but

my question is this how lucky was he in a historical sense how many other players have a legitimate claim to having been the greatest hitter in baseball during a half-month stretch almost solely by babbit pluck how many had that stretch the very minute they got to the bigs or given the very real chance he never sees a big league game again, how many players' entire big league careers were as short, good, and lucky as Soto's may be? So I wanted to answer this because as improbable and weird as that was, I don't think it's that extreme to have a stretch like Soto's in a sample that small, lots of strange stuff can happen. In fact, arguably Soto's performance wasn't even the flukiest one by a big leaguer over that same span.

I looked FantGraph's leaderboards between Soto's debut and the end of the regular season. He ranked 16th in WRC Plus among hitters with at least 50 plate appearances, which is pretty good. But seventh on the list was a player named Sean Bouchard, a 26-year-old Rockies rookie who was not even mentioned on Fangraph's preseason Rockies prospect list. And Bouchard's BABIP during that same period was even higher than Soto's. So Soto's was 500 and Bouchard's was 519. And granted, Bouchard had hit well in AAA and he had briefly been in the big leagues earlier that season. But that was pretty darn fluky. Like when I looked at the leaderboard and saw Sean Bouchard, I thought,

who? He was great over that span, but that was just one small sliver of a single season. Even in that single sliver, I found someone who was improbably better than LaVon Soto. If we were to expand the search to every range of two to three weeks from every season, we would probably find a lot more Soto-esque luck-driven hot streaks. Maybe most of them wouldn't immediately follow a first call-up as Soto's did. the enduring power of voros's law which is named after voros mccracken who is uh best known as the person who brought babbit to light but voros's law states that any player can hit anything in 60 at bats which is basically what levon soto did 60 play appearances, I guess, and he was at the upper range of what you can do. But really, you just never know. So if he were never to play in the majors again, that would be unprecedented because right now he has by far the highest career OPS plus of anyone in AL or NL history with between 35 and 60 career played appearances.

Wow. or NL history with between 35 and 60 career plate appearances. He is at the top of that list, which is, I guess, semi-impressive. Maybe it's nice to be at the top of any list, but he has a 180 OPS plus, and the next highest is at 162 with those very specific and strict criteria. So given his age, he's quite young. And the first impression he made there, I imagine that he will get a call up at some point and he'll get a chance to watch his rate stink at some point. Stink at some point. Yeah. Hopefully they won't stink, but they will sink, I'm sure. And if not, if he never gets called up again, then I guess he can console himself with the knowledge that he made some history and is at the top of an extremely specific leaderboard. But he will probably get another chance and then he will fall down that leaderboard or will be taken off that leaderboard entirely.

that leaderboard will be taken off that leaderboard entirely. But that's the thing. I just wanted to highlight that because as weird as that was, I don't think that was even the weirdest performance by an improbably successful player over that same specific span. So it really just goes to show that over two or three weeks, anyone can do anything, including Sean Bouchard and Levon Soto. Yeah. It's a strange, strange sport. Cam, Patreon supporter, says, I consider myself a very knowledgeable baseball fan. However, I have one big blind spot that gets me made fun of by my baseball fan friends. I don't know anyone's handedness. I watch more than 100 games a year, and yet this key piece of information disappears from my

brain the second a player isn't on screen. If you were to ask me whether, say, Clayton Kershaw is a lefty or a righty, I would not be able to answer you with any degree of confidence. Unless a player is very famously a lefty, I never have any idea. I would take Clayton Kershaw pretty famously a lefty. Yeah, I was going to say. But I guess that just speaks to Kev's inability to retain this information. So he says, I guess my question is, is this weird? And does either of you have a similar hole in your knowledge? I'm so afraid to confess to this. I sometimes worry that I have it wrong.

Oh, yeah. Handedness specifically? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Me too. I feel like I have this to some extent. I mean, I know Clayton K. Handedness specifically? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Me too. I feel like I have this to some extent. I mean, I know Clayton Kershaw's a lefty, but there are a lot of players who could go either way, right? So if it's like a team I'm watching constantly, I mean,

when I was a fan of one team, I would know that. But there are a lot of baseball players out there, and sometimes it can be hard to remember. And I find it hard to remember sometimes because it's so easily looked up too that I don't feel like I need to up that information, and it's not always vital that I have it in my mind. So obviously for a lot of players I do just because I've seen them a lot. But yeah, there are a lot of players who I would have to think about it and would certainly have less than 100% confidence about it. So you're not alone, Cam. 100% confidence about it. So you're not alone, Cam. Yeah.

I think that I feel like the most confident in my mental recall on hitters. Right? Like I can, I mean, I feel like I know handedness players. See, this is why you feel nervous about confessing it, you know, because then people are going to be like, she's managing her fingers, and that guy throws righty. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I sometimes lose confidence, and the minute I do that, my doubt is overwhelming.

You know what I mean? And then I feel compelled to verify that my my understanding is correct but i feel less compelled to do that when it comes to hitters because i feel like i have a better mental recall of them in the box in some ways which is weird because why isn't that true for pitchers too you know ben why wouldn't that be and again like i know oh no i feel like we're gonna get emails somebody's gonna be like you know this is like the equivalent of like was the grink there it's gonna be like that but it's not like that no i don't think this is the measure of your baseball acumen is whether you know whether every single player is a lefty or righty.

I mean, again, like we can access that information quite easily if we don't have it committed to memory for every single player. It's fine. And yeah, I mean, I guess the more baseball you watch and pay attention to, you will have that knowledge. But again, you can't be watching every team at every time and there are thousands of players. So it can be tough sometimes. We've talked about uniform numbers being something that we are just almost entirely ignorant of. Oh, yeah. I don't- I don't even consider that important information to retain. I don't even have any hesitation to say,

I don't know that because it's irrelevant to me. I, I don't even have any hesitation to say, I don't know that because it's just, it's irrelevant to me. Like, I couldn't care less really what someone's uniform number is, especially if their name is on the back. But also I could look that up. I don't need to know that. Like, maybe it was helpful to know that in the olden days where you didn't have like your, at that app where you could look it up or you knew every what everyone looked like because you can see them on tv constantly right i mean in the past it was helpful it was the only way you could know who someone was right is if you had your program or you knew what their uniform number was but now it just it really is not important information

to know and my eye just slips right over it when I see it. I make no effort to retain that information. Handedness, obviously, is more important. It has some bearing on your career and the outcome of the game. So that is more important to know, certainly. But yeah, I'm shaky on that at times. I will admit to it. Yeah, sometimes I feel it's like braiding my hair. When I think about it, sometimes if I try

to hold onto it too tight, I don't know, I can't do it anymore. My fingers go, nope, don't remember how to do that. It's like temporary face blindness or something. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So it's fine. This is a safe space. If Quique Hernandez can admit what happened to him, then surely we can admit that we might not always know whether someone is a lefty or a righty without looking it up. I hope that like his tooth is okay. Yeah.

It's been a while. I'm sure it's fine. Yeah. I wonder if he had to get it pulled. Speaking of numbers, here's a question from Charles who says, In episode 1966, in the discussion of retired numbers, you mentioned the possible need for players to wear three-digit uniform numbers if teams kept retiring them at a certain pace.

I just checked the rulebook and I don't see anything that prevents a three or more digit number on a uniform. So what, other than tradition and the high likelihood of extremely cranky newspaper columns is keeping someone from requesting number 101 or 112 or 90210 or 666? How likely do you think it is that we will see a number greater than 99 and someone's back in the next, say, 10 years? next, say, 10 years? I think it's pretty likely because I was listening to a Sabre cast interview. Rob Nair was talking to Pat Neshek and Pat Neshek talked about how when he would change teams, sometimes he changed uniform numbers and he wanted to be the first to wear a certain number. He wanted to be the first to wear a certain number. He thought it was a point of pride, you know, like he was 93 with the Phillies and maybe he was the first 93 or something. And he just wanted to, like, check that box and be the first.

And I think he mentioned that some other players had done that and that maybe now they had all been worn or almost all. Right. All the two digit numbers had been worn by someone somewhere at some point. And that he and maybe some other players had made it a point to be the pioneer for that number. So once every number has been settled and then the next frontier would be triple digits, right? And why not? would be triple digits, right? And why not? I feel like, yeah, there's kind of a conformist, maybe reluctance to stand out in that way. Or maybe people would think you're looking like you're trying to court attention or something. But if Aaron Judge is the best player in baseball last year and he's 99, then why would you not want to be 100? Why wouldn't someone want to break

that barrier? I'm going to propose a couple of options. Are you ready? I think most people probably think they aren't allowed to. I think that that's the overwhelming reason. I bet most people assume there's a rule in the rule book that you have to have a two-digit number or no more than two digits, right? So I bet that that's the the overwhelming reason is that we have previously lacked the imagination you know as a species so there's that piece i think that people would find it grouseable you know they would feel like they could grouse about it and they would and then you would feel silly like you had pooed your pants but everyone knew you know it would be like a permanent stain on your...

And you'd look, you know, I think on the one hand, you want to stand out on the field, right? You want to be the best guy out there. You want to be an all-star. You want to be a hall of famer. You want to, you best guy out there. But I think that there's a range of individuation that players are accustomed to. But they want to be one of the guys, right? Because being one of the guys has been this thing that they've been working for their whole lives.

And so I think they want to feel that and have some legacy to the number. I think you're right. I mean, clearly there are players who want to be trailblazers in the number space. Yeah. And in fact, that's no longer possible now with two-digit numbers. Officially, they have all been worn. As of 2020, entering the 2020 season, I'm reading an article. I'm shocked it took that long.

Yeah. MLB.com's David adler wrote about this entering the 2020 season there were three not yet worn numbers 86 89 and 92 and then reliever hennessy's cabrera wore 92 for the first time and then jesus cruz wore 86 and then the final one to be checked off was Miguel Yajure he wore 89 for the Yankees and that was it the bingo card is completely full so now if someone wants to wear a number that has never been worn before they gotta go triple digits and I think there's just less stigma surrounding it than there was because it used to be like you had a high number. It was like Bush League. It was like, oh, I'm not going to stick. Right. It's spring training and they're just handing out the

high numbers because there's so many players around. Right. But again, now you have Aaron Judge at 99. Right. I feel like there's probably less of a high number means Bush League sort of connection in people's minds. And man, if I were a big leaguer, I would totally want to be the first triple digit number. That would be a great distinction to have. Wouldn't that be a nice legacy to be the first person to break the bonds of the the two-digit number i mean i don't know if it's like extra work for your clubhouse person to have to stitch another number on there because it's like non-standard and then it probably doesn't i mean it would be off-center right if they'd have to like move the other numbers too so it might just be a hassle right and and kind of a custom job and it was

like it might wrap depending on which numbers you pick it might like wrap around you in a way that kind of obscures what the number actually is you know yeah and as you're saying i mean the whole idea is uniform right it's supposed to be uniform like we're part of a team. We must just subsume our individual identities to be part of the collective here. And so if you're trying to like look like a hot dog or something, like people would think that you're trying to seize the spotlight, which I guess you kind of would be if you were the trailblazer here. I just think it would be a cool trail to place. So I would do it. I would be more concerned about wearing a number of a prior player who either the fans really didn't like or maybe who did something naughty off the field.

My aversion might be to that, but I think that the place where being obsessed with the number part of it, I get it matters to some folks, but that's not the uniform fight I want to fight. I continue to find it. I know there's tradition. The name should just be on all the uniforms. Every uniform should have a name on it.

We shouldn't, Ben, shouldn't get to do the nameless ones. You shouldn't be allowed to do that. And I'm looking at you, Yankees. You're not the only ones, but you're really stubborn about this stuff. So put it on there. Put it on. As someone who does not know anyone's uniform number,

I do sort of support that because the whole idea is like, well, isn't it fan-friendlier to have fans be able to identify who that player is? And yeah, it's easier to do that now with a phone in your pocket but still so still because sometimes especially and especially this time of year you should have to have names on the backs of your jerseys how about that training mandatory yeah it should be mandatory because sometimes they're wrong sometimes you look at the roster online and it is wrong. playoff game. After making the 3,000th base hit required to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame, nine years later, a clerical error is discovered invalidating three of the hits and keeping Ross

from the ultimate baseball honor. The 47-year-old player convinces the Brewers to let him rejoin the team to make his last three hits and sheds his selfish nature as he rediscovers his love of the game. That's the Apple TV summary. This made me think, hypothetically, if it were discovered that nine of Barry Bonds' career home runs weren't actually home runs and he needed to hit three more to reclaim the all-time home run title, and assuming a team was willing to sign him for the 2023 season, seems like a stretch, how many at-bats would it take for him to break the record again? Or alternatively ask, how many home runs do you think Barry Bonds could hit as a 58-year-old DH in 2023? He has kept himself in shape from what I've seen. Not the same shape that he was last time we saw him on a big league field. He's slimmed it down considerably, but he seems to be fit. He's a big cyclist now.

So he's trimmed. He hasn't let himself go in retirement, which would make a difference, but not nearly as bulky as he was. And I'm sure the reflexes and such have slipped. So you would get to a certain point where you were just incapable of hitting a home run off a big league pitching, no matter how many at bats you had, right? Like people will show the clip of the 70 something, like 75 year old Hall of Famer, Luke Appling hitting the home run in the old timers game.

But the fence was shallow. It was not like regulation. I mean, it was still impressive, but at a certain point you just wouldn't really be able to muster the strength to get a ball over the fence. I don't know that Barry Bonds is at that point. And you could completely cheat, of course. retire again, then yeah, you can just sort of sit fastball, right? And just have your home run swing every single time. And of course, pitchers could exploit you completely and they would know that you were doing that. So I guess you couldn't do that all the time. And probably Barry Bonds' plate discipline is still intact to some degree. So he might not be completely hopeless up there, to some degree so he might not be completely hopeless up there but he's been out of the game for quite some time now yeah those years uh probably have taken a toll so i don't know like

yeah could he hit nine homers given uh an infinite number of at bats or however many at bats he could uh take in his remaining lifespan i bet he could i bet he could take in his remaining lifespan? I bet he could. I bet he could hit nine. I think he probably could. Nine, yeah. If he were given a bunch of opportunities and that was all he was trying to do. Because I bet his eyes are really good. Yeah, I would think so.

And like you said, it's not like he isn't doing athletic stuff. He's just not doing athletic stuff. He's just not doing baseball stuff. Yeah. But I don't know. On the one hand, it would be a bummer and no team would do it because even his first club, even the Pirates are like, look, we don't have that many to give away. Yeah, I mean, no one wanted to give him a job in 2008, let alone 2023.

Well, I don't think that was because people didn't think he could hit home runs no it wasn't but but but i kind of would like him to try because he would either do it and it would be super cool or it would put to bed forever the folks on the internet who are like, I could hit a... No, you couldn't. No, you couldn't. Because you're the equivalent of 50-some-odd bonds being like, yeah, we're going to go up there. So you'd either do it and it would be rad or it would prove an important point to me personally. Yeah.

I'm sure a lot of players would have enough old man strength to get the ball over the fence. Yeah. Right. It's just like the bat speed would go quite quickly. Sure. And some of the pitch recognition and just the reflexes and everything. So yeah, you would totally have to just cheat and sit dead red and hope that you got that and you wouldn't get that very often if everyone knew that that's what you were doing but does he have the physical strength to hit the ball over the fence yeah i would guess yes yeah i would i would guess yes and i think you're right that

like best for you to go and you'd stroke but like if anyone could do that piece of it doesn't it feel like it would be him yes yeah i mean without any illicit substances he was uh on the very short list of the best players of all time yeah so yes i i think so i don't know that he could hit nine in a single season it might take him longer than a single season although the longer takes, the harder it gets for him to do it. But yeah, if you gave him a couple seasons, I think he probably could. He would be very bad. I mean, he could only DH and the strategy required to just try to hit home runs solely would probably make him a pretty terrible offensive player, even with whatever remains to him of his play discipline. But yeah, I think if he had one job, he could probably do it if given a long enough leash.

Yeah. Joe, Patreon supporter, says, I canceled my MLB at Bat subscription in 2020 for numerous reasons. I was even quoted in a Hannah Kaiser feature about people leaving baseball post-pandemic. The last two years I've kept up via the podcast and the occasional Friday night streaming game. This year, though, the itch is back. I feel like summers haven't been the same without the background of baseball. I don't have the right TV package to see most games, and the radio only brings me Royals

games, which leaves a little to be desired. Streaming via the app, at least radio if not TV, would be the easiest solution to my problem, but would mean reneging on my moral stand against corporate greed and general frustration with MLB's recent decision-making. If I resubscribe, am I giving in to the Manfred manification of baseball, or am I allowed to find happiness at the cost of subsidizing questionable business practices? I feel like we've gotten questions like this before. Yeah, we get this sort of moral dilemma question. I'm trying to remember what I said because, you know.

Often we get a team-specific one. Right. Like, I don't like my team's owner for some reason. Right. And therefore, the grass is greener somewhere else. And we have kind of cautioned, like, it might not actually be that much greener. You might find that you might go over there and the grass is kind of brown there, too. Like, it's hard to have a completely ethical consumption of Major League Baseball,

given the people who own Major League Baseball games and just the way that the whole sport works and has always worked, frankly, but some aspects of that are more visible now than they used to be. But this is more of a league-wide, maybe partly just not liking the business practices, maybe just not liking rules changes, like if you hated rules changes, just the Manfredification of baseball. Just are you compromising your moral stance here if you go back because you miss baseball? I think a couple of things, and I'm going to share all of them, and none of them are going to offer a definitive answer. Are you ready for me to bob and weave? Sure.

You ready for a little bobbing and weaving? I think a couple of things. I think that it's fine to change your mind on stuff, right? I think that it is good to have principles, but I think that it is also fine when the stakes are relatively low to kind of change your mind and be flexible. So I think that that's one thing. I think that you are right that it is quite difficult to ethically consume in our current system. But I also think that it's still worthwhile to try. So I worry sometimes that when

we throw our hands up and say, there's no right way to do this, that what we're really seeking is a permission structure to do the thing we wanted to do all along and i think that like how you negotiate that is you know it's tricky because i do think that there are limitations to what we can affect as change as consumers in a system but i do think that there are ways to do that and that it is nice to behave ethically, even if it isn't going to upend capitalism. So there's that. And I also think that if you put on a baseball game every now and again, the list of people ahead of you who are responsible for the moral turpitude of the sport is really quite long

and that it would take a while to get to you. So I think all of those things and what you do with that set of stuff is is kind of up to you i don't think that you should under rate the impact that you have as one person in the world but i also think that like looking back on the decisions in 2020, you probably want to like not be overrating the impact either. So, you know. Yeah, I'm just looking at the Hannah Kaiser piece that Joe was quoted in. And one of the quotes is, I got the distinct impression, again, this is 2020, that the players were ready to go. And more than that, that capital B baseball had a unique opportunity to reestablish itself as a leading sport in the U.S.

If it could get started before the NBA playoffs, they would be the only show in town and had a shot at potentially converting people who were home and bored and needed a distraction. Instead, the owners delayed and countered and just generally did everything they could to ensure a short season with longer, more lucrative playoffs. I found it disappointing and a little disgusting. He was so struck by the missed opportunity that he sought out a feedback form on MLB.com, sending a long missive into the ether about how the sport was facing a demographic crisis. I never heard back, of course. Who knows who got that form? So that was frustrating.

So I understand being frustrated about it. And if you want to vote with your wallet and say this was beyond the TV and watch some baseball games. Yeah, I guess you are, but I think it is kind of okay to do that. I don't know. I mean, it's tough because yeah, if enough people presented a united front and said, we will not stomach this and we will make the owners feel the economic hit because of the way that they're acting, then we will force them to change. Great. But that's probably not going to happen. You're probably not going to bring them to their knees by you making your solitary moral stand or maybe not totally solitary, but not enough to make a difference. So there could still be a moral rectitude and righteousness in taking that stand, even if it's not going to have any sort of tangible effect. But also, ultimately, in a sense, you're kind of conceding their power to dictate your access to baseball or enjoyment of baseball.

enjoyment of baseball. It's like, in a sense, are you letting them win in a way because they have poisoned it for you and soured it for you? I mean, I found that frustrating. I certainly hate the zombie runner as much as anyone in the world, right? But I'm not going to quit baseball because of it. Now, I'm not in the typical position that your average fan is. But still, in the typical position that your average fan is. But still, even if I were just an average fan who didn't have any sort of financial or professional stake in paying attention to baseball, I don't know that I would walk over to that because any value in my sending a message there or any revulsion I have about that rule or other changes or ways that owners have acted or anything, I have about that rule or other changes or ways that owners have acted or anything, ultimately depriving myself of baseball, which I still love and enjoy, probably would not make me happier. And we only have so much time on this earth and so many things we get to enjoy. So I just,

I don't know whether drawing that line in the sand and saying, I'm going to send a message at the expense of my own enjoyment. Now, if you can't enjoy it anymore because it's just soured you so much on it, then that's one thing. But if you find yourself missing it and now you're depriving yourself of this thing that you love because of the stewards of baseball who are not doing a great job of stewarding it in your mind, then I don't know. In a way, like maybe the game, the sport, your enjoyment of it is bigger than them and you could kind of push through and not let them ruin it for you would be another way to look at it and just sort of savor the things about it that you do still enjoy and know that hopefully it'll outlast the people who are doing the things that currently are upsetting you well and i think that hearing the quote and i i don't mean to say that this is all that it is but particularly if the thing that that you found

the most galling in 2020 was sort of the missed opportunity of it all in terms of expanding the game's reach and really solidifying a new generation of fans. That in particular strikes me as something that you can be done worrying about. I mean, not that the game doesn't need to expand and that it isn't important to appeal to younger fans and a more diverse fan base. Those things are important, but if the beef in 2020 in particular was you had a real shot

to expand the reach of the game in the zeitgeist and you missed it, of all the things that baseball does badly, that one strikes me as among the least harmful. So you can just let that one go. If you want it. You don't have to, but you could. I mean, that was back when Quique Hernandez was having his incident, and he now feels comfortable coming clean and telling us all about it. So enough time has passed.

Ben, he came clean much earlier than this. Yes. I hope. You know, because he was having downstairs issues here's one that i've struggled with this is from brendan i thought you were gonna say i have also struggled with downstairs issues and i was gonna say ben i don't want haven't we all at one time or another i know but like there's the we don't generally announce it and you can't- Yeah, there's like the reality of it, right?

In much the same way that like we're all gonna die at some point, but we don't have to dwell on that. And I don't need to know specifics. Yeah, right. Don't wanna know. All right, Brendan says, we refer to baseball players as falling into one of two categories, pitchers and position players.

I've never liked the latter term, mostly because I think it's sort of clunky in the mouth. It also seems to me to be a more modern version of pitchers and hitters, with the term hitters being replaced in favor of position players because pitchers also hit. I admit I could be wrong about this. In a universal DH world,

where pitchers, with one notable exception, no longer hit, but do, of course, play a position, isn't the pitchers and hitters notable exception, no longer hit, but do, of course, play a position, isn't the pitchers' and hitters' categorization better? Yes. I think this is both technically correct, which is, of course, the best kind of correct, but also just a better, smoother way of talking about players, with each category being a two-syllable noun referring to the fundamental action each type of player performs, ending in ER, this nomenclature, to my ears ears at least has a pleasing unity of phonetics and

meaning yeah i i fully support the adoption of a pitcher hitter framework because when you do have an otani we have a specific term for that too i'm gonna call him a two-way guy you know yeah and it is a slight to pitchers to suggest that they're not playing a position because of course they are. They are. They can earn a gold glove doing so and everything. My only argument in favor of using position player, which I sometimes do, is that sometimes if I'm, let's say, looking at a leaderboard or something and I want to say that someone is a top 10 and I don't want to say hitter because maybe they're not a top 10 hitter, but they're a top 10 position player. Let's say they're top 10 by war, but not by WRC plus or something.

Then what do I say? I don't want to say top 10 hitter because it's not the hitting that they're in the top 10 of, but they're a top 10 position player. Right? That's fair. What else can you say? Non-pitcher, top 10 non-pitcher? No, that's terrible. That's super clunky.

Yeah. So I think there is some utility still to position player in that case at least. Yeah, I think that that is a fair use case. And I'll say as an editor, like hitter, batter, position player, dude. Sometimes you just need words because at a certain point, you get tired of saying the same thing over and over and again, over and over and again, over and over. Leave it in.

Very loose episode. Oh, don't go there. You started it. I know I went there. Yeah, we went there from the get-go. All right. But yeah, I think that allowing oneself a range of options from a writing perspective is useful. And I take your point that you might want to provide some specificity to the contribution that they are making. And so if you said position player, it sort of broadens the scope beyond the hitting piece of it in a way that might be useful if one is comparing them against other such position players. But I think generally, in many cases, if not most, that the pitcher-hitter distinction is a smoother way of talking about it, especially now that we're in a universal DH era.

way of talking about it, especially now that we're in a universal DH era. Related question from Michael, Patreon supporter. What if, peeved that the MLB PA logo shows only a batter and feeling that it reflects an underlying bias, pitchers decided to form their own union? First and most importantly, would Otani join the rebels? And more generally, what would be the effect of separate pitcher and batter unions each negotiating separately with MLB? Oh, my God. First of all, the Otani question. There's a poll at our Facebook group. I mean, it's not an uncommon question.

Like, is Otani a pitcher who DHs or is he a DH who pitches or whatever? The whole point is that he's both. He's all of those things. Like, why would we classify him as one or the other when the whole wondrous unicorn nature of Otani is that he is all things, right? So I would not care to make a decision. Ultimately, I guess the question is like, is he better as one or the other? Is he more valuable as one or the other? And that's kind of varied by the season. And I guess at this point, you might have to say if you could only choose one, you would probably choose pitcher, right? If only because he's a DH and that's not quite as valuable. Although if he were not a pitcher, then he could play a position in the field and he'd probably be pretty good at that, too. Anyway, would Otani join the Rebels? I don't know. He gets along well with everyone. Maybe he be the the bridge yeah yeah he could bring everybody

together i think that there's a lot of reasons why this would be bad and not work but can you imagine trying to sort out the rule stuff if you had two actually distinct bargaining units. Oh, gosh. It would be, I think, a real mess. I think that being able to represent the collective group that are the players and smooth over some of those rough edges before you get to the table is really useful. I know that MLB can implement rules in a unilateral way, but they do tend to want buy-in from the players. And if they had to deal with hitters and pitchers separately,

I do suspect that they would do more unilateral rule imposition because they'd be like, this is too hard. Yeah, right. There are already kind of clicks on a lot of teams, the pitchers and the hitters, right? Because the pitchers, they associate with other pitchers more and hitters in others. But there's a united front. I mean, probably just like divide and conquer, right?

Like this would be bad for players just because MLB, the owners could kind of use them, you know, against each other in some ways right and you'd have smaller bargaining units it just it wouldn't be a hole facing mlb across the table and right there could be squabbling and i think it would probably not go particularly well with the players right there would be all sorts of wedge issues here that they could uh shoehorn in between them to try to just inflame little grudges and everything and i think probably the effect would just be that uh neither of them would get as good a deal as all of the players can get together yeah yeah yeah that's probably the big takeaway yeah i think yeah yeah can you imagine what the sticky stuff episode would have been like if they had separate groups yeah right oh man but then how what it's almost like the the pitchers would always have to bargain

with the hitters right it would be like a three it It wouldn't even just be like, would it be just the pitchers and the hitters? You were about to say three-way and then you stopped. I think you were. I probably was. I don't know if I realized it. I think you were about to. Would it be like they would each have a place at the table at the same time or would it be pitchers negotiate with the league and then hitters negotiate with the league, or would pitchers and hitters negotiate with each other? Yeah. And then they'd be like, you know what we should do? We should form one union.

We don't have to keep doing this. Much better and simpler. Why didn't we think of this from the beginning? All right. Last one. Francesca says, I was listening to a spring training game today, and the broadcast mentioned a partial shift being utilized. With all the discussion at the moment about the new rules changes, this wording stuck out to me. In the year 2023, what constitutes a partial shift?

Is shifting an all or nothing term where any deviation from standard positioning means it's a shift? Or is a partial shift an indicator that the defenders didn't move very far? Or maybe it means only a couple defenders moving how different is the meaning of the phrase this year versus previous seasons should we even use the term anymore or is every shift now just a partial shift rendering the partial in the term redundant oh this made me think like on baseball savant they have a term called the strategic shift right which right which i always was like aren't they all supposed to be yeah i think they would all be strategic yeah that in the past might have been called a partial shift where it's just it's not like the full

over shift right it might just be kind of one player playing in that position it's just a less extreme version of it and you can still sort of do strategic shifts, at least some of them. And like you can move players from the totally straight up standard alignment. So you could call that a partial shift, I suppose. But maybe we should just retire the term altogether and just say shading up the middle or something. Shading. tire the term altogether and just say shading up the middle or something like shading i guess we could call a partial shift basically like the closest you could get to the old shift the old that really rolls off the tongue ben well no i mean we could still call it the closest you could

get to the no we could say that a partial shift the definition of a partial shift is just like the closest you can get to the old overshift that is now allowable. So it's just, you know, lining up as close as you can get without transgressing. I guess you could call that a partial shift and maybe that would be sort of a useful term just because we might see that fairly often just, you know, going as far as they possibly can without going over the line. So I would be okay with calling that just the most extreme allowable alignment to be a partial shift. And there could be some weird unorthodox ones that teams try from time to time, of course, and you can still have an extra infielder if you want. Right.

There's still some things you can do, but I don't think we should always say shifting if it's just like playing more up the middle. Yeah. Than the standard alignment. I think we could just say shading or playing more up the middle or something. So maybe we should just say shift less. Yeah. I mean, I think that we will have fewer occasions where we feel compelled to say that.

So I think some of this is going to take care of itself. But yeah, you're right that we're going to have to adjust the vernacular a little bit. You're such a sport for putting up with my bad jokes, Ben. No, I'm always down for terrible jokes. Would have been quite an acronym, you know, you'd really have to. Yes. All right. Let's end with the Past Blast. So I'm going to do a follow-up on last episode's Past Blast, but I'll do the new one first. So this is the pass blast from 1975 and from David Lewis, an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. And the 1975 pass blast is the designated hitter

goes back to school. What is good for Indiana must be good for the rest of the country, began an October 21st, 1975 article in the Albany, Oregon Democrat Herald. That quote came in response to the National High School Federation's Baseball Rules Committee bringing the designated hitter rule to high schools nationwide after a trial in the Hoosier State. The high school version of the rule differed slightly from what was used in the American League as coaches were able to substitute a DH in the batting order for any of their nine fielders, not just the pitcher. Additionally, that fielder was allowed to come to bat for themselves at any point during the game, after which the DH would be disqualified. Due to

a different high school rule, the player chosen as the DH could come back into the game in a different position, but the DH role would be eliminated for the remainder of the game. A nationwide poll reported that 60% of high school coaches approved of the DH. The Democrat Herald provided more insight into the opinions of coaches in Oregon. Reactions were mixed. West Albany coach Tom Hawkins took a neutral stance, saying, I don't think it's a bad rule, but I think it is insignificant. took a neutral stance, saying, I don't think it's a bad rule, but I think it is insignificant.

Another coach, Wayne Swango of Harrisburg, did not like the rule, suggesting, our best nine players will be out there anyway. We don't have many past the first nine. Swango or Swango added, I think the pitcher should hit probably because I used to be a pitcher. Terry Leininger, coach at South Albany, agreed the rule would be insignificant, as at the high school level, a team's best pitcher was often also its best hitter. Overall, 55% of Oregon coaches supported the rule, according to the Democrat Herald. The DH has remained a part of high school baseball ever since. In 2019, the National Federation's Baseball Rules Committee adopted a precursor to MLB's Otani rule, in which someone playing the field or pitching can be designated as the DH and is allowed to remain in the game after they are pulled from the field.

always need to we could have separate rules but it's just the the influence of mlb kind of impressing itself upon all levels of baseball and then i guess the idea that well if some number of amateur players aspire to be pro players and maybe major leaguers someday then there should be some semi-consistent conditions so they can prepare for that but sometimes things make sense for major leaguers that don't always make sense for amateur players. But there's a great influence there. So you get the DH in the American League, and then shortly after that, you get the DH in high school. So that's the 1975 Pass Blast. Now, as you will recall, the 1974 Pass Blast was about an article from 1974 in the LA Times. It was a letter to the editor by a man named Richard E. Truman, who wrote in to talk about a decision that Walter Alston had made

and some criticism that a newspaper columnist had lodged against Alston and was talking about how he had developed a computer program that was able to detect the value of certain strategies in games and how maybe one day teams would look at these things in that way and would approach baseball scientifically and look at the math and make the smart percentage plays. And then we dug up an article from 1959 that mentioned the same researcher, Richard E. Truman, who even then was doing this in-depth computer-based analysis. And I was very intrigued because I had not heard of Richard E. Truman, and he seemed to be a true sabermetric pioneer and really seemed to be decades ahead

of his time. Someone in our Discord group said it was like reading a time traveler, you know, just going back in time and writing letters to the editor about sabermetrics, knowing things that we know today but that so few people knew then. And I've read a lot about sabermetric history, and I still was not familiar with Richard E. Truman's work. So I wanted to dig up more about him. dig up more about him. I determined that he had passed away fairly recently in 2015, but just didn't know a whole lot about his early baseball research. And so I've done a deep dive and gone down a Richard E. Truman rabbit hole here. And I guess the bulk of this can be a snippet or collected snippets of a conversation I had with Richard's son, Greg. Now, Truman is spelled not like the president, but T-R-U-E-M-A-N, and Richard E. Truman, which is what he went by in his published work, he went by Dick in real life, Dick Truman.

So this is Greg Truman, Dick's son, telling me about the life of his father and some of his career and his early baseball research. So this is about six minutes or so clip from a conversation that I had with Greg Truman this week. I've been looking forward to this call. I've been thinking a lot about my dad. this call. I've been thinking a lot about my dad. It's just really fun to think about his life and his love of baseball and just to think that he might get a little bit of love from the industry that he was there before and was thinking about before there was a baseball statistics industry. He was always so scornful of the sacrifice bunt. That was his real pet peeve. And that was one of the first things that he figured out was that that was just statistically not a great strategy. And he also was on to bases on balls and the idea of on-base percentage.

That was also something that he had noted, that the most important thing was to get on base and that the walk was as good as he hit. You know, he had some stats behind that. He's kind of like an archetypal American male of the 20th century. He's a child of immigrants. He grew up on the south side of Chicago in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial neighborhood. His front teeth got knocked out playing stickball when he was a kid. He was uncoordinated. He's like a classic sort of quant. He was a math, music kind of nerd, and he played cello. He went to college when he was 16. He skipped two grades, went when he was 16 to the Illinois Institute of Technology.

He went off to the war as a radio technician when he was 18. After two years of college, he came back on the GI Bill and graduated from Northwestern. He immediately got a couple of master's degrees and started teaching. And then he got involved in the aerospace industry. He was at JPL, Jet Propulsion Lab. He was doing telemetrics and advanced calculations for the Mars probe. He went to Hughes Aircraft and was a senior staff mathematician at Hughes Aircraft. So he was literally a rocket scientist. All the while, he was really interested in baseball, and he would publish these occasional articles. When he wrote the one in 1959,

I think he was working for IBM. So he was sort of promoting the IBM computers. After aerospace, he decided he wanted to complete the PhD that he'd started in the early 50s, in the mid-60s, and he worked full-time at Hughes Aircraft and raising four kids in the suburbs of L.A., driving into Hughes Aircraft in Culver City, and completed his PhD in operations research at USC, and then became a professor at Cal State Northridge, which was then San Fernando Valley State College. He actually proposed to his PhD committee that he write his PhD dissertation on baseball statistics and probability and strategy. And they told him, no, we wouldn't hire you and you'll never get a job if you do that. So he ended up doing his dissertation on like sequencing elevators in hundred story buildings when you have 20 elevator

banks and there's a call on this floor and that floor. So that's what he ended up doing, on like sequencing elevators in 100-story buildings when you have 20 elevator banks, and there's a call on this floor and that floor. So that's what he ended up doing, scheduling random transportation systems. So you can see it's the same. It's probability, and it's what they call operations research and management science, which is what he was a professor of. He was at one point the president of the Operations Research Society of America, and I know he gave a talk at their annual conference about baseball, which was sort of an unheard of thing to talk about.

And we grew up with a terminal in the dining room that was connected to the mainframe at the university. I learned Fortran and BASIC to help me do my math homework. And it really delayed my math skills because I had the computer. And, you know, he was just a sort of wonderful, quanty, almost on the autism spectrum guy. Didn't really understand people that well, but classical music really appealed to him, especially Bach. We grew up with the Who's Who in Baseball and the Baseball Register. He had all of those. He was a Dodgers fan in LA. He was originally a White Sox fan. My first job was working at Major League Baseball. When I got out of college, I went to Princeton and I went and got a job at Major League Baseball working on This Week in Baseball,

which was not your typical Ivy League post-grad first job. And I ended up working at baseball for a few years. And then I made a documentary about Americans playing baseball in Japan. And then I wrote a movie script that had a baseball player in it. And so I was very involved with baseball in my own way in the beginning of my career. When I was working at baseball, that was when Rotisserie League was invented by the guys at Sports Illustrated. We were buddies with them because we played in a softball league in Central Park. And so we started the second Rotisserie League at Major League Baseball Productions. And the first Rotisserie League was National League only. So we started the American

League. So I was involved in Rotisserie baseball from the second season through the first 10 years of that. And, you know, that was really all about baseball statistics. Just an interesting tie-in, I think, to my dad's career and passion. He advised me. He looked at it, and he said, okay, I see you've got eight categories of statistics. You've only got 10 teams in your league, and you've got whatever it was, 12, 13, 15 teams in the league. So he said, positions like first base, you could pick the last first baseman and they'd still be significantly effective for you. But the positions that you want to pick are the positions where there's not 10 good players. And he also pointed out that saves

was a disproportionately valued statistic in this league because it was one of the eight statistics. And there's only six or eight players who were accruing significant saves. So he said, skip the first baseman. Let them bid up the superstars. Wait in on the auction until just sit, sit, sit, sit. And then get some relievers and fill in your team based on the criteria that he gave me. And my partner and I won the league the first three years, and then they kicked us out of the league.

He was an associate of Earnshaw Cook. He was in correspondence with Earnshaw Cook. He shared a lot of information with him. He was a popularizer and an early guy. My dad was a very low-key, humble guy and not a glory seeker at all. For him, I think it just became a kind of hobby. He wrote a lot of letters to the editor. He would also write about other statistical sports, things like the idea of a five-set tennis match. He thought that was silly because if you look at the statistics, the winners don't change much from a three-set winner to a five-set winner, things like that. He died just a few weeks shy of his 90th birthday. I think he felt like a little bit of vindication.

And, you know, he was always shaking his head at baseball strategy. He started to see it come around to a more rational, you know, math-based approach. So that is Greg talking about his dad's life and legacy. And I just, I feel like I know the guy. and legacy. And I just, I feel like I know the guy and I wish I had gotten to talk to him and had become aware of him sooner because I just, I like the cut of his jib. I like how he studied these things and also how he wrote about them and the way that he acknowledged that, of course, numbers would never provide the entire answer and we would have to consider the conditions on that day and the human factors and such. And so it seems like he was not overconfident in the numbers, but he really accomplished a lot and was just so ahead of his time, too ahead of his time in a sense. but lived long enough that he was able to see the future that he envisioned come to fruition and apparently feel a little bit validated as he should be.

So quite a character, quite a trailblazer and a sabermetric pioneer who I think should have more attention brought to him. Well, and I like that, I don't know, I think maybe this comes with the humility of knowing that he didn't have the full answer and that the computer couldn't do it on its own. But, you know, I feel like the stereotype of the sabermetrician is that there is something cold and emotionally removed from the way that they engage with the sport. And clearly, like, the sport meant something to him and he passed that appreciation on to his kid.

And so like that, I don't know. I just, I was struck by that. I was like, this was a baseball family. And I think sometimes not anyone listening to this podcast who knows that baseball is really about pooping yourself, but that, you know, people who have a stereotype of the nerd, the analytics nerd might think that you're less likely to pass it on and that doesn't have to be true. So I like that part too. that says the computer changed the face of statistical baseball analysis, whereas the George Lindsays had to do everything with pencil and slide rule.

More and more academics with access to mainframe power summoned the new machine as simulation tool and tireless number cruncher. Dick Truman of California State University, Northridge, who as early as 1959 had written a Monte Carlo approach to the analysis of baseball strategy for operations research, 15 years later wrote a simulation program to computerize his investigations. So he is memorialized in that book. And Jacob Pomranki, our past blaster, he confirmed that Dick Truman was a Sabre member in the late 1970s and early 80s.

And he was active in the Early Statistical Analysis Committee. Didn't seem to write anything for publication for Sabre at the time, but he did attend the 1980 Sabre Convention in Los Angeles, where he met Pete Palmer for the first time in person. Pete Palmer, probably along with Bill James, one of the titans of early sabermetric research and known as the co-author of The Hidden Game of Baseball and inventor of linear weights and OPS. And I emailed Pete Palmer to ask if he remembered anything about Dick Truman. And he did. He remembered meeting him and corresponding with him. And he wrote to me that Truman had gotten copies of the play-by-play coding that the Elias Sports Bureau did for the Mills brothers for their player win averages book. And Dick analyzed the Mills data and figured out that key relief pitchers can have their innings worth about double other pitchers in terms of win probability impact.

And Pete says, I had a footnote in the hidden game of baseball about that, which Tom Tango saw years later, and that got him working on leverage. And we both came up with the idea around 2005 by almost identical methods. So in a roundabout indirect way, I guess Dick Truman's studies on that led to the leverage that we have now, and that's factored into war and everything. And Pete Palmer said that Dick certainly would qualify as a pioneer. And he noted, Pete did, that it's kind of amazing that those two stories that I read on the episode 1974, Pass Blast, were almost identical, even though they were published 15 years apart. And that just goes to show that progress was not rapid at the time and acceptance wasn't either. And prior to Sabre,

there wasn't really much opportunity to publish. So it was sort of voices crying in the wilderness and it wasn't all that different in 1959 from 1974, whereas now 15 years changes everything when it comes to baseball analysis. Yeah. And finally, Greg Truman, who you just heard from, he sent me a whole lot of files, his dad's papers and research and studies. And I collected some from other sources too. And he sent me some pictures of his dad as well and notes and correspondence that he had. And it's really interesting stuff to me at least. And so I will link to that on the show page. I have a little Dick Truman collection here of all these archives.

And it's really interesting just correspondence from decades ago with Earnshaw Cook, another trailblazer, and Pete Palmer as president and general manager of the Padres in May of 1975. And he wrote, Dear Mr. Vivesi, as you suggested in our phone conversation last week, this letter is an attempt to give you some idea of the work that I've done on baseball analysis and how it can be put to practical use by a ball club. Over a period of years, I've developed a computer program which performs a number of different analyses based on the batting statistics of the individual players in any specified lineup. These analyses are primarily directed toward the evaluation of strategies such as the sacrifice, it seems most reasonable that a strategy should only be used if its probability of success is high enough so that the expectation of achieving this goal will be at least as great as if the strategy had not been attempted. Therefore, the approach used is based on the concept of a so-called break-even success probability. And then he runs through a specific example of that and finishes the letter by saying the computer program can also be used to quickly evaluate the run scoring potential of many different lineup orders. Not only does this offer an important aid in the selection of the most productive lineup, but it makes possible a quantitative evaluation of the merits from a hitting standpoint of possible player trades. possible player trades. Managers are always talking about playing percentage baseball,

but to do so, it is clear that they need to have a pretty good idea of the breakeven success probability for each strategy considered. How many managers do you think really have any idea of the breakeven success probability for such strategies as a double steal with runners on first and second with two outs, the squeeze play with one out, or the sacrifice with runners on first and second and no outs? The analyses that can be developed to aid manager John McNamara could be worth an additional five to ten wins per season. And it is also conceivable that fan interest could be increased by effective PR involving some of the ideas presented here. Your interest is appreciated and I'm looking forward to meeting with you personally. And then also in this file, there's a letter back from Pete Bavese in early June of 1975. Dear Richard, thank you for your recent letter explaining your breakeven success probability program. Over the years, we have examined several

different computerized statistical analysis programs, but because of lack of interest on the part of our manager and coaching staff. We have not adopted any of them. I will discuss the framework of your plan with John McNamara, and if he has an interest in pursuing it, I will contact you. I don't see anything further about it. So I'm guessing he didn't have a great interest in pursuing it. But for a while there, Dick Truman was trying to reach out to teams and see if anyone was interested. And there's a letter also in this file from 1984 after he had dropped out of Sabre.

He said, I simply decided that my baseball research was too time and energy consuming and was not leading to any productive end. I've been there. But also he wrote, I'm afraid that I really have lost interest in grinding out more baseball statistics on historical data, even the World Series on second thought. I had really hoped that I would be able to develop offensive and pitching performance measures, which would be used to evaluate players' performance in a timely and meaningful fashion, such as at contract renewal time or when considering potential trades. This has not come to pass, obviously. It clearly needs a lot of pushing and the right connections with the ball clubs. If someone in a position of authority on a major league club were to indicate an interest in current player evaluations, then I would definitely consider further involvement.

But that's as likely as the proverbial snowball in Hades. So that was as late as 1984, and he had been at it for decades at that point. So that's Dick Truman, and I'd encourage everyone to peruse these papers. It's pretty enlightening stuff because it was just really hard to determine the answers to questions. We take for granted just how easy it is to look things up now. Back then, just like the data didn't exist and it was just impossible to process it. So it just took an extraordinary amount of effort to answer just any kind of question. And so I have a lot of respect for the pioneers who were doing it. And I think he was doing it as early as anyone, if not earlier. So I'm glad to know a little bit

more about him. Yeah. All right. By the way, Jacob Pabrenki also unearthed a brief mention of Dick Truman in Sports Illustrated on August 24th, 1964. This item was mostly about Earnshaw Cook. And it says, meanwhile, things have been happening which portend that Cook, hooted at for his claims, may yet have a revolutionary impact on the game. Two National League clubs have approached him for more information. And Cook is meeting this week with Richard E. Truman, an operations research scientist from Woodland Hills, California, who also has been analyzing baseball strategy. Operating independently of Cook, he has come to quite similar conclusions.

Baseball's long-fancied scientific percentage game is beginning to look more and more like superstition. Just to unite our pass blast from 74 and 75, there is a paper in the Truman Files where Dick defends the DH. He writes, Personally, I find it most unexciting to watch the average pitcher bat.

More often than not, he strikes out, generally with the bat on his shoulder, or waves ineffectually at a pitch which may or may not be in the strike zone. In many cases, the manager would just as soon the pitcher did strike out. Heaven forbid that he should waste his valuable energy running out a batted ball or actually becoming a base runner. With the average pitcher batting around 100, he is, in essence, an automatic

out. And that was 50 years ago. Preach, Mr. Truman. You can support Effectively Wild and our ongoing research into early sabermetric pioneers and or dodgers in intestinal distress by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and pledging some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners andreas brad rowland justine liebenson totally not the scranton strangler and george boff thanks to all of you patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for Patreon supporters. So close to a thousand members in the group now. The more the merrier.

You also get access to monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch, and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and many more goodies. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can contact us through the Patreon site. If not, you can email us at podcast at fangrass.com. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild i think applications are closed now for our editor position we've just gotten so much interest and so many applicants and we have to make a decision pretty soon here and we probably have

more than enough qualified people who are interested which is flattering so sorry if you didn't get a chance to apply we gotta close the floodgates but for now dylan higgins remains our editor and producer and we are grateful to him and i'm sure he is grateful that he got to stick around long enough to insert the sound of kk hernandez saying f yeah as he sharted we'll be back before the end of the sunshine with me On an all night drive to another world You can get what you want now Knock it out of the park

Probably end up a drifter and lonely But I'm still hoping for a change of heart And a place, a place, a place to start.