Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1978: Sam’s Back, on Substack

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley welcome back former co-host Sam Miller to banter about his return to public baseball writing, his current relationship with baseball, and his new Substack, Pebble Hunting. Then (17:10) Ben, Meg, and Sam talk about a 1913 article about unprecedented events at the ballpark, the cliché about seeing something new at […]

You might not know it, but it's true The little things you do They mean the world to me Whatever color you might choose You brighten up the room So easily Out of the room so easily I'm Minberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. And I am also joined, as is Meg, by our old co-host, Sam Miller, who has returned to baseball writing and for today to the podcast. So, Sam, welcome back to baseball writing and the podcast and the internet at large.

Yeah. Well, back to baseball publishing. I've been writing for a know a little bit and now i am publishing it but uh i've been i've been doing some work and i've been kind of enjoying the i don't know i've been enjoying it a lot so yeah i'm back that sounded bad i did not like how that sounded a lot of people said that about you but i I guess when people say Sam's back, it sounds better than when Sam says Sam's back. Yeah. Anyway, I've enjoyed some of the work.

I've gotten to see some of the work that you did. Yeah, that's right. The rule is that if one of us writes something in the shape of a book, the other one will start reading it. That's right. I think Ben is maybe the only person that has read like a substantial, I guess RJ, everything I write, I send to RJ like right away, like right away, every sentence. So he and you have read fair amounts of it. And you said, I don't know, should I block quote what you said about it?

I can't remember if you... I don't know. I think I said complimentary things. You told me I should finish it. I remember that. You definitely said I should finish it. Yeah, I did. So I was in favor of you publishing it. So I'm glad that you are. And I'm flattered that you sent some of it to me. And I'm excited for everyone who gets to see what I saw. And I'm excited for myself getting to see what I didn't see. And I also send RJ stuff sometimes.

And RJ sends me stuff. He sends me, we're talking about RJ Anderson of CBS Sports, by the way, if that wasn't clear to anyone. Just some stranger named RJ we both happen to know. But he will send me links to basically everything that he publishes and he will say, don't read it. Scroll slowly. Just click and slowly scroll.

Yeah, scroll slowly. Just click and slowly scroll. Yeah, scroll slowly. Just to improve his traffic stats. Sometimes he'll tell me that he's got good traffic stats and I wonder if that's because he just has many, many friends that he personally sends out all his links to. Hopefully we're not blowing up his spot here. I do feel like that might not

be for everyone to know. I'll check with him. We'll see. If there's a weird cut in here, I guess we'll cut this part be for everyone to know? I'll check with him. We'll see. Anyway. Yeah, if there's a weird cut in here, well, I guess we'll cut this part out too. Yeah, no one will know. It'll just be layers of no one knowing anything. Anyway, we last had you on 14 months ago, I think, which seems like too long for me

to say, have you been? Because it'd probably be a really long answer. But I guess I will say, how are you instead? I guess you just conveyed some of how you are. Sounds pretty good. Yeah, I'm good lately. Good. And the last time we talked to you on here, you had been away from writing about baseball, writing about it at all, right? I think not just not publishing, but not writing maybe for a little more than a year at that point, probably. And at that time, you had not yet been bitten by the bug. Again,

it seemed like you had enjoyed the break and you just enjoyed being a fan again, and you got to enjoy a all-time giant season. So I guess I could say what got you back into it, or maybe just what's your relationship to baseball like these days? You know, I worried because like, um, when we were editing baseball perspectives, you edit like 10 articles a day about like middle relievers and fantasy value and like low A prospects. And so you have a, an awareness of the whole game that is just kind of outrageous and really helpful in informing everything you write. And even at ESPN, I would is just kind of outrageous and really helpful in informing everything you write. And even at ESPN, I would be so kind of tunnel vision that I felt like my grip on the

whole game would sometimes be loosening a little bit. And so I last year was not the 2021 Giants. It was a sort of a different type of season so 2022 giants yeah yeah exactly and so i i would say that i followed it somewhat probably i would say like if it was like the spotify rap i would be like the 99th percentile baseball follower but like if it were you know the effectively wild audience maybe i would have been like meat median maybe. I'm not really sure. So I kind of worried about whether I would be able to like flex those muscles again. And so then today I was looking at, I was reading my baseball prospectus annual, and I got to Nick Castellanos. And I thought, I'm not even going to look.

I'm going to just write down. I knew, I sort of like vaguely knew that he had a bad year last year. And I know who Nick Castellanos is. And so I thought I'm going to predict his Pocota. And so I wrote down two. Wait, where is it? 266, 327, 446. That was my predicted Pocota projection for him.

And I was off by one point on the batting average and uh six points on the on base and uh three points on the slugging and it just reminded me that like it's really like one repetitive story and once you really get locked into it i got locked in around like 2008 2009 like really really locked in and um you know like somehow i still know the prospects i don't even know how i was you know, like, somehow I still know the prospects. I don't even know how. I was, you know, I'm going to tell another story. I was playing basketball. I play basketball. And one of the guys I play with brought his cousin and his cousin was named Jake. And I said, Jake Cousins. And everybody looked at me and had no idea what that meant. And I thought,

do I know what that means? I said, I think he's a reliever for the Brewers. And I didn't feel like I was watching baseball that closely, but I was still riffing on Jake Cousins. So it's kind of still all in there. It never really leaves. Yeah, I guess Nick Castellanos, I have not looked at his Pocota projection,

but I guess he's probably projected to be not much better than an average player hitter, I would imagine. So I think I also got his, I think I got his projected warp exactly right too. I think it was 1.7, I think. Okay. So you remember roughly what an average player is. And also, I guess that Nick Castellanos is one more or less. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

That's exactly right. And I remember to do a little, you know, adjustment for the lowered offensive environment and like that. Okay. Yeah. Sounds like you're ready. Yeah. I would say, I will, I will say that probably the first month or so is going to be a lot

of, I don't know, there might not be a lot of proper nouns, if you know what I mean. It might be some sort of generalities about the nature of sport. And try not to notice that too much. And then we'll get into graphs later. It's almost like the pressure's off because there are too many players now for anyone to know all of them. Because of the 26-man roster.

Yeah. I knew about that, by the way. I knew 26. You had it holstered. You're just ready to go. Yeah. And also just, I mean, the way that rosters shuffle and players get optioned. I mean, maybe that's a little less egregious now than it was.

But just because of the way pitchers are used now, there are just hundreds more players per season than there used to be and many more players debuting. So no one knows all of them. Maybe Eric Langenhagen maybe knows all of them and maybe like Dynasty League people know all of them, but I don't know all of them. Most people don't know all of them. be in a way that it wasn't in the past when there were fewer teams or fewer players and there was no excuse for not knowing all the players now it's like good no one knows all of them so you just have your cutoff somewhere for who clears the bar of notable enough yeah i just don't want to clarify because jake was the cousin jake it's like cousin jake i got it i don't just say like oh your name's jake i'm gonna name a random baseball player with your name. It's like a cousin Jake, Jake Cousins. Yes.

We got the joke, even though the people you were with did not, I guess. So now I imagine everyone is signing up for your sub stack now that they know that you remember Jake Cousins and Nick Castellanos. But probably, I guess we should say, you have a sub stack. So probably most people listening to this are aware of that by now. And probably Sam Miller has a sub stack. It's sort of a you had me at hello situation for a lot of people listening. But for anyone who actually does need to be persuaded to part with their money, I know you're just raring to go with a just hard sell here. You've got a, just a great sales pitch rehearsed because you're just such a relentless self-promoter.

So you probably have the patter down. You're asking me to do this? Are you preparing to ask me to do that? Yeah, go ahead. Well, I, I mentioned when I was on here a year ago that I thought I might write a book and you, you know, I started writing a lot of stuff that was like a book. And, you know, it can be a real long process of turning a thing into a book and it can be frustrating. And, you know, you deal with a lot of, you know, stuff like covers and things. And I just, you know, I got to a point last fall where I was just incredibly impatient to go. I didn't want to, I didn't want to take that time. I didn't want to wait that long. I didn't want to have to

sell it in that way. And so I thought, uh, let's go. And so that's what I, that's why I decided to do, uh, is just, I wanted to, to get going. And so I'm going to write about everything. I'm going to write about all sorts of stuff. I'm going to write more than 18 posts, but something like 18 of them over the next year or so are going to be from that project. That project being unofficially, not actually titled, but unofficially titled The Meaning of Baseball in 18-ish Fun Facts. And so the first one just went up, and it was a long, exhaustively researched meditation on the 1916 Giants who won 26 games in a row, which is a record,

and during the entire 26-game winning streak, never got out of fourth place. And so they're all kind of like that. They're like my favorite fun facts or things that have always been favorite parts of baseball history or baseball present to me. And I'm looking ever deeper into them and deconstructing what they mean and telling them as stories. So that's kind of the spine of it. The next post that I write is not going to be that the next post that I write involves the phrase drunk umpire. And so like, there's kind of that stuff too. Although there might've been drunk umpires during the 1916, probably more like giant season. Yeah, there probably were a lot of them. So there's going to be like some whimsy

and some stuff. And it's just a hodgepodge. I, you know, I have a hard time. I've never really been able to write anything except whatever I was most excited to write in the moment. That means that there's going to be stuff that is all over the board. That's what it is. It's all over the board. Whatever I get excited about I'm going to write about it. Substack.

Famously no editors at Substack. How are you? And I know you're sending everything to RJ, so I don't mean to say that it's not getting screened. He just slowly scrolls, though. He doesn't actually read. It's not as helpful as you'd think. But what's that been like, writing stuff and then being like,

I guess I can hit publish on this? Well, look, Ben and I were each other's editors for like five years, which basically just meant that we posted our own stuff. I don't know. I am more nervous when it hasn't been edited. That is true. But not that much more nervous.

And to be honest, it's really nice to... When you have an editor who is going to be like a wall between you and publishing, you end up writing for the editor instead of writing for yourself or for the audience. You just think what's going to get me out of work today? What's going to get me off the clock this afternoon? And so then that sometimes causes you to be a little bit safer than you might otherwise be. And so I don't know. I don't think it's likely to change what I do all that much.

I guess actually even before that, before Baseball Prospectus, I was at the Orange County Register, and 90-some percent of what I wrote I just posted myself as well. So probably not that big a difference. I mean, if you're looking for some work to do on the side, I know that you have a lot of free time. Yeah. And what you like to use that free time on is editing baseball writing. Yeah, because it's really different than what I do with my non-free time, with my purchased time. What is the opposite? What is the direct opposite of that expression? Your work time?

Occupied time. Occupied time. Yeah, that's good. Well, you know, Sam, if you ever want another pair of eyes on something, I am happy to look at it. Thank you. Likewise. But I don't mean to suggest, by the way,

that you're going to put slop out there or anything. I just am curious because I'm increasingly terrified of writing at all. So the idea of writing without anyone looking at it is maybe just a convenient manifestation of an existing terror. Yeah. Yeah. It's also, I would imagine it feels like a safe-ish space probably because you're writing for a curated audience of people who have opted into the Sam Miller experience, right? I mean, it's like when we wrote for Baseball Prospectus, generally, I mean, people had to pay to read that. The comments were pretty smart, usually. And if you're writing at ESPN, you never know where that article is going to end up, who's going to read that. It might just come across and they might know nothing

about you or anything and who knows. But everyone who is reading your stuff now wants to read your stuff enough to pay you for it or at least know you well enough that you give them a comp account like you did for me. Yeah. So, you know, they will still expect strong work and they will get it. But just saying, you know, no one's out to get you at your personal sub stack that they have decided to subscribe to, I would think. I think that's true. I mean, nothing ever feels safe, but I think that you're basically right. I think I actually, did I talk about this here? Did I talk about this somewhere else? But that was the hardest thing about going to ESPN was just that the audience had no invested generosity in me.

And so they would read the headline and think this guy must be an idiot just based on, you know, like the worst, the worst possible assumption about what the article could be saying. And I miss that generosity that comes from people who have sought you out, chosen to go see what you wrote that day instead of having it pushed on them via notification yep so it's called pebble hunting pebble hunting that substack.com same name as sam's little column at bp and he's going to be writing i don't know maybe a couple times a week or so once he gets into the swing of things and you're basically you're getting that and you're getting a whole unpublished book by sam miller basically so seems like a steal

and you already have an idea for a second season essentially and i do have an idea yeah for a second season but yeah we'll see we'll see that's a long ways away well i think everyone is excited to have you back again and to get to read you and man you're even tweeting i don't know if you noticed but twitter's a little bit different than the last time you tweeted. It doesn't work quite as well as it used to. It's under new ownership. I don't know if you're aware of this, but yeah, a little bit different than the last time. But I guess some good has come of it in that you're tweeting again, so that's something. Yeah. Yeah. I logged on for the first time in a long time i had had my daughter took control of my password and so i wasn't on at all and i logged on and i thought

what is wrong with all this and then i realized that it was a thing called for you there might instead of getting tweets from people i followed i got a thing called for you. Yep. And none of that was for me. None of it was for me at all. Yeah. Right. Okay. Shall we just... I brought a topic. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right. Shall we do my topic? Sure. Yeah. Let's go to your topic.

All right. So I wondered if either of you have like a baseball cliche, like a particular type of baseball cliche or tritism that like kind of lives rent free in your head and that you continually go back to and i don't know deconstruct in your writing or use it as a jumping off point or argue with it or it just sort of comes up like a lot in your writing does that do either of you have one of those trying to remember writing yeah i don't know sounds like a no yeah not off the top of my head i have a i have a yes oh may you have a yes i worry that i'm a like gonna co-opt your your yes in a way that isn't honest

so having expressed we know what yours is i know what yours is well but sam you tell me you tell me and then you can call me a stinking thief and we'll move on do you remember i think that you you were still a baseball prospectus when when i premiere these do you remember when i used to write about the things i wished i could play index no no i don't i used to write about things that i wish i could play index which feels like an old-fashioned sentence because it's not called the play index anymore and i no longer write a baseball perspectives but oh no is it not i wrote in the substack today i wrote play index what is it called it's called stat head now it's the stat it's stat head yikes i need an editor that lack

of an editor already coming back to that you yeah i think I think that it's sort of, I don't mean this as an offense to our friends at Baseball Reference, but I wonder if it's a bit like ballparks where you get used to a particular name and then the naming sponsor changes and you just keep calling it Safeco your whole life, even though it's T-Mobile Park now. I think you'd be granted the grace of that as an excuse, but I will often be at a park and wonder like how much does that happen how much has that happened and it's a thing that i can't look up like even at stat head i can't look it up because it's like a weird it's a weird meg thing and why would anyone track it so

i i think that's importantly different than yours but if it overlaps too much you tell me and no it's in the same it's in the same thing so i will say that mine the the cliche that i go back to a lot is every time you go to the ballpark you have the chance to see something you've never seen before and sometimes i make fun of it because it seems like such a i don't know trite cliche and it's in a in a sort of a mathematical sense it's so obvious and not very profound. And then sometimes I take it seriously. I had an article at ESPN where I spent a day trying to find something in every game. And I found that not only did I find something in every game, but they were delightful things

that I thought were like worth noticing and worth highlighting. So it worked. And of course, I did the pitching lines project in my first year at Baseball Perspectives where every day I would look up every starting pitcher's pitching line in the box score and see if it had ever happened before. And then I would write about the ones that hadn't,

which were like three or four a day. And those articles did big numbers. Wow. Not, anyway. and those articles did big numbers wow uh not uh anyway um so i bring this up partly because i'm writing a post tomorrow again on the topic of things that you've never seen before that you might see if you go to the ballpark and also also because in researching John McGraw and the 1916 Giants, I came across an article in Baseball Magazine in 1913 called Some Incidents on the Diamond Which Never Happened Before. And this is by a writer named William Phelan.

I assume his name is William. This is before first names were written out. So they just wrote WM. WM Phelan, they said, that's enough. And he wrote, this is his lead to this article. Things do not run along with monotonous sameness in baseball. If they did, the game would not endure. There is always something new, something novel,

something to set the fans wagging heads and tongues. For my part, I have always maintained this, that in every ball game that is played, something happens that never happened in any game before. And I have tried to find earlier references since discovering this. And not only do I not find earlier references, but the cliche didn't even take off for quite some time after, as far as I can tell. So it's possible that William Phelan is the father of this concept. And I was kind of impressed by it. And I noted that in later years, it became, you have a chance to see something you've never seen before. William Phelan writing in the game's kind of infancy was able to say that had never happened before. So it happened by that point. Yeah, exactly. So different, kind of a

different era. For instance, one of the things he lists is actually, he says he saw a guy strike out the side on nine pitches. Can you believe it? And of course, we've seen that hundreds of times but to william phelan brand new and so i wanted to talk about the concept or like our favorites or things that are still left to be unseen etc so forth but before we get to to us can i just read some of the things that he some incidents on the diamond which have never happened before according to william phelan sure okay so some of these are, they're a whole manner of things. Some of them feel incredibly archaic, like never happened before and could never happen now.

And some of them are not that impressive. And some of them you think you're lying. That's a lie. Yeah. I wonder how William knew whether something had happened or not, because it's not like he had retroceded a baseball reference, right? No stat head either. So how is he supposed to know? Yeah, exactly. I guess at that point, you could just remember all of Major League history, but he hadn't seen it all himself.

Yeah. So I'm going to read some of these and then I guess you can tell me if you think that they're cool or not, if you think that they were really unprecedented or not, if you think that they really happened or not. So let's see here. The first one he lists, the first one he lists is only once do I remember seeing a run scored on a triple play, which is pretty cool. Run scored on a triple play, but not that cool, right? And he describes it, the bases were loaded. It's an around the horn, triple play, force at third, force at second, throw to first is late but the runner on first like overran the bag and got tagged out and so the run scored on a triple play it's okay so he's not claiming that it had only happened once he's just saying i happened to see it once he has phrased

it as only once do i remember seeing a run scored on a triple play, but I surely saw it once. That's what he said. All right. So it's okay. Well, I can't dispute that he saw it once, but yeah. Okay. Okay. Here he lists a quadruple play, which is merely that the shortstop got confused and recorded,

basically caught a line drive and then tagged everybody. It's not very good that's a weak one right okay here he has a outfielder who mistook the third base coach for his third baseman threw the ball at the third base coach and the third base coach ducked and then the throw was wild nah it's not very good no yeah this is this is this is not working very well as a as a piece that he's writing these are not impressive he must have been pressed for column ideas that day i have seen thousands of marvelous catches but only once did i see a ball caught on the back of a man's hand a second baseman named lawson leaped up after

a fly ball he had little hope or chance to get it he merely stuck his hand vaguely up into the air the ball struck full on the back of his hand forced its way between the fork of the fingers and down came the astonished lawson with the ball still clinging to its landing place. I don't know if I believe that happened. I think he might have just miss seen it. Yeah. Yeah, right. He didn't have HD replays on that one. So, yeah.

Okay. I guess it would be impressive if it happened. I never heard that Radborn's famous home run, going through a hole in the fence and winning a great 18 inning game had an equal at least not in the size of the hole as men who were there have told me that it was all they could do to force a league ball through it when they gathered round to see the cavity so radborn probably charles radburn hit a ball through a hole that already existed in the fence. It was a home run. The hole was very small.

So it didn't make the hole in the fence. No. It went through an existing hole. It went through it. And then later on, people said it was a real small hole. It was a real small hole. See, I've heard versions of that story where it's a pitcher throwing a ball through a hole on purpose, like repeatedly, right? Like Satchel Paige or someone with pinpoint command, right?

That's more impressive than just there happened to be a pretty small hole there that the ball. There's no skill involved in that. No. It is a funny coincidence. And that makes me think baseball is like a cat. It's like how small a hole could it have been that it could get all the way through? Because cats can squeeze. Yeah, they can. It's not like that at all.

Who knows? I think I saw a ball get stuck in between the notches in a scoreboard once. Similarly unlikely, but we just moved on. I didn't write a column about it. All right. I never saw, but once a two bagger that went only six inches. Legally speaking,

this is, do you want to envision how this double happens? Six inch double. Wasn't just a very fast guy and a kind of a bobble that was not scored an error for something i don't know shall i tell you sure okay charlie hickman hit it just in front of the plate as the catcher grabbed at it it rebounded over his hand just grazing the big glove and went all the way back to the stand hickman making two bases as the ball had been touched by the catcher in fair territory, it was a fair ball as it had only grazed the catcher

but hadn't offered a decent chance to hold it. You couldn't call it an error. Therefore, it was a two-bagger. It did be a fun play. Mm-hmm. Okay. A center fielder caught a fly ball at the pitching slab. Oh.

Okay. What? Were you getting somewhere? Yeah. What? All right. But why? A skyrocket went up and seemed to settle right above Beals,

Becker out in center. Beals came in, and as he came, the ball receded, driven back by the wind. On and on came Becker. And when he was finally at the pitching slab, the ball, still well up in the air settled lightly in his hands incredible seems so but i saw it happen that does seem incredible i don't know if i buy that one i don't know if i buy that one either again that seems like he

is exaggerating i've never seen every time you go to the ballpark you see something close enough to something you've never seen before that you can exaggerate it and claim that it was that thing. All right. I'll bet real money that a certain strikeout by Jimmy Ryan never had a parallel where Ryan batting with two strikes on him and a man on first base swung in the air and walked away as the pitcher wheeled and threw to first. So he struck out on a pickoff attempt. Ah, huh. That sounds unlikely too. So if that happens, that would be worth noting in this column.

Yeah, that's my favorite of these. And I do not believe it happened. No. Not only, I mean, there's a sort of a paradox here because like a lot of things that you've never seen before, well, they're really unlikely and maybe the circumstances that would make them possible don't always conspire to make it possible.

Whereas in this case, we have all collectively seen tens of millions of pitches thrown to a batter with a runner on first and like hundreds of thousands of pickoff attempts. And not one other person has done this thing that it becomes inconceivable to imagine that like one guy and one guy only did it. Like the fact that you've never seen it before seems to suggest that it's probably impossible yes all right double play on a guy stealing home strikeout tagged at home that seems like it happened yeah that excited and cap anson swinging at an intentional ball and hitting a triple we've seen that happen yeah so so that's it that's it these were like i

really appreciate that william phelan perhaps coined this concept that i that i do like a lot or sometimes i hate it sometimes i like it but his calibration was off yeah i feel like i i truly feel like in one day i got better stuff than that. Yeah, I guess it makes sense that there'd be some growing pains with this cliche that if he's the trailblazer, the pioneer, the originator of this thought, that there would be just subsequent people who came along and improved the concept. So someone has to go first and fail probably. Yeah, yeah. the concept so someone has to go first and and fail probably yeah yeah and i mean not being able to see replays probably a lot of things that at that time if you i mean for one thing like the you know that everything was kind of fuzzy as i remember it dark uh the photos are always

really blurry but no at that time you might see something you've never seen before and you couldn't hit 10 seconds back. You could only go, did I just see that? And then you'd doubt it. You might not be confident. And I sympathize because just to spoil what we're doing here, you asked us to try to come up with some personal examples. And Meg and I struggled with this assignment. You gave us some homework here, and we found it hard. I don't think you thought it would be hard. I don't think you intentionally gave us homework that we found difficult, but we did for whatever reason. So I sympathize very much with him, especially with a few of the resources that we take for granted today.

Yeah. So. Yeah, it's true that on demand. that we take for granted today. Yeah, it's true that on demand, look, if he had this on his tickler file for several years and these were the best notes that he could jot down, it's not that great. But if he had an article due today

and you had to on demand come up with 17 examples of things that you've seen, that would be tough. You probably would not be that inspired. So yeah, so you alluded to the homework. Now we're going to talk a little bit about our own examples of these. So I had four questions here, and I'm going to ask each of these of all of us. You said that you and Meg struggled.

Meg is already sighing deeply. Do you have answers? I have answers for some of them. Wow, there's only four. I think I do. I have answers for some of them. Wow. There's only four. I don't know. I think I could give you answers. I don't know if they're exactly what you're looking for, but we'll try it.

Okay. The first question is, what is the supreme example in baseball history of this, of going to the ballpark and seeing something you've never seen before. So we don't have to be there. We didn't have to be alive. But of all the things that have happened, what is the best example of this? Right. And we should stipulate because obviously the cliche that you see something new every

time, it's obviously technically true every time. But the cliche, I think, presupposes that this is something you notice and you say, wow, I never saw this before. Because as you said, with the pitching lines, or I think we've done a stat blast in the past where we tried to look up how close did two games ever get with the same sequence of events, right? And not very far at all, right? So every game is obviously unique and is unique in many different dimensions, but we're talking about the famous ones here. So every possibility I came up with for this was like, I think, a fairly obvious one, but I guess it should be, right? Because if this is the supreme example, then it probably shouldn't be. I don't know. We'll just spit it out and we'll judge you.

Can I go first? Because I'm so worried yeah wow okay yeah i don't actually know the like i can't point you to the day the day you know i can't give you the exact day but i would imagine if you were a spectator the very first time in what was it 1884 that a pitcher started throwing overhand you would go what in the what in the world is this business don't you think you would do that does this count i'm so bad at these you could i was playing i just started playing pickleball a couple days ago how do you like pickleball, Sam? And I'll tell you that off mic. And you have to serve underhand.

And it took three serves before me and the guy I was playing with were in heated dispute about whether he was a cheater. about whether he was a cheater. So that slow evolution from underhand to overhand, I think happens gradually. I think it's hard fought every step of the way. And so probably there were many days like that where people were yelling, that's too high. Right, yeah. It became legal at a certain point,

but it was legalized because everyone was already pushing the envelope. Yeah. And it was a period of decades, right, where it was like, you can't break your wrist. You can kind of curl your wrist a little like Jim Creighton or whoever who was doing that. Right. And then. So, yeah, I guess it would be hard to draw a bright line and say this is the first overhand

throw. I mean, if someone came along and and it was obviously different than i guess before that was legalized maybe it wouldn't have been legal to do that you had to do it incrementally but don't you think they would have tried oh they definitely tried i think yeah yeah yeah yeah so it was yeah i think it was kind of constant i mean in a way the reverse imagine the first if you went out and saw your first submariner yeah that's maybe better see but they were probably they were probably that also wouldn't have been quite striking enough because you probably would have seen side armors first and

and all that but if the submariner disappeared for two generations and then, you know, unthawed and came back, I think people would lose their mind. Yeah. I mean, the one that came to my mind, which I guess is a fairly obvious one, but if this is the supreme example, then maybe it's okay if it's obvious. This is also a striking example because it is Ray Caldwell getting struck by lightning as he was pitching, which is, I think, a good one. And now, as you always say, fun facts lie, right? All fun facts lie. Technically, I guess he was not probably actually struck by lightning. Lightning struck in his vicinity.

I don't think he was actually superhuman. The lightning bolt struck the field close by him on that side of the field and he was the closest to the epicenter of the strike and he was the most affected by it but he's probably not actually immortal i mean i guess technically you could survive that but maybe sounds better when you say a pitcher was struck by lightning than the field close by the pitcher was struck by lightning but of course the the kicker to the story is that he kept pitching, right? And he was one out away from finishing a complete game. And then he got struck again. Right. I mean, there are a lot of fun aspects to the story. It wasn't fun for him particularly,

but he got a good story out of it. I mean, one thing, this is in 1919 that this happened, One thing, this is in 1919 that this happened, right? And he was pitching his first game for Cleveland against the Athletics and he was having a good game and then lightning struck. And when you think of like potentially fatal events on baseball fields involving players named Ray right around 1920 or so, you probably think of Ray Chapman, and Ray Chapman was on the field. He was playing shortstop when Ray Caldwell got hit by the lightning, and Ray Chapman, he just, the current convulsed one of his legs, and his leg was numb, and various other players on the field suffered some sort of side effect here, but Caldwell was apparently not knocked unconscious. Sometimes you see that he was unconscious, but according to the contemporary accounts, it sounds like he was just sort of stunned and laid out for a while. And then he had a burn on his chest, or he said he did, but he never actually lost consciousness. And then he just wanted to finish the game.

He said, it felt just like somebody came up with a board and hit me on top of the head and knocked me down, and he got the last out. And I guess the other fun aftermath of the story is that probably not a correlation here, causation relationship, but he pitched really well for a while after this. After the lightning strike, he went 4-1 with a 184 ERA in 44 innings, and he threw a no-hitter, the only no-hitter that he threw. And people joked about how now it was going to be like the new thing to train pitchers by just jolting them with lightning, like some sort of electroshock therapy. And then even the rest of the season and then the following season, I guess he pitched well that year too. And then, and he was someone who like always had great talent, but was kind of a carouser, right? And there's a quote from Miller Huggins about him, that if he had possessed a sense of responsibility and balance,

Ray Caldwell would have gone down in history as one of the greatest of all pitchers, which is like a great combination of extremely harsh insult and a compliment about his talent. But he kind of relapsed and went back to his old ways for a while. But eventually he reformed and became a family man and it had a happy ending and he lived a happy long life apparently. So yeah, I think that's a good one. I think that, yeah, you know, like if it were some other weather equivalent it wouldn't be even if it had only happened once it wouldn't be as but i mean lightning striking like rhetorically speaking it's the perfect one i actually had been thinking a little bit about while thinking about this i was thinking about like your favorite thing in

modern baseball is the baseball reaction videos lightning reaction videos you know when ball players get scared by get scared by lightning yeah and uh i didn't think that there was maybe one i mean obviously i've seen multiple so it can't be that but but those to me are like if you go to the ballpark and you get to see baseball players react to lightning yeah in a way that's yeah it's a good turnout yeah and there have been like tragic incidents of not in the majors but non-major leaguers have been killed by lightning strikes on baseball fields so that's it's not fun but the ray caldwell story is kind of fun because it wasn't tragic so yeah pretty good that was that was mine all right mine is uh mine is tippy martinez picking off three

base runners in one inning yeah to me yeah anytime you max out the possibility like you can't pick off more than three and so picking off all three is uh is great it will never be topped but also pick offs are just really when you think about it they're so rare the math on that has got to be outrageous the players weren't even trying to steal and he could just get all three of them that's crazy i mean i would lose my mind i would lose my mind if i were there and i would really lose my mind if i were the third base runner who got picked up and i was trying to think of of whether anything could top that to me and i mean really i think the only thing might be if you had three runners get hidden ball tricked in an inning.

Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like they always say when hitters make two outs on the first two pitches of the inning, and then the cliche is always, well, you got to take the next pitch, right? But you'd think that if the first two base runners got picked off before you that the same rule would apply and it would just feel like you can't take a lead in this situation so yeah it should get progressively more difficult with each pick off you would think okay all right meg just curious did you feel like that was one of your stronger or one of your weaker weakest okay good

so you're all you're confident now well i wouldn't say that but i'm i'm probably gonna make fewer squeaking sounds okay all right all right so the question second question is what is the supreme example of this from your own personal experience you literally had to be at the ballpark for this to count do you have one of these in your own life yes all right what is it so i have seen a triple play in person and i had never it was the very first time i had ever i had never seen it before and then i i did i saw the mariners do it i think think that they did it on July 26th, 2015. It's not the only Mariners triple play ever, but it is the only one I've seen.

And it was- They turned it. They didn't hit into it, but they turned it. Yeah. Yeah. And it was one of those triple plays where it is the result of the catcher. In this case, it was Max Zanino

just like tagging two runners on the same bag over and over until one of them fell off and it was great they were playing the Blue Jays Tyrone Walker was pitching I'm watching it again and I'm like this is still really fun you know I got some guys in a run down oh they're gonna get one at home

you know I just love that these guys practice they practice so much, right? You're a professional baseball player over the course of your life. You've practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced. And the guidance that you are given as a catcher is like they're going to forget. They're going to forget all of their practice. And you're going to get one of them to step off and be out.

And that's what happened here. You go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And then on the broadcast, I think Mike Blowers is like, yeah, that's what that's what happened here and you go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and then on the broadcast i think mike blowers is like yeah that's what they tell you to do and it worked and um it was great and help me just envision the last phase of this how much time elapsed between out number two and out number three like gosh 20 seconds? Oh, that must have been so fun. Maybe, maybe. To know that two, to chase a triple play for 20 seconds. 20 might be, see, now I'm trying to watch again. And this is terrific radio.

Everybody really loves it when you're like sitting there watching a play. Kyle Sears is like, come back, come back. And then there are two of them. And he's like, oh, oh, no. Oh, ah, he's off. And then that's it. And Tyrone Walker goes, yeah. And he does like the satisfied like pitcher clap. oh, oh, no. Oh, ah, he's off. And then that's it. And Taiwan Walker goes, yeah. And he does like the satisfied like pitcher clap.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you're like, that is a very confident clap for a weird ass play that we all just watched. And I remember everyone in the ballpark being like, what the hell just happened? But then they cheered. It was great. Huh. You said 2016.

Are you still sticking with- 2015. 2015. Okay. I'm watching it. I'm going to watch it, but anyway, you don't have to wait for me to watch it. I don't think, I don't remember seeing a triple play in person. Yeah.

It's the only one I've ever seen in person because they don't, you said, pick-offs don't happen very often. I bet triple plays have one of the lowest frequencies of things, right? They have to. Pretty rare. Famously so. It has to be a pretty rare thing. I love two guys on the same base.

I love two guys on the same base. This guy, he's standing there, and then he just falls off. He falls off. He just falls right off. Yeah, I should say, he didn't step off. He mostly fell. He kind of fell. What did he do?

He exclaimed off. Yeah. He just all of a sudden just jerks. Yeah. He just like broings off. What happened? I think, and now I'm going to watch it again. Ben, should I send this to you so you know what the hell we've been talking about?

I'm just enjoying picturing it based on your description i'm doing a really great job of describing it i mean i'm not but imagine a guy imagine that the base instead of a base was like like a soda can and his left foot is on the soda can and then someone like basically just imagine that the soda can like crumples yeah and he just violently just imagined that the soda can crumples, and he just violently falls over. That's what happens. He just all of a sudden just violently falls over. I think a little bit of this is on the third base coach.

I think that the third base coach put his hand on Ezekiel Carrera in a way that made him like sproing. He was just like, ah! I love the other base runner looking at him. What did you just do that for? Oh, man. Seems like they changed the

settings on gravity for a second. But only for him. Only for him. Very weird. Oh, do I go? I'm watching it again. Terrific. Such great stuff. Should I go? Oh, do I? I'm watching it again. It's terrific. It's such great stuff. All right, should I go? Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to keep watching this, though, because it's so fun.

So this one was tough, I was saying to Meg, because all the games I've been to just blend together, basically, into one big massive baseball game, except for some big playoff games. baseball game except for some big playoff games so that was what i tended to focus on because uh i'll remember who i went with to a game and maybe what we said but i don't really remember what was happening at the game i remember going to a game with you and i remember what you said nothing you said nothing you had an entire baseball game without saying one thing to me and yet i don't remember a thing from that baseball game even even though I was apparently paying attention. So it just, it doesn't stick. Like I remember, I probably have mentioned this, but I remember a game like 20 years ago where Raul Mondesi was playing right field for the Yankees. And I was sitting near another fan who was just very softly cheering for Raul Mondesi in this just monotone, very reserved, but somehow intense voice.

And the friend I was with, we thought it was so funny that this guy was cheering for Raul Mondesi sort of intensely, but also almost under his breath, as if he was afraid that someone might hear him, like Mondesi might hear him, or someone might hear him rooting for Raul Mondesi. So for a long time afterward, we would greet each other just with a somber Raul when we would see each other just with a somber roll when we would see each other. But I couldn't tell you a thing about which game that was or what happened in it. Anyway,

that's why I kind of defaulted to famous games. And because I grew up as a Yankees fan, when they played in a lot of famous games, I got to go to some of those. So the first one I was thinking of, I don't really think this fits the description. It might, but I was at 2004 ALCS Game 7, right, which is the first time that a team came back all the way from 3-0 down to win a best-of-seven series, famously. But I don't know if that single game if not for the Red Sox being down three nothing in the series and then sweeping the next three and then winning that one so I don't know if that fit the spirit of the exercise so the one that I think did is that I was at the Roger Clemens throwing the bat at Mike Piazza oh so that's a great amazing that's a good one right because I don't know if anyone's ever seen that before I mean everything has Oh, that's amazing. That was amazing in the moment. I think I was bewildered when it happened. I remember just

being flummoxed about what had happened and what everyone was so mad about because it was just so outside the realm of anyone's experience that you couldn't really make sense of it immediately. And I don't know that I have made sense of it 20, however many years, 23 years later almost. of it 20 however many years 23 years later almost so when you go back and you watch the replays and and you hear the quotes none of it makes it make any more sense than it did like when when roger clevins is clearly on the replay shouting at mike piazza i thought it was the ball as if that would explain like oh well if you thought it was the ball then it would be fine if you were throwing it at me that's totally understandable that was the best he could come up with in the moment right and then i i think afterward he sort of said like he was just you know his feet were off the ground

it was so intense it was the world series and he's the rocket and his faculties deserted him for a second, basically. But just all the quotes are funny. Like Piazza said, I walked out to the mound to see what his problem was. He really had no response. It was bizarre. So just no one understood. And then like Joe Torre got kind of fed up because everyone kept asking him what was happening there. And Torre was like, why would he throw at him? That's the question, Joe. That's what everyone is wondering. So he could get thrown out of the game in the second game of the World Series? Does that make sense to anybody?

No. No, it doesn't. That's why we're all asking you why he did that. Because he's angry? Yeah, probably, right? That seems like the most likely explanation. Angry with Piazza so he screws 24 other people on his team? Yeah, that certainly

seems like it's what's happened so just every explanation of it somehow uh made it more entertaining i think so that was great that is a good one and and you're right that there is no explanation that makes any sense and yet in its way seems like it tells us more about the human brain and like human emotions than almost anything else that happens in a baseball game because i completely understand roger clemens in that moment like i feel the fog i feel the chaos and i feel my body doing it not knowing why not having any intention not having any, and it just like coming out of my life. And so I really do relate to that moment. Yeah. And he said it was out of control emotions.

He also said he was unaware that Piazza was jogging down the first baseline and that he was attempting to sling it toward the on-deck circle where the bat boys were. I had no idea Mike was running on the foul ball. There was no intent there. So he's just trying to chuck it off the field is, I guess, the best possible explanation for it. But even that, just, you know, slinging around bat shards is not something that pitchers typically do. Once my dad was slinging rocks he was just you know throwing rocks out out into the great you know beyond and uh he didn't let go of one and his arm came all the way around and he hit my mom who was standing behind him with a rock oh no and yeah you said

i thought it was the ball i had very I had more restrictions on throwing things than the average person because of that. Because my mom's like, you just never know. All right. Mine is, yeah, mine is, I was at the Kendry's Morales walk-off Grand Slam game. And if people don't know this, because- You know it's good, because as soon as you said his name,

I was like, oh. Yeah, yeah. So this happened now, you guys, 13 years ago. Stop it. Yeah. So Felix and Jared Weaver,

I don't know, like the two best pitchers in the AL at the time, had this great duel, and it was 1-1. It was a super tense game, division rivals. Frankie Rodriguez came in for a two-inning hold-the-line appearance. I mean, an amazing game, Sunday afternoon game. And in the 10th, Kendris Morales hits a walk-off grand slam

off Brandon League, and it is the most, I mean, it's like the highest pinnacle of baseball emotion. And then he comes around to his teammates waiting for him at home plate. And he jumps on home plate and breaks his leg. And like the leg slips, he breaks his leg. The teammates are still bopping him thinking this is part of the bit and it takes like i don't know

i want to say it takes a minute before the crowd finally is like this is uh this celebration is going a little long and you know it was like the turnaround in emotions i've never seen anything like it i've never been involved in anything like it and the fact that it all happened after the game was already over so you're having like peak peak baseball emotion after you thought you'd already reached you know catharsis and uh so yeah that game i've never seen anything like it that was it for me yeah it's a good one never was the same you guys are still getting hurt celebrating fairly routinely. I mean, David Robertson missing the NLDS last year after same sort of play. I mean, it was just a strained calf or something, but still. They're still doing the arm bopping thing. Yeah.

It's dangerous to celebrate. Like the Bash Brothers thing? Is that what you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Like the thing that caused Codyody bellinger's like shoulder to dislocate and then maybe changed his entire career who could say you know like i mean it was sort of you know trending in a bad way before that but it really took a sharp turn after that

yeah it's an argument in favor of not celebrating not because you might show someone up but because you might hurt yourself yeah all right okay third question and uh i don't know maybe this is just as hard to come up with as the first one but the supreme example of this from basically our own like broader experience watching baseball so anything that happened while we were you know watching ball yeah we didn't have to be there you didn't have to be i mean i don't even care if you saw it happen if you saw it it happen on Twitter, that's fine with me. But what is like the modern great moment? I have one that is, it is not unprecedented in baseball history,

but it is a thing I wish I could have seen. And Sam, you may have seen one of these live. I wish that I could have seen a Bonds 4 intentional walk game in person. Oh, yes. I know that for at least, I believe he had two, and that in one of them, he did get an actual at-bat, and then after that, they were like, no. No, thank you.

Then he was walked intentionally four times. I would like to have seen that. Then I have a nicher one. A more niche? What is the modifier there? I have a- Nichier. Nichier.

I've got a nichier one, which is that when the RoboZone was being piloted in the Arizona Fall League, two things happened with the RoboZone that I think is just delightful. The first is that Geraldo Perdomo flipped off the TrackMan unit at one point. He just turned around and gave the bird to the box. Does that go anywhere? I mean, it might have hurt the computer's feelings. And then another player was ejected for arguing RoboBalls and Strikes, and I'm not recalling his name but you know

they know they know in advance that it is not the home plate ump who is calling it right and at that time I think they were really not doing much to give the umpires discretion to overrule the zone he just got bounced from like a folly game

and you know these are guys who they're trying to impress their organization or other scouts some of them are fighting for 40 man spots and so of all the ways to potentially miss out on playing time to have fought with a computer and then lost that feels that feels like it would be bad but i wasn't there for either of them. So those are some of mine. It's a good one. Yeah. The one I thought of was, and this hardly narrows it down, but ALDS game five. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This whole, I swear to you, Ben, I was going to admit this entire conversation was just, I wanted to see if everybody would say the same play. And all of this was a big long distraction because i didn't want to put you're gonna say shinsu chu yes the ball off the bat yes yes yep that was the best i think he was kind of the capper to that inning it was not the decisive play in that game as it turned out although it seemed significant at the time. But just everything was

wild in that inning, of course. We did a draft, a podcast draft of our favorite moments from that inning. Did you write an oral history? I did. I wrote an immediate fake oral history of that game. And that was the highlight, I think, just for the weirdness of it. So yeah, Russell Martin, catcher throwing back to Aaron Sanchez and the throw just deflected off of the batter, Shinsu Chu's hand, as he was holding his bat. And then it just trickles down the third baseline, and Rugnet Odor scores, right? And that was very significant at the time. It was like a 3-2 Rangers lead, right? And the great thing about that was that, well, Russell Martin said it had

never happened in his life before, so he didn't know what to do. And plate umpire Dale Scott, who has been on Effectively Wild and talked about this play with us, he instantly did not know what to do, and he made the incorrect call and then reversed himself because Jeff Bannister, the Rangers manager, who I guess was the only person who had ever seen something like this before because he personally had been involved in it as a minor league catcher, apparently, it had happened. And so he knew the rule. Shinsu Chu didn't know the rule or what to do or anything. And the umpires got together. And because Chu was in the batter's box when the throw hit the bat then it's not interference so initially it was the incorrect call basically so

the run counted after initially being sent back to the base which is just the weirdest weirdest thing it's the weirdest thing and the reason that i wanted to orchestrate an entire podcast episode to get to it is that when i sat around i don't remember why but i was trying to think of like what the ultimate moment or example of this is and i immediately thought of it nothing else came to mind except this and i don't know why it seems so obviously the right answer. Why? I guess probably we were all like on Twitter together at that point. So maybe it was the collective social media aspect of it.

So we were all experiencing it together, even if we weren't at the park. And I guess it also just compounded everything else that was happening in that game and in that inning so it was kind of like it took it over the the line into total absurdity maybe I don't remember the full sequence of events but maybe it was it was part of a larger tapestry so I guess that was it too yeah have you read the three? Yeah, the first book I read. Okay, so the aliens, they send these photons to Earth to mess up Earth's science by disrupting the particles in the particle accelerator. This isn't going to be a very good example. I want to see where it's going now. Like I just kind of, you know, like so you're kind of imagining

like this photon that can cause things to move chaotically. And I feel like why when my brain tries to think of something in baseball I've never seen before, the first thing it tries to do is imagine a baseball moving

in the least predictable direction like in the most chaotic direct like the ball specifically and i think that's why this one this is my my archetype of the ball moving in an unpredictable direction it just was not supposed to go that direction yeah it's the most routine throw you ever see is back to the pitcher you couldn't you couldn't even make enough sense of it to be shocked i mean it made sense that dale scott comes out and calls foul and that's what you yeah that's i guess what you think must something has gone foul but in fact it was a live ball moving in a wrong direction i don't know yeah i love that play yeah and i have a hard time i mean it is it that crazy i guess it's not that crazy but the stakes the fact that it was that inning that game yeah all right so that was yours too or that was mine too yeah okay okay the last

question the last question i had for you both, what is something that you have never seen before that you hope or that you might see the next time you go to a ballpark? Ben, you go. Okay. the most obvious ones probably would be the most exciting, right? Because you can always just add one, just tack one more of whatever the record is for doing that thing in a game, whether it's someone hitting five homers or your favorite, the 21 strikeout game. So those would probably top whatever I'm about to say. It's just that's, I guess, the most obvious one. So I agree. Those would be great and exciting.

That's, I guess, the most obvious one. So I agree. Those would be great and exciting. But I think what came to mind is, well, this probably couldn't happen. It's probably so unlikely that it could happen or would happen that it's beyond the realm of possibility. But remember when we had our debates about minimum inning and you wanted to call a three pitch inning a minimum inning? I will never forget it,

partly because the song is still in my head. Right. Yeah. And Meg objected to the term, I think, partly on that basis. But also, I think one of our objections was that it's not technically a minimum inning, right? It is probably the minimum inning that will happen, but it is not the minimum inning that could happen because you can throw a no-pitch inning and you were saying a three-p pitch inning should be a minimum inning. So I'd like to see a no pitch inning or a one pitch inning or something, which can happen. Of course, you could intentionally walk someone. You could have repeated pitch clock violations and then you could pick them off. You could do the tippy Martinez except throwing no pitches. Right.

So I don't know if pickoffs will be more likely with the new rules this year or whatever. But again, like, why would that happen? Why would you continue to intentionally walk people? It just doesn't seem like there's any particular reason for that to happen unless you were trying to do this. So barring that, I was thinking maybe just a really long extra inning game just to spite the zombie runner. And Sam, I don't know if you're still as pro zombie runner as you were when it first started. I am still as staunchly against, if not more so. So that 16 inning Dodgers Padres game in 2021 that kept going and just defied the gravity of the zombie runner

was really fun. And I would just like to thumb my nose at the rule and Rob Manfred by just having a game go on for an extraordinarily long time. So you wouldn't get like the longest extra inning game ever or anything, but the longest extra inning game under these conditions just to thwart the intention of the rule to prevent that sort of thing from happening i guess the the one benefit of the zombie runner one of them is that when it doesn't work as intended then it's more fun right because you used to think not that much of like a 14 inning game you know it would take more than that to really get into it if you're sort of a sicko about long extra inning games but now once you get to like 13 or something now it's it's sort of special because it's so rare for that to happen so if we were to exceed 16 and

head toward 20 and just defy all probability despite the zombie runner i would very much enjoy that i like how many times you brought up rob manfred's mood like you think he's just gonna be like so owned in this situation yeah just ranting just in tears yeah i'd like to imagine that i'd also like to see strategy happen you know our old strategy the mid-plate appearance pitching change which just like it hasn't really happened you know like it's the mid-plate appearance pitching change which just like it hasn't really happened you know like it's kind of happened but it hasn't really happened the actual strategy of pulling someone not because they fell behind in the count but because you want to get the advantage of the lack of familiarity of the pitcher coming in so you come in with two

strikes or something and you change the repertoire and change the arm angle. We haven't really had a fully confirmed at the major league level instance of strategy happening other than maybe the initial Joe Girardi strategy example, which he refused to confirm. So this is a strategy that I would enjoy because I think it's kind of clever and quirky. But then as I've learned, the charm of that wears off. And if everyone started doing it, then it would be terrible. And we would have more pitching changes and less offense and more strikeouts. And I don't actually want a version of the game where everyone's doing the mid-plate appearance pitching change. I just want it to happen once. And maybe it would even be better if it didn't work, because then you don't get the only rule is it has to work sort of situation

thing and it will just be dead. But it will have happened once. Hey, I was wondering how you would feel about a compromise on the minimum inning, which would be the two-pitch inning, the zombie runner two-pitch inning. Would that thrill you? That's realistic. It's within the course of normal baseball play, at least as it's played now. It's, you know, be fun, right?

That has happened, I think. Hasn't that happened? Oh, has the two-pitch? I believe that's happened. Yeah. The two-pitch inning, really? I think. I mean, I know there have been two batter innings

where the runner has been. Maybe it was just in the minors that that happened. It happened somewhere in the not-too-distant past. Yeah, in 2018 it happened. I think someone with the Rome Braves, maybe that's what I was thinking of. But, right, because it was a runner on second, and then, oh, O'Neal Cruz was apparently the runner on second. And there was a liner to the second baseman who doubled off Cruz. And then the next batter lined out on the first pitch. And that was the end of the inning.

So that's fun. Wow. I agree. I think it is fun. Only I say it with not quite as much sass in my voice. Take it or leave it. That is sort of the vibe there, Ben right what do you have well i have a couple i have a couple i know i just a bit ago talked about having seen a triple play but i would like

to see an unassisted triple play so that's one i'd like to be at a baseball game i want to preface what i'm about to say by like noting that i want it to be at a baseball game. I want to preface what I'm about to say by noting that I want it to be not a momentary disruption, but not a protracted disruption, because I feel like there are actual dangers that I'm failing to appreciate here, either to the players or to fans, that would make themselves known in fairly short order in a way that would be really bad. So I want to preface this by saying I want it to be like a temporary disruption. I'd like to be at a game where the power goes out.

Yeah, I think that I was actually thinking the power goes out mid-play. Yeah, like I just want it to, and I don't want it to be like a long thing because like, again, I think there might be some danger lurking that I'm not appreciating. And it would cause, I would imagine, a great deal of concern at home. Like if you're watching a game and the feed just totally goes out,

don't you for a moment worry that something really catastrophic has happened? Oh, for sure. Yeah. And so like I don't want to worry people. But I think if you're in the ballpark and like it goes out for a little bit, you'd be like, oh. It would feel kind of like being like, have you? Did you ever have the power go out at your school when you were a kid?

Oh, yeah. They have to let you go home after 45 minutes. Yeah, they do. They really do. The rumor would immediately start up. Oh, get your stopwatch out. We're about to get to go home. So I'd like to. Yeah, I'd like to experience that probably at a day game, but maybe not.

Maybe it would be better at a night game, like everything goes out and then it's dark. I think you'd be worried pretty quickly, and the people at home would be terrified. So that part is suboptimal, because I don't want to stress folks out. But I think I'd still like to see it. Yeah, you mentioned a day game, and I also thought it'd be fun to be at a game where the scoreboard, just like the, not the scoreboard, but the, well but the scoreboard, the sound system, if it all, like the game keeps playing. Yeah.

Just like zits. Yeah. So like a day game with a power outage, they could still play, but just no walk-up music. Yeah. I feel like my window for that, at least living in Arizona, is actually fairly narrow because I think they would send people home if you were at chase and it was like august and the power went out they'd be like we gotta get you out of here because i think there are like state laws about that sort of thing because it you

know gets so hot famously it gets hot in the desert here uh but it's a dry heat is the thing about it famously gets cold too yeah Yeah, it can. It can. And not just in a we're wimps way, in a real way. You know, you relax out there. So that's one. I'd like to, I would like to be at a perfect game. You know, I know that that sort of violates your earlier statement, Ben, but I would like to see that.

I've never even seen a no-hitter in person outside of a spring training context. And like if, can I tell you, here's the thing you don't care about at all, a combined no-hitter in spring training. Yeah, it's pretty low on the list. That's pretty low on the list. You're not like, well, I really saw something tonight at the park.

I'd like to see a complete game. I'd like to see a complete game. I've seen complete games and recently. A pitcher going all nine innings. I can't remember see a complete game. I'd like to see a complete game. I've seen complete games, and recently. A pitcher going all nine innings? I can't remember who. That happens? When was that? When you were a little kid?

Maybe. Yeah. I enjoy plays that are very confusing in ballpark when you don't have the benefit of commentary. Like, even box don't make sense when you're in the ballpark and no one's there to explain it to you. I'm here to tell you. I've never seen a hidden ball trick in person.

I'd like to see that. And I'd like to see it in person and be like, what happened? What happened? Where's the ball? Where's the ball? Where did it go? You want to get tricked?

I do want it in this particular way. Yeah, not generally, but I'm making an exception here. So those are some that came to mind for me. All right. This particular way, yeah. Not generally, but I'm making an exception here. So those are some that came to mind for me. All right. I have a wide range. They range from the very mundane, such as, Meg, you and I both get migraines. Yeah.

And mine come in one second. They take one second to happen, and I can't see at all. And when I'm watching baseball i'm always thinking how come no one ever gets pulled with a migraine it doesn't make sense to me everybody i tell that i anytime i tell someone i have migraines they go yeah me too as far as i can tell everybody gets migraines never see a ball player in the middle of an inning raise his hand and say i I can't see anymore. Come pull me from the game. I would like to see that for personal reasons. I also thought about the rapture.

But in the middle, I will go in the middle, which is a very specific one. Which is a very specific one so imagine say runners on second and third bottom of the ninth home team trailing by one two outs okay go ahead run on second two outs fly ball into shallow left field left fielder comes in appears to trap it runs score. Home team charges out of the dugout. Walk-off celebration, chase down the batter, spray him with water bottles and gum buckets. Visiting team manager challenges the call, says he thinks it's a catch.

So a walk-off celebration has happened. I'm pretty sure that this has happened. A walk-off celebration has been paused for a replay, and I'm pretty sure that walk-off celebrations have hinged on a repay but in this specific scenario both teams will win depending on like this is not we either go home or like if what i'm saying makes sense to you this is a there is no tie possible there is no no, well, now there's one out and we keep going possible. This is either team will win based on this replay. There is no reason for the defense to stand out on the field anymore while they wait for this. So I presume

they will all jog in and wait for the replay to be concluded. And if the call is overturned, I believe they would then do a walk-off celebration. I think they would do it right there on the field, chase down the guy who caught it, spray him with water, dump the gum bucket on him. I think we could have a double walk-off celebration. Either way, I would like to see a two full outcome, like I would like to see a 100% win probability swing replay situation

where it's all or nothing. I thought that whole scenario was leading up to the rapture for a while. I was waiting for the rapture to come. I see. Yeah, that'd be exciting. I'd like to see it. I think those two minutes and 40 seconds would be tense. Yeah. All right.

So that's it. That's my cliche. Okay. Well, that was fun. Well, we're happy to have you back writing for public consumption and joining us today. And obviously, welcome back whenever and I look forward to reading everything that you're gonna write so pebble hunting pebble hunting that sub stack calm and I hope that you have some sort of rip Van Winkle moments coming back to baseball after paying less intense attention for a little while like you had with with the For You tab on Twitter

or StatHead being the new name for Play Index. Like, remember a few years ago when we had the listener, Dario? Yeah, who took the off-season off, yeah. Right, and then was surprised when he came back and wanted to know how to break his baseball fast and figure out where everyone was now? We kind of, like, got that. Then there was a lockout, and we all experienced that sort of,

but no one went anywhere. Anyway, I know that's not exactly what happened to you here. And I'm sure you're aware that there's a pitch clock now. But if any of those incidents strike you where you go, I must have missed something here because I don't know how's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, I took 2021 off from the American League, but 2022 is pretty normal for me. All right. Well, good luck with the sub stack. Thanks. And Sam's on Twitter. He's tweeting now, for now, at least, at Sam Miller BB, tweeting about baseball and also Shrek. All right. So here's the thing.

Sam Miller, not the only beloved baseball institution that has returned to us this week. The World Baseball Classic has also started. And we were planning to devote a segment today to the WBC, but you don't say no to Sam Miller when he comes calling. So we're going to bring you both. We talked to Sam Miller, and now we're going to take a quick break. And we will be back with Sean Spradling, who has been all over the WBC, to tell us what to be excited about as we watch the tournament this month. Okay, we are joined now by Sean Spradling. Infographic design is his passion, but his bigger passion is the World Baseball Classic, which he has been covering on the WBC Central Show, on the Baseball Isn't Boring podcast,

as well as on his YouTube channel and on Twitter at Sean underscore Spradling. And his enthusiasm for the tournament is infectious. So we wanted to have him on so we could spread it to us and our audience. Hello, Sean. Hey, how's it going? Thank you so much for having me on, Ben. This is awesome. Like you said, if there is baseball anywhere around the world, I'm probably interested

in it. So now there's about to be baseball in a lot of places around the world. So this is fun. How did you catch the WBC bug yourself? What got you into it to the degree that you are? And maybe your answer will also explain why everyone else should be paying close attention to the tournament over the next couple of weeks. Yeah, I think I think it's kind of two things. And I've so kind of got thrown into this out of nowhere last fall

when I did sort of become a reporter, like an independent reporter for the WBC. Didn't really expect that. And so I had to think like, how did I even get into this? The two things that I've kind of, I guess, come up with as to the reasons why I got it all wrapped up in the WBC as one, the 2017 WBC I was able to watch. And it was, it was a blast. I loved every game that I got to watch seeing team USA win, um, was also huge, not only for the WBC, but for baseball in,

in like international baseball around the world, seeing that, oh, USA actually is taking this seriously for once. And I didn't get to watch the previous WBCs. I was too young for the first couple. And then 2013, I was in high school. I didn't really get to watch it. That's kind of the first reason. I just saw that it was so much fun last time. And so coming around when it was announced last summer that it would be happening in 2023, it just got me all excited again. announced last summer that it would be happening in 2023. It just got me all excited again. The second reason, ironically enough, wasn't even baseball. So my wife and her family are from Brazil. And in 2018, I was able to go down to visit her family during the summer of 2018, which was during the World Cup. It wasn't in Brazilzil it was in russia at that year but at the same time

there were watch parties every single day and getting to just experience and see what the world cup looked like in a like a soccer country or a football country was honestly just eye-opening to me i did not grow up with soccer whatsoever um but seeing like the entire country shut down for a month and like the economy take a hit for that month was pretty wild. And it was just so cool to see all of the fans and then but also the players that played with the passion and intensity and aggression and love for their country and their brothers, something that I hadn't really seen in baseball other than a glimpse of that in the World Baseball Classic. So after that, it kind of sparked something in my mind. I was like, oh, well, I wonder if there's a way

that we could do something like that in baseball. Obviously, the WBC is not even as close to as big as the World Cup. It's never going to be because baseball is not the same as soccer. But it's the closest thing that we have right now to that, to being able to represent your country and show that passion and energy and respect and honor that comes from representing like your country and your people. Yeah.

So that's kind of how I got all wrapped up in it. Yeah. Well, you're getting me more excited by the second here. This is great. So since it's been a while, 2017, as you said, there was supposed to be a WBC in 2021. Then the pandemic happened. It's supposed to be an every four years event., there was supposed to be a WBC in 2021. Then the pandemic happened. It's supposed to be an every four years event. And we've had to wait a couple extra years here.

So since it's been so long, can you give us a little primer and refresher for everyone who didn't pay attention last time or just doesn't remember all the details? Just where it's being played, how you can watch it, what the format is, how many countries are in it, anything relevant that someone who knows nothing about the WBC or only a very little should know going into this. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We can just do kind of an overview and we can dive into whatever you want to on it. So the World Baseball Classic is essentially the FIFA World Cup, but baseball. So you have every country that is participating in the WBC. It is their national team. So Team USA, this is our country's team.

You have to be eligible for that country, whether you're born there or you have heritage through that country. The eligibility rules are a little bit spotty for some fans that haven't looked into it. But essentially, if you are eligible for citizenship or a passport in that country, then you are eligible to play for their national team in the WBC. So in the Classic, there's 20 teams. It was expanded from 2017 to 2023 from 16 to 20 teams. So now we have 20 national teams covering almost every continent at this point. South Africa was in the qualifiers, but didn't make it. So Africa is not represented in this WBC, but they have a chance to in the next one and have in the past. So it really is a world tournament.

You have the best of the best for almost every single country playing. USA may be a little bit of an exception on the pitching staff, but every other subcategory of roster in the WBC is the best of the best for all of the countries. So it's a ton of fun. Like I mentioned, you're going to see players with completely different personalities

than you're used to seeing. For example, and we can go into this later if you'd like, but Ichiro, when he was able to represent his country and be the captain of Japan in 2006 and 2009, we were kind of used to seeing him be just, I don't know, he doesn't speak, he didn't speak English at the time here in MLB. So we didn't see much personality from him compared to a lot of other players. But then when he went over there, he was aggressive and he was to a lot of other players. But then when he went over there, he was aggressive and he was loud and yelling

and just like showing all of the intensity that we want to see from a player like him of that high of caliber and status. So you're going to see a lot of guys like that, that once they have that country and that flag on their jersey, on their chest, it's going to be a whole different ball game. So it's a lot of fun.

You mentioned how Team USA's pitching is sort of, at least compared to the lineup that they're able to put out there. I don't want to say meager because I would never insult Lance Lynn or Adam Wainwright that way, but it's not, as you mentioned, the best of the best. As we go into this, who do you view as the favorites to emerge from each pool? who do you view as the favorites to emerge from each pool yeah and i think that the pitching for team usa like i said is kind of the one group of player that is holding the wbc back from being the true like world baseball baseball world cup because like you said we have lance land adam wainwright brady singer miles Miles Michaelis, Merrill Kelly. So a lot of very well-known players in MLB.

But when you don't have guys like DeGrom, Verlander, Scherzer, the top American guys, people feel like they're missing out. So that being said, I still do have USA being, if not the best, at least in that top tier. Did put out my power rankings today and they were number one, a shameless plug, but with all four pools in pool a I, so every pool, there's two teams that comes out of the pool from the pool stage into the quarterfinals and pool a, I have Cuba and kingdom of the Netherlands. That is a very, very close pool though. It is very even. It's the most even of all four pools. The other three, there's some definitive top teams and then a lower tier with, with pool A, there's an easy case to be made for any of the five teams to make it out. Italy,

Taiwan, and Panama as well of those five. So I have Cuba and Kingdom of the Netherlands. Pool B is the exact opposite. It is the top two and then everybody else. There is Japan and Korea. If one of them does not make it out of the pool, it's a huge disappointment for them because after them is Australia, Czech Republic and China. Pool C, I have USA and Mexico.

I think Mexico is pretty underrated. I think that this is their best team that they've ever brought to the WBC. I think that they are better than Columbia, Canada, and in Great Britain is also in that pool. And then pool D, which people call the pool of death because it is just, it's a gauntlet. You have three of the top teams in the world. You have Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico, as well as Nicaragua and Israel. So I feel kind of bad for those bottom two teams. Unfortunately, they don't have much of a chance, but I actually have Dominican Republic and Venezuela coming out, which I know upsets some of my Puerto Rican fan followers, but this Venezuelan team is looking really, really nice. This is probably their best team they've

ever had as well. Yeah. And I think the consensus is that there's sort of a tier of three, right? Which is not to slight the teams just perhaps slightly below that when it comes to the odds, but USA, Japan, Dominican Republic. And it's sort of deflating just to see guys pull out, you know, just in the days leading up to the tournament when Vlad Guerrero has to pull out of the DR team. You know, there are lots of wish casting you could do right where you look at players who were maybe originally committed to join or seem to express interest in joining. And then for one reason or another, insurance and injuries and all sorts of reasons, you know, guys end up not going. It's it's understandable. It's unfortunate. But to focus on the players who are there because there's just a ton of talent.

I mean, the USA lineup is just so stacked. Not that the other lineups are a slouch either. The DR lineup is incredible, too. It looks a little thinner without Vlad than it looks with him, obviously. But I'm really excited about the USA lineup. The DR, I think, is a pretty well-balanced team because there's some good pitching on that team. I think I'm most excited for Japan's starting rotation. I mean, the Samurai Japan starting rotation is my favorite unit of any team in this tournament, which, I mean, if you put Shohei Otani on anything, it's like automatically my favorite. But I don't know that I'm even the most excited to see Shohei Otani, because one of the great things about the WBC is that as an American fan who maybe doesn't get to watch certain international players as often as you'd like, unless and until they come to MLB,

you get to watch Roki Sasaki. You get to watch Yamamoto. You get to watch these incredible guys who hopefully someday will be seen in MLB, but are already among the best pitchers in the world. And now we get to see them go up against other great players. So that Japan pitching staff in the starting rotation in particular, that's like the number one attraction of this tournament to me, I think. It is the best. It's the best pitching staff in the entire tournament, which MLB fans- I didn't even mention you, Darvish. Exactly. I mean, there's a case to be made, and I've been in contact with a couple of Japanese

reporters who have mentioned that Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto are, just from a pure pitching standpoint, are supposed to be better than Otani. And so there's a case to be made that Otani could be the third best pitcher in that staff, which is unbelievable. With two guys that are, I think, Roki Sasaki's 21 and Yamamoto's 24, both of who should be coming over to MLB soon, especially Yamamoto this next year after he posted after 2023.

But Japan, I am not one to bet against them in the WBC. They're the most successful team in WBC history. They're the only team that have won twice back in 2006 and 2009. They won back to back. And yet this is their strongest Samurai Japan team they've ever had. So I would honestly be, I'd be shocked if they didn't make it to the final and they have a very good chance at winning. Is there any way to gauge which national fan base is most into this tournament? I mean, which country is following this tournament most closely, is most invested, most behind it, most enthusiastic in its support? Yeah, that is something that I've been trying to gauge over the last couple of weeks because as the hype has started to build, as we've got rosters and

more players posting about it, I've noticed a lot of my tweets that have either done very, very well or not so well, depending on what country I'm tweeting about. I think far and away, it's Japan. They're number one. There is no doubt to me that if you look at, I just retweeted something right before we jumped on here. The tweet says around 36 million people watched the Samurai Japan versus Oryx Buffalo's exhibition game on Monday night, last night. That doesn't even include the thousands that streamed the game online

just through whatever platform they were streaming on. That is more than the population of Texas. And it's a third, almost a third of the entire population of Japan for an exhibition warmup game. It's unbelievable. They're the one, like anytime I tweet about the Japanese team, they are the ones that blow up most because they love, they just love the WBC. This is really their world cup in 2006. Uh, when they went to the final and won it, there was another article I was reading today, the water pressure in Japan,

or I guess specifically Tokyo dropped 25% in between innings of that game. As all of the fans rushed to the bathroom and back, that doesn't tell you something that that shows you how much they love it. We need to be coordinating our bathroom breaks better than the U.S. We're falling behind. How about that? Well, and we've talked about their pitching staff being so exciting, but we also get to watch Murakami,

who when you look at our international player board at FanGraphs is our number one international player. He obviously won't be posted for a little while, but I just can't wait to watch him. It's not like they have a lack of talent on the position player side either. It's just a really deep group. I don't want to make the WBC about major league baseball because that's annoying. The WBC is great on its own, but I think one of the things that is really neat about it is that in addition to big leaguers going to the WBC, affording us the opportunity to watch prospects in spring training, it also showcases guys who are looking for jobs on big league rosters, right? Who have either fallen off rosters in the past or maybe are prospects themselves who are trying to make a name for themselves.

Is there anyone in that group that really stands out to you? Ooh, that is a good question. One of my favorite parts of the WBC is getting to see prospects play because a lot of these teams don't have quite the top tier talent as like, say a U S or Dominican or Japanese lineup. So you get a lot of, a lot of top prospects or guys, like you mentioned that are either previously made it to the bigs and trying to make it back, or, uh, maybe used to be an affiliated ball, uh, or play internationally and want to come back to the U S. So, um, when it comes to like, let's say the top prospects who have yet to make it to MLB, you got guys like

Harry Ford, who's going to be behind the dish for, um, for great Britain. He's one of the top prospects in baseball. You've got guys on Canada, like, like Owen Casey, Edward Julian, uh, Bo Naylor, who I know made his debut already, but a lot of, a lot of prospect names on, on Israel, you got Matt Mervis. So Alan Trejo, who's really young, I know. So a lot of those guys are going to be really excited, exciting to watch that a lot of MLB fans just haven't had the chance to because they don't watch minor league games all the time. When it comes to, I guess, players that are trying to either make it back to MLB or are trying to make the leap over, there are a couple arms in Japan

that are actually Cuban that I am really, really intrigued by. There are three names and they are three of the best relievers in all of NPB, which is the second best league in the world. Consensus is kind of a quadruple A league. So you got guys that can play in MLB, maybe not be the best, but the stars in NPB will absolutely succeed or should succeed in MLB. So the three guys that everybody's talking about on Cuba's is Yariel Rodriguez, Rydell Martinez, and Levon Moinello. All bullpen guys all hover around a one ERA in NPB, all have over nine strikeouts per nine innings. Levon Moinello specifically, he has a, he has a 14.9 K per nine rate over the last like year or two.

So he is lights out. He's also pretty tall, but really scrawny. So if he gains any weight, I mean, he's, he already throws pretty hard. So that'd be really interesting. But I know that a couple of those guys are trying to make the jump over to MLB or at least have talked about it in the past. So you be really interesting to see those guys. And I think that that is actually one underrated aspect of Cuba's team

because they don't have many starting pitchers that are notable, but their bullpen is pretty incredible. Yeah. And in past WBCs, there are a lot of players who subsequently went on to some MLB stardom or renown, and they distinguished themselves in the WBC first, at least from a lot of American fans' perspective, whether it's UN assessmentists who's still in the tournament again, or Jose Abreu, or Roldis Chapman, or Hugh Darvish I've mentioned, or Daisuke Matsuzaka, or Tadaka, or Senga. I mean, there are so many, right? Kenley Jansen was a catcher in the WBC, I believe, before he ever made his Major League debut. I think that's right. So this guy is still playing and yes, they are. They're still in the WBC. Is there anyone in that category where it's like, oh, I forgot that guy. Oh, he's still hanging around. So he'll be on, he's on team Cuba and he will be starting for them,

whether it's in the outfield or DH that remains to be seen. I don't know how well he's running out there in the outfield at this point, but he is also on the same team. Alfredo Despagne, who is captain, he's been in MPB for a long time. One of the older players as well, but he'll probably DH on that Cuban team. Some MLB fans probably know him, but maybe not many. And then you got like another name that kind of pops out

that was probably the most surprising name when teams were announced and the rosters were all finalized a couple of weeks ago was Matt Harvey for Italy. I had no idea that he was Italian, that he came from Italian descent. So that was pretty funny. I got a big reaction on Twitter for sure. Yeah. I was going to ask a related question,

which is exactly that, that the guys who were on a roster that maybe most people would not have known that they had that heritage that they could qualify for. Is there anyone other than Harvey that stands out? It's like, I didn't know that. Didn't know he'd be eligible. Yeah. I think the most surprising one, because you look at his name and you have absolutely no idea that this is where his mother's family comes from, is Lars Neutbar. When he was added to Japan's team, or there was speculation that they were scouting him and wanting him to come join the team. Everybody just kind of laughed at it. It was like, he's not even Japanese. How is he going to play for them?

But then he was like, no, my mom is literally from Japan. My mom was born there and my whole mom's side of the family is Japanese. So through the WBC, he's getting to represent that side of his family. So that's pretty cool. Very similar scenario to Tommy Edmund, who's doing the same thing with, he's playing for Korea, his mom's Korean. And so he's going to be starting up the middle with Hassan Kim, which is a really fun double play combo up the middle for Korea. One last name that just came to mind was Vance Worley. He was born in California, but playing for

Great Britain. He has, I don't think he had ever really lived in Great Britain or had anyone that was from Great Britain in his family, but his mom is, was born in British Hong Kong back when Hong Kong was still under British rule. So technically he did qualify for British citizenship, which is the requirement. And Great Britain's manager, Drew Spencer is like a recruiting guru. He just finds anyone and everyone that is eligible for Great Britain and asks them to play. So he was a funny one. Yeah. I mean, even though Lars Nupar is playing for Team Japan, I mean, the names on the Kingdom of the Netherlands team are, I think, among my favorite in this tournament. I mean, of course, you have the

immortal Sicknar Flupstock, and you've got Chadwick Trump, and you've got Franklin Van Gerp, which is maybe the best of all of them. Yeah, just an incredibly strong roster from a name perspective. And also some big names who, if they weren't famous, you might think Xander Bogarts, what a name. But we're all used to that name now because he's great. Yeah, they have some fun names on that roster. And another player that wasn't expected that no one really knew until you realize, oh, wait, his last name does sound Dutch, was Pedro Stroop, who was born in Dominican. But he has Dutch lineage as well.

So his last name is very Dutch, Stroop. So he is on the designated pitcher pool. He may not play on the team. He might be subbed in later in the tournament, but that's a fun roster. They have a couple of pairs of brothers on that team too, don't they? They do. That was actually something I was going to point out as well. That was one of my favorite parts about this team as well. The Scope brothers, Jonathan and Charlene, you have the Palac who might qualify for multiple rosters, depending on the eligibility requirements, what is your sense of how those decisions end up getting made, both in terms of who the teams are trying to recruit and then how players go about deciding what country they're going to represent? Yeah, it really depends on the country, I think, because there's a different standard depending on what country you're trying to play for.

For example, Team USA, I don't think there was really any recruiting done until the WBC was officially announced last summer. And when Mark DeRosa was announced the manager, he started reaching out to some guys and then Mike Trout officially committed and then everybody flooded in after that. Like everybody wanted to play with Trout. So in that case, USA doesn't really, I guess, scout or recruit until like the coaching staff is actually finalized. Sure. Whereas on the other side of the spectrum is Japan or Korea, where they are playing international tournaments every year. They are playing together as a team, which is another reason why I think Japan is,

has a very good chance to win this because they're just so used to playing together. They play as a national team every year. So they, there is an expectation and a kind of a standard set lineup for them, even in years that is not the WBC. So yeah, for teams like that, it is years in advance that they're already preparing for the WBC. And then you have like some of the, the European teams, for example, kingdom of the Netherlands, great Britain, Italy, and, uh, Czech Republic, even like Israel, they all, I know they start a little bit earlier because a lot of those teams have some players that are American, Israeli or American and Dutch. So they kind of have to start that process earlier to make sure that they are, those players are eligible because that can

be kind of a pain to make sure that you have all that documentation and everything squared away. Must be fun to be Mark DeRosa and have to figure out a lineup that's like, should I lead off Mookie Betts or Trey Turner and then Mike Trout and Goldschmidt and Arnano and Kyle Tucker and Pete Alonso and Real Muto. I guess Jeff McNeil can maybe be batting ninth, just our weak spot in the lineup, Jeff McNeil. It's got to be fun.

You can't really make a mistake there. I guess if I have to have someone come off the bench in the eighth or ninth to pinch run, I'll have Bobby Witt Jr. come in. He's pretty fast. Sure. So we talked about the very top tier teams, but what teams stand out to you

as punching above their population size, let's say, or potential dark horses in the tournament? Yeah, I think there are a couple of teams that have really stuck out to me as, I guess, underrated or like you said, dark horses. I would say just teams that not as many people are talking about as I think should be talking about them. I'll put it that way. The teams that stick out to me are Mexico. Mexico has a very, very strong roster. I mentioned that I think that this

is their strongest national team they've ever had in the WBC. They have guys throughout their lineup. Their entire lineup is MLB players, which is something that they could not say in the past. Not that that is the only way to succeed in the WBC, but it does show that they are gaining a lot of talent. So with Mexico, you got guys like Randy Rosarena, Joey Meneses, who just broke out last year. You have Austin Barnes, which is another name that people didn't really realize was Mexican on his mom's side. You have Alan Trejo. You have Rowdy Tejas. So a lot of guys that are very reliable can really hit, got some pop in the lineup.

But the thing that differentiates them for me is their pitching. Pitching, as we've talked about, is the hardest to get in the WBC. A lot of teams are very hesitant to allow, a lot of MLB clubs are hesitant to allow their players to play in the WBC and players don't want to mess up with their preseason pitching ramp up. So the fact that they have a rotation of Julio Urias, Patrick Sandoval, Jose Arquide and Taiwan Walker, that is one of the best rotations in the WBC, I would say. And they have a couple of solid bullpen arms as well with Gallegos, Giovanni Gallegos closing. So really like that team.

I think that they're in a good pool to make it out as well with team usa i think they are a tier above the rest of those teams in pool c another team that i don't know if i would say they're underrated because people rate them highly i just don't think people rate them highly enough is venezuela i think that they are just right behind the top tier, those top three teams. They are, throughout the entire lineup, they have contact, contact, contact. They got Andres Jimenez, Jose Altuve, Luis Urias,

Anthony Santander. And then at the top of the lineup, you got Ronald Acuna Jr., one of the best players in all of baseball, but especially the WBC. And then behind the plate, Salvador Perez, third base Eugenio Suarez, David Peralta. So it is all guys that can flat out hit. Miguel Cabrera, this will be kind of his send-off since he's retiring after this year. This will be his last time being able to put on the Venezuela jersey. So that'll be really exciting to see.

But their pitching also is very, very strong with guys like Pablo Lopez, Ranger Suarez, Martin Perez, Jesus Lizardo. So they're, they're looking really, really good. They don't have quite the bullpen of those top tier teams, but they have enough starters to where they're planning on kind of piggybacking them. So for example, like Pablo Lopez, and then bring in a Jesus Lizardo in the second half of the game. So I really like their strategy and I think that they will, uh, they'll have a lot of success. You mentioned that, you know, there's always going to be some amount of resistance to pitchers participating when, you know, they might otherwise be deployed carefully in a manicured way by their big league club. But do you see there being anything that might be able to sort of shift

the balance there, at least for team USA and for international players who play in Major League Baseball? Because it really is a bummer to not see the best guys there just because their big league club is resistant. Yeah, it is a huge bummer. And that is probably the biggest talking point that has been unresolved for the last couple of WBCs. I think, honestly, I think that this WBC is going to change some of it. I don't think it'll fix anything, but the fact that we have NL Cy Young winner, Sandy Alcantara playing, you have Christian Javier, no hitter in the world series. Like you have some of the top pitchers that are actually playing. They're not

on team USA. And like I mentioned, a lot of those Venezuela guys, Pablo Lopez, Martin Perez, Jesus Lozada, Render Suarez. So all of the Japanese guys, Otani's going to be pitching. Like they're going to see these top tier guys that are actually willing to pitch. I think maybe if that happens long enough and USA is the only one that's not, I feel like at some point, maybe we won't have the DeGroms and the Scherzers and the Verlanders, the veterans that don't want to get hurt. But you may have some of the younger guys like Shane McClanahan or I don't know, some of the younger US guys that may actually want to play.

For example, like Tyler Glasnow said he wanted to play. He really badly wanted to join the team, but of course he can't right now. He's hurt. Right. So yeah, I think that, I think that there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. I think that honestly, it comes down to a fundamental, just U.S. fans, myself included, I did not grow up with international baseball unless you sought it out. I grew up in Texas, played baseball in Texas all my life in a baseball bubble. So I didn't even realize that Japan and Korea and the Dominicans and the Cubans were all really, really good at baseball until I started looking into it. So there's just international baseball, I think is still a very new concept

for US based fans. And the more that we have the WBC and maybe even like some exhibition games in the years between, if that's possible, we have the Mexico series. We have the London series and a couple of like East Asian games that we ever. So like every once in a while, go play the more often that we, they,

these like fans can see these players play for their national teams on the field, the better, or at least play in other countries, because I think they'll just get more used to the idea of international baseball, that it is something that's important to grow our game and is something that is very entertaining and exciting and fun to watch. So I think that that's kind of the biggest reason for it. Yeah, the WBC is great. I think that that's kind of the biggest reason for it. Yeah, the WBC is great. Do you think that there is any other format or timing that could potentially work even better? Or given the constraints of the MLB season and all of the other international major leagues, all the other players' obligations, is this the best possible time? Because sometimes you'll hear, oh, they should do it after the season or everyone should take a break in mid-season at the All-Star break and they could play a little tournament there. But is this the most workable

method of just working within the constraints and getting the best tournament that you can? Yeah, it's hard. There is no perfect time. There is never going to be a time that an MLB owner is going to be okay with their hundred million dollar asset going to play for a team that they're not connected to at all, or even giving them insurance to be able to play. So I think probably the best option is spring training just because like mid season. I mean, I really liked the idea of playing like an extended all-star break and just doing the WBC there every four years instead of the all-star game, or I guess adjacent to the all-star game. But I just have a hard time thinking that any MLB teams are going to be

willing to in July, halfway through the season, be able to give up their, their top players. And same with winter ball, or I guess after the season, a lot of players do go play winter ball. So I think that could work, but a lot, especially like teams that go deep in October, I have a hard time thinking that they're going to extend their season even longer after that. So this is the time that everyone's fresh.

And even though that the scare is injury, I mean, we see guys get injured. We've seen plenty of guys get injured in spring training already. So it's not necessarily a WBC thing. Just to whet our appetites for what's to come in the next couple of weeks. Can we rewind briefly? Can you give us maybe some highlights from previous tournaments? I don't know if you have a top five all time WBC moments, but if you were to show someone a highlight reel of the best of the WBC so far, what moments would stand out to you? Yeah, there are some big moments. And I mentioned that I didn't get to watch the WBC until 2017.

This is the fifth edition of the WBC, so I didn't get to watch 06, 09, or 13. But I've been able to rewatch a lot of those games and just kind of read up on the tournament from its previous editions. a lot of those games and just kind of read up on the tournament from its previous editions. A couple of the highlights that I think people should know going into this WBC is one, Sharon Martis. He is the only pitcher. He is the pitcher, a pitcher on Kingdom of the Netherlands. He is, I think, I don't know, like 38 at this point. He's, he's up there, but he, in 20, in 2006, he was 18 years old and he is the only pitcher to throw a no hitter in the WBC. So that one was super cool getting to go back and rewatch because at 18 years old, he was actually down to his last pitch because there's pitch limits in the WBC. He was down to his 65th pitch, which is the limit for

the first round at the time. And he was able to, he had one out, but a guy on first base was able to get a ground out double play to end the game. It was a seven inning no hitter, which I know is a little bit controversial, whether that's considered a no hitter or not. But they got run ruled. So the game ended, the other team. So that was kind of one of the top moments I can think of. Another one, I mean, honestly, Team USA's win in 2017 was a massive moment for international baseball, because it was the moment that everybody realized, both in the US and outside of the US,

that the US is starting to take this seriously. It was kind of frowned upon, the WBC was in the US in previous editions because it just seemed like an exhibition that was a waste of time during spring training. But when we got a lot of the top guys to be able to go and play and then play their heart out, even Mike Trout came out and said that he regretted not playing in 2017 because he just thought it would be the good option for him in his MLB season. But he came out and was like, I wish I was on that team. So that was a massive win for baseball, honestly.

But I think the biggest moment that I know we keep talking about Japan, but they're one of my favorite teams is the 2009 WBC final between Korea and Japan. And for those that don't know, Korea versus Japan is a probably the most heated rivalry or at least deep rooted rivalry in international baseball. It's the closest thing we can get to like one of those soccer rivalries, like Brazil, Argentina. So they have a very long, hard political past and a lot of issues that has caused some divides and some tension between the countries. And so that's carries over onto the baseball field a lot of the time. But in 2009, they played each other in the two in the WBC final.

And it was probably the best game ever in WBC history. It went to 10 innings. You had multiple home runs on each side, back and forth. You had you Darvish who blew the save in the ninth inning, but then came back and got the win in the 10th after Ichiro hit the game winning hit in extra innings. I think he went four for four that game. So seeing him, the captain of Japan, finally like really do what Ichiro is supposed to do was really cool.

And then just on top of that, it was, I believe in Dodger Stadium and it was just full of like 55,000 Korean and Japanese fans. Like it was almost predominantly Korean and Japanese fans. So getting to rewatch that game was awesome. All right. Well, you've gotten us hyped and hopefully everyone else. So now that the tournament is underway, can you tell everyone just how to follow it other than following you, which we recommend, but just in terms of how and when

to watch it, what time are the games? So where can people find the games? What other resources, if any, should people avail themselves of until this thing is done? Yeah. So this WBC is, I mean, it's more popular than the previous ones. And so the previous ones were exclusively on MLB network. I believe this one is going to be on Fox has exclusive rights in the U S for streaming and broadcasting. So you got Fox FS one FS two, and I believe to be is the fourth channel that it will be on. So you can go to, if you just go to MLB's website or just Google WBC or world baseball classic, it'll be the first link. You can go and look at the schedule. The US games are all going to be primetime,

mostly on FS1 and FS2, some on Fox. The East Asian games in Taiwan and Japan are going to be in the middle of the night. So definitely try to watch some of them. I'm not going to be able to watch all of them, but if you can watch one, go watch the Japan-Korea game. That is going to be electric. All right. A lot to be able to watch all of them, but if you can watch one, go watch the Japan-Korea game. That is going to be electric. All right.

A lot to be excited about. I will link to everything Sean has done, his power rankings, his infographics on all 20 rosters, which is really helpful. And I'm sure you were updating up until the last second as some players, unfortunately, dropped out. Oh, I was. Even until this morning. Yeah. So follow him on Twitter at Sean underscore Spratling.

And you can also hear his WBC Central podcast, which we will link to. That's on the Baseball Isn't Boring feed. He has a YouTube channel as well. You can find it all in the show notes. And we look forward to following this thing with you over the next couple of weeks. It's going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, this is going to be a blast. Thank you so much, Ben and Meg.

This is awesome. I was really excited to come on and just talk about the WBC. So if y'all ever have any questions or need anything, feel free to reach out. All right. Just Ben here to end with the past blast, which comes to us from 1978 and from David Lewis, an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. And here's the pass pass David has for us today. Baseball is truly a numbers game. In 1978, two Nashville teachers tried to use baseball as a way to boost student interest in mathematics. To do so, they created a game simply titled Math Baseball. Has a real ring to it.

As reported by the Associated Press, the instructional board game is played by answering a variety of simple math problems, which, depending on their difficulty, translate into hits ranging from a single to a home run. Hall of Famer Monty Irvin was a proponent of the game, working with its creators and the St. Regis Paper Company to bring the game to market. Irvin was quoted as saying, Regis Paper Company to bring the game to market. Irvin was quoted as saying, As a parent myself, I know how frustrating it can be to have a youngster spend hours watching televised sports when he should be doing his homework. Instead of fighting it with a little imagination, a parent can turn this television time into an opportunity to practice math. It is unclear, David says, how many future sabermetricians the game inspired,

but perhaps we can in part thank math baseball for the sport's welcoming of analytics. David says, I'm not sure if this game was ever fully brought to the market. I poked around eBay to see if I could find a copy, but was unable to find anything definitive. There definitely have been several similar games under different names, though. I will resist the temptation to do a deep dive to try to track down the makers of math baseball. But this pass blast sounds like a real stat blast. As the lead of this APP says, parents and teachers never cease to be amazed at how a youngster who can't remember the

multiplication table manages to instantly compute his favorite pitcher's earned run average or how the student who goes blank on state capitals can recite every city that has a baseball, football, or basketball team. Math baseball. Use flashcards instead of balls and bats. The piece also says, have your youngster. It says youngster so many times. And of course, the youngster is gendered as he his.

Have your youngster pick his favorite baseball pitcher and calculate his earned run average at the end of each game. If your child is more interested in Reggie Jackson than Tom Seaver, change that calculation to batting average. These calculations can be checked at the end of every week in the local newspaper. Wild is more interested in Reggie Jackson than Tom Seaver, change that calculation to batting average. These calculations can be checked at the end of every week in the local newspaper. How else would one check them? All right. In addition to signing up for Sam Miller's Substack, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon, as have the following five listeners who've gone to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signed up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Derek E. Swanson,

Antonio Gonzalez, Chris Petruzzi, Andrew, and Dylan Harper. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group. You're probably sick of hearing me say that we're almost at 1,000 members. Well, now I don't have to say it anymore because we are at 1,000 members. You're going to want to have to say it anymore because we are at 1,000 members. You're going to want to be there now that the WBC is in full swing and opening day is approaching. If you want to hang out in a virtual,

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and other goodies live streams and other goodies and merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships and much, much more at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can contact us through the Patreon site. If not, you can still email us at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectivelywild.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of this week. We will be previewing the Houston Astros and the Pittsburgh Pirates. So we will talk to you then.