Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1994: Down Goes Dinger

Episode Date: April 15, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about an NPB matchup between Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, those aces’ current talent levels and MLB futures, how velocity has climbed in NPB compared to MLB, and how stealing bases seems to be the one thing Shohei Ohtani (and, for that matter, Mike Trout) can’t do. Then (18:52) […]

Baseball is a simulation, it's all just one big math equation You're all about the stats we've compiled, cause you listen to Perfectively Wild With Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley, come for the ball, banter's free For the ball, banter's free. Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big conversation. Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 1994 of Effectively Wild,

a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Even I was not able to wake up early enough to see it, but I think this morning, Friday morning, in our time zones, may have brought the best pitching matchup of the season because in Japan, of the season because in Japan, Yoshinobu Yamamoto faced Roki Sasaki for the first time. Oh, boy. The best two pitchers in Japan, the WBC teammates, they faced off and the ultimate NPB pitchers duel totally delivered. They were both awesome. I can't believe I didn't see this, but it was very early where I was and even earlier or later where you were.

And I was up late and I hadn't slept a lot the last couple of days and I just couldn't do it. But I have watched some highlights and I'll link to them and I'd encourage everyone to check it out because, gosh, what a game and what a couple of pitchers. So it was the Chipolete Marines versus the Oryx Buffaloes, who are the reigning champions of NPV. And the final lines here, Sasaki, who's 21, went seven innings. He gave up one hit, no runs, two walks, 11 strikeouts. Yamamoto, who is the veteran of 24, he went six innings, five hits, one run, one walk, and nine strikeouts. It ended up being a two nothing win. And both guys were just really

great. And they were hyped to face each other and people were hyped to face them. And Sasaki, I think, didn't allow a basener until the sixth. So he's just otherworldly, as anyone who watched him in the WBC knows. Those two guys, you don't even have to caveat best international pitchers or best under-25 pitchers or best non-MLB pitchers, whatever caveat. You don't even have to include a caveat. Those two guys, I don't know where I would rank them. Just if I had to win one game today or I had to say, who are the best pitchers in the world? How many MLB guys would rank ahead of those two? Not many, just really not many. I mean, I don't know. Like Sasaki, he might be on my top 10 list. I mean, they might both be. If you did the translations and the projections, they'd both be pretty impressive. And we could see Yamamoto in MLB as soon as next season, and Sasaki, it might be a few more years. But boy, I can't wait till a time when I wouldn't have to wake up extremely early in the morning to watch them live.

Yeah, I think that it is a really special thing to have this anticipation building. And also, if the opportunity presents itself for folks to just see them as they're playing now, I don't know if you're going to be disappointed by that. Yeah, because with pitchers, I feel like it's even easier to project how they would translate. Not always, obviously. There are some guys who have been a bit disappointing after coming over from Japan, but you can see the stuff. will translate, especially in the past when you didn't have certain kinds of data, you know, they weren't facing as much great pitching or the same sort of pitching that they would be facing in MLB. And so you could have some questions about will the power translate and will the approach translate? Whereas if you're throwing like 102 constantly, it's like that will play in any league, you know, that's not really dependent on being in one league or another. Like, that's just your stuff.

Obviously, hitters will handle this stuff differently depending on where you are. But those guys are just so nasty that there's not really a lot of doubt about, like, will this work in MLB? Yeah, yeah, it will. Well, and I feel like, you know, even beyond just having greater confidence in the tools we have to do those translations on the hitter side, like, I think that we're just getting a better and better idea of it across the board, but you're right that, you know, it's, it's just a lot easier with pitchers because that's what he does. You know, that's, that's what he has to offer. And gosh, with these two, what they have to offer seems like it's really special.

Yes. I will look up the average velocity and NPB as we are speaking here and give you an update on how that has changed. But it's also nice when a pitcher's duel on paper delivers like that. Because sometimes you get... Sometimes it doesn't. Yeah, what should be a great pitcher's duel, and then it's a little deflating.

Yeah, it's like, eh, that was okay. Yeah. This one, man. I mean, I guess they could have gone even deeper into the games, but really, like Sasaki, you know, he threw 105 pitches, seven complete innings, and obviously they handle him carefully. Sure. And I think Yamamoto threw 101 pitches in six innings. Anyway, just didn't disappoint.

Wish I had been awake to witness it live, but encourage everyone just to check out the highlights because just a lot of pretty pitches thrown by those guys. Also, while we're on the subject of Japanese players, one we talk about even more often, Shohei Otani. There was one thing that I wanted to mention about him, yet another WBC teammate of Sasaki and Yamamoto. There is one thing I think that Otani can't do or has at least conceded that he's not going to try to do anymore, and that is steal bases. So he's never really been that successful at it in the majors. Obviously, he's extremely fast. He's had elite sprint speeds. He's had the fastest time to first base. But even when he maxed out at 26 steals in 2021, he led the majors with 10 times caught stealing that year. So just total, he's stolen 66 bases and he's gotten caught 27 times. So that's not great, really. That's a success rate of 71%, basically.

And lately, like last season, he stole 11 bases. He got caught nine times. It's not so good. Not the best, no. It's odd because he's fast and you think that there's nothing he can't do. So is it just that he maybe doesn't have the greatest base running or base stealing instincts? Or does it have something to do with wanting to hold himself back a little bit and pace himself? I don't know. But he has ceased to try to steal bases,

which is interesting. He hasn't stolen a base since July 26th of last season. He was caught a couple times after that last year. He has not even attempted a steal this year, even with the ease of stealing in 2023 with the new rules. He still hasn't even tried it. From July 27th through Thursday, there are 132 hitters who qualify on the FanCrafts leaderboard. So what, 3.1 plate appearances per game. Of those 132, there are 29 who have not stolen a base. So it's already a distinct minority that has not stolen a base in that time.

that has not stolen a base in that time. And the only other guy besides Otani who has not stolen a base and has had above-average sprint speeds this season and last season is Austin Riley, who you don't think of as a speedster. No, I don't. He's a bit above average in sprint speed, but he's not like Otani fast. No, definitely not. And he's the only guy who even has above average sprint speeds. There's just like a lot of catchers in that list.

And like, you know, it's like your Carlos Santana's and your Alejandro Kirk's and your Jose Abreu's, like those kinds of guys. And then Shohei Otani, who just like sticks out, just a total outlier in not stealing a base, not even attempting to steal a base this season. So I'm not saying it's bad that he doesn't do it. I think probably he has decided that maybe it's just not worth it for him to do.

Yeah, on balance. But it is jarring, I guess, to see something that he either can't do or he has conceded that it's better for him not to do. Because generally, I think of him as someone who can do anything he's satisfied to. Well, Ben, what if I'm going to propose a two-part explanation to this alternative explanation? I think it will horrify you, this alternative explanation. Because what if Ohtani listens to our podcast and then like, sir, you've been exposed. And I imagine he is a little concerned.

And he heard our email question about sort of the unhittable pitch. And he got to thinking about like fairness, you know, and he's like, I gotta, I gotta give something up because otherwise it's too much, you know, it's, it's just, I'm just too good. And it's going to make people feel badly about themselves. Um, because not only am I so good, but I'm also so handsome, you know? And so, um, and I seem to have at least from a distance, again, as we've established, we don't know these guys, but I, I appear to have a sparkling and delightful personality. So, I'm incredibly talented, I'm deeply handsome, and I'm also a nice guy. his own durability and a comment on his desire to prioritize certain aspects of his game over others has turned into an act of kindness for his fellows who are

just almost by definition, less talented, certainly often, not always, but often less handsome. And, you know, some of them suck in terms of who they are as people.

And he doesn't want to say that to them because he doesn't suck, you know some of them suck in terms of who they are as people and he doesn't want to say say that to them because he doesn't suck you know um or at least he seemingly doesn't suck again we have to leave open the possibility that you know guys will surprise us to the downside but so far we don't have evidence of that so maybe in addition to not wanting to hang out with you because he is a little concerned about the depth of your affection for him. He's just trying to be a nice guy. What about that? That could be, yeah.

It would be in character for him to be a nice guy. As far as we know. Yes. But I wonder whether it, I mean, I think it probably makes sense for him if there's any area where he's going to take his foot off the gas. Right. Literally. Yeah, I guess this would be one, right?

I mean, whatever it takes to stay in the lineup and stay on the mountains, like losing stolen bases and stolen bases attempt. It's a small sacrifice, at least when it comes to the total entertainment value that he provides. small sacrifice, at least when it comes to the total entertainment value that he provides. It's a small loss just because it takes away one dimension of the fun Otani facts that you can conjure. So in the past, it would be like, you know, he's the first guy with X homers and X strikeouts as a pitcher or pitcher wins or whatever, and 10 steals or 20 steals or 15. You know, it was like a genre where he does this and he does that. You know, he hits a lot of homers and also he's fast. And also he strikes out a lot of batters as a pitcher and he wins a lot of games.

It was just another dimension that you could bring to him. Whereas now, I guess that has kind of gone away. Like I've joked before, I think about the genre of Otani stat that always includes a by the way at the end. In fact, I saw one courtesy of the great Sarah Langs at MLB.com today. Usually I hear it on Angel's broadcasts, but this stat with seven scoreless innings and one hit allowed on Tuesday, Shohei Otani has now gone at least five innings and allowed fewer than four hits in each of his past seven outings. That's tied with Johan Santana in 2004 for the second most consecutive such outing since at least 1901. The only longer

streak was engineered by Jacob deGrom in 2021 at eight. By the way, he's hitting 304 in 101 plate appearances in that span. So that's the setup for so many Otari stats. You deliver the pitching stat or the hitting stat, and then you hit them with the, by the way. It's always like, you know, he's gotten seven innings and hasn't allowed a run, and he's struck out 11 today. By the way, he's batting third, and he had two hits, you know? It's always the by the way. So

you used to be able to do the by the way with stolen bases as well. By the way, he's got 20 steals or whatever. And now I guess you can't quite do that. So I like watching him run and show off his speed. So I guess semi-disappointing that he doesn't do it in that way anymore, but discretion is the better part of valor. I want him to stay healthy and available. So if steals is the way that he can do that, I'd like it to be more about that than him deciding that he actually can't do it. I wouldn't want to think that he has decided that he can't do something, that he has placed a limit on himself. So if it's more just about being a bit conservative when it comes to health and conserving energy, then that's just fine. Well, and, you know, it's not as if there isn't opportunity for his speed to still aid his value, right?

You know, he might not be stealing bases. And given his success rate like again like you said good choice but you know his speed helps with you know turning what might be singles into doubles and double play avoidance and all kinds of stuff so like he can still demonstrate his his speedy worth uh it'll just come in a slightly different and potentially less exciting form. Or, or Ben, this is all a long con and he is saving a stolen base attempt for just the right moment. He's lulling them into a false sense of security. That might be a preferable outcome for you because then you don't have to grapple with the idea of him having listened to you

talk about it. So that's another alternative for you. If he does listen, I hope he can glean whatever is not as embarrassing for me and forget about the rest of it. But I think this is to some extent an organizational decision because the Angels just don't steal a lot as a team. Sam Blum just wrote about this. And Phil Nevin, the manager of the Angels, he, this article says, makes all the stolen base decisions about whether to go or whether not to go.

So I don't know if he has exerted his will here on slowing down Otani, but Nevin said, we're not really constructed to steal bases and move guys over. We will do that. We'll play winning baseball, but we'd like to hit them in the seats. Interesting that winning baseball there is constructed as stealing bases and moving guys over.

Like, that's winning baseball. We will do that, but also we'd like to hit them in the seats. I mean, if you do that instead, it's because you think you're more likely to win baseball games doing that. Anyway, he said, if we need to manufacture and steal a base here or there, we certainly will. But the times that we'll call for it are probably less than other teams. And another Sam, Sam Miller, just wrote about this in the context of Mike Trout. Because Mike Trout is very similar in that he no longer steals bases. And we used to have great Mike Trout fun facts. And he led the majors in steals in his

first full season. And even after that, he stole 30 bases a couple times and 20 a couple other times. He isn't still bases at all anymore. 2020, he stole one. 2021, he stole two. Last year, he stole one. This year, he has not even attempted one. He barely ever goes. And again, like he was actually pretty successful is the thing. Unlike Otani, Trout was a good base dealer, a good percentage base dealer. So it's not like he was getting caught a ton and he decided not to do it. However, he did get hurt stealing and sliding once. So that was part of it.

It caused him to be unavailable for a while. And as Sam ran through, he's talked at various times about just not being that confident in his reads and his leads. And he's just backed off. And, you know, he has a bunch of injuries that he's kind of managing and has managed. And so he has also decided,

you know what, if I can stay in the lineup and I can crush dingers, then that will be better for everyone. And it is. But it is also still fun to see him run because, as Sam pointed out, it's not because he's lost a step. He really hasn't. Like, Mike Trout's sprint speed, which we don't have going back to his very first couple seasons, so it's possible that he had even more elite sprint speed then, but he has defied the sprint speed aging curve. He's like basically sprinting as fast as he did in his

early to mid twenties when we have that data for the first time. It's just that he isn't still anymore. So I don't know, maybe he talked to Otani and said, Hey Shohei, I have kind of cut this out of my game and it's helped me stay on the field, although it hasn't always. But perhaps they have discussed this and they have mutually reached the same decision that we're just too valuable in other ways to potentially take ourselves off the field by trying to add a base at a time. And see, this is evidence that they can come together rather than being pulled apart by their WBC competition, right? Of course. Yes, exactly. All right.

So we've got some more emails, as promised last time, and I've got some stat blasting to do and, of course, the pass blast. But we can just get to some emails. We had a few follow-ups from our conversation last time. So, first of all, the past blast. But we can just get to some emails. We had a few follow-ups from our conversation last time. So first of all, very important correction. Critical, in fact. James wrote in to say, how can you not be pedantic about Tom Hanks?

Ben referred to Wilson in Castaway as a soccer ball. In fact, Wilson is a volleyball. I stand corrected. This is an important point. Thank you very much, James. We regret the error. We're going to think long and hard about our process, candidly. Also, last time we talked about urban settings where one could play a baseball game other than a ballpark, a non-ballpark urban setting.

And one of the ones I mentioned was just like at the top of a tall building. And some people in our Discord group were talking about this. There is a building, the fourth highest hotel in the world, I guess it is, the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, that is very tall. And also has, I guess it's like a helicopter platform, but it gets repurposed for other things, including a tennis match. So in 2005, Roger Federer and Andre Agassi were in Dubai for a tournament and they turned this helipad into a tennis court and those guys played there. And they've also used it for other stunts like, I't know racing and they landed a plane on there i i just i sent you a picture because now that i've seen this i am recanting and i no longer know no look at this no not at all right no this doesn't look real it doesn't look real which i guess is why they did it it's kind of a cool visual, but... Is this the building that Tom Cruise

jumped down or climbed up or did something on in one of the Mission Impossible movies? That was the Burj Khalifa, I think. The even bigger one. I don't think they played tennis at the top of that one. That was a tiny platform.

But this one, this does not look safe. Is this real, Ben? Are we being had? I mean, I'd say I have a minor phobia of heights. I'm not paralyzed by heights, but, you know, I get the butterflies and maybe prefer not to be in this sort of situation. How did they not have more netting than this? I know. There's one photo where you can see, like, I think maybe they may have hit a ball off, which of course they did. But there's one where you can see like Federer's peering over the edge

and Agassi's on his stomach, like looking over the edge. Like this, there's a sort of, there's not even a fence. There's like a, what would you even call it surrounding this platform? There's not even a fence. What would you even call it surrounding this platform? There's just a little extension to the platform. It looks very much like Star Wars Empire, just unsafe. the tractor beam and you can just plummet down there and there's no guardrail or anything and darth vader can just throw palpatine into the reactor core and there's nothing this is what that looks like there's just there's no vertical barrier really so this is terrifying so in some sense this confirms what i was saying because it's like i guess it would be kind of cool to see players play in this sort of alien setting, but also not without more protection because I would just be fearing that they would fall off. I don't like looking up at the upper deck at major league parks for fear that someone's going to fall over the edge. Yeah, sometimes you're up in the nosebleeds depending on the park and there's a a steepness an angle that i'm like oh i gotta hold on yeah i i don't care for this at all no thank you no no no no no no no all right another follow-up from hayden who says i was

listening to episode 1993 this morning and can't help but ponder a few variations to the unhittable pitch question. So this was a question we answered about a pitcher who has an unhittable pitch but can only use it once a game or once or twice or something. Has to pick his spots. And we were talking about just when would you use it and could you save it up and have them roll over if you didn't use it? So Hayden says, what if you don't know which pitch it is? You all discussed it as if it would be readily apparent to everyone when said unhittable pitch, UHP, was thrown. But what if it's just a superpower? The pitcher thinks this is the one and the batter just swings and misses.

How would the uncertainty on whether or not the uhp had even been thrown alter the game teams know he can throw uhps just not if they have been thrown so yeah that's i didn't really think of that i was thinking everyone would know okay that was it that was the unhittable pitch but unless the pitch itself i assumed that it's unhittable because it has some different kind of characteristic to it like he throws it harder it moves more or whatever like there's some some reason why it's unhittable but if it just is unhittable because it is but you can't actually distinguish it from anything else then it's it's camouflaged it's disguised you would actually not know when it had been used you couldn't distinguish it from any other swing and miss. I don't know that it would necessarily alter my answer about like it's intrinsic value. Like it

would be valuable, but still only be the one. Like there are pitches that pitchers throw that you look at and you feel like it's unhittable, even if it isn't really actually literally unhittable. So it's not like actually literally unhittable so it's not like you know even a league average guy is going to throw some nasty pitches every now and again right so i don't know that it would alter my my answer of how valuable sort of in a vacuum on a per pitch basis it would be since you only get the one but it would be useful And I guess that if you are able to determine, I mean, it doesn't really change how valuable it is to you strategically, right? No, yeah. Because you still get to deploy it whenever you want, even though it's only the one time, unless you're using your rollover pitches, which remember, there might be some value in conservation here, right?

And then it's still unhittable. pitches which remember like there might be some value in conservation here right and then um you know it's still unhittable and so if you are in a moment where you're like i really need strike three you can still go bap and there's your unhittable pitch uh and that's still useful to you but i don't think it really like changes anything all that much but it would be like you would feel um like you had such a fun little secret so like that part might be really nice like you might be like oh here i am with my fun little secret. So like that part might be really nice. Like you might be like, oh, here I am with my fun little secret. I'm doing like fun secret hands. Hayden also said, alternatively, what if only the batter and the pitcher know?

So say there was a player, let's call him Bavier Hayes, who swings and misses badly at a pitch. Would he go back to the dugout and say, man, he really got me with that unhid a ball? And his team would think, sure, Bobby, sure he did. So that's true. I guess also Hayden says, lastly, in tandem with the idea that it would be possible to bank these pitches, how valuable would this player be at the deadline? Teams would call around and be like, I think he's only thrown six this season, 13 banked ones. His own team would have pitching ninja style analysis to show how it wasn't the unhittable pitch he threw, but instead some other gnarly pitch no one would know. So, yeah, I guess that changes that calculus if we can't calculate how many he has left in the tank. Yeah.

Although, as we have seen deadline after deadline, you know, sometimes what you need is a league average starter. sometimes what you need is a league average starter. So it's not that he wouldn't have any value. He just wouldn't be like as pawn offable as you might expect, given that he has literally unhittable pitch. And another follow-up and related question here from Andrew, who's writing in in response to the pass blast in episode 1993 about attack points. Andrew said, it reminded me of something my girlfriend has championed as a potential improvement to the rules of baseball. While she's not a huge sports fan, we occasionally play the baseball mini game

in Mario Party Superstars discussed in a previous episode, and we've been to a few Mariners games together. She is often frustrated by the lack of rewards for good hitting. If a team is able to load the bases, but the Marine layer turns a would-be Grand Slam into a warning track flyout, should they really walk away with nothing to show for it? As a solution, she has proposed that teams be awarded partial credit for progress around the bases. Something like a quarter of a run for safely reaching first base, half a run for safely reaching second,

three quarters of a run for reaching third, and of course, one run for reaching home plate. That way, in the scenario above, a team would score one and a half runs by loading the bases, still fewer than a Grand Slam, which would score four runs, but more than zero. Do you think this would make baseball more appealing to a wider range of potential fans? How would this affect strategy? Very interested to hear your thoughts. strategy very interested to hear your thoughts sure i mean i think that it would change it in so far as it creates like the appearance of there being more action but i think that like what do i think about this what an interesting question it is i think the tension might be a bit reduced because it's true. You would be credited for putting base runners on and advancing them. And that would perhaps give you a fairer reflection of the true talent of the teams. I wonder, I guess, maybe it would, right? Because if you're a better team, you're more likely to put more runners on base. You're more likely to score too, obviously. But I wonder if there'd be just a little less random fluctuation because you're not depending quite as much on getting that hit with runners in scoring position and getting

that clutch hit, which can be kind of fluky and random and unpredictable. Whereas if you're a good team, you're going to be getting runners on more regularly. And if you're a bad team, you're going to be allowing a lot of traffic on the bases. So if you are getting partial credit incremental runs for each base advance, I think maybe it would lead to fewer upsets and less randomness and maybe true talent

being better reflected in the standings, which might be a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know. You could go either way on that. But also, I think there'd be a little less catharsis and payoff and excitement just stemming from any one play because actually cashing in those runners and plating them wouldn't be that big a deal because you've already scored three quarters of a run just by getting the third base, right? So getting all the way to home, it's like, you know, that's no more exciting than getting to first. I mean, I guess you could have a different arrangement where it is not the same value for each base, but it could be like increasing value as you get to additional

bases, although that would get complicated from a scoring perspective. And you'd have all sorts of weird fractional runs, decimal points. And I was about to say like part of what is so, I think one of the things that is kind of appealing about baseball in a way that it's there's like a there's like a simplicity and a cleanness to the scoring that i think is is really lovely you know we're not messing around with fractional this and that and you know yeah i think the big thing for me is just that you know like when you have a runner in scoring position you're on the edge of your seat because it's like all right we to get that guy in or else we get nothing. Yeah, does he get to come home? Yeah, it's like an all or nothing sort of situation.

Either you get a run or you don't get a run. Right. And I guess, you know, that's what Andrew's girlfriend is objecting to. Like she doesn't want it to be all or nothing. She thinks you should get some credit for getting halfway there, which I understand. Like that's an understandable perspective, too. But I think just from a suspense and tension perspective, it's better to have the risk

of getting nothing, and then you're excited when you get something. Well, and I think that it strikes a nice balance between individual and team achievement, right? Because it's not that no one gets credit right like the hitter gets credit if he hits a double and is standing on second base now you know he doesn't get credited with uh having scored a run unless he does but he gets credit and we're like yay he's so good because he hit a double. And then like, if his team doesn't bring him home, then we go, well, he's really good, but the team still has work to do. And it's like a nice, it's, I think that's a nice distribution of credit.

I think we don't, I don't think we struggle with credit on the individual level. And if we, if we did, I don't know, maybe some people do, because there are people who are still like, Jose Ramirez is underrated. Do we think? Wait, that's a whole separate conversation, which we don't need to have right now. But we keep saying, you know, and he's still underrated. And I'm like, is he? Is he still underrated?

He's excellent. I don't mean it in like a he's overrated. I'm just less interested in over and underrated discourse, I think, than a lot of people is maybe the actual takeaway here. But all of that to say, we have a mechanism for credit. It's just what entity is receiving credit, right? And we have this rule that you don't get credits for rounds unless you score them. But those stats still count for the hitter

who gets stranded at third, right? It's not like we take those away. That would be very rude if we were like, your achievement means nothing because your teammates are bums. That would be terrible. But it still counts in the individual player stats in a way that I think is a good distribution of stuff. I do have an update here on NPV average velocity.

I think this supports what you were saying. So I'm going by delta graphs here. And according to delta graphs this season in NPV, the average velocity, they do it by league. I don't think I can look up combined, but in the Pacific League, it's 146.9 kilometers per hour. In the Central League, it's 145.8. So if you do the conversion, that is about 91.3 in the Pacific League and 90.6.

So it's still lagging behind MLB, which is 94. This year we have cracked the 94 barrier. Oh, boy. Which is ridiculous. Here we are worried about unhittable pitches as if that's what's going to do hitters in. Yeah, as if that's a hypothetical. That's the reality. 94, it's just the league as a whole is sitting 94, people.

We are the boiling frogs, except that we are well aware that this is happening. That's not like a real thing though, right? No, I don't think it is. They hop out. They're not. They do hop out. Yeah, they're not like a real thing though, right? No, I don't think it is. They hop out. They're smart enough. They do hop out. Yeah, they're not dumb. I imagine their skin is very sensitive, in fact.

Yeah, you'd think. We have not hopped out of this particular pot though. And if you thought, oh, well, the pitch clock, that'll slow down velocity. They won't have as much time between pitches. Nope. It has increased again, seemingly. And typically, it even increases a bit over the course of the season because guys get warmed up and the weather's warmer and everything. And so even now, it's up just a tenth of a run from last year, but you might have expected it to go down, although I

know it didn't in the minors when they implemented the pitch clock either, which is surprising, but that seems to be the case. Anyway, so in Japan, one of the leagues, 91.3, the other league, 90.6. So you're still talking about roughly a three mile per hour difference. However, I think, and this is sort of what you were saying, I think NPB has gained maybe more quickly than MLB has recently. Yeah, I think that's right. I think I remember that being true. Yeah, and I think it is. So Delta Graphs goes back to 2014 with this velocity info. So in 2014, in the Pacific League, it was 141.3 and the Central League, it was 141 roughly 88. So it's gone from like 88 to 91 between 2014 and 2023. Whereas in the majors, the average four-seamer velocity in the majors in 2014 was 93. So the average velocity in MLB has increased by only about one mile per hour from 2014 to 2023. In NPB,

it appears to have increased by about three miles per hour over the same span. So, I mean, Roki Sasaki is part of that. Right. And I was just about to say, like, there is, you know, I know that there are a couple of guys who are throwing very very hard relative to their peers and so i wonder if that is skewing the average a little bit but um but yeah i think you know again it's not that it is the same it's just that it is it is a higher average than it used to be yeah the gap is closing yeah we should mentally adjust that because i think that people are still and it's not to say that there aren't differences between those two leagues like i don't want to overstate things either but you know i think we need to it's just important to keep you know updating that prior because i think that it is different than

a lot of people maybe understand it to be so yeah. Sasaki's average velocity this year at MPB is 99, or like 98.8. And yeah, he's got a lead of like four kilometers per hour over anyone else. So he is an outlier, but there are many more hard-throwing guys. And Yamamoto is fourth on the list with no innings minimum. So he's right behind, which again, that's why that matchup was so much fun. All right. One more follow-up

here. This is from Brock, who writes in, your discussion of being stranded on a desert island with a player reminded me of something that you two might enjoy. This also reminded me of our recent past blast about MLB surveys and the fact that MLB polls the fans about things they would like to see and did even 30 years ago. Brock says, as you likely know, MLB sends out surveys to fans on a semi-regular basis. I always take these surveys seriously, might as well as they're my only chance to have any influence whatsoever on the league. I try to provide thoughtful and sincere responses. I suspect this is how I was Sure. Once or twice a week?

Yeah, that's a lot. Brock's like a power pole-ee here. Yeah, how about that? They really want to know his opinion about baseball. Brock is an influencer, my goodness. A recent one appeared to be oriented around fan experience and prioritizing what would be the most

desirable fan experiences. Nothing too wild until the final few questions. He sent us a screenshot. Would you rather, and this is either or, fill in the blank, an all expenses paid trip to the World Series or go on vacation with your favorite baseball player? No. No. So that's one question. The other question, would you rather sleep overnight at your favorite stadium or stay overnight at your favorite player's home.

What are these choices? What? This secret survey list. This is fishy. This is like the Effectively Wild email hypothetical surveys that's sent out. So Brock continues to Meg's point about not actually knowing these people. Yeah, it probably would get rather awkward staying overnight at Mike Trout's house. And I would probably want to brush up

on the Call of Duty controls beforehand. But what? I'm not going to select those options. So I have a couple of questions. I mean, first, why are they asking this? Yeah. Like, would you rather an all-expenses-paid trip to the World Series

or go on vacation with your favorite baseball? Like, is the latter on the table here? Yes, exactly. Okay, right. So I have two things here. Like, the first is, one of those things Major League Baseball can do, and the other they cannot. No, I mean, unless the next CBA is like, we're going to work in vacations with your favorite

baseball player as a free giveaway here, or not free. I'm sure it wouldn't be free. And then the other, would you rather sleep overnight at your favorite baseball player as a free giveaway here, or not free. I'm sure it wouldn't be free. And then the other, would you rather sleep overnight at your favorite stadium or stay overnight at your favorite players? It's like players are host families now. What is happening? Sleeping overnight at your favorite stadium, that sounds fun. I mean, I would want to do that if I were a fan of a team. One of the things I've enjoyed about having access to ballparks during non-business hours, either being an intern for a team or a media member who's there early or late, it's kind of cool to just walk around a pretty empty ballpark. Especially if you work for a team and you're there over the winter and it's deserted and it's a different look than you're used to. So that is kind of cool.

And I'm sure they've done this. I don't recall offhand, but you would think that teams have done sleepovers at their stadiums. Almost certainly. Yeah. That seems like an obvious appeal and moneymaker and, you know, do it over the off season. I guess it would be cold, but you know, why not? Why not? But,

but stay overnight at your favorite. So why, why? Yeah. And like from a, so from a like pole design perspective, what information does this give baseball that is usable and like useful to them?

Like, I know, would you rather see, go to our marquee event or do this other weird thing we can't deliver to you? What value is there in the answer to that question? Yeah. Unless they're trying to determine what is it that people really like about baseball. Their homes.

They are into their homes. They're into being into their homes as much as they possibly can that potential has sustained interest for generations what is this question is it that they're just trying to gauge just how fans feel about players and in general or like their affiliations their bonds with particular player personalities as opposed to their loyalty to teams or ballparks or an event like the World Series. It's like, you know, why do you watch? Do you watch because it's a personality-driven entertainment? Because you can see what soap they use in their bathroom. Yeah, well, that's taking it a bit too far.

But I really would, I mean, look, going on vacation with your favorite baseball player, that could be fun if they actually wanted to do it for some reason. I don't know why they would want to. Absolutely not. I mean, why not? You know, you're staying in separate rooms. Would you rather go to the World Series or star in a buddy comedy where you only have one hotel room, you have to share the same bed or fight over the pullout bed? Who could say? I'd be into that potentially, but staying overnight at your favorite player's home, that sounds incredibly awkward and invasive and not fun at all. I wouldn't want to do that even if I could. Even if the player wanted me to for some reason, I'd be like, I think I'll just get a hotel.

Just imagining. Please stay at my house, Ben. Please stay here. Why won't you stay you are diminishing my self-esteem love show a lot um i i am just flummoxed i'm i'm gobsmacked by this question because again i don't think it tells you anything because you could like this either or it does not present the league with useful information. Because let's imagine that you are a fan and the way that you access your fandom is like a close in-depth fandom of particular players. But you still might have that fandom and be like, we're really cool to go to the World Series. Like this doesn't tell you anything except those fans might be creepy.

And we should. Yeah. Right. Maybe it's like, we'll identify the fans who have like some stalkerish tendencies. Bad boundaries. This is the bad boundary. You see,

and now you have to be careful on how you answer these. I guess we'll find out because it looks like Brock checked the boxes for go on vacation with your favorite baseball player and stay overnight at your favorite. So if he stops getting the surveys, then we'll know he's on some sort of watch list. Yeah, watch out, Brock. Man, anyway, I don't know why exactly that's happening. It's peculiar. It's peculiar. I imagine that whoever came up with that survey, if they had submitted that to a research design course, they would have gotten some feedback on these questions.

It's funny because Rob Manfred, he's saying some decidedly non-wacky or infuriating things these days. Like I've seen people share in quotes from Rod Manfred of all people and applying the adjective based to them. No. Okay. Everyone, no. Relax. This is definitely, yeah, I'm with you on slowing our roll when it comes to the new and improved Rob Redford. However, usually PR is his weakness or one of them, right? Yes. And he has at least, I would say, mitigated that weakness perhaps in that he has not said anything super infuriating very recently. The caveats that you're having to apply to this statement. We talked the other day about how like, hey, the rules changes for the most part. They actually seem to be working, whether you like them or not.

And most people, I think, are pretty pro. Seem to like them, yes. They do seem to be working, at least the ones that are having some obvious effect. I think, you know, jury's still out on the positioning stuff and how that's affecting everything. I think, you know, jury's still out on the positioning stuff and how that's affecting everything. But when it comes to the pitch clock and when it comes to stolen bases and everything, obviously, games are faster, more steals. So, mission accomplished. And it's just, it's almost refreshing to see like, hey, MLB set out to do something and it's actually happening the way that they wanted it to.

How about that? How about that? And now our pal Evandrelic at The Athletic, he published a piece about the future of blackouts on MLB TV and whether there could be a streaming service for all 30 teams. And Rob Manfred, he's quoted, this was from a luncheon hosted by the Paley Media Council in New York last month. Often when baseball executives say things at luncheons, it seems to go very badly. It goes really badly.

Yeah. If you're a baseball executive or the son of an owner, you stay away from those. You never come away looking good. Yeah. You could have lunch, but luncheons appear to be pretty dangerous. What is the difference between a luncheon and a luncheon? Is it just the attendance at the event? Yeah. I don't know. Doesn't a luncheon imply... It's like more formal? Is it just the attendance at the event?

Yeah, I think doesn't a luncheon imply, yeah, there's a greater formality to it and denotes a formal social occasion. the lack of availability of baseball in certain markets. He was talking about how St. Louis, and he's defining St. Louis very broadly here. This is like Cardinals television territory, which is many states. He was saying that 15% of homes have access to baseball because of cord cutting and because you have diamond and you have blackouts. And so he's lamenting this state of affairs. And he says, we're going to put the word reach right over the entrance to the commissioner's office. It's kind of our number one thing. Reach as in actually bringing your products to as many people as possible. Trying to inspire people to be taller.

No. Yeah. Or to have ideas that seem like real reaches. But this is for good ideas. And he says, the problem is we granted exclusivity in places where the cable distributors never actually distributed the product. Those people are just out of luck right now. So he's sympathizing with the people who are blacked out of broadcasts. And then he tells an anecdote about how he cross-passed with Rupert Murdoch. What a meeting, Rob Manfred and Rupert Murdoch in the green room before a Fox event. And Rupert Murdoch warned, he's getting a little less relatable and sympathetic as I go on here,

less relatable and sympathetic as I go on here, but Rupert Murdoch, warning Rod Frenk, based Rob Manfred, just name-dropping his chats with Rupert Murdoch, but he's talking about how Rupert Murdoch warned him about the RSN situation, and so he's been worried about it. And he said, I hope we get to the point where on the digital side, when you go to MLB TV, you can buy whatever the heck you want. So he's preaching to the choir here. People are like, yeah, Rob Manfred. All right. Speaking our language

here for the first time ever. And I guess what's happening here, maybe he's taken some media training. But also, maybe what's happening is that his interests and baseball's economic interests are becoming increasingly aligned with fans' preferences in a way that wasn't the case before. better for owners, and how do we make more money, that is maybe overlapping more with what fans want, which is greater access to baseball in this case because of the RSN situation. Because they were raking in money hand over fist, right? And while they were raking in money, they were, you know, Rob Manfred, he's talked about the blackout situation in the past, in fairness. This is not the first time he has ever acknowledged that issue. Yes, for sure. But he's speaking about it more and more, and it's probably not a coincidence because as he goes on to say here, with kind of the decline and collapse of the cable model, he says the tougher challenge is the replication of the revenue.

It's a great business model. When a whole bunch of people pay for something, they don't really care if they have or not, which is what the cable bundle did for us. It's hard to replicate that. Then he goes on to say there will be a downward tick on the revenue side. I think it's going to be a trough, et cetera. So, you know, look, that's somewhat self-serving too, just in the continual jockeying with players for divvying up revenue and everything. Although there's probably some truth also that there might be a decline in revenue related to this. But anyway, what I'm saying is while they were making tons of money with the cable model, he might have brought it up, but it wasn't necessarily top priority or something he would

talk about constantly. But now that that's kind of collapsing and they do have to make up that revenue somehow, the way that they want to do it, that they can do it, the only way they could come close is by getting baseball in the hands of as many people who want to watch it as possible. So, you know, they have kind of cannibalized the audience

or at least segmented the audience when it comes to putting baseball on streaming services, which again is forward thinking in some ways, but also inconvenient in other ways. So I'm just saying maybe the economic interests of the owners, which is what Rob Manfred really represents, is dovetailing in certain ways with the interests of fans more so than it used to. And that's why suddenly we're looking at Rob Manfred in a new light from time to time. Could be, but by the standards of Rob Manfred and commissioners in general who are always disliked, and to some extent that's their job, basically, is to take the body blow so that their owners don't have to.

He's faring fairly well lately. he's uh he's faring fairly well lately yeah i am i get to i get to just like say something and i it doesn't have to i don't have to caveat it like so often i worry about like yucking people's yum i don't want to yuck your yum you know it's a bad expression like it doesn't have good mouth feel that's like an expression um but you know like i think it is fine to say that, like, people should be able to enjoy things and provided that those things are not harmful. Like, you don't have to go out of your way, right, to give people a hard time about liking a thing. So, you know, if you like whatever your thing is, I'm not going to even pick one lest I be accused of yucking yum, but nobody cares about liking the commissioner.

So I get to just say, we can be less impressed by things, you know, like we can preserve a, a skeptical air because I know the real job of the commissioner is to help the owners of the teams that, uh, that commissioner is like in charge

of uh make money that's their job i'm not confused about that but i think having like a baseline expectation that the commissioner will not like actively work against people being able to consume the product uh that he is a steward of like that seems like a very basic expectation and so while our sense of like whoa rob is earned because he has so often been so bum-fuzzled by the concept of having to like speak in public about his sport in a way that doesn't make people hate him and baseball um you know like it's actually a really your expectation so in much the same way that i find like the uncle steve stuff with steve cohen to be just so embarrassing for people i know a lot of people are being kind of ironic about it right there they're engaged in comedy

um but some of some of you are sincere about it and i you know, just have a little bit of embarrassment about that maybe. Again, I don't want to yuck your yum, but I kind of do because, like, stop it. So, anyway. So, you're saying not based Rob Manfred, but baseline Rob Manfred. Just basic Rob Manfred. Very good. Very good. good very good i was trying to think like the whole time i'm like so like who is he like uh like mecha godzilla and and then robert murdoch is a different godzilla is one of them like

gatora is is this should we all just be like ken Watanabe and Godzilla, like let them fight, you know? So like, let's have the let them fight energy around that part. He really was like, hey, when I was hanging out with Rupert Murdoch, was this like between depositions in his Dimension Machine lawsuit? It was at a green room a few years ago. Oh, a few years ago. Okay. It was, yeah. Election denial was but a glo room a few years ago. Oh, a few years ago. Okay. Election denial was but a gloomer in the eye.

Yes. Okay. So, yeah, it does. This article mentions that the commissioner wants to see baseball become a more national game. I would like that, too. You know, even if it has functioned well as a more regional game, it would be nice for it to be more national as well. It could be both. That'd be great. Anyway, I agree.

Keep echoing this line, Rob Manfred, as opposed to some of your past ones. Right. Right. Yeah. While we're engaging in media criticism related to athletic articles, did you want to do a little rant about another one right now? I just think the economics of offering opt-outs to players in the context of negotiation are actually pretty straightforward and have been well explored at a variety of sites, including, I suspect, The Athletic. And so um i don't quite understand why jim bowden has

confusion about why teams are offering opt-outs it's not because they're being nice uh it's often because they want to offer less money to the player and so they have to give the player something of value in exchange for giving them lower contract values like say an opt-out so they have to give the player something of value in exchange for giving them lower contract values like say an opt-out so they can go explore the free market basically if your argument for not including opt-outs is that players might if by sheer accident of occasionally get the better side of a deal with teams like that's a that's a piece you can just stick in the drawer you don't have to run that. We've read that piece before. It was like 20 years ago. Yes, yes.

Bowdoin wrote this piece for The Athletic this weekend. I'm so mad about how much feeling I have about this because that is exactly why it was published. Yes, I imagine that is why he is prominently featured there because he probably gets the hate reads and the outrage traffic, which we are playing into here. But the headline was MLB front offices should rein in player opt-out clauses. It's reached a tipping point.

Of what? Right. Of what? What does that mean? The piece does not make, as far as I can tell, any case that it's bad for baseball, it's bad for fans, it's leading to a less entertaining sport. The entire point of the piece appears to be that MLB front offices should stop giving players opt-outs because it's generally good for players to have opt-outs. And therefore, it's costing teams money relative to holding the line and not giving opt-outs. That is the entire

piece it's like hey teams should stop spending on players basically it's just like teams should be cheaper like teams should hoard the revenue teams should not give players value in these contracts like that seems to be the entire argument you know that expression where it's like you read an article that defends something and you're like, did thing that's being defended write this? Right. It's like that is what's happening. It's like, did the owners write this? Did front offices write this? this like yeah basically that's kind of the perspective that jim bowden offers as a former baseball front office member who uh was somewhat disgraced in that role and uh enmeshed in scandal

and yet also has uh have a fairly thriving media career just kind of built on the back of of that front office career but it's not even like, it's not trying to hide that or make like a larger argument or a reason why anyone else should care about players getting opt-outs other than the owners who are spending on the opt-outs.

There's just no other layer to the article, really. It's odd. And you can kind of tell that it is trying to advance. I mean, it's not really trying to hide this, right? But you can really tell that it's trying to advance a particular understanding of this stuff. Because again, there are a number of economic reasons related to, again, teams not wanting to say, hey, we're going to pay you $350 million, so we're going to give you this opt-out and you're going to take a $300 million contract or whatever,

right? There's a reason they do it. The teams have decided sort of balances out fine for them, or at least fine enough understanding that every contract brings with it risk and that you could have a guy signed to a big deal without an opt-out and he could get injured and be less good for the duration of the deal. And that can happen opt-out or no, right? He doesn't include any of the actual explanations for why this is happening or he does, but he dismisses them very quickly. And it's like, well, no, you've answered your question. You just don't like the answer because again, it might end up with players paid some amount of money. And so spike it. You don't have to run that piece.

Like he has this whole thing in here on Manny Machado and the Padres and how there's a strategic error. And as an aside, I think that the Padres just like broke the brains of several front office executives. Like I think that the Padres have done a number on some of these guys. And so, you know, he talks about it being a costly mistake that they offered him an opt out because he said he would exercise it. And so they ended up signing him to this big contract extension. And it's like the Padres elected to do that. And clearly it didn't hamstring them from spending money. They just spent money like they're just spending money because they want to win a World Series. The fact that that is their priority and not extracting every marginal dollar possible from their players doesn't mean that their priorities are bad. It just means that they have different ones than the ones that you have decided are the ones that front offices should pursue.

He has a line in here, Ben. I'm sorry. I was, like, not going to do a thing. But I'm doing this thing. Yes, these types of contracts. He's, like, talking about the luxury tax. Perhaps some teams like the Padres have decided they will essentially pay these players about 50 million a year for their best seasons, not 30 million a year while spreading it out until the players in their 40s for luxury tax and roster construction purposes. Yes, that is part of how teams are thinking about this stuff.

Or perhaps they're just trying to win a World Series at all costs, regardless of the price they'll eventually have to pay. Again, are we meant to take that as a bad thing? Are we supposed to think that that's bad for baseball or the Padres? Because if this all works for them, at the end of it, they'll have a World Series. And I think that they're excited about that prospect. Like, what are we doing here? All of this is because brian reynolds wants

a freaking opt-out like what what is the you know and he uses machado as this example and again like i doubt he's maybe thinking about it in precisely these terms and sure the team that extracted his early career value is not the team that ended up paying him but manny machado has been very good for the padres and when he was in his team control years was worth by our version of war, like 30.2 wins. And he made $34 million. Like when in his life, is it appropriate for him to be paid Jim?

Because he didn't get paid for that production on the front end. He's actually been an incredibly good free agent signing in his tenure in San Diego. So you can't even be mad about that. But like, when is he supposed to get paid? Rah, Ben, rah. Right. And I'm so angry that I have so much feeling about this because again, that is precisely

the point. Yes. I've been had, I'm contributing to the very cycle that I am frustrated by, but, but. to the very cycle that I am frustrated by, but, but if it's any consolation, and I don't know that it would be, but just scrolling down to the comment section,

not a lot of like here, here, yeah. Stop handing out these opt-outs to players. It's like all the top comments in the upvoted comments are like, did an owner write this? I mean, it's just basically like, did Bob Nutting write this piece?

Right. I guess, you know, if you want to see some positive here, like, you know, there are plenty of people in the media writing from a more pro player perspective these days. Many of whom work for The Athletic. Yeah, right. I mean, of course, The Athletic employs many of the very best baseball writers. It's an incredible baseball staff. So perhaps you could say there's some value to having someone who sort of plays the ownership shill role. perspective and you know like what owners and front office people potentially in some cases are talking about behind closed doors or like what that side you know just to get a fuller picture of what people in the industry are thinking and saying like if you have someone who's sort of the mouthpiece for those interests as long as you know going in that that's the case and you read it

in that context which granted not everyone who's just going to stumble across that piece or get an email blast about it as i did they may not know the background of the author or what that says about this likely perspective but if you go into it knowing that then perhaps it could be kind of illuminating it's like all right yeah this is uh how that faction is thinking about these things. Sure. I just think that it's a perspective that is so, it has been so thoroughly expressed over prior generations of, and not universally to be clear it's not like everyone who used to write about baseball in the early 2000s wrote about it this way or has persisted in that belief right

like there were people who you know when they were kind of thinking about value in cruder terms and maybe not being hyper aware of the labor implications of what they were saying wrote about it one way and like they're thinking on the question has evolved. Like it's, it's not a static thing, but like this particular perspective, I think is very well represented. And like, now there are circumstances where a player opt-out clause makes sense for a team. For example, if I were making decisions for the pirates right now, I would offer an opt-out after year six or seven of the aforementioned Reynolds deal. When Reynolds would be playing at age 33 or 34, as long as the contract was significantly backloaded, that would mean if Reynolds opted out, Pittsburgh would have held his rights for at least the first six years of the deal at well below market value. And he'd be eradicating the highest value, average annual value seasons of the contract.

And I was like like to be clear they have already held his rights at below market value for the duration of his career to this point again when is it okay for him to get paid like what are we doing what are we doing ben because right now right now the estimated their estimated payroll is $75 million for this year. And their estimated luxury tax payroll in terms of committed money. Now, this does not include, like, it doesn't include ARB raises for some of their guys. It doesn't include potential free agent signings. It doesn't include the guys who are entering ARB for the first time. But again, their estimated luxury tax payroll for next year is $29 million.

Why are you worried about this, Jim? Who cares? They have some money to spend, or they should. And if they don't, he can just get out of this business. Maybe Rob Manfred has outsourced his infuriating takes to Jim Bowden. Maybe. There can only be so many bad takes, period. Well, that's so optimistic of you, Ben. There's no theoretical limit. No, yeah.

Just like shifting who delivers them. But no, I guess that's not quite true. All right. Just one more email here before we start blasting, because this is kind of interesting. Aaron, Patreon supporter, wrote in to say, with steals and attempts up across the league in response to the new rules, I've been very curious about why attempts to steal third haven't been more prevalent. I tried searching a few outlets to see if my perception is correct, but it turns out finding data on steals of thirds is pretty difficult.

Are steal attempts at third base more common this year? Is the probability of a successful steal of third low enough that the rules changes aren't enough to incentivize it? And perhaps most importantly, would Ben be able to cope if the zombie runner started to steal third base at an increasingly high rate and further damage the integrity

of what I affectionately refer to as bonus baseball. I think once the zombie runner is placed on second, all bets are off. So what happens after that? They can steal third. That doesn't make me more mad. So I looked up these numbers. You can find a baseball reference, perhaps other places too. And it is striking what's happened on steals of third in particular. So this season, through Thursday's games, there have been 37 attempts to steal third, only two times caught stealing. So that is an extraordinary rate. I mean, 35 for 37 on attempted steals of third, that's like a 95% success rate. I mean, 35 for 37 on attempted steals of third, that's like a 95% success rate.

I don't know if it'll stay that high, but it looks like the ratio of steals to third to steals of second is up a bit relative last year, but that appears to be basically entirely because steals of third have become more successful, not because attempts have become more common. So the ratio of attempted steals of third to attempted steals of second is basically the same as it was last season. So just looking at these early returns, it seems like third base has gotten even easier to steal, even maybe relative to second base, and that teams are not trying to steal third enough. And Mike Petriello mentioned this in a piece about stolen bases at MLB.com recently too. And he showed some examples and this was a little while ago, but he noted that there have been a lot

of really long leads taken by runners at second base. He said at this point, this was April 12th when this was published, he said each and every one of the steals of third so far this year has had a lead distance at the time of pitch release of at least 26 feet with most being over 30 and the average being 33 feet. It's nearly two feet more than it was on 2022's attempts of third base. And if two feet doesn't sound like much, realize that two feet was also the difference between the average lead distance at time of pitch release between a successful steal and a failed one. That, it seems to make clear, is a lot more about how pitchers

are handling the new rules and a lot less about how the larger bases are subtracting a few inches between the bags which also means that it's early and that eventually pitchers will adjust it at some point probably some catcher is going to throw out some runners stealing third base which i think finally has happened now but runners at second are taking extremely long leads like like even more so than runners at first. And they are just, I mean, they're walking to third here. It's like almost a gimme. It's an automatic.

And yet it appears that the rate isn't up all that much, or at least the ratio of steals of third to steals of second isn't up all that much. Or at least the ratio of steals of third to steals of second isn't up all that much. And I think perhaps teams are being a bit too conservative when it comes to trying to steal third, given how successful they've, like, if you're 95% successful at something, you should be trying it more. Yes. Because even though you won't be as successful as often. Right. It suggests you're underutilizing the strategy for sure. The break-even point has got to be lower than you're treating it as. And, of course, you know, if runners do start attempting to steal third more, then pitchers will maybe be more attentive to them. But they only have so much capacity to oppose that at this point. So I think this kind of goes hand in hand.

Like Rob Maines wrote about this, I guess it was like five years ago at Baseball Prospectus. Right. triples, but that there's just more of a stop sign at second. Like runners are not attempting to go to third as often. And, you know, going first to third is a little down and then also stealing third is a little down. So there seemed to be just a lot less trying to get to third base once you're already at second. And of course, you know, teams have generally been more conservative and have played the odds and have had higher success rates on all sorts of steals, but it seems like trying to go to third in particular. And yeah, there are definitely times when it's not worth it to try because

you're already technically in scoring position, probable scoring position at second. So sometimes it doesn't make sense to risk that out once you get to that point. But now it's funny because Rob's last line was taken together, barring a significant change in the game. It seems unlikely that we'll see players scampering over to third base the way they did a few decades ago. Well, we have had a significant change in the game that pertains to trying to scamper to third. So it's something to watch, I guess, as the cat and mouse game continues this year, whether that success rate stays as high, whether the attempt rate rises, because it probably should. It probably should.

All right. So let us get to a stat blast or perhaps multiple stat blasts. Okay, so some StatBlast news today. We have a sponsor for the StatBlast segment for the first time in a while. So as people who've been listening for a long time know, we are very selective when it comes to any sort of advertising or sponsorship on the podcast, which is partly because we are listener-supported via Patreon. Thank you. And also because we don't want to bombard you with ads. We don't like doing ad reads.

Yeah, right. And I mean, it's standard, you know, just about every other podcast, it just hits you over the head with ads and people know it's part of the calculus and you got to make money to do podcasts. So it's commerce, it's capitalism, it's fine. We're all used to it.

But I think it makes for a more pleasant listening experience on Effectively Wild not to have to constantly listen to pre-recorded ads or pre-written ads, or even to constantly press the skip button to get by them. So really, we've only wanted to have a stat blast sponsorship, and we've only wanted to limit it to baseball related products i mean we get inquiries all the time from people who are interested in advertising effectively wild some are really weird yeah they have nothing to do with baseball or what we do here and we say thanks but no thanks you know it would just be it would be jarring i think if we were yeah like ben it would be so weird if one day i was like actually i'd like to tell you about the virtues of NFTs.

Yeah. So we just, we don't want to be in that position. And so basically whenever anyone comes to us, we say, yeah, we're a listener support podcast. It's a baseball podcast. And no, thanks. Thank you. But we're not interested. But rarely every now and again.

Yeah. Every now and again, we get an inquiry from a baseball-related sponsor that we actually like and have some affinity for and think would be relevant to our listeners' interests and relevant to the segment that we do here and feels closely aligned enough with our philosophy and the point of this podcast that we don't think it's too intrusive and could potentially even be additive. So in the past, we have had Baseball Reference sponsor the Pass Blast and Stat Head. Well, now we are sponsored by Topps, which is pretty exciting. People may have seen Topps advertising elsewhere at Fangrafts, just on the website. So it's a part of a larger package here, but we're pretty excited to have Topps as a sponsor and specifically Topps Now. So if people are not familiar with Topps Now, I mean, this is something that like genuinely, sincerely, I can get behind this product. I think this product is pretty cool because I was a card collector when I was a kid. Like I'm the proverbial guy who has, you know, stacks and stacks and binders of cards at my mother's house, and my mother has not thrown them out. They're still there. That's so nice of her.

I don't know that I want to keep them here forever, but she has been kind enough to do that. And I treasure them. I want to have them. So I have a deep-seated affection for baseball cards. And the thing is, baseball card collecting, it's different than it was when I was doing it as a kid. It's changed in many ways, in some ways for the better. And I think this is one of the ways that it's for the better. Because I know that this, I would have thought, was incredibly cool when I was a very active card collector. Because back then, there was one set per company, obviously, usually. And you'd get a big release

of cards at a certain time of year, and that would basically be it, right? And I don't know that there is a better illustration of the way that things have changed and that certain things are more available more quickly than they used to be than tops now, which if you don't know, it's just a very quick turnaround production of cards based on something that just happened in major League games. So, you know, the tagline is your hero, your team, your moment. And the hook here is that Topps will make these cards available for a limited time at Topps.com with free shipping where something notable happens in a game. It could be something a player did or something a team did, some notable moment. And then like the next day, you can purchase a card of that moment and it'll have a

picture and info about that moment and you can memorialize that moment forever, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. I mean, it's very much like, you know, what illustrates the ways that baseball has changed when it comes to like accessibility and responsiveness. I mean, MLB TV would have seemed like a miracle when I was a kid and StatCast would have seemed like a miracle, even baseball reference and fan graphs. day as opposed to waiting till the end of the week and looking at box scores and newspapers and leaders and everything. Things were just so slow to update and so just inaccessible compared to today. And I think that applies to baseball cards too, because it's not like, let's wait till next spring and there will be a new set of cards of this player.

Tomorrow, there will be a card of this moment. So if that moment was special to you for some reason, because you like this player, tomorrow there will be a card of this moment. So if that moment was special to you for some reason, because you like this player, you like that team, or you thought that was cool, you can have a card of that moment and you can have it the next day, free shipping. I mean, come on, this is cool. So we've been getting a list every day of the cards that are available for that day. And we'll put the link in here. You could go to tops.com slash cards hyphen collectibles slash tops hyphen now slash MLB

tops now dot HML. It's a lot of slashes and hyphens. We'll include the link. Yeah, you can find it. But every day they'll just post the new cards that are available, the new Tops Now cards. And it has a countdown until they're no longer available. So, you know, it's an act now situation. And of course, I assume that that makes them more collectible because there's only a limited

number. You can only get them for a limited time. But it's cool because you can get baseball cards of things that would not have had baseball cards before. So I think it's great. And so our stat blasts will be sponsored by Tops Now for a while. And sometimes we'll tie it into a Tops Now card that's available. Not always.

But for instance, we are speaking on Friday and there is a Tops Now card available of Twins rookie Edward Edward Julien, who debuted on Thursday and he got his first MLB hit and his first MLB homer in the same inning, which, you know, that could be a stat blast. In fact, we got that question for multiple people. Is this a first

or when was the last time this happened? And we don't need to stat blast that because others stat blasted that. And I saw at MLB.com, he's the fourth player to do that since 1974, which I guess is complete play-by-play. Aramis Garcia for the Giants in 2018 was the last one. So it's not unprecedented,

but it's obviously unusual and it's cool. So you can get a card of that and it's a rookie card. Some of them are rookie cards tops now. So for instance, that's a card, Adley Rutchman's walk-off homer that was not exactly predicted by Abbott Elementary in its most recent episode, but sort of there was an Adley Rutchman walk-off homer mentioned in the episode. Interesting coincidence. And, you know, you can get that. You could get Braden Bristow of the Rays.

He came up. This is another rookie variant because he threw three scoreless and got a save in his MLB debut. So that's the kind of offering that you have here. And this ties into the first stop last that we have here. So Edward Julien, he got his first two MLB hits in his first inning or the same inning, and one of them was a homer. We also got a question recently about the most first major league hits in a game. So, Ed wrote in to say, in the Giants-Yankees game on April 1st, there were two players,

Blake Sable on the Giants and Anthony Volpe on the Yankees, who got their first major league hit. That got me to wondering, what is the record for most first hits in a game? I can't figure out a way to guess what the record could be, but I think it could be fairly recently set, given the increase in number of players cycling through MLB in the last few years. So I put this one to frequent Southwest consultant, Ryan Nelson. You can find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. And he found that having two first hits in a game, that happens several times a season. Three has happened maybe 60 times or so in the past hundred years. But once you get to even four, that's quite rare.

So the last time that four guys got their first major league hit in the same game was September 7th, 1980, when the Mariners, Kim Allen and the Red Sox is rich Gedman, Julio Valdex and Chico Walker all got their first hit in that game. And they all actually came in as substitutes in that game. That was a September game. So September call-ups, I imagine. But the record appears to be five, five players getting their first big league hit in the same game. And that has happened twice, it appears, both of which were quite a while ago. the first was october 2nd 1938 there was uh there was the

last game of the season and cleveland was playing detroit and there was a double header and in the first game of the double header bob feller set a record by striking out 18 guys. So that game is known for that. But in the second game of the doubleheader, there was history made because five players got their first MLB hit. And I don't know whether that was really noticed at the time, but Ray Mack, Chuck Workman, Oscar Grimes, Bob Harris, and Tommy Irwin. They all got their first major league hit. And this happened again. Five guys got their first hit in 1947, April 17th. This was Boston versus Brooklyn. And what do you know, we're about to have another Jackie Robinson day this weekend, April 15th, when Jackie Robinson debuted for the Dodgers. Well, this was April 17th, and this was when Jackie Robinson got his first hit. So this is timely.

Jackie Robinson got his first hit that day. Spider Jorgensen also did. Duke Snyder also did. Harry Taylor and Earl Torgason. Torgason. Torgason and a Jorgensenensen and Jackie Robinson and Duke Snyder. So, you know, a couple Hall of Famers there. Maybe a more famous group than the 1938 class.

But that's a nice tie-in to the Edward Julian game and also to Jackie Robinson day. So that does appear to be the record. and also to Jackie Robinson Day. So that does appear to be the record. And I was sort of surprised that it hasn't happened much recently either, but I think in at least very recent years, we don't have as many September call-ups anymore because rosters don't expand as much.

And then at least until very recently, perhaps with some of the CBA incentives, teams often didn't bring up their top prospects on opening day, right? Because you tend to get these clustered either at the very start of the season or after September call-ups. And so if not every team is bringing up its top prospects at the start of the season, then you're more likely to have them spread out instead of concentrated on the same day. And you also have fewer pitchers hitting and now no pitchers hitting really, right? So, you know, occasionally pitchers would get their first hit too. And often they just wouldn't have had a hit for some time prior to that because pitchers were very bad at hitting,

as you may recall. Anyway, for those reasons, I suppose, and probably some others, many of the major leaguers who are out there these days and cycle through MLB are relievers who are not going to be getting their first major league hit usually anyway. So it does appear to be not really a recent phenomenon. But as far as Ryan could tell, five is the record. Okay, I've been saving up some other stat blasts. So here's another one from Justin, Patreon supporter, who says, I just listened to the Rockies preview and someone said something like, if every guy on the team has the best

season of his life, they'll play 500 baseball. And this blew my mind and got me thinking, has this ever happened? That is to say, has there ever been a team where every player had the best season of his career? I can't imagine this is super possible. So maybe I'll ask which team had the most players play the best of their career. Not sure how this would be looked up. Maybe the nine players with the most time at each position would be fascinated to know if this has ever happened. Would it be a lineup of studs or a team of one to three year guys getting lucky for a few years?

So Ryan looked into this too, and he looked at every team's qualified players. So batters who qualified for the batting title and starting pitchers who qualified for the ERA title and relievers with, I guess he used 40 plus innings as the cutoff. And he just counted how many players had their best season by war that year. And most of the top results, he said, are very old teams, not old as in the player's world, but long ago, where presumably players hadn't played for very long or didn't play for very long or very recent teams whose players were very young and may have been rookies and and uh therefore it would of course be their best season sure at least to that point so he wrote uh the top 10 excluding pre-world war ii in the last two seasons it's not very notable teams the leader is the 2014 Cubs, who had like 73% of their qualified players have their best season.

So like eight guys, you know, they had like, I guess, 11 qualified players by these metrics and five relievers had their best season and three batters had their best season. The 2014 Cubs were not all that great. They were a 73 and 89 team. They finished fifth in the Central. And it's sort of similar if, they went 59-95. And then the 1962 Athletics, they were 72-90. The 2017 Brewers, who were okay, they were 86-76. They finished second in the Central. 1952 Cubs, 1950 Browns. I can include the list here, but it's not great teams. And that sort of surprised me. But Ryan pointed out,

he thinks it's a lot of like mediocre players getting unprecedented playing time and doing not terribly. So it's like career year, but not necessarily a great year. And so maybe you're more likely to have players like that on a not very good team. Because it's like, all right, we don't have a great player right and so maybe you're more likely to have players like that on a not very good team yeah all right we don't have a great player i guess you know we'll just throw

this guy in there and he'll he'll get a starting role and he'll have his best season ever but it might not actually be that good so even if the rockies uh do have a lot of players who have their best years or their best years to date, they might not actually be good. But I guess they could get to 500. That seems realistic if every guy on the team has, or as many as ever, have the best season of their life to that point. You can play 500 baseball. So that is, I guess, a realistic goal, even if not every player can do that. But it's interesting. Counterintuitively, I think you might have more players peaking just at lower levels because not a great roster. And it would feel incredible for Colorado fans if they were just like,

this is like a respectable baseball team, defying expectation all around us. Yeah, that'd be nice. All right. here's one more that just came to me. I was kind of curious about this. It seemed to me over the offseason that an unusual number of long-tenured relievers had retired this offseason. I kept seeing Jake McGee retired, Sergio Romo, Darren O'Day, David Phelps, Steve Ciszek, Craig Stammen.

Like a lot of these guys had been around for a while. Yeah. And now they're not anymore. Yeah. And this may have struck me because there were also some other guys like Scott Oberg and Adam Warren who announced their retirement this winter, even though they hadn't played for a few years. retirement this winter, even though they hadn't played for a few years. So it was just one of those things where at some point I was like, huh, a lot of relievers retiring. And then every time I would see another one retire, it would be like confirmation of my hypothesis here. So I wanted to know whether that was true. And was this a lot of people at that position to retire all in a group

and disappear from the player pool? And so I wondered which were the years that were like the final MLB seasons for the most long-lasting players at each position. Like which year did the highest number of notable third basemen or shortstops or center fruitles or whatever all end their careers at once. And of course you know you never know when someone officially retires as opposed to just stops playing in mlb so we're kind of treating it as their last mlb season and also i think we defined primary position like we assigned them based on if they had more than 50% of their starts at that position.

So Ryan did the cutoffs at 300 starts as a starting pitcher, 400 appearance as a relief pitcher, and 1,000 starts at another position. And that gave us 300-ish starters and relievers, and then like 100-ish players at the other positions, each of the other positions with some variation. And that's by primary position, players who last appeared between 1920 and 2020. And so he looked up the years when we had the greatest mass exodus at each position. So first of all, when it comes to relievers, I don't think what I wondered is that anything was anything, because I think what it is is that there are just a lot of relievers

now. There are, famously. It is a varied and broad group. So there are just always a lot of long-tenured relievers retiring because there are just a lot of long-tenured relievers. So it appears that 2014 was actually the biggest exit year for long-tenured relievers. 20 of them dropped out of the sample after that year. So Mike Adams, Heath Bell, Jared Burton, Sean Camp, Scott Downs, Kyle Farnsworth, Frank Francisco, Matt Garrier, Brandon League, Matt Lidstrom, Carlos Marmel, Sean Marshall, Leo Nunez, Chris Perez, JJ Putz, Ramon Ramirez, Jose Valverde, Jose Veras, Brian Wilson, Jamie Wright. That was the last year for all of those guys. It's like three bullpens worth of guys. So that's the notable year there. For starting pitchers, it appears 2008 and 2013 each had eight drop out of the

sample. So 2008 was the last Gas the Swan song for Tom Glavin, John Lieber, Esteban Loaiza, Greg Maddox, Mike Messina, Hideo Nomo, Kenny Rogers, and Steve Traxell. And then 2013, Ryan Dempster, Freddie Garcia, John Garland, Roy Halladay, Ted Lilly, Derek Lowe, Roy Oswalt, and Andy Pettit. For catchers, five seems to be the max, the number of veteran long-lasting catchers who have ever retired en masse. So 1947, there were five, Rick Farrell, Frankie Hayes, Raleigh Hemsley, Ernie Lombardi, and Al Lopez. And then 2016, we have first baseman. They had five as well. So 2016, Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard, James Loney, Justin Morneau, and Mark Teixeira, all retired after 2016 or stopped

playing. Second base, it's four, and that was in 2008 when it was Ray Durham, Damian Easley, Jeff Kent, Jose Vidro. In 2020, Brian Dozier, Howie Kendrick, Jason Kipnis, and Neil Walker. And then at the other positions, third base, shortstop, left field, center field, right field, all of them, three is the maximum number of guys, long-lasting guys at those positions who dropped out of the group. So I won't read all of those, but I guess like a recent one, you know, third base, all of those but uh i guess like a recent one you know third base adrian beltre chase headley and david wright all exited after uh 2018 or shortstop uh 2017 eric eibar jj hardy and johnny peralta that was their last year or center field 2019 was the end for Carlos Gomez, Curtis Granderson, and Adam Jones.

So I'll link to the spreadsheet that has the breakdowns of all of this. But that gives you some sense of what's a lot of players to leave all at once at a certain position. For relievers, it's more than I thought. But for starters, eight is the max. And other positions, it's usually three or four or at most five. Interesting. But it's notable. Of course, by the time some of these guys retire, they're maybe no longer playing their primary position because they've shifted elsewhere on the defensive spectrum.

But still, you associated them with that position. All right. Last one. Now, this is prompted by your just off-the-cuff rant about mascots the other day when you just delivered rapid-fire takes about every mascot, seemingly, which was very impressive. But Andrew M. on Discord, he was moved to do a little research into mascot attire because that seemed to be something that you were concerned about i just you know i feel like we should have a pants policy i think there should be a pants policy also i'm sorry i'm not remembering who it who it was in

the facebook group but someone was like i don't understand like bloopers the best mascot and someone asked what my objections were and the person asserting the blooper was the best mascot was like, they were primarily aesthetic. And I'm like, well, yeah, it's a mascot. Like what other, I mean, yeah. Well, that was the question because the poll we were responding to, the survey was all about the aesthetics. It was a, do you like the look of this mascot or not? And of course there's personality and there's backstory. Sure. But mostly we're worried about the weird flesh monster that we're inflicting on the ballpark. Your blooper opinion has been quite divisive. I know.

Because I've seen some people say this is an outrage and other people just as strongly have supported your take and have complained about how fleshy looking blooper is. He's so fleshy. Yeah. Disgustingly fleshy. Disturbingly fleshy. Anyway, if we're going to try to do something

about the indecent exposure of mascots at large, then we have to define the scope of the problem, right? Yes. And quantify the pantslessness. And that is what Andrew did here. So he determined that of the 27 mascots, 10 have full pants. Three have shorts. One has a robe.

And 13, bare ass. So, almost half of the mascots. The robe is somehow worse. Almost half are going pantsless. Wow. Now, he further broke it down. He did a taxonomy just by type of mascot. Right.

And pantslessness. So, two out of seven monsters wear pants. I don't know how you define monsters, but I guess you know it when you see it. Your fanatics, your bloopers, your whatever the hell is going on in Cleveland. Yeah, your orbits, I guess. I mean, orbit's just a non-human, an alien. I don't know if we have to define an alien as a monster, but... Right, why would we hold orbit to our standards? Yeah.

It might look monstrous to us, but then again, we would look monstrous to orbit species most likely. I guess that's true. So two out of seven monsters wear pants. Three out of five birds wear pants. The inconsistency is the thing. Right. Why is it only two out of two baseball head men wear pants. Two out of two real men wear pants.

Well, yeah, you can't have a real, oh, is the robe the friar? I think so, yeah. Okay, I was imagining something way pervier than that. I take it, well, I guess, you know, I take it back maybe. Does the friar, the friar has a robe and pants? Is that what's going on? I don't know. Well, anyway, if you have a very like anthropomorphic mascot, I mean, you know, like a humanoid.

You have to have that being wearing clothes. Yeah. Yeah. This goes back to the Garden of Eden. You know, we're pretty clear on pants being preferable in most public settings. Right. We're pretty clear on pants being preferable in most public settings. Right.

Four out of nine non-human mammals wear pants. One out of three cats and zero out of two bears. One out of one fish wear pants and zero out of one dinosaurs wear pants. And Andrew said monsters being the most pantsless is no surprise, but birds and fish, small sample size, coming in above mammals is odd. Yeah. And he did note that the swinging friar is the only mascot to not wear a jersey, which could be another thing that makes him score so low. Oh. Hmm.

That could be true. I think someone else noted that, like, you'd imagine, like, if you're going to have an animal, you know, a non-monster, non-alien, non-baseball-headed thing, you'd expect it to be, like, bears and stuff because their bits are more identifiably bit-like. And yet, no pants to be had, Ben. Yeah. Just a bunch of bear asses. Yes. I was thinking about the other day because I was watching the Charmin Bears commercial. Yeah, what's up with those? Yeah, because, I mean, Jesse was talking about how it reflected our relationship because recently I really accidentally, without really thinking about it, I bought some rolls of extremely thin toilet paper.

Oh, fan. Yeah. And she's been giving me grief about that ever since. I mean. Tell her I stand in solidarity. Yeah. We have. Treat your tushy well.

We got a fancy bidet. I know you have a bidet. That's right. It's life-changing. And so I just pay less attention to toilet paper in general. But anyway, the Charmin Bears, I mean, they have no visible bits or holes of any kind, which is why it kind of makes them surprising spokes creatures for the toilet paper, because they're like, look how clean, and it's like, I can't see anything. It's just, Like, look how clean.

And it's like, I can't see anything. It's just, I mean, I don't see like poop on your hide, I guess. So that's good. Why can't I see your holes? I can't see where anything comes out. So I wouldn't know if it's clean. Anyway. This is making me have more sympathy for the people who came up with that.

Because, you know, it's like i get it it's a hard thing to advertise because you know you you can't show your downs downstairs you know it was like when they're like you know how we have to sell pads and tampons using blue liquid and i was like we can't just like admit that this happens to like half the population what are we doing here what was your take on Dinger again? I forget. Were you for or against? Dinger's the dinosaur? Yeah. You know, I am pro.

I'm pro. I'm pro. I'm glad you're pro because I was worried that maybe you had said something scathing about Dinger. I don't think I did. And that you had prompted the savage attack that was perpetrated on Dinger. Oh my gosh. Did you see?

I know you saw. I will link so that everyone can see, but someone just tackled Dinger. Like a dude just, Dinger was just like dancing on the dugout as a mascot dinosaur does. Producer Shane brought this to our attention and I was deeply disturbed. Yeah, dude just like

dived onto the the top of the dugout and just took out dinger and took out dinger and and the the perpetrator has escaped justice what's far yeah they've not caught the guy and they're still looking for the guy there's a i'm just looking at the news reports. They're like putting out his picture and like, have you seen this man who assaulted Dinger? It's like a person in there. Yeah. And it's, you know, it looks like a fairly distinctive looking guy. I don't understand. Denver police spokesman Doug Shepman, we're working with the Rockies to try to identify the individual who was involved. We're looking at all the available evidence. I don't know what... Okay, so

you mean the video of the guy doing it? Yeah, like, is there some sort of like a CSI situation? Is there, like, what is, did he leave a skin sample on Dinger? Like, what are we working with here? I mean, I guess, you know, camera angles.

Yeah, I bet there are other cell phone videos and what have you. Yeah, in ballpark cameras and footage that you could pour through to try to find this guy. Anyway, like, there's a pretty clear picture of him. He's drinking a Modelo. And it's like, you know, he's kind of a gray, white-haired guy. And they're offering a $2,000 reward. That's all? Dinger should be insulted.

Did the Rockies determine their award? I don't know. But they released a photo, and I mean, if I knew this guy, I'd be like, oh, yeah, that's that guy. Like, it's pretty clear. So, I'm surprised that this man has eluded justice thus far. But they're putting out the dragnet for the dinger attacker here. Yeah, definitely don't attack mascots. I mean, like, I think that even the pantsless ones deserve to go unmolested at work.

Terrible phrasing makes this awful. Yeah, because the thing is, like, mascots, they take a lot of abuse and it's part of the shtick, sort of. You know, sometimes they'll play along with it. But that doesn't mean that you as a fan can participate in the mascot beatdowns. You know, that's a little bit different. Yeah, don't tackle. That's just some person doing their admittedly strange job. You don't get to tackle people like yeah are we yeah doing anyway

thanks to tops now for sponsoring this tap last i don't think there would be a tops now card of dinger being tackled for instance probably that would feel maybe although it might help identify the the person right if more cards are circulated with his image i feel i feel better about it if like the proceeds went to the whoever the poor person was inside of the the mascot so that they could like you know i hope that they were uninjured yeah i guess there is a padding yeah but still like that would be very upsetting to just you're just like on the dugout you're doing your dino dance like have you have you ever been to Denver, Ben? Are you familiar with Denver at all?

Yeah. Well, I've passed through, obviously, many times in the airport. Sure. I've skied in the States. But you haven't spent much time in Denver. I haven't spent a ton of time in the city itself. Yeah. Yeah, because, like, I don't know if this is the – it always felt cool to me that the mascot was a dinosaur.

this is the it always felt cool to me that the the mascot was a dinosaur because like if you go to the natural history museum there there's like a big dinosaur component to it they got a big t-rex and like i would you know my mom is from colorado and we have a bunch of family there still and so when we when i was little like we would go there and see the dinosaur and it was like whoa cool and so i always thought that that was why they did it. Because like there is some amount of, you know, like paleontology. That word took longer to find in my brain than I'm comfortable with. But I like it. I know that there was that it kind of disturbs some people, but it's a mascot. So there's going to be some portion of the population that finds it upsetting because, you know, that's, you don't have to be a fleshy monster to terrify people.

Although if you are one, it certainly does the job. Are there really blooper defenders? I mean, I know there are, and I appreciate you all listening, but I find us to be at an impasse because he is the worst one. It's not close anyway let's get the forensic team after the guy who tackled tinger spring into justice anyway awful thing yeah even if that wouldn't make a great topic or subject for a tops now card i think uh the most first hits in a game that'd be a great tops. Now card. You definitely have one about that.

Just featuring the five guys who got hits. Yeah. Perfect. I wonder, um, so this is going to betray. I, maybe I should direct this question to friend of the show.

I'm a bachelorette because she has spoken to MLB authenticators before, but I wonder if that is like a, a moment where you as an authenticator feel like it's my time to shine. Because, you know, like you got five guys who have their first hit. You want to make sure that the right ball goes to the right guy. Or are you like overwhelmed by all of the things that you have to do? I wonder what the per game authentication rate is. Yeah, that is a good question.

All right. rate is? Yeah, that is a good question. All right, let's wrap up with the Pass Blast, which comes from David Lewis and also from 1994, a fraught year in Major League Baseball history. But David is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston, and here's what he has researched for us today. 1994, owners grab power back from commissioner. In 1964, as referenced in that episode's Pass Blast, team owners voted to give baseball's commissioner near absolute power, unlimited power. 30 years later in 1994, they took that power back. Of course, by that time, I guess an owner was acting as commissioner. But according to a February 12th, 1994 Associated Press article, owners sought to revoke the freedom

once given to the commissioner to do anything he wished, so long as it was in the best interests of baseball. According to the article, the commissioner could no longer use this power to make decisions regarding the World Series and postseason play, scheduling, interleague play, divisional alignment, expansion, the sale of teams, the relocation of teams, revenue sharing, or broadcasting agreements. At the time of this change, the role of commissioner was officially vacant after owners ousted Faye Vincent in 1992. In response, former Commissioner Peter Ubroth said, basically, the commissioner seems to have no portfolio power or job. That's what it looks like from a distance.

I think the changes dramatically changed the position. There will be the appearance of more responsibility, but substantially less authority. That's the recipe for a non-job. Bud Selig, then serving as the executive council chairman and de facto commissioner before being officially named commissioner in 1998, had a more positive spin on the change. I think, overall, the office is clearly strengthened. This brings the whole structure and office into this decade. had plenty of power and influence, I think, during his day. And of course, he was an owner. And so no one could pretend anymore that the commissioner was somehow different or had different interests than the owners when he was one. And obviously, 1994, not a banner year for Bud or for Major League Baseball in general.

There were some decisions made regarding the World Series and postseason play that year. Anyway, we can end there. Although I just saw that on Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN this weekend, a catcher is going to be mic'd up for the first time. Oh, no.

Yeah. I mean, look, I've done my rant already about micing up players who are playing in games. and I'm dismayed that this is still happening despite the pitch clock allowing less time for chat. And in the most intrusive way possible. Yeah. With the worst possible guy. And here, Martin Maldonado is going to become the first ever MLB catcher to wear a microphone during a game for, I assume, live conversation with. Yeah, Maldonado will be made available throughout the game on a microphone to converse with the Sunday night baseball crew.

No. I mean. It's nothing against. I mean, it would be a no regardless of who it is, right? This is not a Martin Maldonado specific take to be clear he has to catch the game yeah a catcher is

involved in every play famously I mean how would a catcher and they have so much to think about they have so much to do even if the pitcher is calling that game via pitch com potentially the upside to having a catcher be the one mic'd up is that a catcher is involved and is like intimately involved and could give you insight.

Like in the All-Star Game or whenever it was when we had Alec Manoa mic'd up or when Nestor Cortez and Jose Trevino and we could hear like the game planning and the pitch calling, that was cool. Again, exhibition games, totally fine with it. Totally fine. In an actual game though, to add that onto a catcher's plate on top of everything else,

like it'd be great if we could get insight, I guess, from a catcher in real time. As catcher nerds, I'm sure I'd love to hear and pick a catcher's brain in the moment, I guess. But like, how could they concentrate on that? He's doing his job. Yeah. And how can he even talk without being overheard constantly?

Right. I mean, it'd be cool if he was like, this is what we're calling here and here's why. But you can't do that because the better will hear you in addition to the broadcast audience. How does this... All right. Look, my initial reaction is negative i will watch to

see and reserve some of my judgment until then and perhaps this will not be as off-putting and disastrous as i think it will be and and cheapens the stakes in the competition and also make me uncomfortable and worried for the player involved but i don't like it on paper i i don't know i don't love this don't love this at all i don't i don't like it i don't care for it i they just have so much to do also like i don't again this is not it isn't a martin maldonado specific take but also like um martin maldonadoonado, famously beloved by the Astros pitching staff, thought to be very good at the catching part of his job, which is how he, you know, when he had like a 70 WRC plus last year, he still had a job and has stayed having a job. And so what I would posit is that you should not distract him from the place where he does the good part of his job because the other side tends to go less well. Yeah. Talk to him while he's hitting because he might make

it out anyway. And here they are putting me in a position where i feel like i have to be a jerk about martin maldonado i don't have any i don't have anything against martin maldonado like whatever but here here i am feeling like i have to point out right the obvious which is that this is a bad idea and there is a particular side of it that impacts maybe specifically this player but it would be bad no matter who it was. Yeah, I guess you could say he's so skilled as a defensive catcher that he is capable of multitasking, but also, no. No, thank you.

I don't like it even a little bit. I think it's a bad idea, except, like you said, in an all-star game when it doesn't matter. Well, we'll see how it goes, and perhaps we'll discuss it next time. Perhaps. All right.

Well, we gave you a stat blast, a past blast, and a pants blast. What more could you want? How many more blasts could there be? I have an important update. Denver is safe for dinosaurs again. The 45-year-old man accused of assaulting Dinger is no longer at large. Apparently, tips from the community allowed authorities to contact him by phone and he turned himself in on Friday afternoon. On the summons,

there's a field that says victim name and the entry reads Dinger. Thanks to Patreon discord member WSFNYC for pointing out that former Effectively Wild guest and forever Effectively Wild legend John Jaso would be a great candidate for the player we would want to be stranded on a desert island with. He could build a boat. He's laid back. He'd probably like the desert island life. Just a chill guy to spend the rest of your life with on an island if you need to.

I was thinking about active players, which is why he didn't come to mind. Let me read you one more quick email that came in after we recorded on the subject of the pitcher with the unhittable pitch. This is from Shyam, who says he should be deployed as a reliever, not a starter. This would mean you could give the guy 162 appearances per year. Send him out once in two out, one strike counts every game of the season to guarantee completion of a clean inning. So you just wait for two outs when you're ready to pull your previous pitcher,

get to one or two strikes, and then you bring in the pitcher with the unhittable pitch to finish off that batter. It's the old strategy, the mid-plate appearance pitching change, and it's the end of the inning, so not subject to the three-batter minimum, Cheyenne says. So this guy's completing two-thirds of 162 outs each year.

That's worth 40-ish perfect innings, right? Yeah, sure. That's one way you could go with it. Although then, I suppose we would always know which the unhittable pitch was, because all of them would be. Another thing that happened after we finished recording is that the Tampa Bay Rays lost a game. It can be done. They can be beaten. And the Blue Jays proved it behind Jose Barrios. So it was a record-tying run of wins to start the season, but not a record-setting one. The first time they played a good team, they folded like a house of cards. No, the Rays are really good, just not unbeatable.

Also, after I talked about Shohei Otani not even attempting a steal for some time, he did come close to getting one on Friday. With one out and a full count on Anthony Rendon, he was running on the pitch. It looked like he would have been safe easily, but it was ball four. He seemed disappointed that he didn't get the steal. That would have been quite a coincidence, though hardly the first time that we've talked about something and seemed to summit it into existence. And speaking of summoning things into existence, thanks to Ian H. for today's Effectively Wild intro theme. You can keep them coming if you're so inclined. Send them to podcast at fangrass.com. We have many musically inclined listeners,

and we're grateful for your submissions. We're also grateful to those of you who support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay mostly ad-free, aside from our stat blast sponsorship sometimes, and get themselves access to some perks.

Today's five supporters to thank are Tom O., Chris Boner, Joe Cool, Anne Gwynne Robson, and Joey. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only,

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If you are a supporter, you may message us through the Patreon site. And that way we'll know that it comes from a Patreon supporter. We'll read it with the appropriate reference. But anyone can contact us via email at podcastfancrafts.com. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can join the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That will do it for us this

week. Thanks for listening. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we'll be back to talk to you early next week. The memory collector, the creaky feeling It takes you in and sends you reeling It's your being in a simpler song It's the melody so strong It won't let you forget What it is that you've done