Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1995: Stink or Swim

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether a remedy for former Yankees slugger Moose Skowron might help current Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton, Cody Bellinger’s rebound and ovation violation, Domingo Germán’s sticky start, Juan Soto’s pitch-clock problem, Bryce Harper, hitting machines, and the future of minor-league rehab stints, whether Yandy Díaz’s “Ground Beef” nickname no […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1995 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Irelia Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. How are you? Doing okay. I think I know how to help someone who is not doing okay and that's Giancarlo Stanton. I think I have a possible cure or preventative treatment that could keep Giancarlo on the field. a possible cure or preventative treatment that could keep Giancarlo on the field.

And I say this with no medical expertise whatsoever. Not a doctor, not a trainer. No one take my advice. However, everyone knows Giancarlo Stanton seems to be prone to injuries these days, particularly lower body leg type injuries, right? So he has a hamstring strain now. It's grade two. He'll probably be out for several weeks. It's not the first hamstring strain that has caused him some time. And he's also, in addition to hamstring stuff, he's had knee stuff. He's had ankle injuries.

He's had quad strains. So he just can't seem to stay on the field. And I was reading the other day about Moose Gowron, as one does. And Moose Gowron, for those who don't know, he was really a formidable slugger in his day, a Yankees slugger, actually a lot in common with John Carroll Stanton in that he was a Yankees right-handed hitter who was very speedy in his youth and then lost a lot of that speed as he got older because of repeated injuries that kept him off the field. And he played during the 50s and 60s. And in the mid to late 50s, he had a string of injuries. So just reading here from a 1960 article. In 1955, article. In 1955, he hurt a leg muscle, I think it was a thigh, in 57, thumb, toe, and back muscle, 58, a back muscle, 59, he had a leg muscle problem, he was hit by a pitch, then he re-injured the back,

then he broke his wrist. So, it was a combination of more accidental type injuries and repeated injuries to his back and also his lower body. He kept having leg problems like Charcarlo Stanton. And here's what he did. He got some recommendations. He got some great advice here, how to prevent himself from getting hurt again. going to read from this January 1960 piece, the subheading, Swimming Recommended. Skowron reported that doctors at the Mayo Clinic told him his repeated muscle injuries were caused by the fact that his muscles tear instead of stretching. They recommended swimming. I played marbles and checkers when I was a kid, said the burly first baseman, but I never learned to swim. Skowron claimed with an embarrassed grin that he has learned how to swim recently, quote-unquote learned, but then had to admit that he stays out of the deep water because he hasn't learned how to stay afloat. However, this was the recommended treatment,

so this article calls him baseball's most brittle muscle man, which is probably something you could say about Jean-Claude Stanton these days, right? And another May 1960 article I was reading talks about how Casey Stengel, the Yankees manager, was an admirer of the man's muscles and that he was watching him hit and he said, he's got muscles he hasn't even used yet. And Skowron said, if I could just stay at one piece for a change, I've got a chance for that real big year, both for me and the ball club. So same sort of story here, exactly. Another parallel, Muscarin, 129 career OPS plus for the Yankees.

John Carlos Stanton, 129 career OPS plus for the Yankees. Eerie. So I'm saying, swimming could be the answer here. So the Yankees sent him to the Mayo Clinic. Their co-owner at the time, Dan Topping, went to the Mayo Clinic, wanted to find out

if Skowron was possibly accident prone, and if so, could he be cured? How would one determine that? Just like, I don't know, have them run around an obstacle course or something and see if they hurt themselves. How would you determine whether someone is accident prone? Just observe them, see if they trip over stuff. I don't know.

Yeah, like if you, you know, if you yell their name like really suddenly and they start and then they fall over and it kind of reflects that guy. really suddenly and they start and then and they fall over and it kind of reflects that guy yeah it's just like lay banana peels in front of them and see if they slip are you are you then determining whether they're accident prone or just not observant like yeah you know we're sabotage in that sense unethical to test that yeah i suppose those are probably related concepts yeah but but this May 1960 article says, the Mayo report brought out at least a partial medical explanation. It seems Skowron's muscles don't have the elasticity of the average athletes and sudden movements are likely to tear them loose.

However, the clinic said there's no such thing as an accident-prone player. Yeah, that feels not real. Some players, it said, are just unlucky. You got to go to the Mayo Clinic to find out that some people are unlucky. There's real science involved, Ben. Yeah, but I guess there was science in the muscle elasticity part. And so they told him to swim. And so he said, I've been going into the pool three or four days a week for the last couple of winters.

And it seemed to work. So the first few seasons after this great breakthrough, this swimming advice, he played in 91% of the Yankees games, which was by far his best stretch of staying healthy over that span in his career. So I've just got to say, Giancarlo, I mean, I know he's done some yoga. He even has some yoga, like, instructional videos from several years ago. So he has worked on flexibility stuff, but couldn't find any evidence that he swims. I mean, he quite possibly swims, but I just couldn't find any articles specifically mentioning that he swims. So, yeah, I think perhaps we got to get him in the pool here, and this might be the secret. I thought, I was convinced that you were going to go back on your previously reckless advice that one need not stretch. Oh, yeah. I still stand by that.

He's probably stretching too much. That's probably the issue. That is absolutely not the issue, yeah. I still stand by that. He's probably stretching too much. That's probably the issue. That is absolutely not the issue, Ben. I am also not a medical professional in any way, shape, or form. And yet, despite my lack of expertise, I do feel confident that it is not an overabundance of stretching that seems likely to be the issue. We have debated this before on a Patreon pod, I believe. There is some medical backing for my stance. I'm talking about static stretching, to be clear, not like warmups, just, you know, like bending over and touching your toes or whatever. It seems like there's increasingly a consensus that that may not actually improve anything. Spoken like a man who is capable of touching his toes, unlike some of us, Ben. Also a man who is capable of touching his toes unlike some of us ben also a man who has not strained his hamstring recently so i'm just saying i also have not played professional sports recently or ever but i have i have swum you have swum yeah that has uh kept me safe so just saying

free advice for sean carlo and the Yankees. I'm sure extremely qualified medical staff based on 60-plus-year-old advice given to Muscarin, which I just happened to read this the other day. And when I saw that Giancarlo Stanton was hurt, I was like, Eureka, another muscle-bound, right-handed Yankees slugger with sort of the same offensive stats and the same injury issue. I know how to fix this because I have read my history. I just am envisioning you sitting in your apartment, like, reading this and then looking around like, you guys, I did it. I figured it out. Yeah. Just sending an email to Brian Cashman, subject line, swimming. an email to Brian Cashman, subject line, swimming.

I got a hot, hot tip. I think a couple of things, but most notably that I would imagine so, like, you know, swimming is good for you and it, you know, it kind of cross-trains different stuff. It's low impact, right? And I imagine that if you're Giancarlo Stanton and you're dealing with trying to stay in some amount of game shape, but also you don't want to aggravate it, and you are built like a demigod, then it might be beneficial to have a low-impact means of training.

I could see it, Ben. I think you might be onto something. And if he couples that with a good regime of informed stretching, he might really be onto something. You might have cracked the case as it were. Well, he's getting a second opinion from you about the stretching, I guess. I do not necessarily recommend that. I mean, I'm sure he is listening to really anyone but me about what he should do because, as I have said, not a medical professional. Don't know. No, but I do know a lot about Muscarin.

So there's that. There you go. I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express and I read about Muscarin the other day. It is a kind of expertise. Is it the most relevant kind of expertise? I mean, it is a kind of expertise. Is it the most relevant kind of expertise? I mean, I think that's debatable, but it is an expertise. So, yeah, they're probably at the point of like, let's try anything. Sure. Oh, yeah. This quack

on a podcast is coming in here with this 60-year-old advice from the Mayo Clinic. I mean, it is Mayo Clinic advice. You know, it's from the the 1960s. So for all I know, they were like, smoke two packs a day and you'll be just fine. But it was coming from qualified experts at the time. Now, perhaps the science has advanced in the subsequent several decades. But anyway. At least we're past the point where they were probably like, have you tried opium? You know? Yeah. Probably the Mayo Clinic was saying you shouldn't smoke at that time too but you know big tobacco you never know ben yeah but big pool is uh sponsoring effectively wild

here so that's just to disclose it's a literally big pool olympic sized it would have to be to contain john carlos stanton and moose Gowron. I mean, especially simultaneously. Yeah, I know. They could get Josh Donaldson on the swimming regimen, too, since he seems to have the same issue. Anyway, I have a couple other outfielder notes. I don't want to alarm anyone or excite anyone unduly, but Cody Pallinger has a 135 WRC-plus as we speak. Now, that is coming off a fiveRC plus as we speak. Yeah. Now that is coming off a five for five night.

Sure. So I'm picking my moment here. Sure. Perhaps he will not do that every night. And then the WRC plus will go down. Although I think that was his first five hit night. So he's reaching new offensive highs. And look, small sample.

We're still within the bounds of Voros' law, Voros McCracken's rule of thumb that any major league hitter can hit just about anything in 60 at-bats. Oh, sure. I believe Cody Bellinger is at 58 at-bats right now. Oh, boy, danger zone. Yeah, squarely in the Voros' law bullseye here. But, hey, Cody Bellinger.

Yeah. Is Cody Bellinger back? Yeah. I mean, it would be tremendously exciting um for him and for cubs fans if that ended up being true do i find it likely i mean i wouldn't say that um but you know he's a he's a tricky one he's a tricky one ben because on the one hand we've seen what he can do when it's all going right. It's like an MVP performance. Can win an MVP, yeah.

Was he sort of swooning? Not as dramatically as he has the last couple years, but swooning before the postseason celebration injury? I mean, yeah, he was. It is not simply a matter of having been hurt. There was other stuff going on. Yeah. He probably started swimming is what happens. I haven't found any corroboration of that yet.

I just Googled Cody Bellinger swimming to see if maybe that was his off-season regiment. But no evidence. But also, I can't deny that that was what happened. Yeah. I can't decide if you're in the tank for Big pool or if you're actively campaigning against big pool. You know, it's a really confusing message. If you were working as a lobbyist, I would say that you might not accomplish your legislative goals. But he had this, you know, swoon.

He was swooning and then he got hurt. And then I was like, how much is it? The swoon versus being hurt versus him just having this wild long stretch where he played the best baseball of his life, won an MVP, and then kind of was set up to disappoint by virtue of his own supremely good performance for limited stretch. Hard to say. Would be nice if he were some good version of himself though because i imagine he'd find that quite satisfying um he's never been someone i felt confident had like did a a great job of making sustained adjustments right like do you remember his first post season where it was like as long as you were throwing like a back foot breaking, you could pretty confidently get him out.

And then he adjusted, and he was able to hit well against that pitch type, and then it just vanished again. And you're like, but you could do it before. Why can't you keep doing it? What's going on? And so I find him very perplexing. I don't quite know what sort of player Cody Bellinger really is other than someone who is, you know, kind of fun to meme. And then it wasn't

fun to meme him because he was playing so poorly and he didn't want to like make fun of the young man, you know? Yeah. And I don't know if this is all that meaningful. He has struck out not often at all, but he also has a higher BABIP. Now, he's had an extremely low BABIP over the past few years, but he's overperforming his batted ball quality stats, and it doesn't look like he's hitting the ball particularly harder or hitting it hard with greater regularity or barreling it more often or anything like that that might encourage you, but even so. So, I'm sure he's made some tweaks. One of the episodes last year when you were traveling, I think I did a roundtable episode

where I convened some mechanical experts and they gave their advice about how to bring back Cody Bellinger and perhaps some changes have been made, who knows. But if he's good again, then we've talked about how light the free agent market looks, especially for position players. But if he were to bounce back and be a star again, then that would change things because he would be much in demand. He was much in demand even when he was looking for a one-year deal. But he would be looking for a much longer term and more lucrative deal if he could sustain this. But we're a long way away from him sustaining this. It's just fun to see him having a nice few weeks.

Yeah, you enjoy it for the sake of the player, if nothing else. Yeah, it is going to be, it's an underwhelming market, you know. It's very exciting right at the tippy top. And then after that, it's... It's Otani, and then it's everyone else. Which would be the case regardless, but it's a big, big drop-off. Yeah, it feels like a particularly precipitous fall, given the quality of the guys behind him, for sure.

Yeah. That five-hit game came against Bellinger's old team, the Dodgers. And did you see the pitch clock violation? I did. He was assessed. He stepped out of the box for a minute to receive a standing ovation. Actually, I misspoke. That was not against the Dodgers.

He had just played the Dodgers for three games, and then they went to play the A's, and he got five hits, which I guess checks out because it's the A's. But a little less impressive coming against the A's than it would have been against the Dodgers. But he had a nice series against the Dodgers too. And there was that moment where he got the appreciation of the home crowd. And then he started that play for its down 0-1 because he took too long to be in the box ready to face the pitcher, which was like, read the room, you know? Just like, let's give him a special dispensation for this moment. Come on. Have some feel, you know? Have a little bit of feel. And, you know, look, we all have our moments of not reading the room. We are none of us perfect in this regard. But normally, you don't have such a loud reminder from the room yeah right of what

the of what the text might offer if i can continue to mix the metaphor so um yeah like what you doing i i get we want to keep things moving along but also we're here to enjoy ourselves and what about that moment suggested to you that the crowd was keen to move on? They are loudly saying, we'd like to pause, in fact. So, you know, like, let stuff around you be your guide every now and again, in my opinion. Yeah. One of the keys to enforcement, I think, is to have it be uniform and have it be strict and consistent. And otherwise, if you start letting things slide, then people look for loopholes and they try to exploit that. And then the next thing you know, it's a slippery slope

and game times are creeping up again and guys are getting lax about things. So I get that. There is an importance to be placed on just having it be really implemented all the time, but also that particular time. But also, relax. You know, the other thing about it is relax.

Because I think that you're right, that you want, I think any system of rules needs to feel, well, fair, ideally, right? If it feels fair, the odds that you are going to be able to really press the point when a violation occurs are better because people will be like, yeah, I broke that rule, but that rule is fundamentally a fair one. And it's, it's like you said, uniformly enforced, right? There's no dispensation granted. Also, like, I think that we need to, if you're considering edge cases where enforcement might be loosened, loosened ever so slightly.

Part of what you want to think about is like, is this actually a situation where a future rule abider could become a rule violator in a way that isn't in keeping with an exception that we deem to be appropriate? And I would say that in this this instance you don't really have to worry about that because how many how many times do you really have a guy coming home to his former ballpark and the fans the fans are really the ones who instigated that moment it was not like cody bellinger was like cheer for me you know like because in that case i think you should assess him a rule violation because that's like kind of big- of you, Cody. But that's what he did. So you don't really have, I think, an intense danger of violation in a way that would render the rule unusable. And so I say read the room because we're not, you know, we don't we don't want the system to be any more punitive than it needs to be. And I think it's important to remember the intent of the rule. And the intent of the rule is to improve the entertainment experience of the fans.

And so, again, let them in this kind of moment be your guide and chill, you know? be your guide and chill you know yeah it doesn't seem too exploitable that guys are going to be spending several seasons with a team winning an mvp award just so that when they return to that team after departing they can perhaps get a few extra seconds on the pitch clock seems seems unlikely to be an avenue to these sorts of things. I mean, look, I don't want to say that goofy stuff doesn't happen. It does. Of course it does. But also, chill.

Yeah. I was thinking of this this weekend because back on episode 1708, a couple years ago, we had Josh Beck on on a listener who was also a criminology expert. We were talking about the sticky stuff enforcement and whether MLB was going about enforcing that in the right way. And he brought that up on Twitter this weekend because of the Domingo German episode in the Yankees-Twins game where German was pitching really well. And he got checked for sticky stuff and he did have sticky stuff. But he said it was rosin, which is legal. And they told him to wash it off. And then he came back and there was still some stickiness there and he didn't get ejected. And Rocco Baldelli, twins manager, was upset and he then got ejected. And Josh Beck was saying on Twitter that he brought this up way back when on Effectively Wild. Deterrence theory relies on certainty of punishment. So if there's any chance you can get caught but not punished, you're more willing to risk

it. If it's rosin and legal, then no need to wash it off. If it's sticky stuff, then he needs to be ejected. So you could talk about that being a time when perhaps they should have been stricter. But I don't think that Cody Be Ballinger, that's a situation that he was trying to exploit anything more than anyone else could. So yes, it was amusing for me, but maybe not so much for Cody Ballinger. It's like this guy's getting applauded and the umpire's like, you know what? Don't get a big head here. You're just like anyone else. The pitch clock

applies to you too. It's like the memento mori, like the person, you know, riding with Caesar or whatever and whispering in their ear that they too will die someday when they're like parading through Rome and just getting feted and the umpires there to be like, hey, don't get too big for your breaches here. You know, you may be beloved here. They may be grateful for all that you did when you were a Dodger, but also you got to face the pitcher with eight seconds left on the clock and be ready to hit or else there will be a strike assessed. Or else. Or else. Now here's my other outfielder bit.

This is about an outfielder who is not doing so hot and that's Juan Soto. And this is also related to the pitch clock. So Juan Soto, not hitting like Juan Soto, not even like last year's Padre Juan Soto, which was a bit of a disappointment too. But he's been almost a league average producer just because he's still walking so much. But he's batting 164. He's slugging 361. That's not what you want from Juan Soto. And here is a tweet from ESPN's Alden Gonzalez. he's slugging 361. That's not what you want from Juan Soto. And here is a tweet from ESPN's Alden Gonzalez.

Juan Soto is still having a hard time adjusting to the pitch clock. He specifically lamented there not being enough time coming out of the on-deck circle to get himself ready and begin plate appearances. Quote, there's no time at all. You can't even play mind games anymore. We all know Juan Soto, he likes to try to psych out the pitcher, which is fun for fans too, just watching him do his thing in there. I do appreciate the honesty of that. Like, hey, hey, I'm trying to be a scamp.

Why won't you let me? I was just imagining. This is almost like an Effectively Wild hypothetical. I guess it is actually that because I'm bringing it up on Effectively Wild now. But imagine if the pitch clock just broke Juan Soto. Like everyone else was pretty much fine and adjusted and went about their business. But Juan Soto was just never great again because it turns out that he's just such a hitting savant and he's so smart and he's thinking and out thinking and those extra seconds that it took to predict the pitch type and anticipate what the pitch would be and then

maybe get in the pitcher's head. That was secretly the key to his success all along. And now the pitch clock is his kryptonite and he will never be good again. And it's just a Juan Soto only issue. He was just more dependent on the pitch clock or on the lack of a pitch clock than we ever knew. And the great Soto is gone for good. And I was thinking like, you know, would it be worth it to lose the great, the historically wonderful Juan Soto in order to slash 20 to 30 minutes off the average game. And that's a tough one because, boy, I would miss the great Juan Soto, but it's also pretty sweet having the pitch clock these days, I would say. So I think that the greatness of Juan Soto might have to be sacrificed

at the altar of trimming that time off of games. But imagine i will be relieved now when and i do say when and not if one soto eventually starts hitting yeah and i can rule out the pitch clock kryptonite theory but i was thinking you know what if what if what if i mean i imagine i imagine it'll be fine i think it's probably gonna i think it's probably gonna to be fine. But also, it is a little alarming. Like, I don't think that we have, like, dramatically altered our career expectations for Soto. Like, I will speak for myself, perhaps. I do not find my career expectations for him altered. But I will say, it has been a minute now, you know?

It has, yeah. I would, he sort of, you know, he started slow last year. And then he hit better. And then he went to San Diego and started really slow there. And it was still, like, good. But not what they were hoping he would be. And now, slow start again. It's not his first slow start. I'm sure he'll be fine. they were hoping he would be and now slow start again he it's not his first slow start i'm sure he'll be fine i'm sure he'll be fine i'm sure he'll be fine i'm sure

he'll be fine but i just like to see it yeah i'm sure he'll be fine you know how many different ways can i say this yeah great and then the last outfielder related news although i guess perhaps now he's preparing to be a first baseman for the short term. But Bryce Harper, right? Everyone's on Bryce Harper return watch because at first we heard that it might be not until the All-Star break that he comes back, but it sounds more and more like he might beat that, right? And I think actually we're speaking on Tuesday, I think he was scheduled to face some live pitching. I think he was scheduled to face some live pitching. I think he was going to take some pitches off of Ranger Suarez, who's also been hurt for the Phillies.

And, you know, he's very much on the comeback trail here. And it's still a question about when he'll be able to play the outfield because we don't know when he'll be able to throw. And so he's been taking some reps at first base where the Phillies have a hole. And so he's been taking some reps at first base where the Phillies have a hole. But one thing that caught my eye that's kind of interesting is that apparently he might not need to have a rehab assignment, which when I saw that at first, I thought, wow. That seems impossible. Yeah, it seems impossible, right? I mean, he had Tommy John surgery.

Right. He's missed a lot of games. He's been out of action for a long time. Of course he would have a rehab assignment. Now, I think he had a brief one last year after he broke his thumb and was out for a while. He only had like 10 plate appearances. Yeah, it wasn't very much. Yeah. He might just not be big on the idea of taking reps down there where it doesn't count. But even Phillies manager Rob Thompson was saying, I really don't know if he will go on an assignment. I mean, if he's swinging the bat well and he feels good, I say, why waste it? And Harper also said that he could get those reps without going to AAA and that at that point when he's healthy enough to play, he just needs to get back. It's good talent down there. It's nothing against that at all. But big league talent's a little bit different. A big league game is a little bit different. The more big league talent I get to see, the better it's going to be for me. And the interesting thing reading from this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer is that

Harper, in theory, can see big league talent without actually getting into games because the Phillies are one of these teams that has this system called Traject. It's called the Traject Arc. I wrote about this a couple of years ago that there's been this arms race basically, or I guess it's almost literally an arms race to try to perfect pitching machines. exactly and dial it in so that it perfectly mimics the characteristics of actual major league pitchers pitch movement down to seam shifted wake and everything else all the little subtleties and then also you can pair it with a video display so it looks like it's coming out of the pitcher's release point right so it's as realistic as it could possibly be and so the suggestion here is that because the Phillies have this

in their batting cages at Citizens Bank Park, and it can replicate the pitch mixes and deliveries of specific major league pitchers, Thompson says, you can put a video up there and the machine will mimic a pitcher's stuff, velocity, movement, pitches. That's like getting at bats, you know?

It can allow us to kind of expedite the whole thing. So I wrote about that in the context of, is this a way for hitters to even things out and to keep up with pitchers constantly innovating and using new types of technology? Well, maybe if hitters can practice against game speed and game quality stuff, then maybe that could be a bit of an equalizer. I had not even considered this, though, that it might spare you having to play some games and get like four at-bats in a game, right? I mean, you could take as many at-bats as you want in a compressed period against one of these new age hyper advanced pitching machines.

And in theory, it's like compressing a rehab assignment or better than a rehab assignment because you're not actually facing that stuff in AAA that could get you back on the field sooner. So that's just an application of the technology I had not considered. It's kind of cool. I bet AAA clubs are going to hate that though.

Yeah, they probably like rehab assignments, right? They love rehab assignments because they're able to say, hey, come down to, you know, if you're the Iron Pigs, right? You get to say, come on down. We're going to have Bryce Harper for a series while he rehabs before he goes up to the big club. Like they market that stuff actively when it happens. And that's hardly unique to Lehigh Valley. So I've had AAA clubs are like,

but can we break the machines? Like what if instead of them working, they were just all broken. And then you were like, I have to go to Lehigh Valley. Cause cause the thing is all of the machines are broken. Not just some of them, all of them,

they're all broken. So weird that they would all be broken. And the one guy who can fix them, he's on vacation. So I guess you just got to come through. You know, like they're going to hate that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Although I guess they might be using them to train against good pitching too and hopefully get to the big league suitor in theory.

But yeah, I don't know if it's a perfect substitute because of course it's not a game situation and it's hard to replicate yes the adrenaline now i don't know if you're bryce harper and you played in the world series are you getting the same adrenaline rush from playing for lehigh valley i do i do appreciate that he was like look i don't want to be a dick and so i'm gonna say there's nothing against the guys down there. There are good guys down there. That's not, why would you even think that that's what this is about? You know?

Right. I find that, I find there to be a generosity of spirit there. That's very appealing to me. Yeah. Right. Those guys are good too. Yeah.

Like, that's a nice, that's nice. You know, you don't have to say it, but it's nice that you did say it. So it's, it's nice, but.'t have to say it, but it's nice that you did say it. So it's nice. Yeah.

And I guess depending on the injury you're coming back from, maybe you'd want to test your body in ways that you can't in a batting cage. If you're John Carlos Stanton and you're coming back from a hamstring strain. That's what the pool is for. Yeah, that's what the pool is for. Of course, you can do away with the rehab assignments as long as you have the pool. But you might want to just move in a way that you don't if you're just swinging. But it's interesting because with pitchers, I mean, pitchers in theory, they could just throw off a mound or throw bullpen sessions and not do rehab assignments. But also, then they're really not facing, you know, I don't know if there's a batting robot that is quite the equivalent of this pitching robot machine. Yeah.

So that's, I guess, a little harder to engineer. So if you want to face real hitters without endangering anyone, then, you know, you might have to go to the minor leagues and get on a mound. Yeah. go to the minor leagues and get on a mound. Yeah, but I always enjoy a rehab assignment too just because you get to see guys facing other guys they don't normally face and might never face otherwise.

It's just like a mismatch of talent levels. I always want to do research on figuring out what the aggregated stats of big leaguers on minor league rehab assignments is. How much do they dominate? Do they dominate as much as you'd think they would, or are they rusty and not at full strength? And thus they don't

dominate as much as you'd think they would. I want to know. And also sometimes, as I think Emma Batchelory has documented, sometimes you get big leaguers in the minors with very silly looking minor league promotions and jerseys. It yeah you know it's like star wars night or whatever and they're wearing some very silly looking uniform and you never get to see that exactly in the big leagues although obviously we're getting advertising and all sorts of patches but but not quite as as bush league perhaps as some of the things that they wear on a minor league rehab assignment so it's then you always get the stories about like, you know, the big leaguer big leagued them, but in a good way, right?

Like, you know, bought them a bunch of food, like bought a fancy spread, you know, just like gave them a little preview of what it's like to be in the big leagues, like Crash Davis, you know, regaling his Durham Bulls teammates with stories of what it's like in the show, you know, just giving them a little taste of that while they're down there. So that's nice too. Yeah, I think that that stuff is really nice. And like, you know, sometimes you'll hear they're like, they bought everybody headphones.

I bet there are a lot of, at some point they're like, we have so many headphones. Like it seems like headphones are popular. You know, like. Yeah, Rob Manfred giving people headphones. Yeah, like nice, like Bluetooth ones, you know, like nice ones. But at some point you're like, I just have all these headphones. Like, what do I even do with all of them? Yeah, I think it's a nice thing when they get to go down and like spend some time with those guys. It might not be all that long before the major leaguer who's rehabbing sees that AAA guy again in a major league context, right? Like, in theory, some of those players are going to end up being Bryce Harper's teammates, right?

You know, if everything kind of goes to plan. So I do think that there are nice stories to be had there. And it kind of, you know, like, I get it. stories to be had there and it kind of you know like i i get it i get that you want to be if you're especially if the player who's rehab you're helping to manage is one who's both as good and as important to the phillies as bryce harper is like you want it to be methodical you want it to accomplish everything it needs to in terms of getting him up to game shape. But you also want to make sure that like, you know, nothing, no other ailments begin to befall him. Right. But maybe this is a place where we don't need a machine.

You know, maybe like this can just be a thing where he like pops down to, especially if you're, you know, a club where your AAA affiliate is pretty close, you know, we have Valley's not that far. Yeah, and I guess even if you can compress more at-bats within a small window than you could just playing one minor league game at a time, you also have to be careful when you're coming back from injury not to overtrain and just be in the cage all day

because then you might hurt yourself because you're not built up to do that. But it's an interesting application of that technology. And obviously, Phillies fans are in favor of Bryce Harper coming back as soon as possible. One other note on a player I wanted to mention, Yandy Diaz, who we christened with the nickname Ground Beef, which has swept the nation. I can't believe it hasn't caught on. It's so appealing. You think about

what are the foods that you want to look at the most? And number one with a bullet is ground beef. Yeah. How has he not embraced this? Yeah, that's my question. But the problem is, the tragedy is that even though this nickname was so apt- Perfect. Because of course, he's a beef boy. He is a beef boy. He hits a lot of ground balls, hence ground beef, we might have to retire it though, because all of a sudden he doesn't hit ground balls anymore.

And this is what everyone's been waiting for with Yandy Diaz. Like imagine if he could just elevate with those biceps and how hard he hits the ball. And he found a way to be pretty productive without doing that. I mean, doing that a little more, but still not a lot. Like last year, he had a 146 WRC plus. Yeah, he was very good. Very good.

Yeah. But it came largely from walking a lot. I mean, again, walking is good, but he hit nine homers in 558 play appearances. And you look at that guy and you're like, how did he hit nine homers in 558 play appearances and you look at that guy and you're like how did he hit nine homers like so imagine if he could hit more homers and still do the other good things that he did well so now so far he has a 150 wrc plus which is almost unchanged so you might think same yandi diaz but no i don't think it is because he's got four homers already in 67 plate appearances. He's slugging 500 despite batting 241. And his BABIP is like 100 points lower than it was last year.

And still his productivity has been basically the same. His expected weighted on base is like 100 points higher because he's crushing the ball and he's hitting the ball in the air all of a sudden. And he's hitting the ball in the air all of a sudden. So last year among qualified hitters, he had the 17th highest ground ball to fly ball ratio. This year among qualified hitters, he has the 16th lowest ground ball to fly ball ratio. It was 1.57 last year. It's 0.61 this year. So he's hitting many more flies than grounders.

And again, with all batted ball stuff, you got to wait a while for these things to stabilize. And, you know, standard small sample caveat applies here. But he's hitting many more balls in the air and hitting those balls hard. And Daniel Epstein just wrote about this at Baseball Perspectives and brought it to my attention. wrote about this at Baseball Perspectives and brought it to my attention. So just to imagine, watch out if Yandy Diaz now, in addition to doing the other things he did well, is actually using that strength to get the ball in the air and is no longer ground beef, then he could be truly, truly an offensive force. I keep thinking of additional ground like beef related um oh you know you know one we haven't used uh before ben you know when we haven't used before when it comes to beef like if um you had

like a beef boy pitcher he could be beef chuck because oh yeah check it yeah um the the raise as we are sitting here on uh tuesday so these are through Monday's games, lead the majors in home runs, Ben. Yeah. 37. They have seven more than the second-place Dodgers and 11 more than the third-place Yankees, who famously have several beef boys of their own. Yes. A number several beef boys of their own you know yes a number of uh of beef boys so i look we have talked about how we did not want to overreact to the rays win streak and we don't want to overreact to the i'm doing air quotes when i say slump that they find themselves in now

slump they have lost three whole games so clearly yeah trash but uh they they do lead the majors in home runs and wrc plus so i uh i don't know man. We talked about it. It is interesting that they are doing some unrazy kind of baseball. Maybe they are being aided by a baseball that is a little more forgiving to home runs, as the early analysis shows. But ground beef, now we have to come up with a Yandex Diaz-specific one. Yeah, could be Kobe beef now, right? Because, I mean, Kobe beef, just in terms of his quality, I don't know if that conveys. That's terrible, Ben.

That doesn't work at all. Look, I don't want to be unkind, but I also want to be honest. His average lunch angle has doubled i'm trying to think of uh of what would convey beef that is now airborne airborne beef space beef i'll work on it that's just you know spaghetti against the wall that's not it's not sticking it's falling falling right off that wall you know um i was gonna bring up the the ball though as you just did, because Rob Arthur did his early season check-in at Baseball Prospectus. And what he found, it kind of mirrors what you can see by looking at the Baseball Savant day-by-day baseball drag readout, which is that the drag is reduced.

Now, it's not peak juiced ball is back. It's just that we seem to be back to the 2020 to 2021 ball, which was fine. I'd even venture to say it was sort of a happy medium. And last year was maybe too dead. And 2017 and 2019 were too lively. And maybe this is sort of the Goldilocks zone for the baseball. But it's interesting that we're back there because the ball was deadened on purpose and MLB said that it was going to be deadening the ball. And it has not announced that it is rewinding things back to 2020-21. So I wonder, again, whether this was an intentional change or what, but the offense that it has produced thus far is fairly robust relative to, well, certainly what we saw last year. But we've got 4.66 runs per game thus far, which is about on par with 2020, below 2019. Again, it's April, so you would expect that to pick up later in the season, all else being equal.

But I feel like this is not a bad place for offense to be right now. You know, this feels like, all right, it's not too much scoring. It's not a deficit in scoring. It's not deficient. This feels like a decent amount of offense. And it also, I think, makes the decline in game time

more impressive. Yeah. Because longer games, you would think, would result from more scoring. Right, right. So the reduced game times that we've gotten this year

has happened even though scoring is up. So that maybe makes the savings even more extreme than it might look at first blush. But I'm kind of happy with offense the way that it is now. And it's not just the ball. It's also, of course, the running game, which we have discussed plenty. And perhaps it's the shift ban, but I don't really know how much that is actually contributing to it yet. Whatever it is, feel like uh this is

this is sort of a sweet spot thus far i'm worried ben that the league is gonna be so confident after all of this that they will then do something really silly um having been met with success for their machinations so far they're like we know exactly what we're doing. And then like, you know, strikeouts are going to be florps or something. Well, yeah. Strikeouts, still lots of those as we've discussed, even with the sticky stuff crackdown, at least when Domingo German is not pitching. But BABIP is up to 299 now, which again, like it was 300 in 2017, right? And it was 298 in 2019. And then it dipped down over the past few years, maybe as the ball was deader, but also as shifts and defenses got ever

more sophisticated and prevalent. So again, like I don't really know what the effect of that has been thus far. Is Cody Bellinger having a better year because some balls that would have got caught in the shift before are not now? I don't know. We really have to wait to see. But I'm kind of pleased where offense is sitting right now. It is funny, though, that you mentioned, like, is MLB going to get high on its own supply and overreach? We did get an announcement about the new Atlantic League rules. Just got a press release about that before we started recording. So not a lot of new experimental

rules being tested in the miners this year because most of the ones that they were testing have now been implemented in MLB. So still testing the ABS system, robot umps at some level, Testing the ABS system, robot umps at some level, and still testing the pie slice rule at one level and the pre-tacked ball at one level. And the pitch clock that they're using in the minors is like a second or two more aggressive, less lenient than the one in the majors this year. But nothing, you know, way out of the ordinary that hasn't already been tested in previous seasons. out of the ordinary that hasn't already been tested in previous seasons. So in the Atlantic League, though, which is still a partner league of MLB, this year they will be testing the double hook DH rule, which has been in place there before. So this is just the attempt to prolong starting pitcher outings by tying the DH to the starting pitcher.

So you can use the DH throughout the game if the starting pitcher has completed at least five innings. So if the starter doesn't go through five, then you lose the DH for the rest of the game. And some people have been advocates of this. I'm not against it, but I don't think it will work really. I just, I don't think it will have any demonstrable, measurable effect, because I just feel like the benefit to getting the starting pitcher out earlier is, I think it dwarfs the benefit to keeping the DH, probably. I just, I don't think it really will do anything, and it's kind of complicated. So I'm'm not against it but i think if you really want

starters to go deep into games you need to restrict the number of pitchers on the active roster which we've discussed that's my chosen solution for that but then they're also going to be testing one disengagement from the pitching rubber during an at-bat instead of the two that we now have in mlb which to me look I guess there's no harm in testing it, but I have no desire to go from two to one, seeing what we're seeing this year in majors, which is people just running rampant. I mean, it's fine. I'm not necessarily against what we're seeing this year with the huge uptick in stolen bases and stolen base success rate and attempt rate. But seeing how dramatic the effect of that has been, I would not want to go to one disengage

because that'll be wacky. That'll be like people running constantly, I think. Well, and I think that when we were discussing the relative appeal of some of the new rules, one thing that we mentioned is that we're not trying to manage the game time number to zero, right? You want there to be baseball. And so I think that we should sit in this reality for a while, first of all, to make sure that it persists, right?

Because there is precedent for rule changes having an effect on game time and then that game time creeping back up again, right? We saw that in the minors in the first sort of round of testing around some of this stuff. And so we want to, like, we should like sit in it like a warm, like a still warm bath. See, a pool is better because like pools are heated. And so sometimes you like jump in and you're like, oh, cold. And then you sit there for a second and you're like, oh, cold.

And then you sit there for a second and you're like, oh, this is actually quite nice. You're like, oh. You have that kind of. Yeah. I'm not straightening my hamstring anymore. It's a miracle. I really worry about you not stretching, and I'm skeptical of your research, Ben. We've got to elevate this. All my sources on the show pitch.

We've got to escalate this question to actual doctors. But, Ben, I think we want to sit with it for a little bit and see if the game times that we're seeing sort of stabilize and are persistent. And then we can ask the question, are we good? Like, is this good? Because right now, I think we're in this really lovely Goldilocks zone, if you will, where the games feel zippy. They're moving. There's action. It isn't distracting, right? We're kind of getting into that phase of the implementation where the broadcasts are talking about the pitch clock less, you know?

And so we're just able to, to like enjoy the baseball moving at a good pace but it doesn't feel rushed and it doesn't feel like you know you got a flight to catch like what do we why are you you let me luxuriate in this a little bit and so i don't feel as it is currently constituted a need to speed things along any more than we already have. And so I get like, I think it's fine in the background for, you know, the league to test one disengagement and this and that and say, okay, if we get to a point where we feel like we maybe do want to trim a little bit more time, or we do see game time starting to creep back up ever so slightly to have data ready for us to say, okay, well,

if we went down to one disengagement, what would that theoretically do for game times? Like, I think that's fine. Like test stuff, you know, we are lab league advocates over here, but just, you know, just test it. Cause right now I don't think we need to keep, we don't need to rush into any more change. We've had a lot of change. We feel very disrupted. You know,

let's unpack the final box in the move before we start to contemplate our next move. You know, it's like when you're renting, you have to, you have to stay at least as long again, as it took you to get the art up on the wall. So it's like,

that's always been one of the rules that I've lived by. It's like, okay, if it takes you six months, well, you got to enjoy it for at least that long. Cause it's like that's always been one of the rules that I've lived by. It's like, okay, if it takes you six months, well, you got to enjoy it for at least that long. Because you just spent all this time with a blank wall and now you have something up there. So sit and enjoy it for a second before you contemplate other stuff. I don't know what I'm trying to say, but I just think everyone should.

Yeah. I think, look, if you want to implement things down the road, then you can test them even after you implement things in the major league level at another level so that if you want to make a further change a few years down the road, yeah, then you have the data. So that's okay. I'm just saying the effect on the running game has been dramatic and I wouldn't want to have the number of engagements again, just given what we've seen this year i feel like the the solar bases are in a pretty good place right now it's a good spot like we just are very it's very comfortable you know we're in like a good spot so i have a i did a little service journalism here because we got a question about the new rules pertaining to the running game that I couldn't answer. A few people have asked us this one. For instance, Sydney wrote in to say,

say on the third pickoff attempt, the defense catches a runner on first in a rundown, but due to some sort of defensive lapse, that runner manages to make it back to first. Do they get to advance to second anyway because it was the third pickoff attempt, or is there something different about a rundown versus a regular pickoff? So what happens to pickles? What happens to pickles? Can you put them back in the jar? Yeah.

Won't anyone think of the pickles? So if there's a third pickoff attempt where either you have to catch the guy or he gets to go to second. But in this case, there's a rundown, right? So like, does that still count against the pitcher as the third pickoff attempt or does it sort of reset because it's like the defense, there were many throws going back and forth. So I did not know the answer to this. I asked MLB the answer to this, and the MLB spokesperson checked on it for me and gave me the answer, which is, if all runners safely return to their originally occupied bases, the result of a third or subsequent disengagement is a balk. A rundown occurring before the runner ultimately returns safely does not change the result. occurring before the runner ultimately returns safely does not change the result. So in this example, the runner would be awarded second base at the conclusion of the play. So how silly and

Benny Hill and Yakety Sax-esque-ish would that be if you have this pickoff attempt, there's a rundown, let's say there's a raw a long rundown and pickle and it's back and forth and back and forth and the runner finally somehow makes it back to first base slides in safely there now they just get to get up dust themselves off and go to second base so it's like there's no incentive to either try to make it to second or go back to first because if you go back to first you still ultimately get to go to second. I don't think this has happened yet or at least I haven't seen it happen, but now I'm kind of hoping it happens

because of how silly this would be and also because I'd feel smart for knowing what the rule is. But imagine how weird this would be if you have a whole big rundown and you go back to first base and it's like, well, I guess I get to go to second now

after all of that. Huh. I don't know how I feel about that, Ben. I don't either. Yeah. I'm not sure if I like this or not. Yeah. I think that once you get caught in a rundown, it shouldn't count against the pitcher anymore

because he did his job. Right. He got you. Then it's on the rest of the defense almost. Right. It's not the pitcher's fault for him. I guess the defense is always involved, though. Wait, I want to make sure I understood the answer you got.

So if, okay, there's a pickle, right? And it's the third disengagement. And you get tagged in the pickle. Oh, then you're out. Then you're out. You're still out. Right. It's only if you make it back to first that you're no longer pickled.

Then you get to go to second because, yeah. You're suddenly fresh. Right. You're a cucumber again. Yeah, you've reverted to a cucumber. Okay, so I wanted to make sure that i understood that so i mean i guess it's not likely to be a problem even if i think i don't like this because most guys get get got in a pickle you you know? Yes. Most base runners, when pickled, they stay pickled, Ben.

Yeah, they're still briny. They're still briny, yeah. They're still briny. But I want it to happen. I want there to, well, one, because it's always fun when they manage to escape the brine, right? When they have been let loose, when the pickles are on the counter, that's always fun. And also, I want to be in a ballpark where someone has to explain what the hell just happened. Yeah, right, exactly. hell just happened right exactly that sounds and like on the broadcasts you know i feel like we

should you you have done service journalism i feel like we should send um a copy of this segment to every broadcast booth so that um they can be prepared because it's bound to happen at least once this year right yeah you'd think how many successful pickle escapes how many cucumbers do we have in a season generally do we i mean i mean i know that that has to be tracked i'm sure that like sports info solutions tracks that now probably it's it's rare which is it makes it fun and special when you can elude the rundown and get out of it. So in that sense, if you manage to elude it

and get back to first, then you should be rewarded. I mean, you're rewarded because you're safe. But also, in this case, you still get to advance to second anyway. So it opens things up

for the runner because there's no difference that they shouldn't have any added incentive to go to second as opposed to going back to first because either way, they get to second. So you feel kind of bad for the pitcher because it's like, hey, you picked him off basically and then your defense

didn't seal the deal. But really, the pitcher is part of the defense and the infielders are part of the defense. And if they fail too, then I suppose the failure should be distributed the same way it's a collective failure um i have a semi-related question uh it's josh harrison who was so good at getting out of pickles right do you think that he ever went by the nickname cuke because he was no longer in his it was fresh like a cucumber yeah well now that we have to forsake our ground beef nickname i guess we can something really satisfying about saying kuk to josh airson feels like yeah it's got good mouth feel i'm gonna come up with an alternative

for please do for yandi um ground beef was so good I'm offended that other people didn't like it as much as we did. I mean, there's no accounting for taste, Ben, but, and look, I know that I play a volume game when it comes to wordplay. Like I acknowledge my place, right? I'm an eating eater. But every now and again, I really throw cheddar. And I felt like I had it there. I thought I was like, that was painted. And it was painted cheddar. It was ground beef.

I don't know that anyone outright rejected it. No one harshly condemned. It didn't catch on, though, Ben. No, it didn't catch on. I'm not sure how big the market was for Yandy Diaz. Don't patronize me. I'm just saying, I don't know if the market rejected it exactly. So you're saying this is less about me than it is about Yandy Diaz? Yeah, it's about the race.

You don't have to insult Yandy on my behalf. I can accept that the people didn't take to it the way I thought they would. didn't take to it the way I thought they would. I forgot to read, by the way, the third experimental Atlantic League rule, which is the boldest, right? The designated pinch runner. So each club will list a player who is not otherwise in the starting lineup as a designated pinch runner. That player may then be substituted at any point into the game as a base runner. The player who is substituted for, as well as the pinch runner, may then return to the game as a base runner, the player who is substituted for as well as the pinch runner

may then return to the game without penalty. This press release doesn't specify how many times you can do that. I assume you can only do it once in a game. Otherwise, it would just be out of control. But even so, I don't like this. I think there used to be something kind of akin to this in the majors called a courtesy runner, which was like if someone hurt themselves on the bases, you could temporarily replace them with another runner, someone else who was in the game or on the roster. And then the other guy could come back when he was over that injury and both players would not be burned. And they did that. I think 1949 was the last time there was a courtesy runner and then that was banned. So this is kind of like that, except it's for a pinch runner. It's not just in case of injury. It's to replace a slower runner with a better runner. I guess it's, again, another like base running action on the base paths kind of measure. But I don't love it, you know, because I kind of like the substitution rules in MLB largely.

And when people would say like, oh, the DH, it's a slippery slope. And pretty soon you'll have DHs for everyone and you'll have two different offensive and defensive units and everything will be hyper specialized. And I always thought that was overblown because pitchers are just so worse at hitting than even like shortstops or catchers. It's not even close. And I don't generally, I like players having to do more things and having to be all purpose players and jacks of all trades. So I don't think I would want this. I see the, I guess the idea, but I don't really like it. And I don't think we need it necessarily. There should be a cost to having a slow guy is that he's not very good at running.

It's a slow guy tax. I can't decide because part of me really loves it and part of me thinks that it's an abomination. So it would, yeah, it would increase excitement at times, you know, if it's like a big moment when you have some slow guy on the bases. But, but again, like, it's not like you can't replace a runner as it is. Yeah. It's not like they invented pinch running. Right. Pinch running. We're pro pinch running. Yeah.

It's just that there's a cost to that. There should be a cost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. They're really changing stuff, Ben. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. They're really changing stuff, Ben. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's all about like, would it make it more exciting? And you already can pitch run. It's like philosophically I'm opposed to the shift ban or the positioning restrictions. But then again, when I see it in action and I see someone. You're like, it's fine. Yeah. Like when I see a ground ball get through that probably would have been an out last year, I'm not like mad that that wasn't an out.

Like there's still part of me that's like, I don't like this. I don't like that they're being restricted in where they can stand. And yet when I actually see the results, again, I don't know that the results have been that dramatic, but when I do see a batted ball that gets through, I'm not like, would have been better if that was a routine out to the guy playing in short right field or something. So it's more of a philosophical thing than an inaction thing. I'm laughing, Ben, because I'm like, is it great or is it an abomination? is it great or is it an abomination? And then I'm thinking about Alia from Dune and now I want all role changes delivered and the creepy voice of the kid in the lynch dune

being like, I have a message for my dune. Instead of the mic'd up umpire. Yeah, oh yeah. You need a designated creepy kid if you don't want out there being like, I have a message from the replay center. Spies. You went out there being like, I have a message from the replay center.

It's pies. I didn't feel silly when we sat down to record, but I worked up to it, I think. I'm glad. It's because of kooks. Yeah. All right. So, look, we called for injuries to cease the other day, and they did not. They did not.

Again, why does no one listen to us? Ground beef, no injuries. Yeah. So it's, you know, Brandon Woodruff is hurt now. Chris Bubich is hurt now. It's not great. But perhaps Corbin Byrds is hurt, though a lot less seriously than Woodruff.

It seems like... It seemed very alarming in the moment, I will tell you, though, because I was watching that and I was like, really? We're doing this? Yeah. So that's not great. Some players have continued to get hurt. However, we have also seen some prospects get called up and that's been fun. I guess most notably, Brett Beatty has arrived, perhaps belatedly, but Eduardo Escobar was not hitting. Brett Beatty was raking in AAA, and now he's up with the Mets. Right. And the Rockies called up Nolan Jones and then sent him down again almost immediately

without ever having him get into a game, which is very Rockies-esque. I mean, I know he was— What is the plan? I don't know. There isn't one. He's called up, I think, because marquez got hurt and yes there was a spot and then they needed a pitcher and so they sent him down again but it also was very rocky but the most aggressive and like uh mason miller's coming up with the a's and levi stouts coming up

with the reds you know lots of prospects debuting but i think the most notable was zach netto coming up with the angels and david Fletcher just being optioned and outrighted. Established big leaguer David Fletcher, extended big leaguer David Fletcher. Yeah, recently. Recent-ish. Down to the minors. And Zach Netto, the first player from last year's draft class to debut, and usually it's like some hard-throwing closer, like some major league-ready reliever, college closer who comes up and maybe is the first to debut Zach Netto as a shortstop. But the Angels are aggressive, and we talked about this on our Angels preview pod, the possibility of Netto coming up and the fact that Perry Manassian seems to be very aggressive when it comes to promoting prospects.

And he did it again here. So, again, like not a lot of seasoning netto was hitting really well in the minors you know he's uh he's not set the world on fire in his few few games in the majors but like he's a good defensive shortstop the angels didn't necessarily have one of those so he doesn't have to hit that well to justify his presence there but in theory at least i like it like it's aggressive. He hadn't even played in AAA and, again, was drafted just last season.

But I like that they're going for it because, again, like, it's probably the last year with Otani. They need to stop being so angels-y. They need to win while they still have Trout and Otani. So if you actually think that Neto is your best player at that position, which is an open question, but if you think that he is, then go for it. So we'll

find out whether that's true. But if that was their evaluation, and I assume it was, or they wouldn't have called him up just for fun, but if that was their evaluation, then I applaud them for going for it. Yeah, I think that it's exciting to see them try to do it right i don't know if it'll work but no me neither i mean it may very well not it may very well not but it might like he is a well-regarded prospect so um it's not like he's like some scrub like you know he i think he was a consensus top 100 guy so oh yeah yeah and also we've seen some extensions for for big league pitchers we saw an extension for uh logan webb which was very much appreciated by giants fans five years 90 million and then we saw the twins

extended pablo lopez and that one was i think for four years 73 and a half million and Lopez is off to a great start I love when there's like a challenge trade or like a one-for-one and then both guys are good yeah it's always fun it's very exciting Pablo Lopez is off to a great start in Minnesota Luisa Rice obviously is off to a great start yeah in Miami I don't think he's hitting 500 anymore he's like down to 455 or something. Scandal. Slumped. Scandal.

Nice to see both of those guys hitting. And that also made me think, just because Paolo Lopez, like Zach Gallin, who's also off to a great start, and Sandy Alcantara, who had a great start and then a couple not-so-hot starts after I was raving about him the other day. But those three guys, I mean, Lopez and Gallin, I think, are in the top 10 among major league pitchers in Fangraff's war. Alcantara, even after a couple of rough starts, is like 35th, I think, and obviously is the reigning Cy Young Award winner. And all of those guys were Marlins' tradies within a span of a few months, which amazes me. I mean, there was the May 2017

trade when the Marlins got Pablo Lopez for David Phelps, basically, and there were a few other throw-ins on either end of that deal. And then, of course, the famous getting Gowan and Sandy Alcantara and Daniel Castano and Magnery Sierra for Marcelo Zuna in December 2017. And obviously, the Marlins then traded Gallin for Chaz Chisholm. And that's a fun trade that's very much in the genre of want both of those guys to do well, want both sides to win that one and be happy with that trade. But the fact that the Marlins got, within a span of several months, But the fact that the Marlins got, within a span of several months, Gallin and Alcantara and Lopez for not a lot, right? Yeah.

And then, by the way, Jesus Lizardo is like a top five pitcher in Fangraph's War this year, too. Yeah, he's really taking a step forward, seemingly. It's quite exciting, yeah. Yeah, and he was good last year, too, but perhaps even better now. So the fact that they've done such a great job of acquiring pitchers specifically, and they're still not a good team, which I think they did better. I'm sorry, the way you said that was so perfect, and they're still not a good team. They're 9-8 as we speak, but I think they're like 5-0 in one-run games or something. Yes, and then they're getting blown out in every class. It's a

highly skewed situation over there. Despite Luisa Rice's best efforts, they're still not a good offensive team. They're like 24th in... They're not a good team! They're 24 like 24th in... Not a good team. 24th in WRC Plus.

And I think they're second to last and just run scored. So they remade their offense to be less strikeout prone, but they forgot to actually get good hitters too. I mean, they are... They're still striking out a fair amount too. They mean, they are, they're still, they're still striking out a fair amount too.

They're like ninth in strikeouts too or tied for eighth or something. So again, like they're not good, but also like they, they should have been good

that just getting, getting, I'm frustrated. I know. You're all worked up. Like if you get Gallen and Alcantara and Lopez and Luzardo. You should be good. And, yeah, like, that's a great rotation right there, basically.

Yeah. Forget about the other good pitchers that they've had, too. But they made all those trades and got all those guys without giving up a lot at all. Yeah. And yet, they are still the Marlins. They remain the Marlins. So that's a disappointment. They are the Marlins.

They are the Marlins. They cannot help but be the Marlins. It is a really funny, it's just a, it's just a funny club. You know, you look at them, you go, what's going on over here? So we got to finish with a meet a major leaguer and a pass blast. But one last thing before we do that, just the defining issue of our times, Anthony Bass. We've got to talk about Anthony Bass. Now, I know you've been on Twitter less lately.

So I don't know if you were. Can't you hear how happy I sound? I don't know if you were partaking in the Anthony Bass. I did see this, yeah. Anthony Bass became Twitter's main character basically for a day, which was highly unexpected. Yeah, it sure was. Anthony Bass would be that person. So, Anthony Bass, who is best known

if he is known, I mean, look, he's had himself a career. He's a 35-year-old guy who's been in the big leagues for 12 years. How about that? How about that? He's with the Blue Jays, and he had a nice season last year, a really nice season for the Marlins and the Blue

Jays. He's off to a rough start with the Blue Jays this year, but off to an even rougher start, I suppose, on social media. So here's the thing. I mean, it's always, I think, fraught to tweet about airline stuff. People can't help tweeting about airline stuff. And on the one hand, I guess it's relatable because everyone has had airline issues and air travel issues. Yeah, and some of them have been exacerbated late, yeah. Right. But also, it's kind of hackneyed. It's very much like a what's the deal with airplane food sort of routine. And also sometimes it's max of privilege and it's a way of, you know, getting attention at times in the sense of like if you're someone who has some clout, if you have some followers, if you were verified when it meant something to be verified.

Right. Then you could get the attention of some customer service, right, by complaining about some product. And, you know, I guess it's just do what you have to do to get attention also. But sometimes it's just like, you know, just suffer in silence like everyone else. Right. But Anthony Bass just triggered the rage. And I guess, you know, there was sentiment on both sides here. Sure. But he tweeted over the weekend,

The flight attendant at United just made my 22-week pregnant wife traveling with a five-year-old and two-year-old get on her hands and knees to pick up the popcorn mess by my youngest daughter. Are you kidding me? And then two interrobangs, so just question mark, exclamation point, question mark, exclamation point. Just question mark, exclamation point, question mark, exclamation point. And the thing about this was that he tweeted with this a photo of his two kids and of their popcorn mess. Yes. Just on the seat, next to the seat, in the aisle. Yes. And the kids had their headphones on and they're playing with tablets or whatever.

Yes. And there's this popcorn mess beneath them. Yes. and they're playing with tablets or whatever. And there's this popcorn mess beneath them. And I think some people assumed, as I did the first time I saw this, that Anthony Bass was present, that he was taking this photo. And when I read this the first time, I was like, Anthony Bass,

why are you making your 22-week pregnant wife traveling with your kids, crawl on her hands and knees to clean up the popcorn mess while you are just taking a picture and tweeting about it. That's what I thought at first. But of course, he was not there. He was not there, right? No, he's with the Blue Jays. And so I assumed that his wife was traveling with the kids alone and sent Anthony Bass a picture, I suppose. And then he posted it because he was outraged on behalf of

his wife. So some people were like, why don't you clean up the popcorn? Why are you making your wife clean up the popcorn? I would like to think that Anthony Bass would have done that if he had been there. But he was with the Blue Jays and Blue Jays fly charter, I'm sure. Anyway, so we could rule out that reason to be mad at Anthony Bass. But this became a whole backlash to the parenting on display here because everyone pointed out, you And he doubled down. He stuck to his guns here as this saga went on, as hundreds or thousands of replies flooded in, people condemning him or asking questions. Someone said, genuinely curious who should clean up the mess your two-year-old made. As a parent of three kids, I'm the one responsible for them. Anthony Bass tweeted, the cleaning crew they hire. Then, you know, some people were saying, just be a decent human. And if your kids are going to make a mess, clean up the mess. And

he quote tweeted and said, you are the perfect parent. You can do no wrong. Then I guess some people were questioning why his wife was flying at all if she's pregnant. And then he specified she's permitted to fly for a few more weeks, according to her doctor, but that's not the point. And then he clarified that United provided the popcorn, not his wife. So it's like, it's not a you break it, you buy it. Like, you bring the popcorn, you clean up the pot. It's like, if United provided.

This is like a you smells it, you dealt it kind of. Yeah. United provided. This is like a you smells at you Delta kind of. Yeah. United provided the popcorn. So he's suggesting that they're liable for any messes created involving said popcorn. Then it ended when he said, thank you, everyone, for the support. United Airlines, which responded to him on Twitter to ask for the flight details, is taking care of matters with the flight attendant internally, which sounded ominous. So, you know, I mean, that makes you think that the flight attendant is getting disciplined

or fired or something. Who knows, right? I mean, for all we know, this was just for show. And they were just like, yeah, well, we're going to talk to the flight attendant. Don't worry, Anthony. And they didn't. For all we know, the flight attendant got promoted. Who knows?

But taking care of matters could mean anything. And then Anthony Bass, I guess, finally finished sometime after this by tweeting a picture of his cute kid holding up a big bag of popcorn with a popcorn emoji as if to say maybe like, leave me alone. Here's my cute kid with popcorn popcorn but i don't think this went the way that he thought it would yeah but john boyce tweeted that like this was this was almost a heartwarming throwback to like old twitter like 10 year old twitter yeah where you know people would just get very up in arms about some like moral quandary related to air travel and then everyone would pile on this main character. And it's so inconsequential. It's almost like a nice break from the things that people are usually raging about on social media. We can all come together and debate the ethics of cleaning up the popcorn on the flight. But just who imagined Anthony Bass just seizing the spotlight of Twitter just with this popcorn quandary.

So where do you stand on this defining debate of our times? Why are we doing this to me? It's so uncut. I know. Dangerous, dangerous waters. I don't know, man. I feel like it's a very complicated complicated situation it is a little more complicated than

sure because nothing's black and white including popcorn and anthony bass's wife and the flight attendant but i like to me i think part of it comes down to the specifics of the situation like things that we don't know right Right, like what was the interaction between her and the flight attendant? Right, that's what I want to know, yeah. Her and the flight attendant, because I just, I do struggle to imagine

a flight attendant coming up to someone and saying, hey, clean up your kid's mess. Right, right. And like, did the flight attendant know that she was pregnant? I mean, it's 22 weeks, so, you know, depending on what you're...

Depending on what you're wearing, you know, you might not even know that the person is pregnant then. Right. But, yeah, also, if they were, like, I order you to clean up this mess. Yeah, I just can't imagine... Or was it, like, was the wife the imperious one and being like, you must clean up this mess.

And then the flight attendant was like, you clean it. Like a lot of it is the tone and like who was ordering whom around. Right. I feel like we just have, we are missing critical pieces of this story that make it hard for me to to really say because like in my experience on flights you know they come out to do the food and beverage service and any number of things might happen after that you know people leave stuff on the ground people like stick their trash in the

little pockets and then they forget to take it out to give to the flight attendants when they come back through to like you know hold the bag or whatever and so i i um i really don't understand like what the the sequence was that got all of us in this weird situation. I mean, like generally I, like on the one hand, I think that there are times when folks they'll wield whatever small power they have.

And sometimes they do that in a way that isn't considerate to the people around them. And, you know, sometimes those people work for airlines, like that's not unprecedented. Right. And I can imagine being, um, even though this isn't like my experience, like I can imagine being like a, a harried mom traveling with two small kids by myself. And I'm also pregnant and I probably am uncomfortable because everyone is uncomfortable.

You know, it's just like not a very pleasant experience and you're trying to like keep these kids quiet and entertained so that they don't bother the people around them and like that was the that's the other thing like did someone complain right about the popcorn yeah it's not like a safety hazard right like and and like again i i agree with the sentiment that like you should if you're traveling with your kids, like, what your kids do is, especially if they're that age, is like, you know, it's kind of your responsibility to sort out. Yeah. As the parent of a toddler, like, they will make a mess almost inevitably when you give them, I mean, like popcorn, you know, there are certain foods that they might not make a mess, but you give them popcorn. They're going to make a mess.

Regardless of who provided it, some of it's going to end up on the floor so and so right but also and so like you should you know you have to manage that mess i would hope that that the people around um do we know anthony bass's wife's name i keep calling her anthony bass's wife's name. I keep calling her Anthony Bass's wife, but she has a name. Yes, right. I will try to find out. Anyway. Sydney, apparently. Sydney.

Okay. So, like, I would also hope that the people around Sydney on this flight would be, like, you know, operating from a place of generosity toward her. Like, hey, you're a mom seemingly traveling by yourself with two little kids. Whether or not anyone knew she was pregnant, like, that's a lot to have to manage on your own. And so like, I don't understand. Does someone complain? And of all the things on the one hand, like mess is mess and someone does have to clean it up.

And I don't want to like pass on my mess unnecessarily. It's probably not the flight attendant's job to, I mean, they come around and they take the garbage, right? But cleaning up litter, like there is a cleaning crew that comes in, right? And be courteous to them also. not and throw your stuff all over the place and someone else like just because it is someone else's job to clean and prepare the cabin for the next flight doesn't mean that you should like be a dick so so you know there are all of these conflicting things where you would hope someone would be like kind of generous and and forgiving but also you don't want to be inconsiderate of the crew or the cleaning staff. So that's all of a thing. Also, on the one hand, it is a mess.

But also, it's not a smelly or sticky mess. So there are worse messes. It is a weird, we're missing a reel of film, you know? Yes, right. And I feel like whatever is on that reel of film would really make obvious how we should feel about this. But in the meantime, I'm going, why do you make me talk about this? Right. Now, here's a little more information.

Now, again, we're not getting the flight attendants side of the story here. Holding out on me. But apparently, Sydney's older sister, who is country music singer Jessie James Decker, took to her Instagram stories on Sunday. Oh, boy. And James Decker, who's the wife of former NFL wild receiver Eric Decker. So this is an athletic family, it sounds like. So Jesse James Decker also condemned United Airlines, saying that the staffer humiliated Sidney.

Here's the quote. Blair accidentally spilled some popcorn in the aisle and the flight attendant came up to Sidney with a trash bag and a wet wipe, telling her the captain wants Sid to clean up every drop. What? Right. My poor sister is on her hands and knees crying in the aisle, completely humiliated and exhausted with her children while everyone else watched. Now, again, we're only getting one side of the story here.

But if that's actually what happened, I mean. Right. If that is what happened, that is crummy. But that doesn't sound real to me. The captain wants to know. How would the captain know that? I know. Well, that makes it sound like a flight attendant on a power trip, right?

Right. And, right, this is what I'm saying. Like, there are times when people, like, you know, my general rule of thumb is, like, you just, like, you don't want to make life harder for working people, right? Like, but there are times when there are power trips to be had and exercised, and they are, in a way that is like really unpleasant.

And that's not great, but that's so real. Yeah, it just sounds extreme. Look, if that's what happened, then, you know, I'd probably be upset if I were in the past too. Yes, I would be too, yes. Yeah. So, again, you know, I guess this is always the danger of debating and discussing things on Twitter. Everything gets kind of flattened and you're either a hero or you're an enemy. Right.

There are probably shades of gray to the Anthony Bass airplane popcorn saga. So I don't know. I don't know that I can outright condemn the man. Are there parents who are very entitled and are just like, my kids are going to go around making a mess and it's everyone else's problem? Yeah, absolutely, there are. And in general, if your kids make a mess, then you should clean up that mess and not expect others to do that. But also, if it's not like a high priority situation here, and you have a mother who's pregnant and on her own with two kids and it's a

few pieces of popcorn yeah i don't know that that doesn't matter so who cares yeah i i think you know you wanna you wanna like um yeah like parents you know you should mind your children and like non-parents you know like have some generosity toward the fact that, like, little kids are often a lot to wrangle. And, like, if everybody's doing that, then we can all coexist in the tube that stays up in the air. Yeah. Takes a village to pick up the popcorn, I guess, is the lesson here. Wait, like, nobody offered to help her? If this, like—

Yeah, that seems— Yeah. Right. Like, unless, you know, if there's, like, some other obnoxious behavior going on that would make people less inclined to help, that would be one thing. But it is odd that no one's like, can I give you a hand here? So, I don't know. We need more information. We need, how is this not on YouTube or something?

This is my question. We have all sorts of, like, people freaking out about wearing a mask or whatever and then it goes viral like can we get the popcorn moment please so that we can all just come to informed conclusions i think that the really important takeaway from this segment is that i am right about the potentially corrosive effects of twitter that's the real takeaway i'm not saying you can't go on there i'm not saying it can't be fun sometimes. I'm not saying it doesn't have its merits occasionally. But also, sometimes it's nice to not be on there for a little bit.

You know, just like find the level that works for you. And if it's less than what you're doing now, you won't actually miss anything. Yep. All right. Well, Blue Jays fans probably just hope that Anthony Bass will stop making such a mess in the Blue Jays bullpen. That's probably all they care about for now. Wasn't his ERA trending for a little while? That's when you know that things have gone really off the rails from where you expected them. Yeah. All right. So let's finish with a meet a major leaguer here.

Meet a major leaguer. I'm very leaguer i am very eager to meet this nascent major leaguer it's the thrilling debut of somebody new let's meet this mysterious major leaguer So thus far this year, I think we have met 38 new major leaguers. Yes. And some of them are, of course, top prospects whom we have discussed, but some of them are more obscure. And that's the purpose of our Meet a Major Leaguer segment. Yes. To shine a light on some players you might not even have known that they are major leaguers. And look at that.

They achieved their dream and they reached the pinnacle. And whether they last a long time or perform well while they're there, that's still something to be celebrated. So we should know their names. And there have been some good names. You know, there's the Nationals' Thaddeus Ward, who is the first Thaddeus in major league history, or at least the first to go by Thaddeus.

I was going to say. Yeah, there were a couple of Thaddeuses or Thaddei who went by Ted, but he is the first to proudly embrace the Thaddeus. And then there was Cleveland's Peyton Battenfield, who, as Emma Batchelory noted, it's a real crime that a guy named Battenfield is not a position player because he doesn't bat. And Emma said, you know, he doesn't really field either, but pitchers field, you know, we can give him credit for fielding. They don't get as many fielding opportunities. It would be nice if he were a non-pitcher. I wish we could body swap James Outman and Peyton Battenfield.

Oh, yeah. Battenfield should be a hitter. Outman should be a pitcher. It would just make so much more sense. You could just name swap them. That seems less complicated than body swapping. Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean, we already had Josh Outman.

And if anything, probably an underreported story that there was a pitcher named Josh Outman. That should have been a bigger deal. I did my best, Ben. But you know what? No one wanted ground beef either. No. I mean, we still have Josh Outman. He's been gone for a while.

And he was maybe just not successful enough really to own the name. He didn't get enough outs, I guess. James Outman, he doesn't seem to make that many outs, it looks like. Anyway, those are fun names, but I don't think they can compare

to the two players in tandem that we have decided to highlight today. Because there are new major leaguers named Hogan Harris and Hobie Harris. Hobie! Hobie and Hogan Harris, no relation, are now big leaguers. Yes, they are. I mean, when I saw Hobie Harris, I had heard of Hobie Harris because you selected him in the minor league. Twice. The agent draft. Twice, yeah.

He was your fourth round pick this year, so you're racking up batter's face. Brent Honeywell is really where I'm making my money so far. I saw that Hobie Harris made the majors and I was like, all right,

good job, Hobie. Then I saw Hogan Harris and I was like, wait, I did a double take. Wait, does that say Hobie? Is this a different guy? Hobie Harris and Hogan Harris? Yeah, they're both big leaguers. So you are introducing us to Hobie Harris and I will introduce us to Hogan Harris. So tell us about Hobie, who is also another national like Thaddeus Ward. Yes. Our collective strategy of drafting nationals, I think, is going to serve us well in the minor league free agent draft. So Hobie grew up in Texas, and he originally went to Paris Junior College, played the outfield and pitched growing up and again at the JUCO level, but began focusing solely on pitching as a sophomore. And after his sophomore season, he transferred to the University of Pittsburgh and was a 31st round pick by the Yankees in the 2015 draft. And he kind of, you know, worked his way through the Yankees minor league system for a bit.

um and he kind of you know worked his way through the yankees minor league system for a bit and then in 2019 was taken in the minor league phase of the rule five by the blue jays famously a great time to be a minor leaguer he obviously didn't pitch at least in a competitive setting during 2020 um but then in 2021 he appeared in 42 games for triple a buffalo throwing 43 and two-thirds innings and notching a 3-9-2 ERA and a 5-0-6 FIP. He elected minor league free agency after that season when I famously took him in the minor league free agent draft and signed with Milwaukee. But he spent all of last year at AAA Nashville. Sorry, everyone. Thanks, Brewers. He made 53 appearances, posting a 2-0-44 era and a 421 fip with 56 strikeouts and then signed a minor league uh deal with the nationals this offseason at which point i was like ready to be hurt again um but this time it worked out for me so jessica camatero wrote a

piece on hobie's potential debut during spring training noting and here i am quoting here harris arrived at spring training with a renewed outlook from lessons learned last season. He had found that he was putting pressure on himself and thinking about potential roster decisions in AAA. While that didn't impact his performance, he found that, quote, mentally and emotionally, it was a little difficult to handle. He shifted his focus to take the game one day at a time. There was a stretch a couple of weeks there where it got a little more difficult to go to the field because I was trying to think what else do I need to do? Harris said. And I was thinking that too, because I was confident he was going to debut and I was wrong, but being able to put it back into perspective. And with the help of my wife,

she kind of got me back on track and said, control what you can control. Don't worry about what's going on around you. Just take care of your stuff. And we ended the season on a good note. Just take care of your stuff. And we ended the season on a good note. And he had a good spring. He had a.90 ERA during spring training and made the Nationals opening day roster. He debuted on April 1st, striking out Marcelo Zuna, who was his first major league batter faced. He threw a scoreless inning in his debut.

He has since made four more appearances. And on the season, he has a.30 ERA, era a 416 fip with three walks two strikeouts two earned runs and for my purposes 23 total batters face across six innings his fastball averages at 94.7 miles per hour and he also throws a cutter and a splitter per stat cast although there is some disagreement on his pitch classifications among the various services but most importantly just like his piece also addresses the name ben the name here i am quoting yeah the name hobie comes from a sailboat harris said the hobie cat company manufactures sailboats kayaks stand-up paddleboards surfboards and more

harris's family had a boat when he was a child in texas and they sailed when harris was younger until baseball eventually took up their time my dad and my grandfather grew up sailing harris said my real name's actually robert hobie is so much better so i am named after my dad being the first born my dad was torn between the name hobie and then giving me his namesake i really never i've never really gone by robert i've gone by hobie my entire life. For the record, it's pronounced Hobie. It's mispronounced all the time, Harris said with a laugh. The biggest miss I get is hobby. I honestly get that about 90% of the time.

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is Hobie Harris. And I hope all the hobbyists out there realize how much more fun Hobie is to say and start saying Hobie, Hobie, Hobie. Hobie, interesting. I wouldn't have even thought there's a Star Wars character whose nickname is Hobie, but that's with two Bs.

Two Bs. One B. Right. I wouldn't think that you would get that wrong. You would not think that people would be confused by that, but, you know, people, they make mistakes. Yeah.

The thing is, there had been only one major leaguer named Hobie before Hobie Harris, and that's Hobie Landreth, who was a catcher in the 50s and 60s. And here's the thing. Sadly, Hobie Landreth died this month. Now, he lived to be 93 years old. I'm surprised we never had him on the podcast. years old. I'm surprised we never had him on the podcast, but he died on April 6th, just a few days after Hobie Harris debuted on April 1st. So it's like Hobie's like Highlander.

There can be only one. It's like when Hobie Harris checked in, Hobie Landreth had to check out. And I don't know how Hobie Landreth died or whether there was an illness or anything. I'd like to think that he knew that he was informed that there was a new Hobie and that that brought some enjoyment to his last days, that he was glad that someone had picked up his mantle and carried on his Hobie legacy in the big leagues. I cannot confirm whether he knew or not about Hobie Harris, but Hobie Landreth, he was an actual Hobart. Hobart, nail Landreth, whereas Hobie is a Robert, as you said. So he's sort of a pretender. I mean, it's not his actual name, but he has embraced it and he's gone by it. So he owns it. I think he's not just an honorary hobie he's he's a legitimate hobie he's gone by hobie his whole life as he noted so you know and he was you know almost named after a boat and i think i think that his dad made the right choice because i can't imagine a time when if i were named hobie i wouldn't want to be hob You know, like I kind of want to get a new cat just so that I can name it Hobie. It's Hobie, great name.

But there might come a time when like there's something serious going on, like he has to go to court or a funeral, and then he might want to be Robert. And he might be grateful that, you know, he's not legally Hobie. He's just spiritually Hobie, you know. Well, I think he should change his name in honor of the late Hobie Landreth. He should officially embrace Hobie. Hobie. Just change it legally.

So Hogan, not quite as fun. No. Certainly a Hogan Harris debuting the same month as Hobie Harris is wonderful. Yes. In isolation, Hogan Harris is not quite as fun. And neither was his debut, unfortunately. So things did not go quite so well for Hogan Harris. Now, Hogan Harris is an Oakland A. Probably not a coincidence that we're talking about a national and an A here. There are going

to be a lot of nationals and A's making the majors for the first time this season. So Hogan Harris, he's a few years younger than Hobie. He's 26. He's from Lafayette, Louisiana. He was a Ragin' Cajun. He is a lefty and he's 6'3", 230. And he's been in the A's organization his whole career. He was drafted by the A's in the third round in 2018. And he's been working his way up ever since.

He has not fared well in AAA. He's been a starter in the minors mostly, and he worked in relief in his first appearance for the A's. He has like a six plus ERA and 10 starts for AAA, although he performed much better at the lower levels. But he's had some injuries. He had Tommy John surgery, so he has recovered from that, but he missed. Well, everyone missed 2020 and then him 14th in the A's system this year, but delayed by the elbow injuries and oblique injuries. And their scouting report was that he has swing and miss stuff, but that he's walked more than four batters per nine as a professional. His fastball was a touch firmer a year removed from surgery, averaging 93, touching 97. He runs into trouble when he tries to overthrow his four-seamer. His upper 70s changeup is quite good and his best swing and miss secondary.

He also throws a slow arcing curveball that has roughly 20 miles per hour separation from his fastball and maybe more of a strike stealer than a swing and miss offering. At the end of the season, he added an upper 80s slider slash cutter hybrid into his repertoire, which the A's believe will be the key to Harris turning over more advanced lineups. His delivery is still a bit rigid, and he struggles at times staying on line to the plate. He has fringe average command potential that is mitigated by the quality of his stuff. So he was called up. He made his debut on April 14th against the Mets. That was Friday. And it went not well.

It went historically poorly. In fact, I'm sorry to say for Hogan Harris. So he was not really scheduled to pitch that day. It was kind of an emergency situation. So he was called up because they had a road trip and it taxed their pitching staff. So they called up Hogan Harris just as a, in case of emergency, break glass long reliever for the series opener against the Mets. And as it happened, he was warming up in the second inning because things didn't go well for the A's. And then they had to bring him in for his MLB debut in the fifth inning. And they hoped that he bring him in for his MLB debut in the fifth inning.

And they hoped that he would give them a little length, and he did not. And manager Mark Kotze said, I look at that move right now and I assess myself for putting that kid in that situation. But really, we had limited options in what we could do with how thin the bullpen is. And here's how it went. So he got the first batter he faced out. He got Daniel Vogelbach to ground out. That was good, but that was the only out that he got. So Oakland was down six to three. After he got Vogelbach to ground out, he issued three walks in a row. He hit Brandon Nimmo with a fastball to drive in a run. Then he walked Starling Marte and then Francisco Lindor doubled to clear the bases.

Then he walked Pete Alonso and that was when Kotze pulled him and Chad Smith came in and got out of the inning, although there was yet another run charged to Harris. So that is six earned runs and five walks in a third of an inning,

which gives him a 162 ERA. He is, according to stats performed, the only pitcher to allow at least five walks and runs in less than an inning during his MLB debut since 1944. And that pitcher in 1944 was Joe Nuxhall, who famously was extremely young. He was 15 years old when he did that. So that was maybe more understandable. That was during the war years, of course. So things went really, really badly for poor Hogan Harris. And he was optioned after that debut, sent down on Saturday and replaced, I believe, by the immortal Richard Lovelady. But Hogan Harris, just a really rough, rough outing.

And I think there had been only one pitcher maybe who had a higher ERA than that after his MLB debut. I guess barring guys who had infinite ERAs. I guess, barring guys who had infinite ERAs, but among guys who actually got an out and had some defined ERA. I think Joe Cleary in 1945, he gave up seven to earn runs in a third of an innings pitch, but Hogan Harris joined a group of several other guys

who gave up six in a third of an inning pitch. So rough start, not nearly as smooth a debut as Hobie Harris, but hopefully he will be back at some point and we'll be able to lower that ERA. Don't you mean hopefully? Hopefully he'll be back. I should have said that, but that game was a total mess. Ron Darling, I think, said on the broadcast, my scorebook is a crime scene. Yeah. And that was the game when the Mets broadcasters were not in the visitor's booth because the Coliseum possum reappeared. That's right.

The possum in the booth still has not been transplanted. So they had to move booths. And on the field, things were even worse so the a's issued 17 walks which was i think an oakland a's record and then the mets who drew the 17 walks i think that was a franchise record i think at least one of those free passes was a hit by pitch and not a walk potentially but yeah it's not it's not good Yeah, there was a Sarah Lang's stat, because the Mets had two six-run innings in the game and had one hit in each of those innings.

So Sarah Lang's found a six-run inning with one hit had happened twice in the same season, only once since 1974, and that was with two separate teams in two separate games. The A's did it twice in a four-inning span. The Mets won that game 17-6 despite being out-hit 13-11, which was not the greatest margin of victory ever by a team that got out-hit, but it was up there. It's wild. It was extremely wild.

Yeah, not effectively wild. Truly wild. Like, you can't even. It was extremely wild. Yeah, not effectively wild. It was truly wild. The A's have a 7.74 ERA as a staff through their first 17 games. And I just stat-headed that. The only team with a higher ERA in its first 17 games of a season was the 1951 Browns at 8.29. was the 1951 Browns at 8.29. The Browns finished that season with a 3.38 winning percentage, which would translate to 55 wins

over a 162-game season. I think the A's, I'm not going to say they would be happy with that, but I think I would be surprised if they won that many games at this point. Like, this is an intentionally terrible team. Yeah, Kyle Kishimoto wrote about them for us yesterday. And so these stats have changed a little bit through 16 games.

Yes, it was the Browns and then the 55 Kansas City A's. And here is a little nugget. Those teams each, and here I'm quoting from Kyle, went on to allow at least 5.7 runs per game across the entire season. That is so many runs. Like it is a, it is a real bad situation there. Although, uh,

as Kyle noted, when the news of Mason Miller getting called up, um, hit the transom, he picked a good time to write about it because he's, he noted at the end of this that like uh his stuff is easily the best stuff on oakland staff and he wasn't even in the bigs yet so oh boy not um not a good not a good time in oakland right now a long season yeah the fans

there deserve a lot better than what they're getting. Alright, so we'll finish with the past blasts. Meant to mention, by the way, when we were talking about, I like when challenge trades work out well for everyone. So far, just an extremely early check-in on the Braves-Brewers A's trade.

The Estuary-Ruiz and Sean Murphy and William Contreras trade. All those guys have been good thus far. Yeah. So that's kind of working out well. Estuary Ruiz has a 140 WRC+. Yeah. You know, a high Babbitt, but he's a high Babbitt guy.

Yeah. So, so far, at least the bat has not been knocked out of his hands. Sean Murphy is leading the major leagues in war by a catcher. Yeah. Not that surprising. He's very good. He's very good. Also, William Contreras, who has a 112 WRC plus, you know, not hitting for power, high BABIP, et cetera.

But also, and here's the thing about him, he was not a good framer in the past. He's looked much better behind the plate. He is leading the majors by a lot in framing. And that's sort of a small sample stat that is often telling. So, Sean Murphy is second in framing, but it's a distant second to William Contreras. And this is not the first time that the Brewers maybe have fixed a framer, right? Because they famously did that with Omar Narvaez. He was quite bad with the White Sox and the Mariners and then became a very good framer with the Brewers. It was so upsetting to watch. I was like, why is this happening to me personally?

And I knew that it wasn't actually about me because that would be very big-headed, but it felt pointed in a way that I really haven't experienced until people decided they don't like ground beef as a nickname. And then I was like, wow, once again, just floored by the world. Yeah. So he's been working on his framing and it seems to work. So, so far, good returns for everyone. Although, you know, look, the Braves have the best catcher in baseball right now, Sean Murphy. I'm sure they're quite pleased with that.

Yeah. I don't think that they have any complaints in that part of their roster. If Contreras can frame now, though, he doesn't have to hit as well as he did last year. Correct. It'll be quite valuable. All right. Here's the pass blast from 1995 and from David Lewis, who's an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. 1995, Jethro sues MLB for pension. In 1950, Sam Jethro debuted for the Boston Braves, becoming the first black ball player to play for the franchise and for either of Boston's then two major league teams.

Jethro excelled that year, leading the National League in stolen bases and at age 33 was voted NL Rookie of the Year, still the oldest player to win Rookie of the Year honors. 45 years later, Jethro was living in Erie, Pennsylvania, running a bar and raising two grandchildren without the assistance of an MLB pension. At the time, ex-players needed four years of Major League service time to qualify for a pension. Jethro, whose career was significantly shortened by baseball's color barrier, played just three years in the majors, or at least in the white majors. Jethro, who played eight seasons in the Negro American League between 1938 and 1948, primarily for the Cleveland Buckeyes, decided to fight on behalf of himself

and his fellow Negro Leagues veterans. As reported in an April 22, 1995 Baltimore Sun article, a class action lawsuit was filed on Jethro's behalf on March 30 of that year against Major League Baseball, the Players Association, and the Pension Fund. The lawsuit claimed violations of civil rights, antitrust, and trademark laws while accusing the organizations of fraud and conspiracy. At the time the lawsuit was filed, Jethro was struggling to pay his bills, saying, Right now, I don't know how much longer I can pay in regard to his apartment. In reference to the unequal treatment Jethro and other black players faced even after the color barrier was broken, former Players Union representative Marvin Miller, who agreed to testify at the trial, said,

All things being equal, he did not have as much opportunity to accumulate service time as a white player. Former Players Union Representative Marvin Miller, who agreed to testify at the trial, said, Jethro, looking out for his grandchildren, envisioned how much an expansion of the pension fund could help his family, potentially allowing him to put a down payment on his house for his grandchildren, said Jethro, It's hard for me looking out for them, but I'm going to look out for them the best that I can. In October 1996, the lawsuit filed on Jethro's behalf was dismissed by a federal judge. In January 1997, MLB owners voted to provide pensions for Negro League players who had at least four years of service time in the Negro Leagues and the AL and NL combined. Jethro and many other players who faced similar circumstances immediately became eligible for pensions between $7,500 and $10,000 annually. Jethro passed away in Erie, Pennsylvania at the age of 84 in 2001. So it's good that he and his grandchildren got something, but that was an oversight for a long time.

And there were still some players who were passed over there, like Ron Teasley, our guest on episode 1887, who's one of the few surviving players to play in the Negro Leagues during the years that were reclassified as major by MLB. And he's 96 now. I think we talked on that episode about him not getting a pension because he fell between the years when he could qualify. And there were so few survivors when they did that reclassification that they didn't offer pensions to those players, one of whom is Willie Mays, of course. But that seems like an oversight too. So, you know, one of the many sad Mays, of course, but that seems like an oversight too.

So, you know, one of the many sad legacies of that time, of course, but there was some rectifying of that belatedly done. See, like, that's a very important, like, story. And so, it's really stymieing my ability to do my moody voicing. stymieing my ability to do my moody voicing. Yeah, right. All right. I didn't think of this before, but it occurs to me now that if there was ever a time for people to use the Michael Jackson meme of him eating popcorn in the Thriller video, people always post that whenever there's some juicy debate online.

What better time than in Anthony Bass' Popcorn Gate? This is a nuanced, reasoned, temperate discussion you get from this podcast. We're not hot take artists out here condemning Anthony Bass and his wife as the worst parents of all time or blasting the flight attendant. We will seek more information. We will try to see all sides. We will bring you layered sports and airline etiquette discussion. Couple other follow-ups for you here. Another extension after we finished recording, Hunter Green extended by the Reds, six years, 53 million. Also, the Rays' Jeffrey

Springs expected to have Tommy John surgery. The Pirates' JT Brubaker did have Tommy John surgery. And here's an update for you. I'm not going to say we got confirmation that Shohei Otani listens to Effectively Wild, but I lit off last week's episode by talking about how long it had been since Shohei Otani had so much as attempted to steal a bass. When we recorded on Friday, I think it had been 42 games dating back to last August since he had attempted to steal one, and he hadn't actually stolen one since last July. We talked about whether this was a self-preservation strategy, whether he just decided he wasn't good at it, whether this is the angels limiting him. I said I was a little bit disappointed that that aspect of his game seemed to have

fallen by the wayside. Well, what do you know? On Monday, he attempted a steal and was caught. And on Tuesday, he attempted one and was safe. He stole a base. The timing seems suggestive. That's all I'm saying. Certainly didn't mean to pressure or shame you, Shohei, but I'm taking this as a sign, which does not mean that I will tone down my admiration for the man. In other news, there was a notable quote by Carlos Correa who said about being booed at Yankee Stadium, it's gasoline in your Ferrari. I love it. And this just provides further evidence that either Carlos Correa's agent, Scott Boris,

is providing him with metaphors and analogies, or those two are just so simpatico that they're a perfect match for each other. Because of course, Correa of the Dior store analogy almost seems supplied by Boris, but here he goes with the gasoline in the Ferrari. Maybe he's just wired that way, or Scott's way with words has rubbed off on his client. Love to hear it. Lastly, got two player name mix-ups for you here. Now, if Hobie and Hogan Harris were on the same team, we'd probably hear them being confused all the time. Hobie Landreth, I meant to mention, was the original Met picked with the first pick by the Mets in the expansion draft because, as Casey Stengel famously said, you gotta have a catcher or you'd have a lot of passed balls. So we're still waiting for our first

Hobie-Hogan case of mistaken identity. But the man who inspired this recurring bit of ours, Tyler Wade, he's back in the big leagues with the A's. He played in that series against the Mets. And on Sunday, he pinch ran. And here are Ron Darling and Gary Cohen on the Mets broadcast. And now being asked to try and save this one with a one run lead in the bottom of the 10th and a free runner at second base. I was just going to say that he's been so good that I've been very little base runners. So not of his doing, he will start this inning with a runner on second. That'll be, no, they're going to pinch run Taylor Wade for him. Tyler Wade, sorry.

Pinch hit in yesterday's game. So look at that. Even though Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward are no longer teammates, Tyler Wade's still getting called Taylor as soon as he's back in the big leagues. Also, another Angels-related name mix-up just dropped. This is from Saturday's Angels game, and former Mets broadcaster Wayne Rendazzo is on the mic, debuting an Anthony Rendon-Hunter-Renfro mix-up. Add it to the list. Today's Effectively Wild intro theme came from Patreon supporter Gabriel Ernest. It, of course,

samples Sam Miller and his famous intro from episode 512. You can keep your Effectively Wild intro theme submissions coming to podcast.fangraphs.com. You can also support

Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some

monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free aside from our stat class sponsorship, and get themselves access to some perks. Ross Wallace, Warren Schmidt, Dan Roberts, Drew Broadfoot, and Bobby Pants. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only. Coming up on 1,100 members in that bustling teaming inclusive community you also get access to monthly bonus episodes plus playoff live streams you can get

discounts on merch and ad free fan crafts memberships and much much more check it out at patreon.com slash effectively wild if you are a supporter you can message us through the patreon site if not you can contact us via email as as mentioned, at podcastatfangrafts.com. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild

on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode a little later this week. Get your laps in,

stave off your hamstring strains, and we will talk to you then. Because you didn't know when to quit Now you've got to deal with it That bee for me Yeah, they'll get the beef release. Beef release.

Here it comes, the beef release. Beef release. Yeah, they'll get the beef release. Beef release.