Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1999: Meet a Maggi Leaguer

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Drew Maggi’s major league debut and whether there should be a way for other journeyman minor leaguers to make the majors more easily, the story of short-lived Mariners mascot Spacey the Space Needle, the causes of a dramatic uptick in occurrences of catcher’s interference, Shohei Ohtani’s anti-pitch-tipping prowess, […]

If baseball were different, how different would it be? Players growing third arms and infield military Anything is fair game, even Kike's dirty pants And maybe if you're lucky, we'll cope all by chance. You never know precisely where it's gonna go. By definition, Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 1999 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing great. My heart is still warmed by Drew Maggi's Major League debut.

It happened. I was nervous because he didn't get into the first game after we talked about it, but fortunately he did pinch hit for Andrew McCutcheon the game after that, and is starting also as we record on Thursday. So that's exciting. How about that? What a moment that was. It was as wonderful as anyone could have hoped that it would be. Yeah.

I mean, it finally, it finally happened. Yeah. Yeah. And fortunately, the Cody Bellinger mistake was not made again, where there was a pitch clock violation during an ovation. At least they did let him soak up the adulation of the crowd. was not made again, where there was a pitch clock violation during an ovation, at least, they did let him soak up the adulation of the crowd. And they were actually chanting Magi. I mean, good job, Pirates fans. We talked about how things are going great for the Pirates these days. So, Pirates fans in a great mood and obviously well-informed about the story of Drew Magi,

the almost 34-year-old minor league veteran. They all listened to Effectively Wild, and they knew who Drew Maggi was and why this was exciting. And umpire Jeff Nelson let him soak up the cheers in the moment, although he did then incur a pitch clock violation for the second strike. He came by that one honestly, you know? Yeah, right. I think it was probably the most poignant pitch clock violation of the season because it was like he was trying to make the time last longer, you know? He waited way more than a decade to make it to that moment and he's trying to savor it. And, well, you can't do that because pitch clock. But at least, you know, they let him have the initial moment.

And then after that, I think it's fair game, right? I mean, you can't probably give him a blanket dispensation for the entire plate appearance, I suppose. So I don't fault him for that one. But it was exciting because he jumped on the first pitch and fouled it hard. He was a little too quick. But off the bat for a split second, it looked like, oh, man, might this be a magical moment? And it still was even though he ended up striking out what kind of moment what kind of moment

i was gonna try not to do a gift of the veggie this time but i guess i just did basically yeah he just kind of did yeah he was like um he's he's uh like schrodinger's pitch clock violation like simultaneously the most and least likely person to suffer a pitch clock violation. Because if anyone's familiar with a pitch clock. Yeah. You know, but also what a moment. So, you know. Yeah, it was really nice.

Yeah, he actually, I listened to his post-game interview. He was interviewed on the field and his parents were there and his brothers were there. And you could watch them and hear them during the broadcast. So that was nice. And he was thanking them after the game. And he was talking about how, you know, anything is possible. The fact that Drew Maggi can make the majors finally. Anyone can do anything.

And he said that when he heard that he was going to be getting into the game, he was kind of giving himself a pep talk about having a good at bad and slowing the game down, he actually said, which was funny because he then slowed down a little too much during the play parts, but still. But that was so great that it made me wonder whether there's any way to make this mandatory in a way or at least open up the possibility for this to happen more often to have some sort of, again, like special dispensation roster exemption where you could have a program where when someone has been in the minors for 10 plus years, let's say. Yeah. Then there's some incentive to call them up and get them into a game. You know, you could call it like the gift of the Magi program or the- You could call it that, Ben. Ben. Do you believe in Magi program? I don't know. Ben.

Something, name it after him. But like, gosh, I don't know, like a minor league, Drew Magi, make a wish type of program for like veteran minor leaguers who've been bouncing around forever and who probably will never make the majors. And then you can give them the shot, give them that moment in the sun. Basically, I guess you could say, well, it doesn't count against your 26 player roster limit, right? Like you could just get a free spot basically, if you have one of those guys in your system, and then you could call them up without any penalty or cost and give them a chance to have that kind of moment. Would that make sense? Might that make sense?

I think that that sounds lovely. I mean, I don't want to, it's a tricky thing, right? Because when you're trying to, not only you're trying to manufacture that moment, but when you're forcing it, you run the risk of it being a little bit patronizing. But also, it's lovely. I imagine that, okay, Ben, I want to make sure my understanding is correct. My sense would be that the greatest, the biggest gating factor to this would be the pension implications, potentially, right? Because isn't it if you have one day, you don't get a lot, you don't get the full potentially, right? Because isn't it if you have one day, you don't get a lot, you don't get the full freight, right?

There's a reason that players reaching 10 years of service is a big deal. And part of that is the pension vesting that comes with it, right? But you do get something if you appeared in the majors even one time. Although, is it if you are in a game or if it's just if you're on the roster? That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. Because

he was already on a roster. Right. So maybe it doesn't matter in this particular instance, but could matter in others. But yeah, I think that that would be lovely. Yeah. Well, you could either be generous and just give them that or I guess if they weren't going to make the majors anyway, you could have some kind of carve out or something. Like, if you really want to be a miser and a stickler about it, you could say, well, you get to go to the big leagues. You just, you don't get that. But I wonder whether, I guess one obstacle obviously would be that some teams uh you know it is the big leagues and the games uh count and matter and everything and also you know you'd be taking someone else's playing time although not their roster spot and some teams they'd be in a pennant race the reason

why i was thinking of it is because september rosters don't expand the way that they used to and i'm fine with that on the whole. I think it was sort of silly when you had some teams with 40 guys and other guys. Yeah. So the thing is, though, that there are some major leaguers who do not make the majors now because not as many September columns. Not that there's any shortage of newly minted major leaguers, as we have discussed. There seems to be more every year. So many, in fact. Yeah. But some of those guys who would get to come up in September, maybe when you're out of the race and you're just seeing what you have or you're sort of

rewarding someone for that, they might not get that chance anymore. Now, if they were on a contending team, I know the Pirates are off to a great start. They're a contending team, but it's April. But if the Pirates, if this were late in the season, if it were a team that were fighting for every win, then you might not be able to call that guy up or you might not want to call that guy up, even if he was kind of bumming around your system. So in that case, I guess you would have to work out some sort of loan program or, you know, when it's like a late career minor league veteran. I mean, you could just you could work something out with another team that it's out of the race and would have the plate appearance to give to that person. The gift of the Magi. Do you believe in Magi? Honorary major leaguer, not honorary, actual major leaguer, but kind of an expedited,

accelerated program to get them there when they might not get there otherwise. So I think, you know, you could like release them and have the other team sign them for a day or whatever. So I kind of like to see that. But yeah, as you say, part of what makes it so special is that it is really hard to get there, obviously. So if you do kind of build in some mechanism whereby you can always get there if you last there long enough, or you're much more likely to get there, then it would not be quite as special, I suppose, if this sort of thing were happening more often, or if the player knew, I only got there because of this special program. I don't know what players would think of it.

Right. Yeah. I mean, I would think it'd still be kind of cool just to be in the show, just to get the major league experience for a day. Even if there were some roster rule that helped expedite that, I'd still want to do it, right? I mean, you used to be able to say like, oh, he's in the baseball encyclopedia now. And now we talk about baseball reference, I guess. Of course, you're already on baseball reference, but you have a major league page on baseball reference, which is different and important distinction. I think that I'm trying to sort through what I think of this. Because like, on the one hand, I think we can acknowledge that there are guys who deserve to be in the big leagues, probably, who don't end up making it.

And guys who are not objectively, like, the most, one of the most talented guys, at least not for very long, who do make it, right? Like, there is some wiggle there. Like, I don't think that teams are always so perfect at talent evaluation that, you know, we can say, like, oh, well, everyone who deserves to be there is always going to get there. That's almost certainly not true. There's some luck. It depends. You're on a certain roster and not another when a need arises. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's that piece of it. And I think that if you made the rules stringent enough, right. If you really are making it the really naming it after him, like how many guys, it's not very many guys, right? Like that's just not going to be very many guys.

And so I think that if you understand it as in part, an acknowledgement of sort of persistence and fortitude in the face of a thing that many people would very reasonably be done with earlier in their lives that's fine like that i don't know that that really takes anything away from the experience of it i mean i imagine that players probably would have really strong opinions. They might not all be in alignment, but I imagine that their opinions on this would be very firm. If you gave them the opportunity, but you're like, but it doesn't count for bench and stuff,

then would it be the meatloaf award? Because you can't do anything for it. But you can't do that. Yeah. Jumeji just hit a ball about 100 miles per hour, but it was caught in center field by James Outman. You know, we were talking about how maybe it'd be better if there were a name swap and James Outman were a pitcher and Battenfield were a position player, Peyton Battenfield. But it is nice when you look in game day and it says Drew Maggi flies out to center fielder James Outman. That makes me happy. It is satisfying.

Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to be like out to the Outman. Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. So that was nice.

Happy that it happened. a podcast and a platform for Meg's mascot opinions. There's one that a couple people have asked you to share. It pertains to your team. And it's a Mariner's mascot, a short-lived Mariner's mascot named Spacey the Space Needle, which surfaced on Reddit the other day. Which surfaced on Reddit the other day. And people were commenting on this quick clip of Spacey the Space Needle, a 1979 Mariner's mascot. Didn't last very long, but you can imagine what Spacey looked like. It looks like the Space Needle, the famous building in Seattle.

Okay, Ben. It's saying you can imagine what it looked like and then seeing it. I submit that you cannot i submit that you gotta see it to be like oh because it is as if they took you know they had to make it tall we'll get into the stilts uh in a moment here but they were like what do we take the the head of the space needle and then we put a thing on top of it that in the grainy footage here looks like the Death Star. Like there's that. And then we put him in a uniform, right? Because how could we make the bottom of his body look like a building?

Couldn't do it. Couldn't possibly just put him in a Mariner's uniform, you know? I kind of love spacey i have a a potentially unkind thing to say about spacey which is like is it possible that they just didn't get a very good stiltsman you know yeah what's the still what is a stilt are you a stilt operator are you a still driver no um you're stilted i don't know yeah but it's true that there's probably some skill some technique to walking on stilts especially with a space needle mask on your head the the possibility of tipping over because you have like a weird high weight you know i don't know what the um the manufacturing technology was like in 1979 you know um we've had advancements since then i don't know if boeing was involved

with this you know if it was at the time like things weren't going great for them so i i wonder if we in the modern era um could could employ technology and materials potentially like from the space shuttle to to make it very light. We could make it out of paper mache. We have paper mache space needle head. What is the thing on top of his head? I mean, like the thing on top of his head is like the, you know, the part of the space needle that you can go up in and there's a restaurant up there and they've made the floors clear now, Ben. I don't like, I don't care. Oh, no.

Excuse me, I'm going to do a swear. I don't care for that shit at all. No, absolutely not. No, thank you. It's like, oh, it's expensive because it's for tourists. Fine. They can keep that. That's not for me.

Yeah. I read a little bit about Spacey. I was looking, there didn't seem to be a lot of contemporary coverage in 1979. They were waiting for us, Ben. Yeah, the archivists. But in 1990, which is when Mariner Moose came in, the first Mariner's full time mascot. And I was looking at a January 1990 article in the News Tribune, and there's a Mariners executive who's saying kids love mascots, and who better to decide what the mascot should be than the kids? So they were doing a You Pick the Mascot contest that was open to fans who were 14

and younger, and there was a $1,000 prize for the winning contestant. And this article says, the Mariners never have had an official mascot. The one night in August 1979, they held a mascot for a night contest. On hand that evening was Spacey the Space Needle, Sam the Roller Skating Salmon, and a man. Wait, it gets better. And a man dressed only in diapers who wished to be called the baby. The baby? And who crawled all the way from left field to home plate. Fans voting with their applause chose Spacey.

The baby? What did the salmon look like? Do we have a picture of the salmon? I don't know. You can look up the roller skating salmon, but I haven't seen a picture. What's it called? What was the salmon called I don't know. You can look up the roller skating salmon, but I haven't seen a picture. What's it called? What was the salmon called? Sam. Sam, the roller skating salmon. Mariner Sam, the roller

skating. I love the baby, because I don't even know what that has to do with Seattle or the Mariners, unlike the salmon and the Space Needle. I have no idea. Yeah. So, I found a 1999 Seattle Times article that says, in the 1979 mascot competition won by Spacey the Needle over the Bulgarian Rabbit, a man showed up wearing only a diaper

and calling himself the baby. Oh, and so this is why the baby, and everyone was like, yeah, keep that guy around. We had all the mascots run or ride or skate or do their thing from the left field tunnel to the plate, recalled Randy Adamic, now Seattle vice president of communications. The baby crawled. When he stood up at home, his hands and knees were all bloody. Oh. I think we gave him second place for his pain. So, I'm sorry. A bloody baby.

What a mascot. A giant bloody baby. And they mascot. There was a giant bloody baby, and they were like, for the kids, you know? For the kids. For the kids. Yep. Here's a 1990 article, Seattle Times, also that says the Maritors threw a mascot

contest which produced the Moose's fleeting forerunner, Spacey the Needle. He was an architectural wonder on stilts with a replica of the top of the space needle on his head. The only thing was, a space needle had a few built-in limitations as a mascot, mobility being chief among them. Being on stilts, there was only so much he could do, Adamic said. Spacey entertained at several games and took his retirement. I think that they maybe need a better stilts practitioner, a better...

Certified stilts operator. Stilts operator. I don't want to say stiltsman because it could be, you know, there's no gender requirement around stilting. Yeah, the Savannah Bananas have done pitchers and hitters on stilts. Yeah, which I don't think is a good idea, but you're doing a lot more action than just like walking around, you know? Yeah, if you can pull that off, I would think mascotting on stilts would be possible. Yeah, you might be limited in certain ways, but you'd also be enabled in certain ways to do things that more vertically challenged mascots could not. So I would like it. It'd be a good look.

So, I would like it. It'd be a good look. I think that another perhaps underrated issue for Stilty, for Spacey. They should call him Stilty. No, that's bad. They should call him. But Spacey, like, implies, you know, a blah, blah, blah. You know, a blah, blah, blah about you.

You know, you're forgetful. You're absent-minded. You're not. You're operating in an ethereal plane, you know. You got to be grounded because you're a tall building. And if you're not grounded, you're going to fall over and it's going to be bad. So, one issue that I could foresee is, like, how tall was Spacey actually? Like, what was the height? Yeah. Like, what was the height? Yeah, it looks, I mean, just from the footage here, it looks like Spacey's towering over the umpires by at least a few feet, right?

So I wonder if in the ballpark, if there might be places where, you know, Spacey could not go. Could not go for, because like, how would one traverse, how does Spacey get, get in an elevator? Spacey'd have to come down off Spacey's stilts, and then you'd have to have a special Spacey elevator. That sounds funny. Because you couldn't,

you wouldn't want to horrify the children, shatter the illusion that Spacey is not in fact a giant, right? Yeah. You can't have Spacey take off the helmet the mask no get into an elevator or duck under a ceiling or something yeah i may have shared this story before so i apologize for repeating myself which bothers some but um i know someone who worked for the team like in game day operations and their job was to be like the moose chaperone because there are multiple mooses.

There are at least two. And they could not cross paths because it would be bad for the children, Ben. We're trying to create a world here, you know? Right. So, I think that you would need, first of all, you'd need at least two people who are really good on stilts. You would need Space Metal to make the head. And then getting Spacey through the ballpark feels like it would be a tremendous challenge. And, like, there's no padding on Spacey, right?

And you're at a height. So if you fall, you're going to hurt yourself, you know? And as we discussed when we were talking about Dinger being tackled which again we are opposed to mascot assault or opposed to assault of any kind you know there is like a safety issue here that i don't want to downplay just because the person they had in the stilts might have been a bad stilt um stilt writer stilt writer no i'm gonna keep work chopping it i'll find it yeah right if you were dancing on the dugout as Spacey and you fell, then not only are you falling from some height, but you're falling from the stilts as well. Right. So that could be problematic.

Right, yeah. So I don't know. It might need some workshopping. all agree about is that you know if spacey is occupying a take it or leave it kind of category in terms of the mascots that we have um at one end in terms of bring it back right now i need to see it the salmon on roller skates because again what and then at the other end is the bloody baby which you know can just remain in remain in the backwaters of history as far as I'm concerned. Yes, please.

Yeah. Well, we're gradually transitioning into just a full-time mascot podcast, just a horniness and mascots. We're just the furry market. We're just cornering the furry baseball fan market. Oh, no, no, we're not crossing. No, we're not. We the furry baseball fan market oh no no we're not crossing no we're not we're not crossing those wires not necessarily we're not always crossing those wires we are occasionally wondering if there is a desire on the part of others to cross that particular set

of wires but we are not ourselves we don't the desire. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Right. Yeah. Right. So I did want to talk to you about an epidemic that is happening across the sport right now. Is it injuries? Well, yeah, there is that. We have talked about that. I don't know what more to say other than stop with the injuries. Stop getting hurt. Every darn day.

So Robbie Ray's out for the season now. And it's like two or three guys seem to leave a start every night. Every night. Kenta Maeda, German Marquez, each of them recently returned from injuries of their own. Taiwan Walker. And it's always like a forearm or a tricep or something and a flexor tendon. And you're always just worried that it's going to turn

into Tommy John or at least with Robbie Ray, just a flexor surgery that's going to cost him the entire season. It's the worst. Just stop. I don't know how to stop other than I guess my proposed solution for everything is still just limiting the number of pitchers on the active roster, which I hope would make guys throw max effort less often and might lead to fewer injuries. But I don't have a panacea for this.

It's just really bad every day when someone else goes down. It's a problem. Like, I don't know that if we were to wrap them like in bubble wrap, if it would help, maybe we should put them on stilts. Mascots maybe should be wrapped in bubble. I mean, maybe if Spacey, the Space Nato were in bubble wrap, then that would solve the problem of plummeting from a great height. Yeah. I mean, maybe.

Maybe. I still think you could break stuff, though. Yeah. Yeah. So, that was not the epidemic. That is actually a more serious epidemic. I don't have a solution for that one, and it's bad. But there's also an epidemic of catcher's interferences.

Yeah. So many catcher's interferences have been happening this year. And we've done the StatBlast already this week, but this is StatBlast-y, I guess. I just looked up how many catcher's interferences there have been each season going back a ways. catcher's interferences there have been each season going back a ways and there are so many more catcher's interferences than there used to be. No, can I just say catcher's interfered? Do I have to pluralize it? I don't know. I have to figure it out because it's happening so much more often now that I have to get the terminology down. So there have been 26 instances of catcher interference so far this season. Yeah, instances of catcher interference so far this season.

Yeah, instances of catcher interference. I think that that's the best way to say it, even though it's funky. Yeah, it doesn't really flow that well. But 26 times it's happened this season. As recently as 2014, there were fewer than that in the entire season. In 2014, there were 23 instances of catcher interference. There have been 26 already this season. 2014 is not that long ago. Same number of teams, same number of games. We're 15% of the way through the regular season, and we've already exceeded the number of catcher's

interferences that there were in 2014 and 2013 and 2012, right? It's unbelievable how much it's skyrocketed. Now, it's still quite rare in the grand scheme of things. I don't know that anyone else is, like, promoting the rise in catchers interferences, but there have been so many more. So, like, this is, if we were to stay on this pace, and I don't know whether we will, but right now we're on pace for like 170 catchers interference calls. There's another way I could say it. There you go.

That's better. That's smoother. By the end of this pod, we're going to have this nut cracked. And we'll figure out the stilts thing too. Yeah. So 170 would be the pace that we're on right now. There were 74 last season. That was a record.

There were 62 in 2021. That was a record. There were 61 in 2019. That was a record. Forget about 2020, although there were a lot that season on pace for a lot that season. But really, like it's gone up so much where it was, you know, just looking from like 1998, the first 30 team season, there were 23 that year. So it was like kind of flat, roughly like there were the same number in 1998 and 2014. And it fluctuated like in 2002, there were nine. And in 2010, there were 28.

But, you know, it didn't go above 28. And then suddenly, 2015, 33. 2016, 41. 2017, 43. 2018, 41. 2019, 61. And then 62 and 74 last year and on pace for many more this season. last year and on pace for many more this season. So even if we were to stay on the current pace and have 170, I mean, it's still not that many. It's right now happening once every 14 games or so,

which is 28 or 29 team games to each catcher interference. So it's basically happening like five or six times per season per team. That's the pace we're on right now. So I don't know that that's so terrible or that anyone would particularly care, but it is much more noticeable at least. And we've had some games, there was like a Red Sox Angels game where there were three in one game and two in one inning. Yeah. And I know two in one inning happened last year also. So they're clustering and they're becoming more noticeable. And it's really a rapid rise just over the past several years. And I think we could talk about why it's happening, but it is clearly happening.

And it's one of the most striking trends if you care about odd little rules and minutia. of the most striking trends if you care about odd little rules and minutiae. Okay. So, the ridiculous answer is their hands have all gotten bigger, right? Or their gloves have all gotten bigger. There's an epidemic. The hidden injury epidemic is big hands, like swollen hands, like uncomfortable, like digit compression. Yeah. Well, some of them might have swollen hands after the catchers occurs because they get hit by a bat. You know how when you live in Arizona, you have two states of being, you either constantly have to pee or you always have like a mild dehydration headache.

It's like there's very little time spent comfortably in between those two. And when you're in the dehydration headache mold, at least for me, it's like you get kind of puffy thingies, you get the you get kind of puffy thingies you get puffy digits so so the silly answer is uh that they like have bigger hands you know and it has led to them but i wonder if what we are witnessing is are they being instructed to move forward in the box from to try to optimize pitching because like i have heard tell ben um of catchers who like have seen dips in their framing numbers and uh and they've been like hey why am i bad at this all of a sudden and their teams will be like oh you're you're set

up too far too close and so they reposition them you know and so like are they being pushed forward some amount i think so yeah and could we figure that out with the stack cast data not publicly if we had it if we had it i this is this is actually my answer to the data that i want the most is is catcher's positioning in the end. You know, I want really precise batter box positioning too. Yeah, I would like to know that too. And I don't know that that data has existed for that long. And I'm sure it hasn't been tracked really.

But there is at least the possibility to figure that out. And of course, there have been various biomechanics data providers that predated StatCast doing that kind of stuff. So I might actually inquire and see if I can get any info on that because I have asked for that sort of information on batter position before as pertains to hit by pitches. Or ask about the big hands. Well, yeah, that too. I would think that probably with Hawkeye, we could track hand swollen size now these days. They're measuring all the digits. So I would think, though, that if we could quantify that, that we would see that catchers have shifted forward.

I think this is largely an artifact of framing. I think the timing is suggestive, right? When framing really caught on, when teams started stressing it and paying attention to it, that's when these numbers started to creep up. Especially once catchers went to the one-knee stance predominantly, which happened several years ago. And I wrote about that trend at the time. Tyler Flowers was really one of the popularizers of that. And now it's rare to see a catcher not on the one knee stance. It looks like old school. There are only a few holdouts at this point, you know, like Wilson Contreras and some others who maybe want to be more mobile back there and be able to that and catchers are being taught to do that now because framing a lot of framing is about framing the low strike and receiving the low strike there

are a lot of strikes down there and you know if you can stop the the pitch from falling then or appearing appear to have stopped the pitch from falling then that can help you nab those low strikes. That's where catchers make the biggest difference receiving-wise. And I think that's what's happening here. Obviously, if a pitch is falling, the longer you let it travel, the more it will fall, right? And so the last thing that the umpire sees, of course, the umpire's view might be somewhat obscured, but the last thing the umpire sees is course the umpire's view might be somewhat obscured but the last thing the umpire sees is is when the ball goes into the mitt or thereabouts and so the farther forward you can catch it the higher it will be the closer it will be to a strike or look like it was closer to a strike so i think that's what's happening i think catchers are reaching forward and uh they're

they're getting burned by that now and then and i think what we've seen this season with an even further rise i wonder whether that is resulting from the the new stolen base rules and the restriction on pickoff attempts and now catchers are probably extra antsy back there and you're thinking i gotta be ready to throw and I want to get a couple inches closer to second base to compensate for second base being a couple inches closer to first base, right?

And they're kind of jumping out of their shoes and maybe in their haste or their anxiety or urgency to be ready to throw, but also be framing like there's a lot of demands on catchers right now.

And I would imagine that this is stemming from that. So big uptick back when people started paying attention to framing, another big uptick when everyone went to the one knee stance, and now another big uptick, perhaps this season as a result of in response to the new stolen base stuff. So I think that's why it's happening. So I don't know how it would stop, right? Because like all the incentives seem to be pushing catchers to do this, other than the we go to robot umps, not even a challenge system or something, or something else changes with the running game, it seems like catcher's interferences might

be here to stay or become even more common. Cases of catcher's interference? Yeah, sounds like a disease or something. Yeah, it does. You gotta blockage. Well, I said it was an epidemic so yeah you gotta see i was gonna say a rash of catcher's interference in that scenes even worse um

but yeah i uh or they uh mismanufactured all the gloves you know so they're bigger and um alternative explanation equally plausible yeah i think that the other explanation is better i have greater confidence in its power to explain there's some instances where it almost seems intentional on the batter's part or at least you could say that the batter was not actually obstructed or interfered with or impaired in any way because sometimes the bat will make contact with the glove like after the pitch has already gone by you know and there is actually a case a couple years ago where Clayton Kershaw was kind of miffed at Jerickson Profar because it appeared that perhaps Profar had sort of intentionally

elicited a catcher's interference call on a pitch that was like already by him. And he took kind of a weird, like downward choppy swing. And Kershaw was like, you know, they might need to revisit this because you could, you know, I mean, there have been players like Jeff Sullivan was semi-obsessed with catcher's interference and particularly with Jacoby Ellsbury, who is the all-time leader, who passed Pete Rose, who had many, many, many thousands more plate appearances than Jacobi Ellsbury did. And Ellsbury was the catcher's interference king. And he had like 12 of them in one season, and he ended up with 31. And then recently, Nick Senzel was eliciting a lot of catcher's interference calls.

So you can kind of work it into your game and not necessarily do it intentionally, but perhaps sometimes do it intentionally. So there are some cases where it's kind of cheaper, at least like there wasn't actual interference. But I do understand why you have to have the rule because if you didn't have any penalty or cost associated with

that then the catcher could just be constantly interfering with the swing i mean they might hurt themselves but you could be throwing your glove into the bat path every time right so there has to be some rule about this right but it's uh it's just it's being triggered so much more often yeah i just i wonder whether we will continue to see the occurrences rise yeah i i am fascinated by it because it it seems like it it could involve some amount of skill although i think you'd probably just want i mean like i don't know maybe you're just happy to get on base but i think you'd still want like a clean finish and swing so that you can do other stuff besides just take a free base on catcher's interference. So even if it is a skill, I don't know that there's often a ton of incentive to deploy that skill.

I mean, I'm sure there might be specific instances where it's like, oh, well, I have this skill and the bases are juiced. So I shall be interfered with. Also, like, interfered with. I don't know. It's just such a, I don't know. I find that way of describing it to be kind of funny. So, I don't know. It's an error.

Right. And I find it kind of deflating when it happens because there's often a moment of confusion. There's almost always a moment of confusion. There's almost always a moment of confusion. Yeah. Because sometimes it's very obvious, but often it's just a nick and you can't really see it until you slow it down and see the replay. So there's just this moment of like, what? Everyone just suddenly stopped doing what they were doing and now the guy's going to first base. Did he get hit or something?

Oh, I see. Catcher's interference. Right. So there's always a moment of confusion. And then it's sort of an unsatisfying resolution to the plate parents in my mind. I like framing, obviously. We enjoy framing. I don't particularly enjoy this byproduct of it, which it just feels unfulfilling.

It's like we were watching the pitcher versus batter confrontation. And sure, the catcher is a third party in that, and the umpire is a fourth party in that. But still, we want to see them settle their differences here, and we didn't actually get to see it because the catcher's glove just crept in and said, actually, what if this plate appearance were over now? So, we just skipped it and went to the next one. And you don't get credit for it in on-base percentage, which you don't with any other kind of error, so it's consistent. But that is potentially a weakness too, because even reached on error, a regular one,

you should probably get credit for that, or at least it's certainly a skill that some players are able to reach on error more often because they're fast or they hit the ball on the ground or they pull their grounders and they're able to put pressure on the defense and beat those out. So there is some skill to that. Like there's clearly some players are able to reach on error more often over time than others. And that is also the case with catcher's interference. So it also feels like maybe the batter should get a little credit for that. But

also, it's kind of dinky. And it's just, it's not fun. It's not fun. So I don't really want to see this happen as often as it has been happening. It's not a huge problem. But every time it happens, and especially when we see a few in a short span of time, it's like, this used to be really rare. I mean, I don't know whether it was always tracked and reported accurately, but if you look back at really long ago seasons on Baseball Reference, it's like a handful or maybe a couple were happening per season. Obviously, fewer teams, fewer games. But it was an extremely rare occurrence.

Yes. Now it's merely quite rare. Yeah, not extremely rare still rare but you know like um you know like there's less pink in in the meat as it were um yeah i i think that it is made moderately better by the fact that in theory you could clarify more quickly via the umps being mic'd up, like, what had just happened. Like, they should say, that was the catcher's interference. Yeah. You know?

Catcher's interference. I do wonder if catchers, like, get in their own heads about it, you know? Yeah. Like, do you get worried that you're too close? I would. Then do you set up too far back? Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And also, I wonder whether we're seeing more catchers get hit on backswings. Too close? Then do you set up too far back? catchers, they're always going to get hit by foul tips and everything. But if there are more catchers interference calls, there are probably also more cases of catchers getting nicked on backswings, too. And it's just another bruise to add to catchers' bodies, but it can't be great. So if I were a catcher, which again, I wouldn't be, despite my admiration for catchers and my appreciation of the position. Part of that appreciation stems from just how little I would want to do that job. So I would definitely, it would be in my head. I mean, sure, I'd want to get my pitcher extra strikes, but also I really would not want to get hit by a bat at any point in the swing. So I would be quite wary. I mean, imagine how many close calls

and near misses there are if there are this many contacts. So if I got hit, I would learn my lesson from that and I would scooch back a bit, but that I would not do well on my framing metrics and that would upset me too.

It's a real conundrum. It's a real, because you just have to be able to wipe it. I, I continue, um, to, to appreciate like the little seemingly impossible things that baseball players do. And I think the one that I have been the most in awe of lately, which perhaps speaks to my own ambient level of anxiety is just the ability to like let it go and not think about it again i sit in awe and also envy yeah me too mamas don't let your babies grow up to be catchers

i guess someone's got to catch so some babies have to become catchers yeah i don't want to think about babies now because now i'm just thinking about the Mariners. About a giant, bloody adult baby. Why? Why? Someone has to contact the person who played the baby and ask why. What were they thinking? Disturbing. Anyway, another pitch-related intrigue here. There was a video that went around also on Reddit that is basically, it's shot by a Japanese fan of the Angels dugout the other day during the Angels-A's game on April 25th, when Jose Suarez was pitching for the Angels. And you can see Shohei Otani pick up on Suarez's pitch tipping and then relay that information first to the pitching coach and then to Phil Nevin, the manager, and then Nevin pulls Suarez aside and gets him to stop doing the tipping that he was doing. We don't usually get footage of the dugout constantly during games, but because there's a big Otani fan there who just wanted Otani to always be on camera, we got this little insight here. And it's interesting because I'm always really fascinated by pitch tipping and pitch tipping rumors because I feel like often it's kind of overblown.

Yeah. It's kind of overblown. Yeah. Like maybe there wasn't actually pitch dipping happening, or if there was, maybe it didn't make as big a difference as people believe that it did. But it's always hard to tell. And in this case, you can see it being recognized and corrected in real time, which is kind of cool. Tiny sample, not necessarily meaningful, but interesting, suggestive in the first to third innings against the A's. While Suarez was doing this, he gave up eight hits and a walk and five home runs. And then he went back out for the fourth and fifth, having changed his setup.

It was like his glove setup. You know, he was like holding it higher or lower or whatever, depending on the pitch type. And in the fourth and fifth innings, he gave up no hits and one walk and no damage was done. So again, correlation, not causation. I don't know for sure that he was like eminently hittable and homerable against while he was pitching and then almost unhittable when he was not tipping. Did I say pitching? Tipping, I meant.

Tipping. But I wonder, though, how often this kind of thing happens. I imagine it's happening pretty constantly. And we just don't have the footage where we can kind of track it in real time. Also, some people were sort of slagging off the Angels coaching staff and saying that it's kind of embarrassing that they didn't pick up on this and that Otani did it, right? And there have been some other instances of this too. Jose Suarez, I think there was a pitch tipping issue with him like four years ago, like 2019 when Brad Osmus was the Angels manager, and they talked about

correcting that back then. And there have also been some cases. There was one, I think it was last season, where Mike Trout appeared to pick up on a pitch tipping issue, and he was gesturing almost in an irritated way from center field about this happening. Was that related to pitch tipping or walking the base? That was separate. Conditional walking someone.

Yeah, those were separate. Two different instances of him being kind of annoyed. Okay. Yeah. But after this game, Suarez said he was told that he was tipping pitches. After the third, he changed his glove placement and the results differed.

And Nevin said that they think the pitch tipping issue that was identified will help Suarez be better. So I was just thinking, I mean, A, I wonder just how often this happens. It's kind of funny when you think about it, that you would be varying your glove location just unconsciously, depending on the pitch type. It makes me wonder what other things, what do we tip in real life? That there are no implications of that whatsoever. But if you were to-

I think that's the start of a true crime podcast, Ben. Yeah, I guess so. But our tells or our ticks or our mannerisms or gestures that we do, I mean, that unless you're on a major league mound or at the poker table, it table, it doesn't matter. But we're probably all doing that constantly and probably much more often than major league pitchers who have been conditioned not to do it. But it's funny that they do it even unconsciously. But also, I feel like, and look, I don't know that the Angels coaching staff is particularly

good or great or well-qualified or whatever, but I kind of think that if Trout and Otani are the ones picking up on that, that's not necessarily an indictment that you didn't because these are probably the two best players in baseball. I mean, they are baseball savants, the humans, not the website. But like, of course they would see it, you know, like they're geniuses, right? So, I mean, if they're almost extra coaches in that way, then that's great. Now, granted, I think probably like everyone in the dugout and on the bench is like constantly trying to pick up on tipping and signs and everything, right? So, probably everyone's doing that and

people who aren't in the game and people who are coaches, maybe they're sort of explicitly supposed to do it or they have more time or mental bandwidth to do it. So perhaps they should be picking up on it more quickly than players. And they're veterans and they're experienced and they're wily and they should be looking for all that. But also, Otani and Trout, like, they're masters of baseball, you know? Like, if they're picking up on something, it wouldn't be surprising to me

if they saw it before even someone whose job it was to do that because they're just ultra-skilled at everything. So why would they not be ultra-skilled at that too? Right. I don't think that it necessarily, I don't know that, like you said, like, they might be garbage as a coaching staff. I don't know. I'm not saying that they are. I just don't think weird position i was thinking about this the other day because my my stepmom found a reel from an old late night episode where like matt harvey went

around this is when he was still a met and you know like matt harvey and he went around and asked uh new yorkers like who was their favorite met and of course a number of them said matt harvey and then they talked about martin harvey and then a couple of them were like you know ripping on matt harvey because i didn't realize it was him. And I was like, this is the perfect level of fame because being famous seems terrible to me. And I think that for 99% of baseball players, that's true. And then there's Ohtani. Like, he, even as a baseball player, incapable of being anonymous in, like, a public space.

Like, if you saw that guy, you'd be like, oh, that's sure Ohtani. That man's a professional athlete, know yeah anyway yeah we've talked about the the npb otani cam on some japanese broadcasts where the camera's just always been on otani at all times because that's why people are tuning in how many times in a season do you think he picks his nose because like he does it at least a couple of times. He's human, you know? Yeah. You know, I don't know that I remember him doing that, and I've certainly seen enough gifs of Shohei Ohtani in my day doing things in the dugout. But why would someone gif that? Because you're a fan of Ohtani.

If you're watching the Ohtani cam, maybe too much of a fan. I think that would get gifed. If Ohtani were very obviously picking and flicking or— I didn't say anything about flicking. Well, I mean, I wondered what would happen after the pick. Is there flicking or is there ingestion or what? But I think that would probably— You could wipe it off on yourself.

Sure, yeah. There's another option. That's true. But I think, I mean, everything he does, because he's so expressive and kind of charismatic, and he's always being funny or amusing or playing pranks or joking or something in the dugout. So I think given the number of eyeballs on him and just the gif economy when it comes to Shohei otani yeah if he were picking that we would probably we would know and i don't recall seeing it but it may have happened that's probably true but yeah i i have sympathy for like as a person who has um uh i'm bad at poker because i have a very expressive face um and i've thought a lot about in the last you know couple of years as people have talked about you know being like, an office worker who maybe

has to go back into work in person. Um, you know, after having spent some portion of the pandemic working from home, just being like, Oh, I, I am so grateful that I don't have to do that. Cause I imagine that there were a number of people who went back to work and then like, had to readjust their face to being, you know, and I don't say that like I'm constantly mad at my coworkers or anything like that, but we all have our little annoyances at work. Right. And I have the great luxury of just letting it can just wash over me and no one, no one's the wiser. And then I can hopefully present myself in a kind way and I'm not annoyed way. I'm sure I

don't succeed at that always, but you know, I don't, nobody's looking at my face being like that Meg, she's got feelings, you know, so I would hate to, I'd be a bad pitcher just for this reason though. No other reason. Yeah. Okay. This was actually April 24th, not the 25th and that was uh the game that the angels ended up losing oh gosh 10 in extras and so i guess that was uh probably like he almost he almost saved them i guess otani almost uh got them a win there just by curtailing the pitch tipping perhaps if we could somehow quantify your pitch tipping war just from some expert pitch-tipper on the bench. What does his value add? Right.

Saving his pitchers' runs constantly by perceiving their pitch-tipping and being able to tell them. But you would think that Otani, as both a pitcher and a hitter, in addition to everything else he's great at, he'd probably be great at picking up on pitch tipping too, right? Because not only, I mean, he pitches, so he has the potential to tip pitches himself and has to police himself for possible pitch tips. And then also has the experience of being a hitter and trying to pick up on other people's pitch tips. So he has like, he's been on both sides of it. It's like you hire some hacker to be like a white hat hacker to proof your defenses against the bad hackers because they have hacked and they know how to find the holes in your defenses, right? So Otani's kind of like that. He's been on both sides of it. He knows how to pick up on pitch tips and also how to stop it and prevent it in himself. So you would think that in addition to everything else, he'd be also extra skilled at that. So here's some evidence that that is the

case. One thing I wanted to mention before we end, Jordan Walker was optioned, which I guess probably would come as a shock to some people who remember how he started out, right? So he started out with a very long hitting streak. He got hits in each of his first 12 games, which was not historic territory, but coming up on historic territory, it was historic for a player as young as Jordan Walker is. And so he started off great and just going gangbusters. And it seemed like, okay, he's hitting the ground running. There's not going to be a big adjustment period. And then just, what, nine games, I guess, after the hitting streak ended, or eight maybe, he is back in the minors. So kind of a quick comeuppance, but it's interesting because obviously he kind of forced his way onto that roster by

hitting extremely well in spring training and just looking big league ready. I don't think it was initially the plan for him to be on the big league roster, but he just forced the issue and he pushed his way out to the roster. And initially it looked like this was a great decision and it's going to be just nothing but sunshine and rainbows all the way. Now, over the last few games of the hitting streak, at least, he was getting one hit a game. And, you know, sometimes you have hitting streaks where you're not actually hitting that well, right? Because you're just getting like a single a game for a while. And that's not that great, even though it extends the hitting streak.

game for a while and that's not that great even though it extends the hitting streak if we just divide his 20 game sample in the majors into two well over his uh or i guess if we want to make it even more extreme and cherry pick then we could do his first nine games versus his last 11. So his first nine games, he had a 994 OPS. And then his last most recent 11 games, he had a 475 OPS. And he struck out 13 times and walked twice. And I am always fascinated by the idea of the book on hitters. And I probably got a stat blast about this at some point because I always just wonder how pervasive that phenomenon of the book is where a hitter comes up and initially they're just feasting on pitchers challenging them and just throwing fastballs and we don't know who

this kid is and we're going to make him prove it. Or at least in the past, we just really don't know who this kid is. We've never heard of him. We have no scouting report. We have no data to go on. So until we develop our own book on him, then we'll just go with the generic book and maybe he'll be able to take advantage of that.

So I wonder if you were to study this, and maybe I will, whether you would see that the first, you know, X plate appearances of rookies, major league careers on average are better than their next Y plate appearances, right? Like whether there typically is a correction or whether that is partly a myth and that hitters actually do just kind of constantly get better with age and experience or whether there typically is an adjustment period. Because there isn't always, you know, some guys, there's no book. I mean, there's no hole to exploit and they're just good from the get-go, basically. They just gradually get better. Whereas other guys, they have some huge hole or flaw exposed. And I'm not

saying that's what happened with Jordan Walker. Like like he might have been okay but obviously he he cooled off and if you look at how pitchers were pitching him at least just with pitch types you know very simply like if you graph kind of a 10 game running average of like four seam fastball percentage and slider percentage the four seam fastball percentage goes way down the slider percentage goes way up. So maybe they were just like, let's see if he can hit breaking balls. So at least at first, maybe he couldn't. I also wonder whether that book effect would be more pronounced now because information circulates quickly around the league or less pronounced than it used to be because the

information circulates instantaneously when you get to the big leagues. There's already a book. There's already a scouting report if you want one. But between that and him hitting a lot of ground balls and also having issues in the outfield, they sent him down. That's, I guess, probably the bigger issue for now. Yes. Yes. And I think like he is in a, he, he was in a spot because on the one hand, like if you're going to play him in the outfield, it has to get better than it's been. Like we had a piece on that Alex Isert wrote earlier this week, this week before he was sent down about sort of the situation in the outfields there. And I have watched some of the Cardinals, but I don't watch them as much as like a Cardinals fan does. So I like asked Ben Clemens, I was like,

so what's your take on this? Just because I was curious as I was editing it, like what, you know, as someone who watches them often, and he was like, yeah, you should be sent down. Because the defense is a problem and not just in a, we're in a small defensive sample and the numbers can be kind of weird, you know, especially in such limited attempts. You know, he seems like he's struggling there. And it would be that would be one thing if there weren't other guys on the roster, both competing for outfield space, but then also the DH spot.

Like, I think that one of the important numbers in determining walker being up or down isn't one of his it's the fact that like nolan gorman has a 160 wrc plus so they can't put him at dh and take at bats away from gorman they want gorman's bad in the lineup so then you know once new bar comes back from being hurt, like, what do you do? You have this log jam that he, like you said, kind of, you know, hit his way through in spring. But you still have, you know, Newt Barr and you still have Tyler O'Neill and you still have Burleson and you have Dylan Carlson. Yeah. Right. So they have all these guys and you're right that he had cooled, and it wasn't what it had looked like in the beginning, but I think that if he either had an obvious place to be played

or was able to DH, that they would probably let him sort some of that stuff out at the big league level, but they just have this weird configuration. Now, you might say, is it better for him to try to sort that stuff out in the minors i mean if he's going to get consistent playing time then then probably you know i don't know it's interesting like how i i was reflecting on how i reacted to this because it didn't strike me as a wild decision maybe in part because i just edited that piece but and had sort of thought about what he really looked like as a defender more than I would have previously. But, you know,

the Cardinals, they tend to promote guys when they think they're ready. Like they don't really play service time games. And so this is part of the benefit of not doing that is that my initial gut instinct was not that he was being like fooled with, right. But that they really have something they want him to work on. Now, I think if you want to have a conversation about whether that's the right developmental environment versus just doing it in the big leagues, like that's a fine conversation to have, but I was like, oh, right. Like this is what happens when you have a reputation for and seemingly act often in good faith with your guys is that like i'm more inclined to believe that there's an honest assessment here that stuff

needs to be worked on rather than just like oh they're they're trying to you know game him or something yes right sometimes it's kind of the the cliched line like oh we need to send him down to work on his defense right but in this case he really does have to work on his defense. And because, yeah, they gave him the shot, then you kind of know that's good faith. And he's a fairly recently converted outfielder. He was a third baseman and, hey, they have Nolan Arnauto and that's great. But also it means that he has had to move and there's an adjustment period there. He's a really young guy. You know, he's not even 21 yet.

So, I think that the future is still very bright for Jordan Walker. Oh, yeah. You know, and that this is, this will be fine. It'll be fine, I suspect. Like, I don't think that anyone is sitting here being like, oh, we got to reevaluate Jordan Walker. I think he'll be back in, I don't know whether it'll be weeks or months, but you don't want someone like him probably to be sitting in the bench. If you want them to work on defense, they got to get regular reps.

And probably being in the minors, being at AAA is probably just as beneficial when it comes to working on your defense as being in the big leagues, or it's probably not as big a difference as, say, the stuff. Like if what you had to work on was hitting major league quality pitching, that could be a difficult thing to do when you're not in the major leagues, right? But if what you have to do is get better at fielding then probably you could do that just as well at triple a i mean there may be fewer batted balls hit really hard or something but like generally it's it's more or less the same to play the outfield in triple a versus mlb in a lot of important ways so i would think that he could get good just as well there as in St. Louis. And certainly, if he's going to be playing every two or three days in St. Louis as opposed to starting every day, that it's probably beneficial to send him down again, assuming he won't get demoralized

by that or frustrated by that or anything. But I would imagine that they were able to explain why they were doing this and what the thinking was and that they still have extremely high hopes for him. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that there's any, I doubt that this has really moved the needle internally. Now, if he continues to struggle in the outfield, like, I think you do have to, you got to figure something out. But, like, he's a good athlete and you're right that it's a new position and they have every incentive to try to figure something out for him because, you know, the potential in his bat is so profound. And so I suspect it'll be fine.

You know, there aren't a lot of guys on the board with like 80s on their game and raw power, but Jordan Walker is one of them. So, yeah. Will it be fine for the Cardinals though? I don't know, man. with like 80s on their game and raw power. But Jordan Walker is one of them. So yeah. Will it be fine for the Cardinals though? I don't know, man. Like they had a weird infield freaky Friday. Like maybe, maybe the solution is just to put Jordan Walker on the infield because they're really good infield defenders

had a loosey goosey night the other day. Yeah, I just, maybe we can close just by wondering about their playoff odds and their sort of setup for the rest of the season because they've started nine and 16 and actually another central team, the White Sox, they're seven and 18. that have suffered, I think, maybe the biggest declines in playoff odds since the start of the season. We'll have to look at the change since opening day in playoff odds. And obviously, the Rays are up about 30 percentage points and the Twins are up about 23 percentage points, which pertains to the White Sox slow start, as well as the Guardians being off to a fairly slow start too. So the Twins and the Rays, they're the big gainers in playoff odds thus far. The Orioles also up about 19 percentage points. The Cubs are in double digits. The Pirates, those Pirates up 20 percentage points. But

the decliners, the big decliners are really the White Sox and the Cardinals. The White Sox are down 28 percentage points. The Cardinals are down 27 percentage points. And the Cardinals were seen as favorites to win the NL Central, right? I mean, I certainly picked them to win the NL Central. I think they ranked pretty high on our team fun draft too, right? Like we both remarked, hey, the Cardinals seem fun this year. Like there are a lot of reasons to be excited about the Cardinals and watch the Cardinals. And then the season started and it has not been as fun to watch them as anticipated. So they're down now to like a 22% chance to win the division, about a 39% chance to make the playoffs.

Like, it's just, it's not customary to see the Cardinals just having a fairly, like being in last place, you know, at any point in the season. I know it's still April, but it's just, it's unfamiliar to see them struggling this way. So I wonder whether it will stick. I mean, you know, the Phillies started this way last season and they ended up winning a pennant, but that was unusual and they weren't a great team and they didn't win their division. So will the Cardinals correct course and will it be enough? I just don't know how you take down the Pirates, you know? Great.

take down the pirates you know like um i don't think that the pirates will win the central we don't have to belabor that point i do think that putting yourself in a little bit of a hole is not the best one like i don't think that the brewers are a bad team right and they're 16 and 9 and i think that the Cubs are pesky. I think they have the potential to be pesky. I don't think they're good, but they're pesky. And then the Reds are the Reds. But also, I think that all that needs to happen is, like, a 10-game winning streak, and then we're going to be like, ah, here they are.

You know? So, like, I just— The Cardinals are capable of that. They are capable of that. Much longer than 10-game winning streaks, in fact. Yeah. There's so much time left, you know so like the cardinals are capable of that they are capable much longer than 10 game winning streaks in fact yeah there's so much time left you know there it's not even the end of april it's close but it's it's not may yet you know so i i think um that it is appropriate for their odds to have been adjusted down given how they've played so far but there are a lot of very

talented um players on that team. I mean, the fundamental issue is that the rotation is still bad. It's a pretty bad rotation. So, you know, they're going to have to either score a lot of runs or go get some help, which is not out of the realm of possibility that they just try to go get some help.

Yeah, they're eight and a half games back, which sounds bad. Of course, they're eight and a half games back of the Pirates, who will come back to the pack at some point. They're still seven back of the Brewers. And again, that's kind of concerning because, you know, the Brewers will be there. They're always around. Yeah, they're not a bad team. Yeah. So we knew that the rotation would be a problem yeah but some other guys who were expected to to contribute and help mash to make up for that have have not as of yet but we'll see

i i still like i was pretty confident in the cardinals when the season started. Yeah, me too. It's definitely a concerning start. But I imagine that from now on, they will play a lot more like the Cardinals, like we anticipated that they would. And so it's just a question of have they dug too deep a hole and how good will the other teams in that division be? And I don't know. But I'm certainly not counting them out yet. As for the White Sox, though. Yeah. Man, you know, it's.

I think it's a real problem. I think they're in real trouble. I think it's really bad over there, Ben. It's not great. Yeah. I don't think that Tony La Russa was a good manager, but clearly he was not the only problem. So really, they've had all sorts of injury issues. Last year, they had more wins lost to injury than any other team. And that was a big problem.

And also it exposed their lack of roster depth, right? And the fact that when anyone would get hurt, like they just would not have a competent backup and it would just be a steep fall off from the first string guy to the second or third string guy. And that's still an issue, but even the first string guys in many cases are not playing particularly well. And so I don't know what you do about that.

I mean, like, Luis Robert is not playing well. They went and got Andrew Benatendi, and he's, you know, not playing particularly well. Not that he's, like, a star or anything. Luis Jimenez has been healthier, but he hasn't hit at all. So a lot of it was like, if we could just keep everyone healthy and in the lineup, then we'll be all right. And even to the extent that they've done that, it has not been all right. Like they've had, you know, three kind of above par hitters to this point, Yasmany Grandal, Jake Berger, and Andrew Vaughn. And most of them aren't doing incredibly well either.

And then you have some apparent holes. I mean, you know, Oscar Colas is exciting in some ways, but doesn't appear to be ready. And his pitching has been an issue too. Like no one's doing that great. Dylan Cease has been pretty good. But other than that, I mean, Lance Lynn is struggling. It's just, it's been kind of a top-to-bottom failure. It's been, it's like failing on all cylinders right now.

It's just not great. And I don't know, if the White white socks fall out of it this year gosh i mean their whole rebuild and and window and contention it just kind of landed with a thud yeah a thud and it's you know there's no help coming right like their farm system is very thin and they do have a couple of interesting guys but like their their farm system is not good and in in the past that has been a reflection of the fact that like they had a bunch of really good prospects and then those guys made their way to the majors and they do have two guys who are on our top 100 coming into the season but i don't think that like colson montgomery and and Brian Ramos are like

saving the White Sox this year, you know? So it's, um, it's not a good, it's not a good system. And the, the big league club is floundering. So I don't know how they get better. Cause you can't trade your way out of it. And the appetite to spend is limited we saw some of it this offseason but i think we agreed at the time that it was in like kind of weird spots potentially and yeah it's not it doesn't feel great over there no yeah the the promise of that rebuild and just the number of exciting players that they had and still have and just how fun a group it seemed to be. And then La Russa came in and that it was bad because it was like you're sort of squandering or at least not maximizing your window with these guys. And they weren't decent his first year.

And then lots of stuff went wrong, not just La Russa last year. They weren't decent his first year, and then lots of stuff went wrong, not just La Russa last year. And now he's gone, and maybe it's too late, and maybe there just isn't enough depth there. And at some point, they'll get Tim Anderson back, and maybe they'll get Moncada back, and maybe he'll play better. And Liam Hendricks is healthy, which is the important thing with him, but he'll be back at some point. which is the important thing with him, but he'll be back at some point. Right. So they'll get closer to full strength, assuming, of course, that they don't lose a lot of guys in the interim, which is also a possibility.

But yeah, if it all goes awry this year, then I don't, like, are you in rebuild territory? Like, where do you even go? Do you blow it up and try to fix the farm system and give it another go a few years down the road? Or do you try to milk another year out of this group? Or gosh, I don't know. It's a bummer that it wound up this way, at least thus far. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's tricky because it does feel like there are obviously aspects of the organization that have worked well. They have been able to identify talent that has helped them for stretches, although it hasn't stayed healthy at the same time. But I think that when you think about clubs that are behind in terms of the sort of commitment to the baseball operations group, the success of player dev, like the White Sox are on that list. So like now you're in a pickle because you can't player dev your way out of it. And we all know the organizational appetite

for spending your way out. So what does that leave you with? Like you're going to have potentially high draft picks, but have you done a really good job in that regard lately? Yeah, it's not great. When I had to do my preseason predictions for the ringer, we have to pick a surprise team and I picked the White Sox as a surprise team.

I didn't pick them as a playoff team. I picked them as a surprise team, I guess because I thought if they were good, it would be a surprise, which I guess you could say about a lot of teams. But also, I thought there was a little bit of a chance that they had a chance to surprise, right? Because there's a lot of talent there. And I thought, hey, if they can just stay healthy, maybe things will go better than they did last year.

But not so far. Anyway, it's, again, still April. So there is time. They're seven games back of the Twins. Each of these divisions, we're talking about the centrals here. So there's not a true powerhouse. And these are winnable divisions and you can get hot and in a matter of weeks, make up a lot of ground. White Sox have been outscored by 55 runs and have deserved their record, according to base runs. The Cardinals have been outscored by only three runs and are three games below where they, quote unquote, should be, which is another reason to be more optimistic about the Cardinals than the White Sox. But the early returns concerning. Yeah, it's it's not the best. All right.

All right. So let's end with a past blast, which comes from 1999 and also from David Lewis, an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. And here's what he has for us. 1999, Padres bring Brooks to spring training. This is not the current Padres who have unlimited roster spots and sign an unlimited number of middle infielders. Jose Iglesias signed by the Padres now. I mean, I know probably just for minor league depth, but how many shortstops? Do you have to have all of them? Really? Like, must you corner the market on all of the shortstops? You need, like, redundancies in case the first five shortstops get hurt. Anyway, in 1999, the San Diego Padres spring training roster included an unusual non-roster invitee, 37-year-old country music star Garth Brooks

joined the then-defending National League champions. Yeah, we're now into the past-blast where I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that. I remember that. Oh no. I was alive and conscious and a baseball fan at that time. So Garth Brooks joined the then-defending National League champions for the spring in part as a fundraising effort. For his place on the roster, Brooks donated $200,000 to Major League Baseball's Touch-Em-All Foundation, a children's charity he helped start.

Unlike some other celebrity sightings at spring training, such as the in-game experiences of Will Ferrell and Billy Crystal, Brooks stayed the whole spring with the team and appeared in a number of games, including a start on March 17th. As reported in the Tucson Citizen, Padres manager Bruce Bochy said of Brooks, he's been working his tail off, and I told him a couple of weeks ago he'd get a start here. He's been making a lot of improvements, and I'm looking forward to watching him play. Ahead of his first appearance in the starting lineup, Brooks said, It's funny how the responsibility pops up when you get called on to start. I just want to hit the ball back hard instead of just getting the bat on it.

He was even older than Drew Maggi when Drew Maggi got his first start. While Brooks went 0-4 for the day to begin the spring 0-17, he would not be held hitless overall. His determination to hit the ball hard paid off on March 21st when he notched a single off of White Sox pitcher Mike Sirotka. Overall, Brooks ended the spring 1-22, good for a 0-4-5 batting average. Brooks returned to the field for various fundraising appearances throughout the years. In 2000, he played for the Mets, where he went 0 for 17, but collected four walks. In 2004, he suited up for the Royals and got his second hit, an infield single on March 10th. In 2019, Brooks made one last appearance, to date, joining the Pittsburgh Pirates to celebrate 20 years of his charity,

although he did not intend to see any game time. Must be fun to be a celebrity sometimes. It's just like, I'm a country music star. I've got disposable income. I can set up a charity to help kids. And also, I can play in spring training Major League Baseball games. Because that'd be fun. And I know how to play. And I like baseball.

And wouldn't that be a lark? But what they should have done, Ben, what they should have done ben what they should have done is they should have reassigned him to minor league camp and then he could have sung that he has friends in low places well yeah or they they could have put him on stilts and made him the mascot but yeah i don't know that i would want to do this if i were a celebrity and had the option to do it because uh again like there would would be a fun, you know, living your dream fantasy camp aspect to it. But also, it's spring chaining and so who cares really? But also, I don't know that I would want to thrust myself into that situation and take a whole bunch of overs just like as sort of a stunt, even if it's for a good cause.

I don't know. As sort of a stunt, even if it's for a good cause. Yeah. I don't know. That's the age-old question about, like, would you actually want to play in a major league game? You know, just to say that you did. Because on the one hand, that'd be cool. And you'd be a big leaguer.

You'd get that pension, I guess. But also, you'd probably embarrass yourself. And maybe it's embarrassing to want to seize the spotlight knowing you're not qualified for it there are a whole lot of considerations so sam wrote about that one time yeah i think that like i could see wanting to do it for one game the persistence is the thing that is surprising to me because like if you're garth brooks you're like well am i garth brooks or what was his alter egos name oh yeah i was just trying chris chris gaines yeah is that right yes that's right um Ego's name? Oh, yeah. Dick Gaines? Chris Gaines? Yeah. Is that right?

Yes, that's right. You know, he would have been like, what was it? Is it me? Is it Chris Gaines? But like, you know, I get wanting to be philanthropic and, you know, I get that piece of it. But continuing to do it, it's like, you know, Garth, you can just donate the money. You don't have to keep down this piece of it. Like, it's fine.

Yeah. His Wikipedia page says very kindly, very charitably in keeping with Brooks's charity. Brooks's performance on the field did not warrant management placing him on the regular season roster. However, he was offered a non-roster spot, but declined it. Huh. Huh. Huh. So that's, there's an AP article headlined, Brooks pulls plug on baseball career. And this was apparently, yeah, seems the country crooner bowed out gracefully after a showy

six weeks at spring training in Peoria, turning down an offer by the Padres to travel with the team for the first month as a non-roster player. Wow. That's, boy, they really went all in on that. I mean, look, I like some country music. I imagine many major leaguers like their country music. So you'd think that in most cases they would resent the presence of a celebrity interloper like this but maybe if it's garth brooks and a lot of baseball players listen to his music and like his music at least at that

time then they might have welcomed it they might have thought it was kind of cool that it wouldn't mess up the clubhouse vibes to have but kevin towers said the uh the late GM, then GM of the Padres, the closer it got to the season starting, I think this is the type of guy Garth is. He saw this as maybe potentially costing a young prospect or player a spot on a roster and didn't want that to happen. Then he and then third base coach Tim Flannery played two mini concerts for Padres staffers. So he was playing and also giving concerts. So, gosh, it would have been a fun six weeks, I guess. A weird six weeks, but probably for the best that he decided not to stay with the team for the rest of the season.

Because at some point, probably the thrill would have worn off and you would have wondered, what's this guy doing here? Yeah. I think after a while, he'd be like, don't we have business to do? Yeah. Towers said he was an inspiration to our players. The passion he had for the game of baseball and the way he went about it, it's a good reminder for all of us. And also,

apparently, he signed autographs for fans for three hours every night. So that's a good little draw. They all said they missed the cowboy, just having him around, you know? There was something special about him being around everybody. Huh. What a weird story.

What a weird story. Reminds me of an email we got years ago, 2019, that I've had starred and sitting in the inbox ever since. Not in the inbox. I like to keep my inbox clean. But, you know, starred from Daniel, who wrote in. This was when Tim Tebow was playing. And Daniel said, with all the talk of trying to reach a mass audience and Tim Tebow, I had an idea. What if every team had a 26 roster spot? This was before there was a 26 roster spot

at every team. So let's say a 27th roster spot that could not be used by an MLB player, but instead was utilized by a celebrity. So you must play the celebrity slot at least once a week. Let's say Justin Timberlake has one of these slots for the Dodgers. How would you use the celebrity slot to hurt your team the least? Pinch run, garbage time pitcher? Also, what celebrity would garner the most attention? I guess that answer has probably changed since 2019.

would garner the most attention? I guess that answer has probably changed since 2019. I mean, probably the celebrities who would garner the most attention probably would not be the most likely to want to do this or to be good at it, I would think, probably. When you have like the celebrity softball game, some of them are real big celebrities. Some of them, you know, C-list, D-list, let's say. You got to find the ones who are big baseball fans and have some idea how to play baseball or softball. So that's a constraint for sure. But the idea of the celebrity roster spot, we started by talking about the Drew Maggi honorary roster spot. And now we're finishing with the Garth Brooks honorary celebrity roster spot. In this case, though, you'd actually have to use them.

I mean, look, we have so many position player pitchers now. Right, right. You could just have the celebrity pitching inning here or there and no one would really notice the difference. Yeah, potentially. But yeah, I think running late might be the least impactful, you know? Mm-hmm. Would be a good way to get some eyeballs on the game,

you know, at the cost of like competitive integrity and self-respect perhaps. But hey, let's get some influencers on the field and then we will cater to the TikTok crowd or whatever who follows them and get some young eyes on baseball. So that would be a stunt. But I guess, yeah, these days there's a lot of garbage time, a lot of mismatches,

a lot of low leverage innings, and a lot of non-real pitchers pitching. So might as well have them be famous. Why not? Yeah, why not? That will do it for today. I guess we never figured out the stilt question. Can we go with Rumpelstiltskin? Let's go with that. A couple of follow-ups. We talked about the most common birth months for major leaguers last time. August was at the top when it came to paternity leaves. Well, as some people have pointed out, that's also just the most common birth month in the US period, not just for major leaguers. That July through October period tends to be big for births, I guess, because the winter months tend to be big for staying inside. And when one stays inside, sometimes one thing leads to another.

Also, we have it on good authority that the Dodgers are not done reproducing. I believe Caleb Ferguson is expecting next month. I don't know if he's the only one, but they are going for the paternity leave placement record. I wish them well. Also talked last time about the origin of the use of velocity instead of speed in baseball writing and conversation. My hypothesis was that Branch Rickey either invented or popularized it. And I think the latter is more likely because I've heard from a couple of listeners who found some earlier citations than I did in my curse research

predating the mid-60s Rickey examples I cited. In fact, there were earlier Ricky references uncovered in the early 50s in scouting reports in his archive. But thanks to listener Dennis for flagging some earlier examples going back to the 1920s. And also listener Ben Zimmer of The Wall Street Journal, who writes about language for that paper and does this sort of research professionally. So I believe he will be writing about it sometime soon, so I won't spoil his finds. But I will let you know if and when that article is published. Still think Ricky probably played a role in popularizing the use of the term in baseball. Finally, someone on Twitter mentioned that I had mispronounced the name of Manny Trio on the last episode. I don't even remember how he

came up, but if I did that, I apologize. I do endeavor to get name pronunciations right, but sometimes I'll just be reading names and facts and figures while we're recording and my attention is divided. And sometimes I make mistakes and then people point them out and I correct them if I can. Oh, and after we recorded, the Cardinals beat the Giants, shut out the Giants, in fact, and the White Sox got trounced by the Rays. You can 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 almost ad free and get themselves access to some perks.

Kyle Hackle, Kenneth Silverhand, Andrew Simpson, and Kevin Warwick. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only. More and more members and listeners flocking to our banner in the Discord group. It's a great place and all of our Patreon people are welcome. Thank you. One option, if you are a member, is to message us through that site. If not, you can contact us via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild.

Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. Collecting baseball cards before I could read They say I waste my time Tracking all these stat lines But it's here I found my kind I'm all effectively wild Effectively wild