Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2004: House of Cards

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Ben Lindbergh talks to Will Leitch about the Cardinals’ horrendous start, their baffling decision to bar big free-agent addition Willson Contreras from catching, how Yadier Molina’s legacy looms over the franchise, how Oli Marmol and John Mozeliak have handled the team’s struggles, how the rest of the season might go, and more, along with the […]

Upstairs dance and dentry, they both mean a lot to me That's why I love baseball Special kids, it's the preview series, pitching is pure poetry That's why I love baseball Effectively wild Effectively wild Effectively wild Baseball Podcast. Hello and welcome to episode 2004 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented

by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, not joined today by my co-host Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Meg is under the weather, which as I learned from David Grand's new book, The Wager, is an expression that comes from the practice of putting ailing sailors below decks to shield them from the weather. Meg is neither a sailor nor below decks, but she is on the IL with flu-like symptoms. We hope to have her back soon. And so today I will get by with a little help from some other friends. First up, I'll be talking to Will Leach about the Cardinals, owners of the worst record in the National League, who were the talk of baseball this past weekend because of their decision to bar Wilson Contreras from catching. We will get into all of that, as well as Will's new novel, The Time Has Come, which has an effectively wild connection. Then I will talk to David Rosofsky, who is known not only for wearing a SpongeBob costume to Cleveland Guardians games, but for plotting the dimensions of every high school

baseball field in the country. Some of you may remember several years ago, we were briefly obsessed with weird amateur baseball fields, oddly shaped ones with unusual impediments. Well, David has been tracking all of them and sharing some of the weirdest ones online. So he will share those with us today. And finally, we'll have a stat blast or actually several stat blasts delivered in person by frequent stat blast consultant Ryan Nelson. So let's get to it. And you may want to dial down your podcast playback speed just a tad for our first guest. I am joined now by prolific podcaster, columnist and novelist Will Leach, who does indeed have a new book to promote,

which we will get to. But before that, we've got to talk about The Cardinals. I'm sorry to say, Will, that is a big part of why you're here. And it's been a big part of why you've been here previous times, although almost always, probably always under better circumstances for The Cardinals. I think this is your 12th time on Effectively Wild, and it's been a little while, and I went back and looked at the last time you were on, and let me just read the episode description to you just to remind you of happier days.

This was episode 1753. This was September 2021, which you may remember was also a notable time for the Cardinals. Then they bring on Will Leach to discuss the St. Louis Cardinals. Will shares what it has been like to root for the team during its win streak, when he realized they were playoff bound, what has gone into this incredible run, and which Cardinals are candidates for some postseason devil magic. Plus, Will makes the case for this year's version of the team actually being fun, before predicting just how deep into October the Cardinals might play. So that was the best of times, and this is the worst of times. But thanks for coming back to

talk about the Cardinals anyway. Of course. For the record, I'm going to make that same case now. Why wouldn't I make that case now? Yeah, it is definitely one of the wildest things. So listen, listen, obviously no one does or should have any sympathy for Cardinals fans in this situation or the front office for that. But it is good to know, and we will get into the details of this, it is good to know that as much as I and Cardinals fans have freaked out about everything that's happening, the front office is actually freaking out worse. The front office is actually freaking out worse. Yeah. It actually is. Like, they're a little bit like that spoiled kid who finally something, like they don't get that extra piece of candy and they totally lose their minds.

Yeah. That is actually what's happening with the Cardinals right now. Yeah. And you and Bernie Miklas co-host a podcast about the Cardinals called Seeing Red, which is usually just a little play on words, just a pun. It doesn't actually describe your mood as it pertains to the Cardinals, but now it might. I'd like to ask just how jarring it is for the Cardinals of all teams to be running off the rails in this specific way,

where not only are they losing a whole lot more than any Cardinals team has at the beginning of a season for decades, centuries, but also seemingly dysfunctional in a way that the Cardinals usually aren't. Again, not engendering a ton of sympathy here for people who root for bad teams often. I can't describe you as a long-suffering Cardinals fan. Maybe I can call you a briefly but acutely suffering Cardinals fan.

You've been suffering for about a month now, and it's been really rough. So hard. Cardinals fan. You've been suffering for about a month now, and it's been really rough. And so coming on the heels of the Cardinals always being in contention, always seeming to run a pretty tight ship and have a decent idea of what they're doing. How much more jarring is it for this team to be so bad and also just so dramatic in an unusual way for this franchise. Yeah. And I think those are two separate things. I think one kind of followed the other.

Like there have been issues. The Cardinals, because they're, you know, listen, they don't have, like there are excellent reporters covering the Cardinals. Katie Wu does a great job. Derek Gould does a good job. Jeff Jones, a lot of people cover the team well. But it's not the New York market. There still is not, three years later, really a clear understanding of exactly why Mike Schultz was fired.

Like at a certain level, some people might have liked it and some people might not have, but we actually don't really still know. The Cardinals are a very closed-off kind of organization. And they're also, frankly, the company in a company town. It's worth remembering that, like St. Louis, I actually love the city of St. Louis. I think it gets kind of a bad rap. But if you, like, St. Louis, I actually love the city of St. Louis. I think it gets kind of a bad rap.

But if you go to downtown St. Louis, it's the Cardinals and the Arch and there's an XFL team and, like, a couple motocross events at the old place where the Rams used to play. Like, there's not a lot going on. The Cardinals are really this kind of overpowering, powerful thing in town in a way

that has started to lean into being more of the unquestioned empire that starts to look, when you really kind of look under the hood a little bit, things seem to be a lot worse off than you might've thought. And I think you can start with the way the season has started. And on one hand, listen, the starting pitching was an issue. Everyone was concerned about the starting pitching heading in. The Cardinals did not go out and get anyone. You could see the arguments for not paying a ton of money for some of the free agent names that were on there, but certainly that was going to be an issue.

The idea was they had enough offense and the defense was good enough that they'd be able to offset that. They got off to the slow start, partly because of the bad pitching, but it's also worth noting that the Cardinals were bad. They were not 10 and 24 bad. They were losing in a kind of absurd ways, games that clearly everyone would have expected them to win. And certainly watching the Cardinals for 20 plus years, you would have expected them to win. And they kept finding these weird ways to lose.

They lost on a drop third strike the other day. They lost on bad umpire calls. They've lost on multiple errors. They've just lost in all of these weird kind of ways in a way that started to make you feel... I mean, my father, when we were watching the 2011 World Series, he said, you know, this is so, so wonderful. Whatever we have to pay for this someday

is going to be awful. So just be ready when that happens. And fortunately, it's been a while since then, but certainly it's really just been a total disaster. But at a certain level, he's still... The team is really talented. Nolan Arenado is not going to hit like this all year. A lot of things, their Pythags have not been as bad as their record has been.

They lost eight in a row and dropped one game in the NL Central standings. So at a certain level, it didn't really feel like it had gone off the rails. What really changed it was the Contreras situation situation and specifically the way that they responded to it now right listen let's let's go with what they're claiming and this could be what their mindset is actually scarier if it actually is what their mindset is but the idea is it certainly appears to be that pitchers have complained about contrarious is pitch calling uh not this framing. His framing's actually better. His framing's better than it's been in the past, and his bat's been fine. And certainly watching him, he's not yachty,

but neither is Andrew Kisner, it should be pointed out. And at a certain level, no one really expected him to be yachty. There was just a base level of it. What appears to have happened after he lost six or seven or 46, who can remember, Jack Flaherty had a miserable start. They got off to a lead, and he got absolutely destroyed in a start.

He has not started this. And after the game, he said something like, listen, you know, I mean, you do what you can with the pitch calling, right? And it was clearly kind of this quiet, you know, subtle little jab that certainly seemed to be against Contreras. It kind of cascaded after that. And I think that what this really, the person I'm most worried about here a little bit is honestly, John Moseley. Let's think about how this story track.

We all wake up Saturday morning, Cardinals in the midst of a seven game losing streak. Awesome. To the 22. Everything's going great. Everyone's losing their minds. And so the word kind of comes out that like, turns out Contreras is going to be DH-ing an outfield.

Of course, the Cardinals just sent out Jordan Walker to try to clear up their outfield situation. Tyler O'Neill's on the DL after the hustle thing with Ali Marmol, which seems like it happened 50 years ago at this point. So they finally got that cleared out a little bit. Nolan Gorman's getting his at-bats at DH. Everything seems like you can, Newt Barr's back and looking good again

and being happy. And I mean, they've got, Cardinals have Lawrence Newt Barr in the dugout and everyone's so unhappy. Like, what is going on? And so at a certain level, things start to get cleared up and then we throw this wrench into it.

And more to the point, Contreras didn't seem to know. He was interviewed by Katie Wu and he said, yeah, this was certainly a surprise. I didn't really see this coming. There had been reports that he'd taken some fly balls, but there certainly – there was no – he certainly seemed very shocked that it was coming. And then Mo started talking. I think that's really kind of the issue.

And, you know, if you've followed the Cardinals for a long time, John Mo Zalak does not talk the way that, you know, I was watching a Cubs game the other day and Jed Hoyer was on the podcast and he was being kind of funny and relaxed and it was kind of fun to listen to him. And he was talking about the new first baseman they brought up and everyone's all excited about it. But Moe is more of a, I have come down from the mountaintop and I will release to you some scrolls that I have to let you know, and then I will come back up. And that's generally the way he kind of does these things. And it's always kind of done with this, with this sort of a regal is the wrong word.

It's more like someone who's not a Royal, but has convinced themselves that they are even perhaps to like a cosplay sort of attitude. So, so he really like, he just kind of has this, has this kind of attitude of i i know what i'm doing and you will all listen and you will all respond to me and so and it

generally works because the team's been winning for 20 years so it's like okay well i guess i guess i guess it's fine but it appears i had a friend of mine say is he going through a divorce or something because because definitely there's there's a guy in midlife crisis mode. What he does is he says, you know, basically Contreras, we're not blaming Contreras. We're just saying that there are expectations that for preparation that we expected to be there and don't seem to be there. So we're going to take a step back. Will this change down the line? You know what? I hope so.

It's just like, so meanwhile, so then at this point, shortly after that, Contreras gives an interview and he said, and not only does he say like, I'll support the team. Remember Contreras skipped the world baseball classic. He skipped the world baseball classic because he specifically wanted to work with the pitchers, you know, pitchers, Adam Wainwright and Miles Michaelis, who were at the world baseball classic. Right. and he was so gung-ho about joining this organization. He seemed so happy to be a Cardinal. It was just a marriage made in heaven, and then it's just a month in.

And also specifically following Yachty. He clearly loved Yachty and respected Yachty. So he follows that. And so then he calls out the, yeah, actually, I know it's really fun to talk about Woody Allen these days, but the Annie Hall moment where, like, I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here, where he brings out the, yeah, actually the, the, the, I know it's really fun to talk about Woody Allen these days, but the Andy Hall moment where like, I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here, where he brings out,

he's like, I just FaceTimed with Yadier Milena today. And he said, yep, these pitchers need to execute. So things are going great. Okay. Things are,

everyone's communicating and everything's going wonderful. So then there's this massive, massive backlash. Cause again, the idea that never minding the ridiculousness of thinking that Andrew Kisner, who by the way is not a good defensive catcher, let alone not a good hitter, a miserable hitter, the idea that

he is somehow the guy that's going to come in and fix this, and how much of a problem it causes Contreras to play the outfield in DH. Like, Contreras, we're one of a five-year contract. And so, like, even if you're like, you know what, we fought, Miles Michaelis and Jack Flaherty are,

and Steven Matz are upset. We must make them happy. They're all gone before Contreras. Like, I don't know what you're doing in 2027, but Wilson Contreras is getting paid for the Cardinals in 2027. An absolutely kind of crazy thing to do in addition to everything else.

There's this incredible backlash to it, a backlash that I have to say, I have don't remember seeing involving the Cardinals since like after Whitey Herzog left and Joe Torre was there, to be honest. And, and if, I mean,

you know, if you've seen the highlights, they've gotten booed in a way that I talked to Bernie Miklas about this on seeing right this morning, he's been covering the Cardinals for 40 years. I asked him if he ever remembered hearing boos like that. And he said, occasionally there's been some for like an individual. Gary Templeton had a moment where he flipped off the fans one time,

but he's just never seen boos in the team like that. And clearly the team freaked out. The team really freaked out. So then Mo comes back the next day and says, okay, okay, we're not doing the outfield thing. He'll be a DH. We're not going to do the outfield. We're not crazy. And then maybe at some point, if he gets the chance,

maybe we'll get back to the whole catching thing we signed him to do just like four months ago. The scariest part to me, and this is where I felt like, oh man, he's going to tear the whole thing down. Because at a certain level, the Cardinals are due for a bad year. They've had a good year for a long time. I don't think this season is doomed, but at a certain level, okay, like it's hard to be too upset about

things didn't work out this year. They're already far behind. Poor Cardinals fans. They had a year where they finally didn't finish over 500. But what Mo did, Ken Rosenthal had a piece in the Athletics After, Katie Wu had kind of done all, and Derek Golden had the interview with Ken Rosenthal. And here's the exact quote. The exact quote is, Rosenthal points out the Cardinals were afraid to trade for Sean Murphy last season. They wanted to, but were unwilling to part with Oakland's ask. Lars Neupahr,

who, by the way, the Cardinals have Lars Neupahr. Who would not want Lars Neupahr on their team? Lars Neupahr, Brendan Donovan, and a young power pitcher. Here is Mosella's quote. Quote, hindsight is 20-20. The types of players we thought we'd have to give up to get Murphy, we just weren't willing to do. You might say, would we be willing to do it now? I don't think that's a truly fair question.

So if you were wondering, okay, well, now they've poisoned the well for Wilson Gutierrez for the next few years. Just so you know, now they've done it to Neubauer and Donovan as well. And so, like, I don't know what's going on. Like I have to say, my theory, it's all Mo. Like, I'm sorry, like Mo has been an incredible steward of this organization for a very long time, but I think we have learned something about him and this organization.

When things don't get off to a good start, everybody loses their freaking minds. Apparently, yeah. And I think that that's really the core of this. The reason this is happening, I still feel like they didn't address the pitching. They haven't addressed the pitching. They still haven't addressed it past next year. These are all major issues.

But rather than acknowledge what seems to me the obvious thing, which is that Slarity has regressed. Matt's kid doesn't have a third strikeout pitch. And Michaelis has really not been right, really, from the start of the year, whether he's throwing to Kisner or Contreras, I feel obliged to add, rather than acknowledge that and say they could have done that, it's become the worst possible reaction to it, which is to nail the people that are going to be here for a long time. Well, I knew you would have some thoughts on this. I'm not disappointed. Did you have something to ask in there? Did you have something you wanted to say? Because too bad. Yeah, it's almost like when a prospect, a highly touted prospect who excels at every level actually struggles for the first time and then just can't handle the failure. And it's like, well, they have to go through that

for the first time at some point, but it's catastrophic. It's devastating to someone who's excelled at every level. It's kind of like that with the Cardinals. So you wouldn't know how they would respond to a slow start because so rarely do they have a slow start. Certainly not like this. And Moselec was extended a couple months ago, right? And he goes back decades and he's part of this front office continuity that goes back even before him.

I mean, it's been such a stable, steady ship there. And that's why it's even more shocking. I was doing a double take over the weekend because, as you said, it was a lousy start, but there were reasons to be optimistic and to think, oh, they'll regress in a good way and they're the Cardinals and they'll be all right. And in some ways, their problem is that they have too many good players for the number of positions that they have. Right. And then when I saw the Contreras news, I just was like, what is happening here? I subscribed to an athletic newsletter that just emails me the top stories from the athletic. And the one on Monday morning, the top two stories were about the Cardinals.

And they were like on back-to-back days. It was like, Wilson Contreras is playing the outfield now. Wait, no, he's not playing the outfield. That's kind of what it's been like to follow this team. And it's so strange because, again, Wilson Contreras is a known commodity, right? That's the thing I keep coming back to. He's a veteran catcher. He's very established.

He's been in the Cardinals division for his whole career. So they've seen him up close and personal that whole time. They certainly just did a whole evaluation on him. They must know he's not the next coming of Yadier Molina. He's better than Yadier in some ways, and perhaps he's not as good as Yadier in some ways. But you'd think that they would have been prepared for a different kind of catcher. And if you look at the various defensive metrics at baseball savant or baseball prospectus, all the things that we can quantify, whether it's framing or blocking or throwing, he seems to have been about average or even a little bit better than average. And so we can't as easily put a number on working with pitchers and inspiring confidence

and game calling and all of that. But it would have to be horrendous to justify this kind of move with your big marquee offseason signing who's there for the next several years and who, by DHing or playing outfield or whatever it is, just makes your positional logjam so much worse because his bat as a catcher is a great asset. But if you start playing him in the outfield, then that makes problems even worse. You just sent down Jordan Walker because you had too many outfielders. And even if he's DHing, then he's potentially taking at bats from other players who now will not get that playing time. And so

you're robbing your offense to some extent. And also by playing another catcher who's not going to hit. I know Andrew Kisner had a couple hits on Sunday. So it turns out, yeah, if Kisner gets a couple hits and Paul Goldschmidt hits three home runs, then the Cardinals should be fine and they should be. It's a path to victory. It's a path to victory. But yeah, how does your evaluation of this catcher, like what did you think you were getting? And again, as you just hit on, no one thought the Cardinals pitching was good. And they did so little to address the Cardinals pitching that coming into the season, and also that they might be a pretty fun team too, you still thought, oh, that pitching staff. So the fact that the pitching has been bad, how can you immediately look at Wilson Contreras and say, we have to do something really drastic here as opposed to maybe we just have pitching problems. It's also with remembering the messaging too, was not like when Olimar Mol met with Contreras in the offseason, they had this very infamous, at the time famous, now it feels notorious, meeting where they sat down because they were talking about trading for Sean Murphy.

I heard they were going to trade Lars Nussbar. Hindsight's 20-20, you know? But when they sat down and had this meeting, Marmol came out and said, I went into that meeting not sure what we were going to do with the catching position. I left thinking we have our guy. Right. And I believed it. And listen, Contreras said all the right things. He skipped the WBC

throughout spring training. It was clear he was one of the first guys there working with all the pitchers, doing everything you would possibly hope to. Being explicit about two clear things. I want to take over for Yadier Molina and accept that challenge in two. I know I will never be Yadier Molina and accept that challenge. And two, I know I will never be Yadier Molina. I hope everybody understands that. And I think everybody

did. I think everybody did. And just doing, listen, putting aside, he's not the catcher that Yadier was or so on, which is again, he would be the first to admit as well. Imagine you talked about how bad he would have to be to justify starting Andrew Kisner every day as your, as your ninth and your catcher who I, sorry, I hate to keep saying this because Andrew Kisner seems like a very nice man. He's not even a good defensive catcher like that.

Like it would be different if you, you know, if you had this whiz back there, it's like, yeah, you can't hit, but man, everything just runs smoothly.

you know, the, the old Tony La Russa, you can, you can bat one 65 and, and you'll, 165 and you'll start every day for me, like in the early days of Yachty's career before he actually learned to hit a little bit. That's not what Kisner is. And so, you know, when you really take a step back from it,

listen, one of the things that has happened a lot during the Cardinals' slow start, there were a lot of issues with two strikes, being unable, making bad pitches on two strikes. There were a lot of the new pitching coach, Blake, he is a big proponent of more sliders. They're trying to get more sliders. That's a big thing he's talked about from the very beginning. Well, as it turns out, they've given up a lot of, Jordan Hicks gave up

a famous, terrible home run on a slider. Ryan Helsley, who throws 119 miles an hour, gave up a home run on a slider. Ryan Helsley, who throws 119 miles an hour, gave up a home run on a slider. There were a lot of two-strike pitches they weren't getting that appears to have become part of

the blame on Contreras, which is weird because, you know, pitch calm actually does work both ways. And there have actually been multiple moments where we have literally seen a pitcher shake off Contreras and then give up a homer on the next pitch. Right.

Which is also a little frustrating to watch. So, listen, surely, the Cardinals are a closed-off organization. There are tons of things that we don't know that are going on with it. I have no doubt about it. But recent facts and evidence certainly would make the argument that those things that I don't know going on are, in fact, worse than I thought they were than better. So yeah, it's really worse. I don't know. I mean, I don't know how you pull back from, I mean, Contreras, like eventually, I'll put it this way, if Contreras never comes back to catching, I will be shocked. Like that really will feel like an

even bigger disaster across it. But like, let's also not forget this, by the way, this happened the day before Contreras goes back to Wrigley field. And I don't know if you saw the cover of the Chicago sun times today, but it's literally a picture of, of, of, of Wilson Contreras saying not a catcher anymore or something on the front

of the thing, like as if that wasn't bad enough for him to come back. So, and I really feel like Contreras, listen, there are, there are Cubs fans that had issues with Contreras. Certainly there were issues in the front office there on his defense,

but a month in he was, he's the biggest outside free agent they've ever signed. So he's taking over for a legend. They started 10 and 24 with him as the catcher and no Cardinal fan. I know it's blaming him. That seems like a bad sign for the front office. And I don't know if they thought that maybe there'd just be so much built up goodwill.

I'm reminded a little bit after they lost the NLCS to the Nationals a few years ago. And if you remember that series, they had like five hits. Like it was just terrible. They got shut out the last three games. It's an absolutely miserable series. And there was a press conference at the end of the season,

and Moselec was there, and Schultz was there. And the first question, and Mo kind of started his press conference. And the vibe was very well. I know we just lost 4-0, but you're welcome, Cardinals fans. And it definitely had that kind of vibe, and I think

that really, I think it is out of touch. Anytime they ever get some sort of criticism, there's always a, we take the long view. We are the Cardinals. We take the long, and listen, there's a lot of value in that. I do think that's one of the reasons that they've been successful, but I also think it's put them in a position when there is something immediate to react to or something immediate not to react to when they feel like they have to do something, they lose it. And I think that's really what's happened.

And they've really been tiptoeing around criticizing Contreras, even as they throw him under the bus, basically by moving him off of the position. But they've been very careful. Marmel said, one thing I want to make super clear is that we are not losing ballgames because of Wilson Contreras. Well, if you didn't think you were losing games, because why in the world would you make this move, right? So that's very transparent. That's not really saving any face for him because we know you think that or else you would not be making this move to placate your pitchers unless you think the pitchers are going to revolt unless

you do it, even though they're the ones at fault, but they're just more pitchers than there are Wilson Contreras. And so you're just appeasing. They've got quorum. Yeah, right. They've got under the bus quorum right now. Right. So I did want to ask about Marmel specifically because he's been extremely aggro, it seems like, all season long. Now, I'm not listening to his press conferences day in and day out. I'm not a Cardinals fan. And for the most part, I'm reading about these things in print and not even seeing the intonation and hearing how he said it. But every time he comes to my attention, it seems like he's popping off at someone or something, right? And I don't know how good a job you think he did last year. The Cardinals had their typical

successful season under him, right? But we talked earlier this year, Meg and I discussed the Tyler O'Neill blow up, right, and how Marmol seemed to oddly throw him under the bus in a very public way because of some perceived non-hustle, which regardless of whether he was hustling or not, seemed like an odd way to go about it. And in recent days, he keeps doing the same thing, right? So when it comes to Contreras, I know he was asked what Contreras needed to do to be used in the outfield potentially. And he said, I think the question should be, what does Contreras need to do to get behind the plate, not playing the outfield, which seemed just sort of aggressive. And then also when the fans were booing the Cardinals and he was asked about fans being frustrated and he took it in this way that I don't think the reporters were saying that the fans were more frustrated than the Cardinals themselves were, but he took it that

way. And he said, you think they're more frustrated than us? I can tell you right now, they're not. That clubhouse is extremely frustrated. And then he went on about to sit here and think that other people are more frustrated than the people in this clubhouse is insane, absolutely insane. I don't know whether anyone was actually implying that that was the case, but arguing that the team cares more than the fans, that always seems to be sort of a losing argument from a PR perspective. So is this just another example of someone kind of being on tilt because things are not going very well for this team? Or was he like this in a lower key way last year what is going on here yeah there's a good piece by a up-and-coming baseball writer and i'm joe something uh that wrote a really good essay on this he has a sub stack you can subscribe to it i think uh joe was asking about a really smart piece about this about but remember the day that ollie marmal had that kind of pop off about the fans uh the cardinals had lost six in a row and had 41,000 people there for a Thursday afternoon game.

So at a certain level, it's like, talk about being born on third base and thinking that you hit a triple. And one of the things with Marmole that I think is important to remember, because obviously he's the youngest, he's the youngest manager in baseball, and a lot of people didn't know who he was.

But when Mike Schilt was fired, even in the press release, in the statement he gave out, he was like, yeah, obviously they're going to give the job to Ali. He's been with the Cardinals organization since 2010. Actually, he played for the Palm Beach Cardinals in the mid-aughts. So he's been around the Cardinals forever. He is a hand-picked, mosaic protege. And this was always the issue. One of the things when Tony LaRusse was manager of the Cardinals, the idea was always a – back even when Lunau was there, the whole idea was there was a disconnect between the front office and the manager. We've seen this throughout baseball and lots of examples. The idea that

Mike Matheny would be that person turned out to not turn out to be the case, that he would be the combination of those. So then Schilt came in and was seen more as like a company guy, but Marmol seems to be a little bit more than that. To me, I think the key to thinking about Marmol's kind of aggro thing, which is definitely there, is we've all seen his C.B. Bucknor thing, right? Like he had this ongoing battle with C.B. Bucknor where they had a big fight last year and then Marmol tried to shake his hand before a game and Bucknor wouldn't do it. I am not going to come out on the side of CB Bucknor is awesome, just to be as clear as possible on this. But certainly, if you saw, I think there was a John Boy thing about their actual fight. Their fight last year, they were having a normal manager umpire fight until Bucknor said, you just got here.

You didn't even play in the league. And Marmol lost it and lost it. And since then, they just got here. You didn't even play in the league. And Marmol lost it. And lost it. And that and since then, they've been... And I think that speaks to the general thing about Marmol. I think Schilt had a little bit of this, too, because he also had come up with this system and one of Mo's hand-picked guys.

Remember, this is a closed-off system. This is a biodome organization, where everything is all kind of inside. It's almost this weird it's the murtaws of of the low country without all the murder and uh and so on like everyone is they run the town you know so at a certain level when guys get like groomed to put to get up there marmal is there because he's he's he's been part of the organization for a long time he's there because they think he ideally he was hired because they thought he would be better with platoons. He would be better to have a more flexible roster. That's

not paid out at all, turned out at all. But generally speaking, the idea in 2022 was he would do no harm. He would do no harm. And listen, a lot of ways, as we all know, the job of a manager in many ways is to be a middle manager anymore. You're just communicating with the front office and the players. And so Mermel, because he was a company guy and because he had not played in the majors, kind of felt, like Schilt did, that he needed to kind of tough up a little bit and be like, I'm a tough guy and so on. And I think that kind of worked on a team that he didn't have to do that too much on a team with Molina and on a team with Pujols and on a team with Wainwright.

This year, we've seen what happens when you, like, remember the O'Neal thing. The thing about O'Neal when he was mad, he not only said he didn't hustle, he said, listen, we've got a competition going here. And what that meant was, I have too many outfielders. That's what that meant. And so O'Neal, in this competition that Marmol, ostensibly is the one that's supposed to be

deciding what's going on, decided that was a point against him. And he got all tough about it. That did not seem to work. It is worth noting that there was not a bunch of Cardinals that came out saying, O'Neal, yep, he needs to be hustling more. That's not a thing that happened. So yeah, I think there's a lot of red flags that popped up.

They were there last year. They didn't really become really clear until the postseason. Though again, the world, the road is littered with managers that everybody liked until the postseason happened. So I don't know if that's entirely fair, but clearly you're seeing, like the organization, a guy that's gripping the reins really, really tight in a way that it makes you realize, you know, he's in the office all day. He's in these meetings all day. It speaks, as the public representative of the organization, it speaks to the fact that everyone is freaking out. Right. And it seems like it's just the long shadow of Yachty that is cast over this organization. And people will always say, oh, tough act to follow. You know, thinking back to Tino Martinez

following Don Mattingly, it's always tough from a fan perspective for a player to follow a legend like that. But I don't know if I can remember an example of a team reacting in quite this way where they're just so obviously pining for this also does some things better than Yachty, right? I mean, Yachty's been a pretty bad hitter for a few years. He was almost 40, so it's understandable. But you're kind of getting some offense and potentially trading some defense. And that was kind of always expected. That was always part of the bargain. So I guess you could say that, if anything, this is enhancing Yachty's legacy and mystique and the idea that there was something about the numbers that couldn't be captured when it came to Yachty, right? I mean, the numbers are very strong. I think he has a solid case as a Hall of Famer, even without building in some extra intangibles. But this is perhaps strengthening the intangibles

argument to the degree that a star catcher comes in and he's basically moved off the position because he is not Yachty. You have to accept that that guy's gone and he's not coming back and maybe he was one of a kind. That's kind of what it is with Andrew Kisner. It's like, even if Kisner's not that great, it's like he has some of like Yachty's aura like seeped on him or something because he studied at the knee of Yachty or Molina. It's like he's the direct link. Like he absorbed the wisdom of Yachty, the intangibles. Right.

And so he's the guy we're going to go with because he is more directly connected to Yachty. So I don't know whether even Cardinals fans who love Yachty and think he could do wrong or like get over the guy. Like, come on, like, we got to move on. Like, it's sort of sad. That relationship is over. It came to a nice, heartwarming ending and we had a great long run. And now we have to move on to the next. It's like they're so fixated on the earlier era that they just can't accept this new era with another guy who brings his own strengths. And this has always been kind of an awkward thing for the, like, it's been a tension,

certainly always with the Cardinals. This is an organization that, again, you know, listen, everybody, I don't think anyone thought Pools was going to really be, obviously didn't think it was going to be what it was going to be, but I think a lot of people by in May were like, are they going to have to cut Pools by mid-year? There's always been a tension between the continuity that the Cardinals really value and transition. I feel kind of weird saying this, but Yadier Molina only played 78 games last year.

He only played 78 games. Do you remember the video where he went away for a week and they had a video of him getting ejected from his basketball team? Yadier, from all reports, Bernie Miklas, my colleague on Seeing Red, talks about this like Yachty from all reports, Bernie Miklas, my, again, my colleague on seeing red talks about this all the time, but all reports, Yachty was didn't, wasn't really sure he wanted to come back last year.

And they, the organization kind of persuaded him to come back, which also is speaks to this whole kind of like the, the Yachty as the Cardinals organizations would be, you know, like, like the security blanket in a lot of ways. So I think that's certainly true because he wasn't really, and for what it's worth, defensively, he was not great last year. Like, never mind the offense. Like, he looked like he was ready to be done.

And so, you know, the notion that, not only the notion that they knew what they were getting with Contreras, Yanni's been leaving for a while. So the idea that this would come as any sort of shock is remarkable. I was pretty stunned, frankly. They didn't upgrade the backup catcher position heading into this year. I don't see a lot of evidence that he should be in really any sort of position to be a backup catcher, let alone to be now the starting catcher and ninth hitter. So, yeah, there's a lot of problems.

There's a lot of problems. And I'm waiting, you know, I'm going to close on this. One of my favorite things that subplots with Yachty during his time with the Cardinals is whenever he was mad about something, usually at Mike Matheny, by the way. Another thing to keep in mind for the Cardinals, by the way, they have this long, they haven't had to worry about,

they're like the Packers and quarterback. They haven't had to worry about catcher forever because Matheny was an excellent catcher before he was a horrible manager. And Tom Pagnozzi and Tony Pena for a while, they've had like a lot – like Darryl Porter, one of my favorite players ever. Like they've been known for having great catchers. And so being in that position where they don't have it confuses and bewilders them a little bit. But one of the things that Yachty would always do whenever he was mad at someone, he would always go on Instagram. Yachty famously would have these little undercutting things about Instagram. So this is my prediction if this thing doesn't get settled.

Maybe it will stop because Mo will stop talking to the athletic. It's probably time to take a little bit of a break. But I would say if things keep heated, I think it would not be surprising to me to see Yachty actually step in. Yeah. Like actually step in and say something. It would not be a major shock to me, a little bit like Brokaw coming in

and being like, leave Brian Williams alone or something. There has a little bit of that because I think that particularly, I mean, what was the first thing Contreras did when all this was landing on him? Hey, guess who I just FaceTimed with yesterday and said the pitchers aren't executing pitches. The guy that

you all miss. So, yeah, that feels like the next logical step in this madhouse here. Yeah, we got a listener email from Ian, a Patreon supporter, who said, hear me out. What if Yachty was actually literally responsible for Cardinal's devil magic?

He actually is some sort of wizard slash mage slash necromancer and has been able to cast a magical aura around the team for his entire tenure that allowed them to frequently overperform their projections and base runs record.

But now they don't have him on the roster and therefore they no longer have access to his magical powers. And that's why they're bad now. A month into the season, the Cardinals realized that in order to maintain their devil magic, they had to roster and start Yadier Ketcher. And for the magic to continue, he needs to continue to be the de facto starting

Ketcher. At what point does his reduced performance based on the aging curve counteract the benefits of his magical abilities? How negative must his war be in order for the Cardinals to forsake his devil magic and, like Superman going to his fortress of solitude, renounce their supernatural powers. I mean, it almost feels like he's become such a talisman now. It's like, let's bring him back, you know? Like put Yachty on the active roster, even if he's not actually playing,

just list him on the roster and maybe his magical powers will rub off on the other Cardinals catchers. It's starting to feel that level of desperation or attachment to him. Listen, I've never met Tres Barrera. I mean, who starting to feel that level of desperation or attachment to him. Listen, I've never met Tres Barrera. I mean, who is to say that he is not? In fact, Yachty or Molina, the new catcher that they brought up, it could actually be him. I will say if that theory is true and it was Yachty's black magic and necromancer abilities, that is the first thing

that's made anything that John Moselec and the Cardinals have done in the last three days make sense. That's the idea. Like, maybe it's a way to try to get him to come back to bring the black magic, because it's madness. It's like, I love you. Cardinals fans love you. I think that one thing I thought was really interesting last year,

obviously everyone knows Pujols, they get excited about Pujols, but a lot of national media would go to cover the P the pools thing and realize that Yachty was still getting bigger ovations than pools was. Yachty is so beloved in St. Louis. It's also worth noting, like, hey, did no one go to San Francisco last year and be like, hey, Buster Posey retired, and you dropped 30 games in the standings. So, hey, who's to say it's not the fully catcher? Yeah. In retrospect, maybe it makes him look even more valuable, powerful that everything completely fell apart as soon as he left. But last question about the Cardinals. So what are you hoping for now for the rest of the season?

I mean, as bonkers as the Contreras decisions seem, they almost can't be worse than they've been, right? Just from simple regression, maybe it'll look like that was actually the right move because they play a little bit better after this decision than before. But they're down almost 50 percentage points in playoff odds, according to fan graphs, which is about twice as much as any other team. I mean, you think the White Sox are off to a lousy start. The Cardinals, of course, were the favorites in the division, and they're down now to long shots, basically. the division and they're down now to long shots, basically. I mean, you know, 13% chance to win the central and just like a 20% chance to make the playoffs. Like, is that how low your expectations have fallen? And if they don't come back and make the playoffs and end up having a typical Cardinals season somehow, what would you like to be resolved by the end of the season when it comes

to Contreras and Marmel and Muzalak and just the positional clutter, right? And figuring out who the outfielders are and who the pitchers are so that you can go into next season, at least with a solid sense of the roster. Yeah, the pitching is a separate question than figure out the roster crunch because, I mean, they just need pitchers. I mean, they need to figure out which outfielders go where and which DHs and how to figure out all the infield positions. They actually have a lot of talent there to figure out pitching. They have, I mean, they have Myles Michaelis and Steven Matz after this year, and that's it.

That's it. They're all like, Matthew Libertor has looked good. Gordon Graceffo has looked good. There's guys that you hope could maybe fill in. But there's that. I mean, Jordan Montgomery is going to leave as a free agent or they're going to have to pay full price for him. Libertores look good. Gordon Graceffo's look good. There's guys that you hope could maybe fill in. But there's that. I mean, Jordan Montgomery's going to leave as a free agent or they're going to have to pay full price for him. So, you know, I think that is something they have to figure out in the long term.

For this year, I'm sorry, but Wilson Contreras needs to get back catching as soon as possible. Like, I honestly, that to me is the quickest fix in that situation. And maybe Jack Flaherty and Miles Michaelis and Steven Matz either need to figure it out or understand that Steven Matz doesn't throw a harder than 80 miles an hour and can't finish out a two strike, but maybe that's the issue rather than Contreras. I don't see how you can make anything the Cardinals have done really in the

last kind of two, two hot stoves off seasons. Makes sense. If we'll Wilson Contreras is your DH. You can't, moving forward, that just causes so many more problems than just letting them figure it out at catcher. Like it's hard to see, like that's what's so frustrating about this move. There's no upside.

Like there's no upside to the move at all. Never mind that it doesn't make sense in the short term. It's an even worse move in the long term. There's no way. Like, again, if Kistler were some up-and-coming guy, if they believed in Ivan Herrera, who was their one-time prospect to catcher in AAA, that would be a different argument.

But they don't have anything coming at that position. They already have too many people for outfield and DH. Contreras has to be the catcher for this team. And it is the thing that's so alarming about this is not only that it seems to mess up the roster right now, it messes up anything they were trying to do at that position or really anywhere else with their offense over the next two or three years. I think it was understanding thatated that by 26, 27, Contreras was probably not going to be catching 120, 125 games.

But you certainly imagine him to do so for the first three years. That's the point of signing him in the first place. So I don't think this season is over. I don't think it's over. I still think there's enough. Aaron, we haven't even talked about how miserable Nolan Arenado starts. He's been one of the worst hitters in baseball, and it's strange to watch. So there are things that are going to get better.

I also don't think anyone's running away with this division. As I said, they are closer to first place than the Yankees are right now. So they went 1-7 over the last eight games and gained a game in the standings. Things are going okay in that regard. Like they've gotten some slack. I don't think the season is necessarily over, but they need to fix this. And the quickest way to do it is to get Contreras back at catcher. I'm sorry.

I really believe that. And I suspect that's not an entirely unshared thought. Yeah. The Pirates are not unbeatable, it turns out. Yeah, it turns out, yes. So, all right. Well, thoughts and prayers are with the Cardinals community at this time. We appreciate it.

We appreciate it. Thank you. Across the country. Thank you. We're all holding vigils for Cardinals fans at this difficult time. I'm sure is the podcast now selling a St. Louis Strong shirt? We are with you during this difficult time. Yes.

Even Cubs fans have come together, I'm sure, just to, you know, say we sympathize and we would never dance on the graves of our rivals here just because this is so tough. And as I was saying in a recent episode, you know, it is odd that you would think that this sort of thing would be taken in stride when a team is so successful year in and year out that you might kind of give them a mulligan on an off year, right? Just to be like, hey, we've had it good. We've led charmed lives as Cardinals fans. This team is always in contention. We're sort of spoiled by that. So the fact that Aaron Judge gets booed in the playoffs when he struggles a little after hitting 62 homers or the Cardinals get booed this vociferously, I understand why it is, but it is odd that it does not earn you

any leeway. There's no sort of sense of grace or proportion. Like, hey, we've had it so good. You know, how can we complain about one off year? We have it so good all the time that when we have it bad, it seems even more striking by contrast. And so it's a shock to the system. I would say that, but I would also say that, like, one bad season bad season is bad, but like people were angry about the Cardinals. The contrarious thing legitimately made them be like, oh my God, what is going on? Like, I think that's the telling, because that is moving forward a problem that we, I think even the most unreasonable Cardinals fan. And by that, I mean me, I am personally the most unreasonable Cardinals fan, uh, can understand that, uh, you know what, they were not going to make the playoffs every single year. This is frustrating. And particularly in Wainwright's last

year, you'd like to see something good happen. The problem with the Contreras thing is it poisoned the well for years moving forward. And I think that was what made people really, really freak out. Now, the good news for you is that you will be distracted this month from the Cardinals struggles because you have a happy occasion coming up. You have a book that is coming out next week, the 16th. That's just about a week away. It's your second, I guess we could call it adult novel. The Time Has Come. And your first was How Lucky, which came out in 2021 and which was wonderful. And I read it and I enjoyed it. And I've now got my grubby hands on The Time Has Come, which came just a couple days ago.

So I have not had a chance to dig in yet, but I am very eager to. So The Time Has Come for you to plug this book because, as people should know, preorders are all important for authors. When a book is coming out, it really helps signal interest to the publisher, to booksellers, et cetera, when there's a lot of interest in a book before the release. And you have time to place your pre-order now, and you will soon be embarking on a nationwide tour and a traveling roadshow to promote the book and talk to people about it. I know it's difficult to tease this one without giving things away because I've read your various attempts to summarize the plot without spoiling the plot. Hopefully you have that patter down now to the point that you can deliver a tease without divulging too much. So tell people what they can expect from The Time Has Come.

Well, the first thing to note to Effectively Wild listeners is that there are two names on the cover of this book. One is Will Leach, the author of the book. The other one is the person I'm talking to right now, Lindbergh. I was going to ask about that because the book flap summary says Lindbergh three times. Now, can I take any credit for this? Can I accurately take any credit? Because I can take credit for anything I want, I guess. But would it be truthful for me to claim that my surname inspired the name of the

pharmacy in this book? It would be accurate, actually. And so I will tell the, I will tell the, I will do, I will try your plot thing. I actually have to go, I'm promoting this on Morning Joe. The weekend comes out and I have basically 15 seconds to do so. So I'm going to take longer than that now. But basically the premise of the book is there's a woman named Tina Lamb. She's actually inspired by that kindergarten teacher that stormed to the Capitol, not for political reasons, but she legitimately thought it's like a Pizzagate thing. And so the book takes place in June 2021. She believes that something terrible is happening at this pharmacy called Lindbergh's. She believes something horrible is going on there.

And so the book starts with her saying, on June 22nd, I'm going to this place at 5 o'clock. I'm coming in, and I'm going to stop what's happening. And then we flashback to June 22nd, and we follow throughout the day six characters as we follow their regular lives. It all takes place in Athens, Georgia, which is also where How Lucky takes place and is also where I live. And just make sure I get the street right. And so we follow those six characters throughout their day as Tina pops up occasionally to tell you more about her life and kind of what's driven her to be to this place. And we follow them throughout their day. They do not know that they are showing up at this point,

that they're all going to be at the same place when Tina is showing up at the end of the book. So you get to care about these characters, hopefully, and follow their journeys and see how their lives are kind of woven together. And then they all appear together at Lindbergh's pharmacy, your pharmacy, at 522. And we find that's all that happens.

It's inspired by the book, by the movie Shortcuts, the Robert Altman movie Shortcuts. Shortcuts is not available for streaming anymore, so I often just say Magnolia, which is to say you follow a bunch of characters who are somewhat related and somewhat unrelated, but they all come to a collective moment.

In Shortcuts, there's an earthquake. In Magnolia, frogs fall from the sky. But certainly, you have a moment that hopefully speaks to what it's like. The original title of this book was Tumultuous Times. And I think hopefully speaks to what it's like to try to live through this unique moment in human history. Or at the very least, I will have the opportunity to expose what the Lindbergh family has been a part of for decades through this. And it is worth noting that, like, literally there were two reasons that it's called Lindbergh's.

One was I was actually just starting with the first chapter and I needed the name of this place. And I was actually listening to your show. I was actually listening to your show. And I did – I was going to call it Meg's. But I thought – and I wanted – because basically the guy that runs the store is like the Cheyenne of the Lindbergh family. But he didn't really want to run the pharmacy. And at one point, he went off to try to start his own thing. And it failed.

And right before it failed, he tried to change the name to Lindy's to try to make it like, to like connect to this thing that he didn't want to be a part of in this very sad kind of pathetic way. And then he just finally gave up and came back and took over for his father to run Lindbergh's. But he's very sad. And he's very kind of sad. So he is Theo Lindbergh. So it's not Ben Lindbergh. He is Theo Lindbergh. So basically, once I realized, oh, Lindbergh's is not a bad name, because now I can use that Lindy's thing I've been wanting to do. And also, the other reason I did it is because I am exposing. Tina Lamb's thing is a true story, and she is exposing the monstrousness that's gone on the Lindbergh family for generations. Well, I know from experience it can be difficult to name fictional characters and places, and you can obsess over that and take way too long to think of a name. And so sometimes it is the best thing to just say, what is within my field of view right now? Or what podcast am I listening to? I'll just take that. One thing I, one thing I will definitely say is if you, if you, if you read that, if you read the time has come right now, because listen, there is baseball in this book. I feel obliged to point that out. But also if you

read this book and you follow a lot of baseball, you'll be like, wow, there's a character named Goldschmidt. Oh wow. There's a, there's a character. There's a character. Like eventually you realize there's so many characters in the book and so many side characters. I'm like, eventually I just have to start naming them about baseball players. I'm out of names. So there are a lot of baseball players' names in this book just because I was watching a baseball game while I needed to toss a name in it. Yes. Well, I think you got the pitch down.

You'll have to trim it further for the 15-second version. I don't think Scarborough is going to give me the full thing, though. Yeah. But I can't wait to read it. Now I'm kind of apprehensive to find out what's going on in my pharmacy. I'm honored to have made this indirect contribution to literature, but also now nervous that you have tarnished my good name. But I'm going to guess that there's some misunderstanding here, that maybe Tina doesn't actually know what's going on inside Lindbergh's pharmacy. That's my hope, at least.

I hope it's a nice, wholesome place and a cornerstone of the community. I'll find out soon, along with everyone else who reads The Time Has Come. You can go preorder it now. Everywhere you can find books. And, of course, you can find Will so many other places. Ranting about the Cardinals is just a small, tiny percentage of his output, even if he's done it on multiple podcasts today alone. But you can subscribe to Will's Substack, as I do, and find all of his collected works there, as well as original pieces every Saturday. It's called the

Will Leach Newsletter. It's williamfleach.substack.com. And that one, he's been naming after baseball players for a while now. It's just the name of Cardinals players. It used to be Wilco songs and now he's on to Cardinals players. So you can find his podcasting about movies and the Cardinals and his writing about movies and politics and baseball at MLB.com and everything else is in one tidy package at the newsletter. But best of luck with the book. And where can people find out about where they can see you on this upcoming tour? Yes, I started in Athens where the book is set. But on Friday the 19th, I will be at P&T Knitwear in New York City. If you're in New York City coming out, I am doing the event with the great Adam Moss, the editor, the longtime editor in chief, the legendary editor in chief of New York state coming out. I am doing the event with the great Adam Moss, the editor, the longtime editor in chief,

the legendary letter and chief of New York magazine, who, who is going to host the event with me. You also be able to find me in St. Louis on the May 26th with Bernie Miklas and June 2nd with a former, my fellow former dead spin editor, AJ Delorio, who will be at the Chevaliers in Los Angeles.

So it should be an entertaining time. If you'd like, if you liked our early blogs and Hey, who will be at the Chevaliers in Los Angeles. So it should be an entertaining time. If you liked our early blogs, and hey, who didn't, right? We'll have a fun conversation as well during that time. By the Sam Miller definition of a baseball movie, which is anything that has baseball in it, this is a baseball book. And it's also an Effectively Wild book because my namesake pharmacy is in here. So do check it out. And I guess we've talked to you most recently

when the Cardinals could not lose a game and now when they cannot win a game. So we'll have to have you on next time when they're just doing okay, you know, just at an okay time for the Cardinals. It's not as newsy, but it doesn't always have to be extreme circumstances. Hopefully that will describe the rest of their season,

that they're doing okay. Anything that's not this is just not this. I don't know what's going to happen, but this has to stop happening. Thank you, Ben. All right, let's take a quick break and I'll be right back with David Russofsky to discuss his efforts to chart every high school field in the United States, especially the weird ones. If baseball were different, how different would it be? And if this thought haunts your dreams, well, stick around and see what Ben and Meg have to say. Philosophically and pedantically, it's Effectively Wild. Effectively Wild! All right, we are back and I am joined now by David Russofsky. Hello, David. Hi, how's it going?

It's going well. Now, it's not going so great for your guardians. And you're not here primarily to talk about the guardians. You're here to talk about weird high school baseball fields. But I got to ask, since you did achieve some measure of fame late last year for being

quote unquote Spongebob guy who was wearing a Spongebob costume to Guardians games, specifically inspired by and to support Oscar Gonzalez, who, of course, walked up to the Spongebob theme. I'm sorry to say that not only

are the Guardians off to a somewhat slow start, but Oscar Gonzalez himself off to an extremely slow start, so much so that he was recently optioned to AAA. So I've got to ask, I know this is a difficult time. Do you have any messages of support for the Guardians or for Oscar Gonzalez specifically? Have you not been attending often enough while wearing the Spongebob costume? Is that what is causing the slump here? So I went opening day for the Guardians in Cleveland

and it was kind of unfortunate. I showed up and the pitch clock, that went unnoticed. The one thing that really changed was the walk-up songs. You can barely like barely hear the theme song at that point anymore it like at that point it's just like are you ready kids and then it just goes out like there's no singing the song anymore it's pretty sad

so that's kind of unfortunate so do you think the pitch clock has sapped oscar gonzalez of his mojo because he can't hear the whole spongebob theme SpongeBob theme anymore. If you want to put a label on that, sure. Yeah. If we want to put that in that box, I'm fine by me. I do think he'll bring it around. I think everyone on the team is just really young. So I think it's just a growing process. Right.

Well, your support, I'm sure, is appreciated. You have not abandoned the team. We can't pin it on you, even for superstitious reasons. So Oscar's going to just have to figure it out himself somehow. And hopefully the SpongeBob theme will be back and he'll be back and then you'll be back at the ballpark. I assume you will not be wearing the SpongeBob costume in his absence? I don't think I will be. Okay. So what you are actually here to talk about is your project to chart high school baseball fields in every state of the country. And you started this just over a year ago. You've just completed the 10th state, Connecticut. So you got 40 more to go.

I don't know if that means that you're on pace to finish in four more years or whether you've picked up the pace. But this is starting to attract a lot of attention because you've identified some really quirky fields and you've done a great job of documenting them. So tell me how this project came about. So I played baseball in high school. The field that I played on for my home field was one of the original that I posted about for Ohio, my first ever post. That was one of those four. I remember playing there and I was like, wow, you never really see just for context, my field had

the home run fence, their left field was the school. So to hit a home run, you had hit on top of the school. And I was like, wow, you never really hear about stadiums or fields that do that. I feel like we're in an anomaly. So initially it was just like, how many fields do that specifically? And then it turned into a whole, once I started looking at Ohio specifically, I was like, wow, there's a lot of weird fields.

And then from there I'm like, oh, I should try and do this for America. And then from there it just'm like, oh, I should try and do this for like America. And then from there, it just sprung into this crazy thing. I finished it in like 2021. And I just sat on it for a year. I was like, kind of nervous. I was like, what should I do with this? And then it kind of led to this. ambitious undertaking. We went through a phase on this podcast where we were documenting some weird fields, and it was really just the tip of the iceberg because there's so many fields. I mean, we talk about how dimensions differ in the majors, of course, and they differ so dramatically in some cases. I think it's one of the best, strangest quirks of baseball at that level. But of course, the variations are much wider and weirder at lower levels. And there are so many more fields at lower levels than there are in the majors that if you think that the green monster or whatever is weird, then you have no idea. I mean,

there's so much weirder than that. So for you, what qualifies as weird? Because you have actually charted the weird field percentage for each state. For instance, Rhode Island, which you charted only 50 total high school fields in Rhode Island, but 22% of them were weird by your definition. Whereas Ohio had 753 fields, but only 6.6% were weird. I don't know whether your standards for weirdness have changed over time as you've gone through this project, but what to you constitutes a weird field? Yeah, I do think it has changed over time. For Ohio, I remember when I initially did all those fields, I was just kind of loosely just saying everything was weird. And then for my BFA thesis project, over the last year, I had to like look back at them and I'm like, oh, wow, some of these aren't

actually as weird as I thought they were. I definitely have, as time has progressed, I've gotten a little stricter with what I've found is weird because over time with more states, it's gotten like, I've seen more of those quirks and through all of them so it's just like oh that's just a thing that exists at these fields right yeah the bar for weirdness gets higher yeah i the biggest one i always get is sometimes people send me fields on twitter uh the biggest one i always get is oh look at how big this field is and while from like an imagery standpoint yeah it's it is crazy how they're theoretically you could hit a 800 foot bomb and it wouldn't count as a home run but i just kind of try to steer away from those i do have those graphics of just the outlines of

the fields and that's where those that has its place like i think those are cool in that aspect but from a like a specifically like weird standpoint I think it's got to be something where like it was intentional your field had to fit inside of a like a specific space and that means you have to like whether it's like fit inside and use your school as the outfield wall or like in some fields, like the street is kind of like barging in on the fence. So you have like a 250 foot right field or something like that. Just something that was intentional to like fix a problem. Yeah. And that's why Fenway is weird and other ballparks in the past have been weird because they were sort of squeezed into an existing cityscape, right? And obviously with a high school field, you're going to have to just make do with what you have to work with there. And sometimes it's not that conducive to a baseball field,

at least in theory. So tell me, I guess, just how you find all the fields, right? Because you use satellite imagery, I suppose, to take measurements and have charts and diagrams. But how do you know that you have found all the fields? I kind of just go by the state's high school athletic association websites. There's a big list that I found that has each of the websites for each state. And then from there, I go and find each school. Some states are definitely harder than others. Like Connecticut and Rhode Island were so easy. They just have all the schools listed and they have all the playing locations listed. And so it was pretty easy,

but some states like Ohio and West Virginia and Utah, it's kind of like a little scavenger hunt and you have to go in and meticulously look for each state. And not just each state, but each state's school and their playing locations. So it is definitely laborious. And did you say that this was part of your thesis project? I know that you just recently graduated from Bowling Green. Congratulations. So this is not just for internet fun. This was for credit also. It was originally for fun. And then for my thesis project, I had to do something related to digital art since I'm a digital art major. And I was kind of reluctant at first to like show this to my class because no one in my, none of the art students knew anything about sports. And so like,

but eventually I showed it to everyone and like, wow, this is really sports. And so like, but eventually I showed it to everyone and like, wow, this is really cool. And so yes, my thesis project was Ohio specifically. That's how I actually created the outline graphics was that was for my thesis project. And as you've gone through this, have you heard from people often who either have played baseball at those fields or went to those schools and have nominated their fields for weird field consideration or told you stories about what it's like to play on those fields or suggested that you underrated or overrated the weirdness of a field? Like, have you gotten a lot of feedback from people who have set foot on these fields?

That's actually probably like one of my favorite parts of the whole thing. For the thesis project, for the poster, it was more detailed. So I surveyed a bunch of people who played at the Ohio fields. And it was really cool listening to all their, hearing all their stories about how someone got robbed of a home run or vice versa. Someone got a home run that they probably shouldn't have gotten because of the field.

And just little small, intricate little tidbits about each field. I think it adds a lot of personality because you can just kind of glance at all these on Google Maps. And that's one thing. But just to hear from the people that actually played on the fields is a whole completely different dimension. I don't know if you're gathering data on when these fields were constructed, but have you noticed any trend over time toward more or less weird fields? Like, have you noticed that the weirder ones tend to be older or are there still very strange ones that have come online in recent years? I've definitely noticed that the older ones are more of the weird ones. The only ones that are like new and weird are kind of the ones where they're like, you know, I'm talking about like the, the multi-use fields,

where it's like all completely AstroTurf and it's like, it's a soccer field and it's a football field and it's a baseball diamond. It's a softball diamond, all in one giant shape. Those are probably the only ones I've found that are like, Whoa, that's definitely not a baseball field. Like that's probably it for new ones. Are there genres of weirdness that you've noticed, like different classifications of what makes something weird? Could you divide it into categories? Like you have your fields that are kind of intersected by other fields, right? So

the outfield of one field is the outfield of another field, that kind of intersected by other fields, right? So the outfield of one field is the outfield of another field, that kind of thing. Or you might just have just a weird shape. I mean, they all have like a diamond, right? That looks like a baseball diamond and that's kind of consistent. But then after that, is it just like the amount of foul territory

or like how shallow or deep certain fields are, like how high the walls are? Like, what are the different ways that a field can be weird? I kind of have like a couple little, like you said, subcategories for each weird field. I don't actually like put that in the data or anything, but like usually like the weird ones are either like, oh, outfield fence is really close to home plate and it's really short. There's ones where like, there's a giant fence. So like it's regular distance, but it's like a

30 foot tall fence. And then there's also just the ones where there's like a road or like a parking lot. That's like intruding on the outfield. Uh, and then I'm always a sucker for ones where there's like a sidewalk in the middle of the field. I love those. There's a couple of those I've found so far that I always get a kick out of that. Just imagining someone like being like trying to get by during the middle of a game or something. Yeah, right. I said you charted the weirdness by state.

Sadly, Alaska has no weird fields, according to your calculations. Only 26 fields in total, but still no weird ones. Although I guess sometimes there's like no nighttime. So that's weird. But still, the dimensions, not so weird. Have you noticed that the types of weirdness vary at all by state or is it just sort of the same sort of weirdness? But some states have more of that than others. I've noticed that it's either the really densely populated states or it's the really rural, not very populated, like densely populated states. It's either one or the other.

Like the middle of the pack ones are never really that crazy, at least so far. I haven't really done many of the middle tier states yet. I was going to ask about the order you're going and you've done Rhode Island, Hawaii, West Virginia, North Dakota, Connecticut, Maine, Ohio, Utah, Delaware and Alaska. Is there a method to that? Are you going in a certain order? Do you have the next 40 states mapped out? So I made this like very loose scatter plot of each state by population and acreage. plot of each state by population and acreage. And so I'm just kind of like loosely going left to right in terms of population, because I've found that most of the time it's actually the population that determines how many fields there are so far. So I'm just kind of slowly going from left to right. From least populous to most populous? Yes. Okay. Yeah. A couple sprinkles of like populated ones.

Like Ohio, which you started with, I guess. But I guess that's probably good just for positive reinforcement and for feeling like you're making progress and just checking states off, right? Yeah. You get to go faster through them instead of starting with the really populous ones. So we have to ask about some of your favorites. You must have a top five or a top 10 or something. I don't know whether you actually have a ranking or you just have some sentimental favorites. But we have a tradition on the show of answering odd hypotheticals. And sometimes they are about stadium dimensions and how things could be weirder.

And the question is always, if baseball were different, how different would it be? And we talk about, would it still be recognizable as baseball? So I am curious about some of the weirder ones that you've turned up and whether you've thought at all about whether this is a feature that should be ported to the majors, whether you'd like to see it, whether it would still be recognizable as baseball. So give me as many of your favorites or any of the ones that stick out in your mind as you like. My go-to is always Monroe Central High School in Ohio. I think that was in the first Ohio post I ever did. That's the one where it's like the corner is part of a football field. And so like left field is like 270 ish feet. And then right field is like 510.

I always have a sweet spot for that one since I actually went to that one for my thesis project and took like, like walked on the field of that one. And it that one is definitely jarring when you get there. So I'd say that one 100 high school in 100 West Virginia. I recently found out that it's actually not for the baseball team, but it's so egregious. I just had to mention it anyways. There's no fence on the right field side, and right field home run distance is 152 feet. Even for softball, that's crazy. To indicate what's a home run, because it's on the side, like the right field side is on a mountain, they spray paint a line on the mountain and you have to hit the mountain high enough for it to count as a home run.

So props to whoever came up with that idea. Are there some that you think like, this would be fun to see higher level players to see big leaguers playing? that you think like this would be fun to see higher level players to see big leaguers playing or like instead of doing the field of dreams game they should play here just for maximum weirdness in one exhibition game per season or one real game per season there's a field in delaware called sanford school their field has a right field distance of 228 feet and the wall is only like 20 feet tall. So it doesn't really compensate for how short of a distance that is, but I'd like the thought process that it might. So like, I think that would be a cool one to have players play on. I think that would be a real fun one for people to just mash on that one. Have you heard anything from people involved or have you

looked at any stats or anything to assess the offensive environment at some of these parks? Like if you see that it looks like an extreme pitcher's park or an extreme hitter's park, have you ever, I don't know whether data is available on that publicly or just talk to people about what the park actually plays like? Originally when I was doing Ohio, I was trying to see if there was like a loose like park factor I could try and do for each field. I didn't do enough of that yet. I might work on that a little bit later once I get more schools done. I am curious about that though. It would be really interesting to see like a correlation between like acreage or like no fence or with fence and like the amount of home runs. I do think there would, there probably is an underlying thing in there that I think

needs to be uncovered. Do you know, no pun intended, the ballpark figure, just how many, how many fields that you're looking at in total, or are you almost afraid to look up the complete number? I guess it might change for one thing by the time you finish the 50 estate, but also it might be daunting to know how many more you have to go. I loosely Googled how many high schools were in America and it came out to somewhere around like 20,000. And I'm about 1.5 thousand in. So that was pretty daunting. But yeah, it's just a slow burn, I guess. Right. It's nice to know that these a slow burn, I guess. back at the Baker Bowl or Forbes Field or Polo Grounds, you know, all these old parks that were just wedged into some urban center and they made do with the dimensions that they had. Just the

outfield dimensions and the fence heights and all of that, it's become more similar over time. You know, there's still a lot of variation, but less than there used to be. So it's nice that if you go looking the way that you have, you can still find some true strangeness in this great nation of ours at the high school level, at least. What kind of feedback have you gotten? What kind of support has this drummed up on Twitter and Reddit and everywhere else that people are following your efforts? It's been mostly positive, I'd say. As baseball fans, we're pretty knowledgeable on the fact that baseball fields are varied and Have a lot of different distances and all quirks and stuff like that the one negative comment

I get from time to time is like oh baseball should have one normalized fence distance And I definitely disagree with that. Yeah, I don't really think much controversy can arise from this. I think it's kind of a wholesome project that doesn't really hurt any parties involved. I was going to say, I think the variation in square footage of the field from the biggest MLB park to the smallest, it's like Coors Field and Minute Maid maybe. And it's about a 14% difference, I think, in just field square footage. I wonder what the biggest difference is that you've found just like between the most extreme fields in a state or even in the 10 states that you've done. I don't know whether you have the square footage for every field.

The biggest field I have recorded is Concord High School in Delaware with a total area of 7.2 acres. And the smallest, it was 100, but I since found out that's not actually where they play. So second smallest is Kamehameha School in Honolulu, Hawaii with 1.7 acres. So part of my math, that's like 5.5 acres. Okay. Yeah. That's a big range. So Coors Field is like 121,500 square feet, acres like 44,000 square feet or something like that. Okay. Coors Field is 2.66 acres according to Business Insider India. Right. Yeah.

Well. So. So you're telling me so that biggest one is like, what, three times bigger than Coors Field or something like that? Yeah. My goodness. What are the dimensions of that place? I do remember that one was just crazy because it's at a park and there's no fence.

Okay. dimensions of that place. I do remember that one was just crazy because it's at a park and there's no fence. It was 600 feet to left field, 715 to middle, like dead center, 440 feet to right. So yeah, a lot of inside of the park homers on that one. Yeah. I guess everything's inside the park if there's no fence. That's a question that I think we've answered and that we get still sometimes, just what if you did away with outfield fences as used to be the case in some early parks and I guess also in some high school parks to this day. Well, that is indeed wild. I'd love to know what the offensive environment is like there. So not to get ahead of yourself because this is not your life's work, but a chunk of your life's work. So can you foresee doing other levels at some point? College parks, little league parks, international parks, et cetera? I vaguely remember someone wanted me to do

a European league that they watch. They wanted me to attempt that one. I mean, if it's teams, depending on the amount of teams, I'd be willing to do that for sure. I don't think there's really like a limit to that've made some things available so far, DaveRuss.MyPortfolio.com slash baseball. What are your plans for building that out or making prints available or sharing the data with people eventually? The eventual plan is to kind of take all the fields and stuff and put that into like a reference kind of thing where you can just kind of go in, look at the fields and stuff and put that into like a reference kind of thing where you can just kind of go in, look at the fields, regardless if it's weird or not, and even like filter out like by

distance and state. So you can like find similar distances and all that kind of stuff. And then I do plan on eventually selling posters of the outline graphics once I figure out the legal limits of that. Right. So you've put for state by state, you've charted the outlines basically of every field in that state so that you can see some of the differential there. Right. Right. So how does this relate to your other work, either what you're aspiring to do as a career, what you did in school, I know you've done some photography, you've done some other sorts of sports data visualization. How does this gel with your career ambitions or does it? I do know I want to work in the field of sports.

To be honest with you, I would do any job for any major league team or minor league team, as long as it's in sports, really. So there's no real bounds yet, but I think this is a good entry point into that. What are the tools that you use for people who are interested in getting in the weeds, just the software or the other resources that you've used to map all of these things and then plot them? So far, it's just Google, Google Maps, and then like any spreadsheet software, and then Photoshop and Illustrator. I'm not like one of those QGIS, super intricate imagery people. It's pretty bare bones here. Well, it comes out looking great,

at least to my uneducated eye as someone who's graphic design, not my passion, but clearly yours. And I think it does show. Is there anything that we haven't discussed yet? No, no pun intended, but I think we covered all the bases on this one. Okay. All right.

Well, I really look forward to continuing to track your work over the rest of this odyssey. People can find you on Twitter at DaveHRUS. And I mentioned the website a second ago, but I will link to that in the show notes. We'll have to have you back, if not before, certainly when you complete this project, which I hope you will, because it's been a lot of fun to follow along. And it's definitely in line with our philosophy here at Effectively Wild of appreciating the weird eccentricities of baseball. Thank you. Okay, it's time for the Stat Blast. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS- And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways

Here's to Dast, or StatBlasts, are presented by our sponsors at Topps Now. Hopefully you've heard about Topps Now by now. These are the trading cards available for a short time only at Topps.com. After each day is games, someone does something notable in a baseball game, Topps turns right around and makes a baseball card about it, which you can then purchase from Topps.com and get shipped to your door for free. The cards aren't free, but the shipping is. And the rapid turnaround technology here would have been mind-blowing to earlier generations. You're telling me that something happens in a baseball game and the

very next day you can buy a card featuring that moment what is major league baseball fixed is this scripted is the sports entertainment is a wwe are they telling tops who the next month's standouts will be so that they can keep cranking out the baseball cards no no one knows what tomorrow's tops now cards will be they're just able to make these moments into cards that quickly anyway check out the offerings available at tops now each day not just to Tops Now for sponsoring the stat blast, but because you might be happy to have those collectibles to memorialize, as the tagline says, your hero, your team, your moment. I was planning to do some stat blasting today, and then Meg fell ill, and I thought it probably wouldn't be fun to do the stat blast as a monologue. And then I thought, well, why not have the frequent stat blast consultant himself on

the show who did the stat blasting so that he could deliver the results in person? So I am joined now by frequent stat blast consultant, Ryan Nelson, making his Effectively Wild debut, although you've been here in name and in spirit almost weekly for quite a while now. So this is probably overdue, but welcome to the podcast, finally, Ryan. Hello, Ben. How are you? Doing okay. And I think I've shared maybe that you're a Braves fan. I've certainly told people that they could find you on Twitter at rsnelson23. But is there anything else you'd care to share about your background and how you became capable of stat blasting and what it is that you enjoy about it and how, if at all, it's connected to what you do as a day job?

Well, first, I'll start with a correction, actually. Sorry to do that to you. This is my second Effect of the Wild appearance. I'm now tied for 102nd all time. I looked it up this morning. Oh, good stat blasting. But it has been, I think, about six years or so. So it's been quite a minute. It was in the Jeff Sullivan era. So don't blame you for forgetting.

Yes. It's been many hundreds of episodes since then. Give people the context for when you were on the first time. Yeah. The first time I was on was right out of college. And I had written an article that I had sent to Jeff since he had also written a similar article regarding essentially the value of any particular draft pick in any draft and how basically the draft is more of a crap shoot than you could ever imagine.

And even the number one overall pick is only worth something like 10 war on average, when you look at all the draft picks all time. So I'd sent that to him just kind of saying, hey, you know, interesting, we had the same thought here. And he said, cool, do you want to come on the podcast? I said, okay, I guess. So that was my appearance. And then, you know, several years went by, and then the opportunity came up to do some stat blasting, and I threw my hat in the ring and you accepted. So here I am now. That's right. Episode 1070. 1070. Is that what we say? 1070.

That was the episode. Yeah, that was almost half the series ago now. Yeah, that's another life. Right. So how did you develop the skills that you have put to use in stat blasting? So I actually went back to grad school only about a year after graduating from college. Went to Georgia Tech and got a degree in analytics, which is a new thing that hasn't been around very long, but now it's becoming quite popular. And part of that degree was statistics, computer science,

and worked through things I was interested in, one of which was baseball, and downloaded RetroSheet and next thing you know I'm searching through there and it's not as hard as it seems and so I think a lot of people think it takes some genius knowledge and it very much does not so little practice and you can do it too. Yeah for the code heads out there what is your technique what languages do you use for these things? Yeah, I use R, which is the shortest named coding language, of course, and also a statistically inclined coding language. So quite good for this type of thing.

Very equivalent to Python is another very popular one. They're not all that different. So very entry level and good for this kind of surface level coding as opposed to something more in-depth, like an application or something like that. Sometimes it's pretty straightforward and you can query it up in a moment, it seems like, and then sometimes you're racking your brains for hours or days to figure out what's the best way to run something or how to run something such that it can finish in our lifetimes. So sometimes it's more complicated than other times.

Yeah, that's right. And I never remember that better than when I post in the StatBlast Discord channel. And when I'm struggling and someone says, why don't you just do this? It'll take 15 seconds. I'm like, you know what? That's just because you're smarter at this than I am.

So good job. Yeah, if you're not in the Patreon Discord group, you're missing out on lots of StatBlasting in the StatBlast channel, where people do stat blasts just sort of freelance just for curiosity. So you have several stat blasts for us today that have been building up for a bit

and we'll see how many we can get through. And I guess we'll start with one that was sent in by listener Joe in response to a tweet from the account Baseball Doesn't Exist at BaseballDoesnt. And the account said that Zach Greinke has struck out 20% of the active managers in MLB, which maybe sounds like a lot. So Joe said, I ran across this stat about our patron state Zach Greinke on Twitter

and was not sure if there was a way for your crack team of frequent StatBus consultants to figure out whether this is some sort of record or not. This impresses me a great deal, but I know that pitchers in the past used to pitch a lot longer than even Granke, and we're seemingly in an age where there are fewer major leaguers as managers, way more teams, and more manager turnover. Any chance you could StatBlast this? And yeah, it does at first blush sound pretty impressive. It wouldn't have been tweeted if the account owner didn't think it was impressive. So should we actually say wow about this one? nothing than a record. Yeah. So not surprisingly, lots of pitchers have struck out at least one active manager in any given year, you know, going back last 10 or 20 years, there's something

like 30 to 60 pitchers who have done it at least once, but six is getting up there, but it happens still fairly regularly. You know, I found about 550 or so player seasons using play-by-play data. So that's not every season ever, but most recent seasons that have done this exact thing where they've struck out six or more of the active managers. So about 10 every season, give or take, that have done six or more. Definitely not super common, but not all that rare either. So I went back through and found the most recent examples of more than six. So for seven, we have CeCe Sabathia in 2018. He struck out Mike Matheny, Aaron Boone, AJ Hinch, Joe McEwing, Gabe Kapler, Alex Cora, and Kevin Cash. The caveat there is good old Joe was a temporary manager. He stepped in when Rick Renteria of the White

Sox was sick. So if you don't really want to count that because he was only a manager for a couple games, it would be Randy Wolfe in 2015 was the most recent with exactly seven. Eight, also CeCe Sabathia actually one year later in 2019. We add in Rod Barajas, Chris Woodward and Rocco Baldelli, We add in Rod Barajas, Chris Woodward, and Rocco Baldelli, but lose Mike Matheny, who also lost his job. Again, though, Rod Barajas, interim manager. So maybe this is the most recent true seven rather than eight. Nine, we have to go back to 2005 with Roger Clemens.

He had struck out nine major league managers that were active that year. And 10 is where we really start getting into rare form. There's only been 10 ever player seasons that had 10 active managers struck out by that pitcher. Most recently, Charlie Huff and John Candelaria in 1993. There have been eight 11s, most recently Goose Gossage in 1994. And there have been four 12s. We're getting pretty up there in numbers with Jesse Orozco in 2002. And then finally, we get to the top five. There's been five player seasons ever with more than 12 strikeouts of active managers. We have Burt Bleileven in 1992 with 13, as well as Goose Gossage in 1992 with 13. Nolan Ryan, same year, probably a trend there, 1992 with 13. Goose Gossage, 1993 with 15. And finally, leading the list is Nolan Ryan, not all that surprising, 1993.

He had struck out 16 of the 30 active managers that led teams that year at some point in his career. Just kind of an unbelievable stat there. More than half. Technically, it was exactly half because the Reds had two managers that season, and he had struck out both of them, Tony Perez and Davey Johnson. So at any given time, half of the teams were led by a manager who had been struck out by Nolan Ryan at some point in their career.

Well, I guess if you had to guess who was the leader, he would have been up there pitching into his mid-40s at a high level and striking out a ton of batters. And I guess that must have been an era maybe when a number of managers were younger or recently retired players. In fact, Nolan Ryan's manager that year was Kevin Kennedy, who was several years younger than Nolan Ryan was, as I recall from a past stat blast about Olly Marmole and players who are way older than their managers. Though Kennedy was a career minor leaguer, so he was not struck out in the majors by Nolan Ryan. But that makes this cranky stat sound extremely unimpressive, like not even worth tweeting. It sounds good, but all time, you got to stick a one in front of the six there, and then it's actually a record. So it's one of those that can be kind

of misleading, I guess. It's just that it's not unimpressive, but in context, once you actually do the work, it's not that special. Yeah, you just have to strike out 10,000 over the course of 60 seasons, and you'll do it yourself too. No sweat. All right. This is something I spotted on Reddit and asked you about because someone on this Reddit thread said this better be a stat blast on Effectively Wild soon. And we don't take orders from Reddit necessarily, but we do take requests. requests. So this was prompted by a 16-pitch plate appearance between Anthony Santander and Royals pitcher Taylor Clark. And I've always been fascinated by long plate appearances. The one that was interesting about this, which is the longest at-bat or plate appearance so far

this season, is that it did not go to a full count. So the questioner wanted to know, what is the longest plate appearance in terms of number of pitches that did not go to a full count? And as always with pitch-by-pitch data, we're talking about since 1988, since that's when it really started comprehensively. Yeah, that's right. Someone put up the stat signal, and it was seen far and wide.

So we actually have two at-b bats tied for the record in this stat, which is actually 18. You may remember just a few years ago, Brandon belt set the record with, I believe 21, but that did go to a full count. So two plate appearances reached 18 pitches without getting to a full count. So the first was May 18th, 1997, in a Royals-Tigers game. And Bip Roberts, great name, faced Felipe Lira.

And he had the following sequence in his at-bat. So he had a foul ball, a called strike, and a ball. And then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 consecutive foul balls, followed by another ball, three more foul balls, and then finally a ground out for the 18th pitch. One interesting point here, though, that if an 18 pitch at bat wasn't interesting enough, that makes it even more interesting, is both of the balls were pitch outs, including the second one, which was thrown on an attempted stolen base. So there was a throw down to second. And there were also seven pickoffs in this plate appearance. So in total, I guess you could say that's actually 27 balls thrown in this plate appearance, all to get one ground out. So really working overtime there, both catcher, pitcher, everyone around just to finally get a normal ground out.

Yeah. And we actually still have the second one as well. Alex Cora, May 12, 2004, also had an 18 pitch at bat. Also ended interestingly and for a different reason. So he started off the count with a ball, called strike, and ball. Very normal 2-1 count. Then decided to hit 14 consecutive foul balls in a row and then a two-run homer on the 18th pitch. So that is a tough go for the pitcher there.

Just could not get him out. And then it come back to bite him in the worst possible way. Two-run homer. Ended up winning 4-0 anyway, so the two runs didn't really matter all that much, but quite the ending there. That's pretty good. And 17 has happened twice also, you noted. 16 has happened. 15 happened 10 times. Russell Carlton did some research about 15 years ago. I don't know why I remember these things, where he looked at what happens with each subsequent foul in a plate appearance if the count isn't changing.

And he checked to see whether it would benefit the batter. Because if there's a times through the order effect, you might think that there's a long plate appearance effect. You're seeing more and more of the pitcher's pitches. You're tiring out the pitcher. Then again, the batter might be getting tired out if you have 14 consecutive fouls. And he wrote, if the batter is fouling off two strike pitches after being behind in the count, it means that he's more likely to get on base. But after the count evens, there's no particular advantage to fouling off a lot of pitches. Seems that even if the batter is behind in the count, if he's more likely to get on base, but after the count evens, there's no particular advantage to fouling off a lot of pitches. Seems that even if the batter is behind in the count, if he's still at least making contact, it's a good sign. However, the effects don't seem to grow by huge margins

when the batter spoils multiple pitches. Talk of the pitcher having to show the batter extra pitches and this being a net gain for the batter doesn't seem to hold water, at least as far as this particular batter being able to get on base in this particular at bat. Of course, once you get up to 18 pitch plate appearances, you're working with small sample sizes. But it worked out well in one of these cases. It's got to be pretty crushing to have your pitch count go up that much and then also not even get an out. That's why you never give up. All right.

Next one. So I mentioned earlier that the Pirates hot start had cooled, that they were on a lengthy losing streak, but they continued to be in first place. Looks like they're about to win as we speak here. But we got a question from Aaron, who is a Patreon supporter, and said the Pirates are on a seven-game losing streak and, as I typed this message, are leading their division. This has me wondering what is the longest streak of consecutive losses a team has had while remaining in first place? I could imagine seven being close to the top because in addition to potentially losing ground daily, division leading teams are less likely to lose a bunch of games in a row. I could also imagine being way off and some historic collapses escaping my memory. Is this streak significant? Right. Yes. So it is significant. It's one of the longer

streaks in history, but still a few games shy of the record. The record is actually the 2017 Dodgers. Obviously, an incredible team made the World Series that year. Some people may remember that they lost 11 games in a row towards the end of the season. Thankfully, didn't really matter all that much. They had a 16 game lead going into that 11 game losing streak. Still ended the streak up nine games, still cruised into the playoffs, no issues there. Probably, I'm sure some people were concerned that this was a sign that they were going to struggle in the playoffs. They very much did not, made it all the way to the end, just about won it if it wasn't for certain events that we don't need to describe anymore on this podcast, at least. Second place was 10 in a row by the 2010 Padres. They started their streak with a six and a half game lead and came very close to losing it. They finally won a game after 10 straight losses

to keep their one game lead in the division. Fortunately, they would only go 14 and 13 the rest of the way and finish two games back of the Giants, who they themselves would go on to the World Series that year as well. Nine has been done twice, 1970 Twins and the 95 Angels, and eight has been done 15 times. I won't read them all out, but I will note that the 2006 Cardinals actually did it twice in the same season. They had two separate eight-game losing streaks,

all while being in first the entire time. And then, of course, they went on to win the World Series that year as well. So all I think this means is that if you have long losing streaks while in first, you're going to go to the World Series. Basically guaranteed, you can lock it down. One other note on those is that Pirates are still pretty shy of that all-time record, but they are very close to tying or breaking a slightly different record. And that is that the 1987 Brewers had an eight-game losing streak while in first, and they were the only team to have an eight-game losing streak while in first that then knocked them out of first place. In other words, all of those other teams we mentioned

all stayed in first, finally won a game, and kept staying in first place, at least for the time being. The Brewers ended up losing 12 straight, the ninth of which knocked them out of first, and they fell all the way to third place in their division. So if the Pirates lose two more games to knock themselves out of first, that would break that record of ineptitude knocking you out of first place, but taking that long to do so. Right. Well, unless the Rockies have a late comeback in them, doesn't look like it's going to happen.

It appears that the Pirates will be back to their winning ways and they'll be happy not to set that record, I'm sure. The Pirates will just have to lose another eight games later in the season in the World Series. Set that record, I'm sure. The Pirates will just have to lose another eight games later in the season in the World Series. Could happen. All right. Here is a question from Brandon, Patreon supporter, and this was in the StatBlast Discord channel. He said, what's the record for the most times a team has gone nine up and nine down through the first three innings in a single season?

Feels like every other game I watch, the A's are doing it on offense. Certainly not doing it when they're pitching, but on offense. I was actually surprised at how small this number was. I mentioned so in the Stat Blast Discord channel. It's 18. So 18 times in a season, a team has gone nine up, nine down, basically perfect three innings for their opponent. And that was done by the 1967 Reds. 18 doesn't seem like a

lot. You know, 10% of your games doesn't seem that crazy. But someone else in the channel noted that, you know, there's something like a 3% chance of that happening. So having it happen in over 10% of your games is actually quite, quite bad. Cincinnati Reds, 1967 had 18. Second place is a three-way tie at 15 with the Angels in 1970, the Expos in 01, and the 2019 Blue Jays. So three more than second place is not where you want to be. The A's this year have actually only done it three times, I believe, so they have quite a ways to go. It really hasn't been the offense that's been the problem with that A's team. I'm sure that the A's pitching staff has not had very many perfect three innings. Right. Yeah. Supporters surprised to see that Red's team

at the top because it wasn't a bad team. It was a winning team, but it was a low offense era, obviously, the year before the year of the pitcher, and it was not a very good hitting team. I think they were 16th in WRC plus of 20 teams that year. And I guess it's just a little bit random and one of those things. Next stat blast. Well, this was on Twitter. Actually, it was tweeted by at its D train. And this person said with JP France set to make his MLB debut against the Mariners, he'll most likely face J.P. Crawford and Ty France.

When was the last time a pitcher faced two batters with his name, if ever? And they tagged Sarah Langs and Jason Stark, but you Kool-Aid man it in there and answered it yourself. So what did you find? That's right. The stats couldn't hide. This one was actually posted in that Discord channel as well. So, you know, just more advertising for you there. I found it's not that rare, right?

It happens a couple times a year. You know, some recent examples I found were September 28th of 2021. Luis Garcia faced Avisail Garcia and Luis Urias. On July 17th of that same year, Jorge Lopez faced Nicky Lopez and Jorge Soler. 17th of that same year, Jorge Lopez faced Nicky Lopez and Jorge Soler. And then towards the end of 2020 on September 1st, Carlos Hernandez faced Carlos Santana and Cesar Hernandez. That actually happened to also be the most recent game where the pitcher was making his debut. Carlos Hernandez, first game of his career facing Carlos Santana and Cesar Hernandez. So that also answers that question. Digging a little further,

because you may have noticed a pattern there, a lot of Latin names, which aren't particularly surprising. Lots of Latin players in baseball, and all the names come from one language. So there's lots of similar names. The most recent explicitly non-Latin name I found was actually Tim Peterson, who faced Jace Peterson and Tim Beckham on August 15th, 2018. Had to go back to Jace and Mr. Beckham to find a explicitly non-Latin name. Yeah, I guess it seems like it should be rarer than it is because the example was France, right? And JP, it's a little like there have only been three players named France with the last name France in Major League history, and that's counting Aussie France, who played one game for the 1890 Cubs. So they're the only two French, really, players, Frances, in Major League modern history.

So the fact that they're facing each other is kind of interesting. I did wonder, like, JP, whether that should count because those are initials, you know, and I mean, I guess JP Crawford is John Paul Crawford and JP France is Jonathan Patrick France. So they're John and Jonathan, I guess it's close enough. It's almost like you would have to kind of quantify the rarity of the names because that's what makes this particular example interesting. Otherwise, you probably could have told that it was not that uncommon. Yeah, that's right. You make a good point. I guess the whole premise is a farce. We need to cancel the stat blast. Nope, let's keep going. So here's one. This was also from Brandon, Patreon supporter in the Discord group. Here's one. This was also from Brandon, Patreon supporter in the Discord group. Wanted to know the record for number of losses in a season in which the losing team scored first. So not come from behind wins, but the opposite of that fall from ahead losses.

Yeah, that's right. I believe Brandon is an A's fan, if you couldn't tell from all his loathing questions that he has coming in here about the A's terrible streets here. So the record for most games lost after scoring first is actually 53 by the 2006 raise. They scored first in 87 of their games about half the time, but only won 34 of those 87 losing 53. That is not good. Generally, if you score first, you win more often than not. And that was not the case for that raise. The New York Mets in 1962, not an especially great team there, lost 50 games that they scored first in, as well as the 1998 Florida Marlins lost 50 games, although they were a little bit better that year, I think. So, you know, 50 is about the cap. Lots of teams have done it in the 40s. We have another, you know, 32 or so that have lost 40 or more games that they scored first. But as I mentioned, even those teams, some of those teams that lost 40 games in which they scored first, they still had winning records in games they scored first. It's

pretty hard not to, but there are some examples of teams who didn't. The worst winning percentage in games in which a team scored first is 19.6%, which, no surprise here, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, they scored first in only 46 of their games, maybe just over a quarter of their games they scored first, and they lost 80% of them anyway, only winning nine of their games they scored first, and they lost 80% of them anyway, only winning nine games in which they scored first. So not surprising, but still kind of mind-blowing. Second place is the 32 Red Sox at 30%. So the Cleveland Spiders really set quite

the mark there. Almost impossibly bad, but we already all know that about the Cleveland Spiders. Right. Yes. Not flattering that the A's of this year have been compared to them at times too. That's right. Some recent examples of teams that have been pretty bad in games they've scored first, the 2003 Tigers only won 36% of the games they scored first in. Those 98 Florida Marlins, 38%. Those 2006 Rays, 39%. And the most recent team on this list, the 2019 Tigers, lost 41% of the games that they scored first in. Now, did you have a related follow-up about the 2001 Mariners? We did, yes. So they actually had the opposite.

They had the highest rate of winning games in which they scored first. And just winning games, period, I guess. Also both. Probably a correlation there, not surprising. They went 86 and 9 in games in which they scored first, or 90.5%. That is pretty far and away the best record. I don't have it in front of me, but I think second place was around 81, 82%. So really just knocked out of the park. But if you want to set the all-time wins record, you kind of have to do something like that. Right.

All right. And the last one, just to clear your plate here, this was an email from Connor who said, I'm looking at Jake Cronenworth's Fangraphs page and just noticed that his batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage has each declined every year of his career. Despite this, his season plate appearance totals have increased each year.

He is sadly not projected to continue this trajectory, his career. Despite this, his season plate appearance totals have increased each year. He is sadly not projected to continue this trajectory, but four years of this trend seems like a stretch anyway. What is the longest streak of this kind in MLB history? It may be easier to just use WRC Plus instead of the trio of stats I've provided. So declining stats, but increasing playing time. Who has the longest streak? Yeah, it's not very long, right? I mean, there's a lot of qualifiers here, especially if we're looking at the slash line, you're talking about your average has to go down, your on-base has to go down, and your slugging has to go down, plus your plate appearances are going up. So that's a lot of qualifiers. So probably not

surprising, the record's actually only five seasons, and it was done by a pitcher, which kind of makes sense because smaller sample size, the pitcher's name is Bill Hallahan and he played from the twenties into the thirties and he started off his career with three plate appearances with a 71 WRC plus and a three 33, three 33, three 33 slash line. And it turns out that he was not almost an MLB average hitter and he got worse every year. And he also pitched more every year so for five straight seasons his plate appearances went up and his uh slash lines by his fifth season it was 099 170 123 which is much more like the pitchers were used to hitting so um he did got worse every year after pitching more and more every year four

has happened a few times, four times. There was two position players to do that, Armando Rios, Salvador Perez, and two pitchers to do it, Eric Stoltz and Johnny Welch. So if Jake Cronenworth repeated this year, he would join those four as tied for second. But it doesn't quite look like he's going to make it. He's, one, probably not going to get enough plate appearances, but also he's currently outpacing last year's stats. So he's probably not going to be added there. I'm sure he'd rather not if he could help it. So we do it by WRC plus the record is also five,

but it's done by another pitcher this time, Luke Hamlin. He had five straight seasons of plate appearances going up. His W plus is dropping uh his first season he had six plate appearances and at 240 wrc plus the pitcher could not sustain that rate and his wrc plus dropped from 240 to 19 15 negative 18 and negative 27 in his sixth season it actually dropped to negative 60 but he actually had less plate appearances in that sixth year. So he didn't quite qualify by that, that statistic. So he almost got six, but didn't play enough, but still holds the record at five.

Again, it has happened four times by WRC, WRC plus as well. So, you know, that's kind of the record four to five, depending on how you look at it. It doesn't look like Cronenworth is going to make it to four to join or to five to extend.

Right. It would be hard to exceed 684 plate appearances for one thing, but also I guess the offensive environment has picked up a little bit. His WRC plus is almost identical to last year's, but his slash stats are all at least a little bit better as of now. He's got like 30 points of slugging on his last year slugging percentage. Again, the ball has been a little bit better as of now. He's got like 30 points of slugging on his last year slugging percentage. Again, the ball has been a little livelier and it's up league wide, but I guess that's one of the things that can make it hard to sustain this sort of run. Yeah. I'm generally rooting for Cronenworth and all other players to not get worse and worse and worse. So let's hope he doesn't do it. Yes. All right. And I have a little stat blast that was calculated just while I've been talking

to you because I got curious about your gap between appearances on Effectively Wild and where that ranked among the longest gaps going from 1070 to 2004, a gap of 934 episodes. And according to Chris Hannell, fellow listener, Patreon supporter who started the Discord group and keeps the record of all the Effectively Wild guest appearances, you are not only not the record for longest gap, but not even close to the record for longest gap, which right now is held by Jeff Fletcher, who covers the Angels. and he joined us way back on episode 139 as our Angels preview guest, I think on the first year that we did previews, 2013. And then he came on episode 1876 to talk about his Shohei Otani book. So that was a gap of 1,737 episodes, which puts your gap to shame.

According to Chris's numbers, you rank a mere 15th on the list of longest gaps. Well, that's good. I wasn't planning on coming back to episode 3,900 anyway, so I'll claim the record then. We might have you on before then, and we will certainly hear your name and benefit from your research before then. and benefit from your research before then. So go follow Ryan on Twitter at rsnelson23, and your work is always appreciated this week and most weeks. Yeah, thanks, Ben. I love doing it.

So thanks for letting me participate. All right, let's finish up with the Pass Blast, which comes to us from 2004 and from David Lewis, who is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. And David writes, Lewis, who is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. And David writes, box office blunder on the base paths. During the 2004 season, Major League Baseball announced an unusual marketing partnership between the league and Columbia Pictures. In order to promote Columbia's upcoming release, Spider-Man 2, MLB and Columbia executives unveiled plans in May to place a six inch by six inch Spider-Man logo on first, second, and third

base for one weekend of interleague play in June. Unfortunately for the two corporations, the idea was nearly universally panned by fans. An ESPN.com poll with nearly 45,000 respondents found that 79.4% of fans disapproved of the partnership, suggesting that the league was selling out by teaming up with the studio. One day after announcing the partnership, MLB backtracked on the decision, canceling plans to put advertisements on the bases. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said, it isn't worth, frankly, having a debate about. I'm a traditionalist. The problem in sports marketing, particularly in baseball, is you're always walking a very sensitive line. Nobody loves tradition and history as much as I do. Other aspects of the deal remained,

such as movie trailers being shown on Jumbotrons and Spider-Man-themed giveaways. However, the bases would no longer be touched. Gosh, now that the bases are bigger, even more prime real estate for advertising. Honestly, this is less than 20 years ago, but it sounds so quaint. If there's one thing MLB has accomplished, particularly under Rob Manfred, it is getting us to accept the idea that MLB is selling out and just expecting that and shrugging most of the time. We may not have ads for movies on bases, but we have superimposed ads on the mound. We have ads on player jerseys now, ads on umpire uniforms, ads all over the place. And I'm sort of sanguine about this. I guess I've become accustomed and resigned to it myself. I tend not to care so much about uniforms anyway. But again, 2004, not that long ago,

and we're way beyond public pressure putting the kibosh on MLB's plans to sell out. And we got a lot of responses to our discussions last week of player names and nominative determinism. Some others that were mentioned, Scott Blewett, just a great name for a reliever. In his very brief major league career, at least thus far, Scott Blewett has neither lost a game nor blown a save. You've got Josh Fields. That's a full sentence. Cutter Crawford, of course, throws a cutter. Charles Bender threw a curve. Homer Bailey allowed lots of homers late in his career. Larry Walker walked. Lots of turners turn double plays. Brandon Belt belts the ball. At least he used to. Kevin Quackenbush just signed with the Long Island Ducks. A bird in the hand is worth Quackenbush. And there's some players who have semi-baseball appropriate names but might be even better in other sports like Jay Baller or Jake Stryker. Tigers prospect Josh Crouch. He's a catcher, not the first catcher named Crouch. There was a Jack Crouch who played in the majors in the 30s. Speaking of catchers, Ed likes what we mentioned last week that Jason Castro was a catcher for the Astros, C-Astro, but also he's from Castro Valley, California. And if we're going to count executives, of course, Brian Cashman is the most appropriate name for a Yankees general manager. And lastly, Dennis says a whole category of

nominative determinism you've overlooked is players named after famous baseball players. They're not as fun as the puns, but of course, Itro Cano was destined to become a professional baseball player when he grew up. Other examples are Dalton Varshow, who became a catcher like Darren Dalton, Jeter Downs, who became a shortstop, and Willie Mays Akins. I think this is true nominative determinism in that there was likely actual pressure to go into baseball based on their names. It's a fun pun, but none of Colin Holderman's classmates heard his name and said, wow, I bet you're going to pitch in mid-relief. We talked about baseball Zen last week. We mentioned the one that looks like a Sasquatch. A number of people informed us that

this is not the Sasquatch, it's the Pasquatch. As Francesca wrote, the Sasquatch is actually a Pasquatch based on one of Vinny Pasquantino's nicknames. The Pasquatch makes an appearance on the top of the Royals Hall of Fame building in the left field concourse of Kauffman Stadium. Each time Vinny is on base or has hit a home run, Vinny has a little Pasquatch necklace. And the Royals did a little promo video featuring the nickname as well. Listener Dave says he can't enjoy the Zen because of the field diagram that appears on the screen as the Zen is playing. He says, I was reminded about my frustration about the painting the infield baseline Zen. I've had MLB TV for only a few years and I cringe when the Zen is on the screen. As a former minor league groundskeeper, I can't overlook the error of the painted or chalked lines. The first and third baselines do not go through the middle of the

first and third base bags, but instead the outer edge of the bags. How can I or any baseball fan have Zen energy with an incorrect baseball infield layout? Also, an update on the Dodgers paternity leave situation. Caleb Ferguson, as expected for someone who was expecting, has gone home to be with his wife, who is about to give birth. So he should be added to the paternity list soon, which will move the Dodgers into a tie for the most placements in a single season. Shout out to listener Anton in the Discord group

who took a look at the birthdays of U.S.-born MLB players and was able to confirm a relative age effect in line with high school and little league age cutoffs. So fewer MLB players than one would expect based on U.S. birthday trends were born in June and July. More were born in August and September. I'll link to his graph. I noted last week that the Marlins were 10-0 in one-run games.

They're now 11-0, which ties the 72 Mets for the most consecutive wins in one-run games to begin a season. And happy retirement to Effectively Wild guest Grayson Greiner, who is on episode 1215 with the two other 6'6 catchers in history, Pete Kogel and Don Geely, both of whom sadly have died since then. Grayson Greiner didn't have a long big league career, but he played in a lot more games than either Geely or Kogel did. It's tough to be a tall catcher, it turns out, which was the theme of that conversation. Speaking of once and perhaps future catchers, Wilson Contreras knocked in a

couple of runs for the Cardinals against the Cubs, and the Cardinals did win that game. Andrew Kisner was hitless. 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 ad free aside from our stat blast sponsorship and get themselves access to some perks. Matt Kennedy, Robert Johns, Sam Beeson, Brock, and Nishant Menon. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the aforementioned Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, as well as monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on ad-free Fangraphs memberships and merch, and much, much more. Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you

are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via Thank you. EW pod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Alex Farron for the new Effectively Wild theme heard on this episode. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. I helped a little because Shane went to the Mariners game and was caught on Root Sports applauding Logan Gilbert after he lost his perfect game bid in the seventh. Thanks for listening, and we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Does baseball look the same to you as it does to me? When we look at baseball, how much do we see?

Well, the curveballs bend and the home runs fly. More to the game than meets the eye. To get the stats compiled and the stories filed. Fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it down on Effectively Wild.