Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2005: Spring Has Sproing

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s recovery from COVID and the belated release of the CBA, predict how well White Sox cast-off Jake Diekman will pitch for the Rays, discuss injuries to Luis Garcia, Max Fried, Tyler Mahle, and more pitchers and investigate forearm/flexor strains as potential precursors to Tommy John surgery, react […]

Oh Tony, le stat blast, le beef boy so chouette Les avis pétantes, et super, une fête Je pense que c'est effectivement cool Je pense que c'est effectivement wild Effectivement sauvage Effectivement Sauvage. Effectivement Sauvage. Hello and welcome to episode 2005 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing just fine. How are you, if you want to repeat what you just told me before we started recording? I don't know whether to, I mean, I want to ask you how you're doing before we are actually recording, but then I have to ask you how you're doing once we're recording again. I know. Pulling back the curtain here.

I'm good. I'm on. I mean, I think let's do this. Set our expectations low. Let's do this as part of my rehab assignment. Okay. So, you know, definitely in throwing shape. How much zip is on the fastball? I don't know.

I think we're going to find out. Yeah, the COVID came for me, Ben. Yeah. So there's no truth to the rumor that you've been playing hooky so that you can just read the collective bargaining agreement cover to cover. And in fact, you know, one of the things, I'm not like breaking news here, but you know, one of the things that COVID is famous for is giving you kind of a brain fog. And so, I haven't cracked it even a little bit yet, Ben. You waited so long. I know.

It's finally out there for everyone to cruise. I'm so excited. I wish I could tell you that I sat down and I started thumbing through just in a rush, a joyous, rule-bound rush. But instead, I rewatched part of the first season of Stranger Things. So, you know, who could say what was more productive? Really. Right.

Well, that's important, too. I look forward to any tidbits you turn up when you do finally just immerse yourself in the CPA. And however long that PDF is, it might make good convalescence reading once you're up to that, once the fog clears. Yeah. And I will say, that once the fog clears yeah and and i will say like the fog is is mostly clear i was able to like edit and stuff um thank thank goodness for um for good teammates though you know because like um on sunday uh evening i said to you ben it it happened finally happened yeah and you were like well let me know if you need the day off tomorrow because we were supposed to record.

And, you know, people have a wide range of experiences with this, obviously, some of which are quite severe, and I've been fortunate to be spared that. But Monday I woke up and I was like, yeah, I can't record. Yeah, you went on the COVID IL. Yeah, so I appreciate John filling in and keeping things humming along at the site. And then Will for moonlighting as me. I think that like the words per minute probably the same, at least when it gets its most frenzied for me. So, you know, adults shouldn't have to have fevers, I think is one thing I've arrived at.

It's an experience that, well, I mean, I don't think children should have to have them either. But, yeah, you really don't. It's not great. So, you know, everybody keep watch out there. They always tell you the fever is not the problem. The fever is protective, right? But it's also uncomfortable. So, there's that. out there. They always tell you the fever is not the problem. The fever is protective, right? But it's also uncomfortable. So there's that. Well, and like, that's true to a, I was going to say

to a degree, but that's too funny. You know, you get to a point where you're like, oh, I need to monitor this like pretty actively because it can spiral on you. I think the body aches were the part that I disliked the most. But, you know, I'm still obviously at home and hanging out because I don't have a negative test to my name. But it stunk. So, you know, do what you can to not get it and not give it to other people because it wouldn't be an experience I'd recommend. And I think all things considered, got off pretty easy in terms of the COVID. So, yeah. Well, glad you're back. Glad you're on the upswing. Thank you. Me too. We are going to talk about a bunch of injuries today, I think, on this episode.

What is going on? What do we need to change in society, Ben, to keep these elbows safe? I have some ideas, but I do want to give you a quiz first. I mean, not like a scary, put you on the spot quiz when you just came back from COVID. I did watch a lot of baseball in the last couple of days, so I'll say that. the last couple of days. So I'll say that. This is extremely low stakes. What I want to know is how good you think Jake Diekman will be

for the Tampa Bay Rays. That's what I'm sure you've spent days and hours pondering this question as you were recovering from COVID. I want to know this because the Tampa Bay Rays just signed Jake Diekman. Yeah.

And Jake Diekman was a cast off from the Chicago White Sox. Right. And he had pitched very poorly for the White Sox at the start of this season. And then the Rays signed him. And so whenever the Rays sign anyone, particularly some nondescript reliever, everyone goes, well, now he's going to be amazing. So I want you to, without actually putting any money on this, put your figurative money where your mouth is. And I will play along too. How good do we think Jake Diekman will be? Do we really believe in Ray's reliever magic here? And

for context, Jake Diekman has been an effective pitcher in the past. Yeah, he's been good. He has been at times quite good, you know? Yeah, right. It wouldn't be unprecedented if he pitched well for the race. At the same time, though,

the Chicago White Sox just decided that they had no use for Jake Diekman. And the Chicago White Sox, I believe, have one lefty on their entire pitching staff. I thought you were going to say one reliever on their entire pitching staff. The White Sox, I believe, have one lefty on their entire pitching stack. I thought you were going to say one reliever on their entire pitching stack.

The White Sox are famously not off to a good start this season. The Rays are off to a historically great start. And so when you see the White Sox decide this guy can't help us, and then the Rays say, huh, maybe he can help us. Well, obviously the Rays think that Jake Diekman will be better for them than he was for the White Sox, or they would not sign him. Right. Because if he continued to pitch as he pitched for the White Sox, then he would not help

the Tampa Bay Rays. He had almost an eight ERA for the White Sox in 11 innings. But, you know, a 5-9-6 FIPS. Yeah, right. You know, he had like a basically a 5 ERA last year, too. He was somewhat more effective for the red socks and then not effective for the white socks. So he preferred one color of socks to the other. And so basically he hasn't been decent since 2021.

He hasn't been good since 2020. Right. And that was a short sample right yeah and then 2019 he was in and then yeah 2018 he had like a seven and a half year into small sample so you really have to go back to well 2017 he barely pitched in the majors. So 2016, I guess he was he was pretty, pretty solid that year. And 2015, pretty, you know, you have to go back several years to like when you're like, oh, Jake Deakman. Right. So so obviously the race think he can be better than that. And the White Sox, like if they thought he had anything left, you'd think that they would want him even more than the Rays because they need pitching more than the Rays do. And again, they have one lefty on their staff. The proximate cause of the Rays signing Diekmann was that Garrett Clevenger, he got hurt. He's out for the season, it looks

like. So the Rays were like, oh, we need a lefty. Let's go get Jake Diekmann. He was a freely available talent. So I'm sure the Rays, the fact that they signed Jake Deakman doesn't mean that they think they're going to make him into some dominant late inning arm. It's just like, we need someone right now. And he might not even last long enough with the Rays to actually determine whether they made him good miraculously or not. But still, I want to know what's our guess. I guess the funny thing is that his last two outings with the White Sox came against the Rays, who in an inning and two thirds scored six runs off of him or earned and hit a homer and drew three walks.

So like they saw him being bad for the White Sox, and yet they must have seen something, right? They must have thought, we can fix him, we can rebuild him, right? Because otherwise they would not want to sign the guy who stunk to start the season and stunk specifically against them. So, can they work Ray's magic with Jake Diekman? against them. So can they work Ray's magic with Jake Diekman? What's your expectation? And we'll just assume that he actually sticks with them long enough for this to be meaningful, but like, give me, give me a FIP. Like if, and obviously if he were to stick with them for the rest of the season, that would probably mean that he was pitching well, right? So if we project that he's going to last, then we're probably looking at. Yeah. So I guess what we're saying is like, what is Jake Diekman's true talent as a Tampa Bay Raid?

And his projection. So according to the Fangraph's depth charts, his fifth projection, and I don't know if this is with the White Sox or park neutral or with the Rays or what now, but it's 4.53. Right. So that's your baseline Jake Diekman fit projection. Yeah. Well, I'm going to answer your question with a couple of questions of my own, Ben, just to start. And that's not me buying time. It's me trying to get some jokes in.

The first is, on the one hand, yes. I'm trying to get some jokes in. The first is, on the one hand, yes. If the White Sox thought he could do something, surely they'd hold on to him. But I'm trying to think of a way to ask this question politely and not sound like a jerk. But do they know what they're doing? I think that there is a scenario where the White Sox say to themselves, you know, if he could fix this thing, he'd be fine now. Like he'd be, you know, maybe he wouldn't be a great reliever, but maybe he'd be like a league average guy, right? We don't know how to do that. Like, you know, this might

be a thing where like they're struggling to sort of help him course correct. So there's that piece of it. The other piece of it is that, as you've noted, they are really bad as a baseball team. As we were recording this on Thursday, they're 13 and 25. And I'm given to understand that Jake Diekman is owed $4 million this year. Now they're going to have to pay him some of it, right? But maybe they're like, well, we'll get rid of him and someone else will pick up the minimum part. I don't know. You know, like that.

What do the Rays think? Well, they probably think that maybe they also wonder, do the White Sox know what they're doing? And they know what they're doing. And while the Rays are in a position of really being very good at baseball and

obviously wanting to continue to be very good at baseball, it isn't as if they don't have a bunch of other really good dudes, including a couple of good lefties, you know, in their bullpen currently. So I think that if I'm Tampa, I might look at it and say, well, one thing about it is what's it really going to cost? You know, maybe we help fix this guy. Um, and, uh, he can be useful in a very particular way. I mean, surely their advanced guys probably saw something and then we're like, well, what if we teach him that one cool trick? I mean, I guess if you want to be encouraged,

you could say that while his average fastball velocity is down slightly, it's not like it didn't crater. It didn't tank. It's down from what it used to be, but compared to the last couple of seasons, it's kind of sitting around the same. And yet striking out so many fewer kinds of guys. So not kinds of guys, but just guys. I mean, maybe they are fewer kinds of guys. So, not kinds of guys, but just guys.

I mean, maybe they are different kinds of guys, Ben, but who could say if they were the same guys as last year or not? The thing is, though, they must think that he could contribute right away. Because this isn't like inviting him to spring training and, hey, we'll see what he has and we can work on some stuff. And they're off to a great start, but it's still a tough division. They don't want to just throw away any games, even if he's going to be a super low leverage guy for them. He wouldn't be a super low leverage guy. Yeah. But they must still think because the average reliever this year has a 4.15 FIP. And Jake Deakman's projection, again, is 4.53. So that would suggest he's a below average reliever.

Right. And you'd think that the Rays, even depleted by some pitching injuries as they are, they seem to have an endless number. They got so many guys. Right. So like they must think he can help them in some way. And recent results would suggest that he cannot. Right.

He has not pitched in a way that would help them for nigh on three years now, I think. Nigh on. Wow. We got fancier in my absence. Howdy, podcaster. You're going to hear that expression today. I don't know. So they must think there's like one weird trick, not to make him dominant or anything, but to make him playable.

Something that the White Sox couldn't figure out or couldn't convince him to do or maybe even his previous team. So give me a number, your estimate of Jake Diekman's true talent as a Tampa Bay Ray FIP was. And again, are you going over or under? I assume you're not going over the projection. No, I wouldn't dare. You know, I wouldn't insult. I mean, I'll apparently insult every single white sock, but I would never insult the Rays like that. No, I will say that he will register a—I'll say that he'll beat the depth chart projection,

but not by a lot. Actually, let's do this. Because there is, as our listeners might remember, the depth chart projection, it takes Zips and Steamer, and it mooshes them together, and it applies other stuff. That's the technical term. Yeah, it mooshes them together, and then it applies the applies other stuff. That's the technical term. Yeah, mooshes them together and then it applies the playing time stuff and da-da-da. And so, like, Zips has even less confidence in Jake Diekman than, say, the White Sox do.

Zips projects him for a 4.96 FIP, which is pretty bad. Not as bad as what he's done so far, but pretty bad. Steamer's a little more optimistic and says, expects a 4.10 FIP. And so I'm going to kind of, not precisely, but sort of split the difference. Let's say that he'll have a 4.25 FIP. Okay. That's a good guess.

Yeah, I think. I mean, is it a good guess, Ben? Who knows? Who knows? It's a guess. It would be really funny if the White Sox were like, you know what? This guy's bad. So are we.

But if we get rid of him, someone else signs him, we get to keep $500,000 and pay him less. You know, maybe that would be really pretty sad. Before I saw the projection, I was going to say 4.5 just because that would be a lot better than he's been lately. So I was giving the Rays some credit, but not miracle worker credit. Every time Sprinkle Rays dust on every reliever and they're incredible. That's not necessarily the case. So I was going to say 4.5. Then I saw the projection. And if that's kind of his baseline projection, then you would think that the raise could better that, if anything. So, I mean, I guess my guess would be sort of similar to yours, except I don't want to make it super boring and identical. So I guess I'll say I'll go under yours. I'll say four. And really,

my guess is that he doesn't last long enough for us to figure it out because he's replacing Chase Anderson on the roster. And Chase Anderson just joined the Rays this month. And then he had two outings, didn't give up a run. And then they're like, all right, next, Jake Diekman. So odds are he's not going to be a temporary Ray, or at least in the major leagues, for very long. But I feel like, you know, because we ascribe such powers to the Rays. And they do often seem to justify that. And of course, there's the famous Sam Miller tweet about Rays trades.

And you just sort of assume great trade, great signing by the Rays. Who did they get? Who'd they give up? Right. So then you find out they got Jake Diekman. Huh. Okay. But if you really believe in Ray's magic, then you should think that Jake Diekman is going to be the next great pitcher for the Rays who no one was thinking about. So, but I don't know about that. If you if you really believe like can you name five of their relievers ben i mean like you know even really good player dev teams and i think that you know it's not controversial to say that the rays are one of them like they don't hit on every guy that's part of why you take a volume approach to like if you're good at it and you know not every one is going to

work out but you're willing to sort of cycle through the the fringes of other big league rosters no there there are some parts of that that we might think of as sort of unsavory but like you know you know you're gonna miss on a lot of them but if you hit on a couple like really worth it you know know? Yeah. I think why this particular example was so intriguing to me is because it is seemingly a case of the Rays betting on Rays magic to some extent, right? Because again, he's been very bad. So he has to be better. They have to think he'll be better than he's been.

Or they wouldn't do it. Yes. Because he does take, I mean, Because he does take a roster spot. Yeah. So they're thinking we could fix him at least to some extent that he will be as a stopgap temporarily useful to us. And the White Sox, who seemingly are in more need of him, concluded that that would not be the case for them. So this is kind of a bet on player development at the major league level, right? So I wanted to make a little bet of our own with zero stakes, even lower stakes than the Rays signing Jake Diekman. So that's our extended analysis of the Rays signing Jake Diekman. I don't know where else you're going

to get that kind of content, honestly. Like what other podcast is breaking down the Rays signing Jake Diekman? But I think it's emblematic of a larger trend that we talk about. So we'll see if the Rays are just so special that they can actually make Jake Deakman into a serviceable reliever on a first-place team in a great division. But I guess we can sort of segue into injuries because it's an injury that caused the Rays to sign Jake Deakman. And that was, what, a knee injury, right?

But there have been so many arm injuries lately, and that's not new. We could have said that at any point in the past several years, and we have while doing this podcast. But there have been a notable number, and I've been particularly struck by the number of, well, elbow issues that turn out to be Tommy John or UCL related in many cases, but start as forearm strains or flexor strains. And I don't know whether people listening

to this have the same shudder that I do when I hear forearm strain or flexor strain. I just have this instinctive, I recoil. Oh, no. It's almost, it's like more ominous than some more serious actual injuries because on its own, it shouldn't be that bad. But my impression, at least, was that in many cases, it's a prelude to a Tommy John to an extended absence. And I was thinking of this because Max Freed just went on the IL for Atlanta and Max Freed has already had a Tommy John surgery. And that was some time ago. Now he is on the IL. And again, you know, they're downplaying it to a certain extent. And I know nothing about Max Freed's specific situation, but forearm strain was the diagnosis. And then it was reported, hey, he had

an MRI and nothing super concerning and structural damage. He's just going to need some time. Right. And then Atlanta's had other pitching injuries, too. And Kyle Wright is out, too. So they're hardly alone there. But when I saw that Max Reed had a forearm strain, I thought, is that as concerning as I suspect that it is? And then I was thinking of German Marquez, who it was reported that he had a forearm strain and the same song and dance about MRI and nothing super concerning and no structural damage. And then pretty soon after that, he was having Tommy John, right? And gosh, you don't even have to range far from the Rockies because Antonio Sensatella now, he has also gone on the IL, I think, or was removed from a game with a forearm

strain. Yeah, he at least came out yesterday, yeah. Right. So Rockies fans are probably thinking, here we go again. We just saw this with Marquez. Are we going to lose another guy when we're already shorthanded, literally? So I was just kind of curious about, like, what does a forearm strain mean? You know, and as I was looking into this, the twins announced that Tyler Malley is going to have Tommy John surgery. Not our listener named Tyler Malley, but the actual Tyler Malley who pitches for the Minnesota Twins. Tyler Malley, who pitches for the Minnesota Twins. So he was also a guy who just recently went on the IL with a forearm strain, right, or a flexor strain. And those are the same thing, by the way, which I kind of clarified for myself. A forearm strain and a flexor strain, those are just different terms for the same injury, at least in most cases. So I wondered, I wanted to talk to some people who know more about

this to decide whether we should be worried about Max Fried beyond just this immediate forearm strain and whether just in general, is it a death knell for your UCL if you go on the IL with a forearm strain or a flexor strain? So I called up a couple people. One was Glenn Fleissig of the American Sports Medicine Institute. And he's a longtime biomechanics expert. And I've talked to him. I'm not sure if I've had him on a podcast, but I've talked to him for many an article in the past. And he just knows a ton about pitching and pitching injuries and the strains on pitchers' arms. So I basically just asked him to explain the elbow and how forearm strains are related to UCL strains and so forth. So here is just a quick clip, kind of edited and condensed, of how he explained the relationship between those body parts.

When your arm cocks back and then you had to kind of catch it and then get it going forward, it's very stressful on the elbow and the UCL could tear. What's happening biomechanically in the elbow at that time, the elbow has its maximum rotational force torque at that time. It's really pushed to its limit, obviously, because sometimes it breaks. What we found out in the biomechanics research is that the stress or the torque, actually, on the elbow at that time is pretty much equally divided into three responsibilities. The UCL has to do one-third of the torque. The elbow muscles have to do one-third of the torque. And the bone-on-bone, the forearm bone touching the upper arm bone, that has to do a third of the torque. And the bone-on-bone, the forearm bone touching the upper arm bone, that has to do a third of the torque. Technically, it's about 100 newton meters

and it's about 30 to 35 newton meters for each. And why I'm saying that is other biomechanics research we've done has shown that 30 to 35 newton meters is about the most a UCL can take. So when things are going well, you're pretty much stressing the UCL to its limit every pitch. If the muscles can't do their third, then the UCL has to do more than its third. And then the stress on the UCL is more than it could take. Oh, by the way, when I say the muscles of the elbow, I'm particularly talking about what's called the flexor pronator mass. Those are the muscles that contribute and help protect the UCL in particular. It's not the biceps or the triceps. It is the flexor pronator mass are the muscles whose function helps the UCL.

If the person does have a forearm strain, they got to rest or get that fixed, rest or rehab, because if you try to pitch with a compromised forearm muscles, then that will greatly increase the chance of UCL injury. Okay. So I think he laid that out in a pretty clear way that I, as a layman, could follow. So if there's something wrong with your flexor tendon and that flexor pronator mass, it's like it's a bunch of different muscles and it's like right next to your UCL. So they're often kind of associated and they share the load along with the bone and the bone doesn't break so easily. But the other things do. The muscles can get hurt. The tendons can get hurt. You can't even really strengthen a tendon that much. So that's why we get so many UCL

injuries because it's just the weak point. And guys keep throwing harder and harder, and they put more strain on their arms. And then that's where it snaps, basically, not to get too graphic about it. So I also talked to Stan Conte, who has been on Effectively Wild many an episode ago. And he used to work for the Dodgers and the Marlins as a head athletic trainer. And he has his own injury consultancy service. And he's just worked a ton with injury data and with teams over the years. And he explained some of the same stuff that Glenn did to me. But then he also explained that sometimes there can be some imprecision, let's say, when it comes to defining exactly what the injury is. So here's some stuff that Stan said on that subject.

What teams report is like what the White House reports, right? Sometimes it's in the neighborhood, but it's not exactly. And they want to kind of throw you off a little bit. Nobody likes to put up that he has a UCL strain or sprain or whatever because that's like everybody goes nuts, right? So a flexor strain sounds not as bad, right? It's going to be okay. It's a strained muscle.

It's going to get better. a strained muscle, it's going to get better. What teams are putting out that goes on the IL is not always really super accurate. We see this with obliques too. They'll use something else. They'll use the word intercostal sometimes because they don't like the word oblique because oblique sounds terrible. Oh no, the guy's got an obl leak and he's going to be out 30 days and that type of thing. So you see some people, the way they put it out to the media is to minimize the potential thing. I think they're close to the best or stuff like that, you know, for a multitude of reasons, whether they need to trade for somebody now or do something or if this guy's going to be out a year and a half, all those kinds of stuff. There's some reasons not to give out all the information. The team decides what they're going to put out. And they're not lying because the guy probably does have a flexor strain. There's a lot of flexor strains. Or they have some old injuries

that you can see on the flexor. So by saying it's a flexor strain, they're not lying to you. They're just not telling you the entire. And then the question always is, if he has a flexor strain, he sits out six weeks, gets back, and then has another injury, then that flexor strain probably overloaded the UCL and the UCL blew out. Okay. So don't know about any specific case, any specific pitcher, any specific team. But sometimes if someone goes on the IL with a flexor strain slash forearm strain, it can mean that there's also some other stuff going on there.

Right. And maybe the team hasn't been super open about that. What? Yeah, I'm blowing everyone's mind here. Not every injury is exactly described in detail to the public. Not every IL stint is totally legitimate and above board. I know I'm dashing dreams of how honest and forthcoming teams can be. Knock me over, Ben.

I know. In baseball, I think we have it pretty good relative to some other sports, right? When it comes to teams actually disclosing injuries and explaining what they are as opposed to hockey or something where it's like. He has a leg and you're like, well, yeah, we knew that part. We're looking at him. He's got two, in fact. Like, is this, like, is it an imputation? Like, is there just a muscle strain?

Like, what's going on here? All the same sort of terminology. So in baseball, we have it pretty good when it to minimize the panic, maybe, and the concern and probably are not outright lying or deceiving, but maybe omitting a few tidbits here and there. And just saying, like, you know, we hope that this will get better and we don't want to alarm anyone unduly. And as Stan said, like, there could be other incentives for them not to be completely transparent about that. And the player may prefer it that way. So so that's one scenario when these things happen. a forearm slash flexor strain and you come back too quickly, then you might be in trouble because that's, I was going to say shouldering the load, but I guess it's more like elbowing the load that those muscles aren't elbowing the load and therefore more strain is going on to the UCL and snap, sproing. It doesn't actually make the sound sproing, I don't think, but I'm trying to

make it sound more cartoonish and less painful and depressing than it actually is. It's a whimsical sound of a UCL snapping. So that's one possibility that maybe there is no UCL damage when you go on the IL with a forearm strain, but then you come back maybe too quickly and you don't even realize. And then you incur some UCL damage. So there might not be anything nefarious, any shenanigans. It might just be a subsequent injury that comes from that. It could also be that there was some underlying UCL damage and that's why you got the forearm strain because the UCL was not elbowing its load and therefore there was more strain on the forearm, on the flexor. And so that's what caused that strain, right?

And so it's sort of a symptom of an issue with the UCL. And look, their pitchers, like their entire arms are mincemeat. Like, I mean, it's probably pretty tough to read an MRI at times because like everyone's got some degree of damage. And it's always like, is it so much that it can't recover with rest and rehab and platelet replacement therapy and all these things? Do we have to replace it basically? And that can be kind of a judgment call. So there could be some fraying or something or it might be tough to tell.

Really serious damage from just kind of run of the mill every pitcher is constantly hurting themselves kind of damage so there are all sorts of possibilities but what it boils down to is yeah it is kind of concerning yeah there are reasons to be worried when someone gets a forearm reflex or strain that there's something else going on there or there could soon be something else going on there. Well, and it's a tricky thing because there's the subterfuge part of it. And we know that sometimes the subterfuge can be deployed

not in the interest of protecting the privacy of the player, but you want to do a little messing about, right? You want to do a little messing about. Sometimes it is like shenanigans. They're up to shenanigans. And we've seen the extreme version of shenanigans where you have a guy who's injured in a way that the team he currently plays for

doesn't tell the team he's going to play for about, and then AJ Prowler gets in trouble, right? So we've seen that version of shenanigans. But is this there's a weird tension not just in your elbow because it's like on some level it's very much our business because whether um the elbow is shouldering the load what what did you say elbowing the load elbowing the load makes it sound like you have a mountain of laundry and you're like get out of the. I have to leave my bedroom now. Neither Glenn nor Stan used the phrase elbowing the load. You mean that's not a medical term?

No. They don't teach that one in medical school? Mm-mm. So on some level, it's very much our business because it obviously determines whether these guys are going to be available to pitch. And it shapes our understanding of how competitive the team is going to be and what the trajectory of their career might be. But also fundamentally, I thought to myself, do I want to tell people, like, oh, it's not their business? And then I was like, yeah, it's fine. I'll tell people because that's a thing that I have.

So I don't want people to think I'm slacking. I was just sick. Anyway. I don't think anyone thought you were slacking. I don't want people to think I'm slacking. I was just sick. Anyway. I don't think anyone thought you were slacking. I don't know. Really, both of them stressed to me that it's definitely not like a one-to-one thing. No, there's going to be a lot of variability. Yeah, there are pitchers who have just strained forearms or flexors, and they rest, and they rehab, and they come back, and they're fine. So, it is far from a sentence to UCL replacement surgery. Stan sent me what he said was the best

study on this publicly, and I'll link to it in the show notes, but it was done by Chris Ahmad, who's a doctor with the Yankees. And it was based on 2010 to 2014 data. This was published several years ago. And what he concluded back then was that about 20% of major leaguers who have forearm strains do have UCL reconstruction within the next year. So one in five. the next year. So one in five. So it's definitely elevated compared to the general pitcher population, but it's still more common than not that you won't have it at least within the next year. So maybe that's hopefully kind of encouraging. But basically, if you suspected that sometimes a forearm strain can auger something worse to come or something that has already happened that we may not know about. Yeah, there's some reason to think that, which is certainly not to say that any specific pitcher or Max Fried or Sensatella or anyone else does not just have what the team says that it has. I have no idea how common that kind of obfuscation, let's say, is. So it's good to know that that might occur. But it's really like, even if you don't have a forearm strain or a flexor strain or some kind of prelude to it, sometimes you don't. And sometimes it's kind of out of nowhere, which like listening to those guys describe the anatomy and all the strains and forces it's it's shocking that it doesn't happen even more than it does because you know if if we tried to throw with the force that

they throw with there would be sproing instantly like we we couldn't even generate that force but you know i'm so resentful of you introducing sproing because now when we talk about this potentially devastating injury, I'm going to laugh, Ben. Well, we still cheer you up a little bit to think of this whimsical sound that UCL snapping doesn't actually make. But really, that's why we don't see pitchers throwing even harder than they do. Like we've seen, we've seen the maximum velocity, not really increase all that much over the past several years, even as lots more pitchers have clustered closer to that maximum. And that just seems to be because there is an upper limit, basically like how much tension that and torque that ligament can sustain. And I'm

sure there's some genetic variation there. And I guess you could have someone with just like a frequently strong UCL or no UCL if you're RIDIC or whatever. But like, for the most part, there's a limit there. And Glenn was telling me that when they've done cadaver testing, that the cadaver UCLs cannot withstand the strain of just a regular kind of throwing motion. Now, they are cadavers. Wait, how do they make the cadavers throw baseball pens? That's an excellent question. You know, I'm just here to submit that there are a lot of reasons I'm not a doctor and make cadaver throw baseball high on

the list. Yes. So the fact that the cadaver's arms go flying when you try to subject the UCL to that force, obviously a little bit different from a healthy and living young athlete doing the same. But still, there are tolerances there that just are not high enough to sustain this. And that's why it keeps happening. And that's why it's going to keep happening. And so you see staffs get depleted. And sometimes there's very little warning.

Sometimes it's like Luis Garcia, right, Where there wasn't really like a tremor before the shock, you know, it just happened. It just snapped. And that's sort of what Glenn was like, you know, it can sometimes just take one pitch because the, the, this torque is so strong that like, if the other parts there that are kind of cushioning the UCL don't do their part, then it's broing. It doesn't necessarily need to take tons of wear and tear. It might just take that one traumatic delivery. So you have just pitching staffs that are just decimated by this stuff constantly. And that data that I cited from 2010 to 2014, that might be a bit out of date. Stan

was saying that there are way more Tommy John surgeries, certainly at the minor league level, than there were back then. And it could be because mechanically, those guys are not as refined, right? And so major league guys, they might have the mechanics that allow them to do it and sustain it for longer. Whereas if you're just kind of wildly throwing but still throwing really hard, then you might be more likely to spring. So I think, you know, you look at some of these teams and I mean, the Braves are doing just fine, but their staff has been depleted. The Astros, they came into the season without a lot of pitching depth, which was something that everyone was talking about then.

And they've lost a good deal of it, right? And the Twins, you know, the Twins are doing well too, but losing Malley is a big blow to them too. And it really,

like not only does it suck when one of these guys goes down, but it also sucks because you're constantly in a state of not knowing when someone will go down. And the track record of being healthy and durable is no guarantee whatsoever that they won't spring on the very next pitch. So you're kind of in a constant state of like, please be OK. Please hold up. I don't want to lose you for the next 18 months or so. So it's not a great state of like, please be okay. Please hold up. I don't want to lose you for the next

18 months or so. So it's not a great state of affairs. It's not a brand new state of affairs either, but it continues to suck. It's one of those things where you, you think about what our understanding, like our anatomical understanding was when people started playing baseball compared to what it is now. And on the one hand, it's like, wow, we can like, you know, we have Tommy John surgery. Well, this is an incredible thing, right? It's so amazing that like these guys, and then you're like weirdly less worried about them for a while. Well, I just fixed it. So like, you know, it's going to be like me when I test negative for COVID. I'm like, I won't get it for a little while. Yeah. It's almost like the Peltzman effect, which I bring up from time to time, which is basically

like maybe you wear a bike helmet and so you are riding a little more riskly because subconsciously you think, well, if I do a header here, at least I have a helmet. You're not thinking that necessarily, but below the surface, you might take more risks or be inclined to take more risks because you have more protection it could be a sort of similar thing where it's like well if something springs we can fix it whereas in the past that might have been career ending you're really you're really committed to spring i know i guess i guess i'm really embracing this but but in the past that would have been the end of your career in most cases, many cases.

Whereas now, it's still sort of like, well, it's an epidemic. It's a really bad thing about baseball, but it's not necessarily ending careers. So can we just tolerate this constant risk and this ever-present threat? And I've talked about this before, but I think the only thing you can do is find a way to make pitchers throw max effort less often. Right. forces. It's all like very finely balanced where you're basically throwing as hard as your body can withstand as those weak points of the arm can withstand. And so if you're constantly throwing, you're right on the knife's edge when it comes to the surgical knife, right? Because you're throwing a hundred. That's why I'm always just in a constant state of terror about Jacob deGrom and just like, take a little off, Jacob, because you could still be effective and it would really be a load off.

So that's what all the studies show. Like it's, yeah, on the whole, maybe a harder throwing pitcher is more likely to get hurt than a softer throwing pitcher. But it's really the range, the variability within that one pitcher's velocity range. Even if you're a hard thrower, if you take a little bit off, then that's good. If that's protective, if you're constantly throwing as hard as you possibly can, then that's just going to take its toll inevitably. So there has to be some mechanism to protect pitchers from themselves and convince teams to protect pitchers by having them pace themselves.

And I just cannot think of a more effective way to do that than to try to continue to lower the number of pitchers on the active roster. There are resistance and problems, as Mork and Sword was saying on one of last week's episodes, but I think it's got to be done for the good of the game and for pitchers' health. I was going to say, I do wonder, knowing what we know now, if we went back in time, would we have baseball?

Would people be like, this is a reasonable sacrifice to make in your elbow? If you knew the damage it could do, but you didn't yet know that we would eventually have the means of repairing it in a way that preserved careers and allowed guys to really come back and pitch well. Like, when we have our sport, you know, when we're like, it pulls all the stuff apart. Torque, torsion. Like, ugh.

I'd like to think that... Exactly. Spry. I'd like to think that the entertainment value is net good. And even if guys get hurt, if they have great success for a while, then maybe it's worth it to them in the long run. At least with something like a UCL injury, it's not necessarily something that will handicap you in your post-playing life. So that's some consolation, I suppose. But it really is like you would think that everything would be pointing toward fewer injuries because we have better treatments. We have miraculous surgeries

that would have seemed miraculous, right? Just being able to replace a UCL. They seem miraculous now. Ben, did you hear this thing where they're making cadavers or baseballs? That too. Miraculous. I guess they always probably could have done that if they just wanted to be. You know, I'm happy to donate my body to science, but I don't want to think about what science is going to happen after that. Like, you know, I'll be dead.

It's not my business anymore. Yes, exactly. Exactly. But you'd think like with all the strengthening programs we have and all the knowledge about how pitching when you're fatigued can do damage. And we don't see young pitchers racking up huge pitch counts and innings counts and pitchers just on a whole, like all the individual pitchers. They're throwing fewer pitches and they're having more rest between outings and all these things that we thought would be protective. And yet there seemed to be as many injuries as ever. And I think it's because of the max effort. You know, not that there weren't always injuries. Of course, there were. And when there were injuries, there was often no remedy, really. But obviously, it wasn't diagnosed as well. And pitchers weren't as forthcoming about those things, especially because there was only so much you could actually do about it. But

you'd think that we would have solved this, and if anything, it seems to be getting worse, kind of paradoxically, counterintuitively. But I don't think it's necessarily a mystery why. I think we kind of have an inkling of why it's happening and there just has to be a collective will to do something about it. So, given all that though, I was thinking, did you see the quotes from Jack Flaherty about his velocity? Yeah, I did. So, Jack Flaherty is tired of being asked about his diminished pitch speed. Right. And I'm quoting here from Jeff Jones, Cardinals reporter. And here's what Flaherty said. The next time somebody wants to mention the velocity on my fastball, just I'm not going to answer that question. Like, I'm going to play with the velocity of my fastball based on what the game calls for. I can get outs if I need to get outs at 95, I'm going to play with it. I've always played with it. I've thrown fricking fast balls at 87 before in games when I've been at my best. I'm just saying because y'all want to make a big deal out of it and I'm tired of it and I'm not. It's so ridiculous. I'm going to go for what

the game calls for and that's part of pitching. So if you want to ask, you don't understand the art of pitching. I'm going to go with what the situation calls for and what the game calls for. You have to manage pitch count and manage the way that the game goes. There are certain times when you up it and now you're going to start seeing 94, 5, 6. Certain times you might need to be like, OK, dude, the situation calls for it. You adjust. That's how the game goes. And then I guess the reporter said, we don't know that unless we ask.

And then he said, well, then you don't understand pitching. So it got a little combative, which I guess is not a first for Cardinals pitchers in the media, maybe. At least he didn't blame Wilson Contreras. That was nice of him. I will admit that I have not listened to the week's first episode because, again, I was watching Stranger Things. Yeah, very important. But it seems like the vibes over there are not good, Ben. Yeah.

It would appear that the vibes in Cardinal Sand are pretty bad. I mean, like, this is just such a silly and unnecessarily combative thing to say. Like, I understand it has to be deeply frustrating, right? Like, there have been times in Jack Flaherty's career where he has been just wonderful, right? Like, that 2019 season he had was so good. And he was so good. And then this year he has not been so good, you know, it has been, and it's, it's been a while since he's been, even if you're just looking at ERA, like it's, it's been a while since he's been good. So that's not great.

I guess that there's a version of this answer that could be informative and less combative, right? Where, like, maybe a guy throws a lot of different kinds of fastballs, and they operate within different velocity bands, and they have different, you know, shapes, and they move in different ways. And so, the game situation—but that's not what he's—that's not, I don't think, what he meant. velocity bands and they have different you know shapes and they move in different ways and so the game situation but that's not what he's that's not i don't think what he meant like i don't think that that's he's just yeah he's just talking about his four-seamer right like yeah the thing reason i brought this up is that like i want pitchers to do what he's saying that he's doing. Right. So, if that's the actual explanation for diminished velocity, then I would like to support that, if anything. Sure.

And I think there is something to be said for the idea that we're all hyper-focused on pitch speed, right? Yes. And probably to our evaluative, that's hard to say, detriment, right? Probably, yeah. There might be things that we overlook. Right. Deception, command, whatever it is, right? Yeah.

And so we are all hyper-focused on velocity. It's not just the pitchers themselves and the teams. It's also the media. It's the scouting industry. I mean, we're all looking at the radar gun or looking at, you know, the cameras and computers, right? Kind of prefer calling it the radar gun, even if there's no real radar gun involved, even if it's not some scout holding up a gun somewhere. But that still happens sometimes. But then sometimes you'll be in a setting where somebody says without thinking, you're going to get your gun out?

And then you're like, oh, we've gone into a very bad place. Yes, right. So I guess that's kind of contributing to the problem potentially because if a pitcher were doing what Jack Flaherty says he's doing, and there are some pitchers who obviously do take a little off at times. I mean, Justin Berlander has been famous for doing that. And Shoya Otani has done that at times. But it used to be very common. And I've talked about and written about that's less common, like the variation between pitch speeds, your same pitches. It's smaller than it used to be because it's just closer to max effort all the time.

So if you had a throwback, and maybe Sandy Alcantara does this to some extent, just to pace himself. If you had someone who's pacing themselves and they were constantly getting questioned about velocity, that'd be bad, right? Because that would be like reinforcing the idea that you have to throw as hard as you possibly can

at all times. And especially if it's a young guy coming up and maybe it's an amateur player at showcases or it's someone in the minors and they're just trying to conserve some energy and not to put too much strain on themselves. And yet the scouts for their own team, for rival teams, for the media, whoever it is, if they're constantly reporting like, well, where was he sitting? Where was he maxing out? You know? And so if you were intentionally taking some speed off, then you

would almost have to be shouting that from the rooftops and saying, no, that's what I'm, that's on purpose. Yeah. Because otherwise people are going to think you can't do it or that you're hurt or something, you know, something's wrong with you. And that's kind of the catch-22 because, like, it is important, you know? How hard you throw is very important. It's important. I mean, it's not the entire picture. It's far from the entire picture, but it's probably the most important single piece of the picture. And there have been innumerable studies showing that, you know, with Jack Flaherty even, I saw, I think think Tom Tango was tweeting out how much more effective his fastballs are when they're thrown harder.

I mean, that's not surprising. It matters. So, if someone sees that you're not throwing as hard, then they might lower their evaluation unless they know, oh, that's what he's doing. And pitchers aren't really being asked to do that these days. Now, I'm not saying I think that's the entire explanation for Jack Flaherty not throwing as hard as he used to. And Dan Szymborski of FanCrafts was kind of fact-checking him a little on Twitter and noted that, you know, because Flaherty was saying he's thrown 87 in games when he's been at his best. And Dan pointed out he's thrown 21 fastballs in his career at 87 or slower. All but five were this season.

Right. And two were in a June 2021 game when he was pulled after three with five walks. And one was in the June 21 game when he was pulled with shoulder pain. So the only times he's done it are this season and games where he was pitching really poorly or hurt. So it's, you know, fact check, not entirely true. Like some number of Pinocchios there probably. And I sympathize because like if the explanation is that he just can't throw as hard as he used to,

well, what is he going to say? Like it's probably not fun to be reminded of that and question about that constantly. And there are pitchers who have to make the adjustment when they can't throw as hard anymore and they have to learn to get by with diminished velocity. And some pitchers have done that really effectively. But coming out like he's in a walk here, right? It's a contract here. I mean, is he going to want to come out and say, I can't throw that hard anymore? Maybe not. Does he want to have his nose rubbed in the fact that he can't throw

that hard anymore? Probably not. So I get why it wouldn't be super pleasant to be asked about that if there's nothing you can do about it or if it really is part of the plan to some extent. So I'm just saying, I don't think that's the entire explanation for why he's not throwing as hard. But the point is taken, I think, or should be taken, that there is something to the idea of taking something off and pacing yourself. And if everyone constantly piles on anyone who's doing that, then we might drum that behavior out of the game even more than it already has been. Yeah, I think that that's well noted i mean i think the the i imagine that the frustrating thing for flarity is that like let's say starting tomorrow the assembled um cardinals beats for like fine we're not going to ask you about velocity well he still has to help account for why he's not as good as he used

to be right he's still it's wilson contraris's fault i mean i know he's dhing now but still he's around well sure but, you know what I mean? Like, the question is being asked not just in service of, like, idle curiosity about fastball velocity. Like, what they're trying to figure out is, like, dude, we saw you in 2019 when you were so, so good. so, so good. And you were throwing almost two full ticks harder, at least on your four-seamer, than you are now. And so, okay, maybe what you're doing velocity-wise isn't indicative of injury or decline, but is purposeful strategy. Well, that purposeful strategy isn't resulting in effective outings. So, okay, let's take that explanation. Maybe we take that at face value. We still need to interrogate it further because now you need to help us understand what are the criteria you're using to keep

adjusting velocity up and down. How are your other pitch? How are your other pitches playing off of diminished velocity on your fastball? You know, like even if we took him at his word on this stuff, like we still have to try to answer the question. Now I think that there can be room and I, I'm, I don't say this to accuse the St. Louis beats of anything to be clear. Like, you know, I think that the velocity piece has probably been at least diagnosed, if not like fully teased out from him. And so now it's like, okay, well now the project is figuring out like what's wrong and they're going to keep doing that. And that's a reasonable thing for beat writers to do. That's sort of their job is to figure out why one of the, you know, why a 27 year old, one of the guys who they were

hoping would have a big bounce back and be an important part of that staff and really help to stabilize that rotation hasn't been able to do that. And you kind of got to figure out the answer to that. And I can totally understand how as a human person who does your job in public like it probably really sucks for everyone to keep noticing it's not going well but like it is but i i think your point is a good one which is that like we should not just we shouldn't assume oh well velocity's down that's it you know that's where the analysis begins i think and like there might be that might you know that might, you know, for some guys, that's just going to be it. Yeah. For some guys, that's going to be the thing.

It's like, you used to throw two or three takes harder than you do now. You throw less hard now and stuff doesn't play as well as it did. And that stuff's getting beat in the zone and it's running into barrels and all of this stuff, right? Like, sometimes that's the end of the explanation. Sometimes it's the beginning of the explanation. Because sometimes you're like, you're not throwing as hard but you're still really good what's up with that cool thing that i think that all of this is a long way of saying the bad news for flaherty is that he's just not very good on a team that has like it seems to be

in an incredible amount of disarray and is grasping for answers as to why it's in that disarray. And we have collectively decided, I think correctly, that blaming it entirely on their new catcher is probably not a satisfactory answer. So you're going to go rooting around for other stuff. And one of those things might be diminished velocity, but there's probably other stuff there too. I think, again, the bad news for Flaherty is that like, it's not like they're going to pull back the curtain and be like, well, the VLO is bad, but all this other stuff is good. It's like, no, it's all pretty bad right now. Yeah. In his defense, I suppose his max speed on a four-seamer this year is 97.6, which is roughly what it was in 2018 when he was a good rookie.

So he is capable or has at least been capable of throwing that hard, I guess, sporadically. But yeah, it's not been good. I want to start just blaming Wilson Contreras for things that go wrong in my own life. Just like, I lost my keys. Wilson, where are my keys? Can't find. Wilson Contreras, you've done it again. Maybe Wilson should be the new Morgan, the name that you just shout when we're blaming someone for something.

No, but see, when we call out Wilson, it's like we're calling out to the volleyball, right? We realized it was a volleyball? Yes. We realized it was a soccer ball. No, it's a volleyball. I'm mixing up our fact check. a volleyball or did we realize it was a soccer ball no i'm getting it's a volleyball right i'm mixing up our fact check yeah but some guys i mean you have shane bieber for instance who is still quite effective with the slower pitches or or clayton kershaw who we talked about now

you know those are outliers clayton kershaw is not a great comp for your average pitcher who loses velocity because he's clayton kershaw is not a great comp for your average pitcher who loses velocity because he's Clayton Kershaw. And those guys have incredible command and other reasons why they can succeed like that. But it can be done. It's not necessarily something that spells the end of your career if you're a starter and you have other ways to compensate for that. But it's just it's striking when you look around and Atlanta's rotation is screwed up. And then you look at the Mets rotation and the Mets, I really like the return on investment thus far for Mets pitching. It's not been great. Like they had Justin Verlander get his first

win as a Met. He had kind of a vintage Verlander performance on Wednesday. But really, you look at the full season stats for the Mets, like I know going into that game, only the A's had a lower war from their starting pitchers, which is really not what you would have expected from the Mets, who were projected to have maybe the best or second best rotation. And the results just haven't been there. And it's largely guys being unavailable.

And, you know, Verlander's back now and Carrasco's about to be back, it seems like. And it remains to be seen whether Scherzer's neck issue is super serious or not. But all the fears about just like, this is an old team, you know, like the Mets pitching staff so far this year, even with some of their older pitchers often being unavailable, their average weighted pitching age,

31.6 this season, which is a full half year older than the Red Sox who are in second. And that's not so great. The Mets' offense is second oldest behind the Dodgers, too, but that has not been as problematic. And they have younger guys they have called up and could continue to call up. But the vaunted rotation that everyone was like, if they could keep these guys healthy, which I guess was the same thing that we said about the Rangers' rotation. And so far, things have been going better for them despite the absence of DeGrom.

But the Mets, man, they've fallen on some tough times lately, and I don't know whether they're going to be able to depend on that rotation, even though the names on the depth chart are pretty impressive. on the depth chart are pretty impressive. Yeah. It's, um, it, it's one of those things where a couple of months from now, like maybe it all comes together and everyone will be healthy and they'll be pitching grade and no one will be getting checked for foreign substances.

Or if they are, they will be, you know, what's the opposite of sticky. They'll be like sandpaper. No, that'd be probably troublesome. Also they get,

what's the, maybe bone dry, just like bone dry. Um, and we'll be like, Oh, you know, we overreacted. But right now it's like, oh, you know, we're going to go. Things are bad for both New York teams, you know. Yeah, they're not the best. I think that there's.

I mean, the Yankees just played the A's, which is a nice reprieve. So they swept them out of town. But yes, overall, not going great. Yeah, it's not the very best that one can get. The Marlins have a better record than the Mets right now. I was just going to say, speaking of NL East pitching, maybe the most interesting story now is that they just called up Aerie Perez. Yeah, they did.

Who, not to be confused with the Aory Perez outfielder who once played for the Marlins or was on the Marlins. Not that I think a whole lot of people were confusing them, but kind of confusing if you just type in Aory Perez right now into, say, baseball reference and a name comes up with a Marlins cap. And these are not the AORI players you're looking for. Yeah, so one of the very top prospects and top pitching prospects in baseball is coming up to the Marlins, who are now 12-0 in one-run games. They were 10-0 last time I cited that stat.

They're now 12-0, which is a record to start the season, at least. And, I mean, I don't think the Marlins are good, really, like the underlying team. But if you're 12-0 and you're five games ahead of your base runs record because all of those coin flip games have gone your way, then I guess take advantage of it. Although very aggressive because A.R.E. Perez is the youngest pitcher in the majors since Julio Rios debuted. Like young major league pitchers, like 20 year old major league pitchers are almost unheard of at this point, again, because like teams are exercising caution when it comes to young arms.

But you just you don't see this anymore. Like he's going to be 20 years old and 27 days. Like he just turned 20. Yeah, he's a he's a young 20. Yeah. So this is this is like out of another era. And not only is he super young, but he's coming like he he barely was at double A. Right.

But he barely was at AA, right? He had six starts in AA, and he did so well that maybe there was nothing more for him to learn at that level. And it's fairly common for is to be a pitcher these days, welcome to the major Ziri Perez. But I am't pretend that I know what haunts him. But if you're running through the list of things that you're probably actively anxious about as you prepare for your first big league start, I would imagine that there are such pressing concerns, right? Like the start itself and who you're facing and what it's going to be like and where you go. I would be so nervous about getting lost. You know, I would, I would, anyway, I worry about that at ballparks now. Like at the ballpark or on the way to the ballpark? Well, now both, now that you've said that, I meant at the ballpark. I still worry about that at ballparks I haven't been to before. And like, no one cares where I go. I mean, they care. Like,

sometimes you go to the wrong place and they're like, you are not allowed to be here. And then, and then sometimes it really doesn't matter very much, but, um, all of that to say that the, the sproing concern is probably lower on the list, not because it isn't, I would imagine an active background concern for all pitchers all the time, but because there are so many other things that will have, um, pressed their way up to the top of the list of anxieties. Yeah. Probably not helpful to be thinking like, my elbow could blow up at any second now. Right. Helpful in the sense that maybe moderating how hard you throw would be helpful in the long run,

but also for your confidence and your focus and executing pitches, probably best not to have that in the back of your mind. Executing pitches, probably best not to be able to say, I can't worry about it actively. Or you'd go, you'd be so distracted, you'd be anxious to the point of distraction. See, Kat, you can't be on the desk while I'm doing the pod. You're not on the pod. It's not your show. Sorry. You can leave it in because Babby's very cute, but you can't see her because it's not a visual medium. Kat could have filled in for you while you were her because it's it's not a visual medium could have filled in for you well while you were out but it would have been a lot of dead air with an occasional meow yeah the the only the only member of the household who was happy that i was sick was

babs because she's like oh great i get to lay on you for like 12 hours perfect she's not sick anymore i guess so yeah she's all yeah she had very expensive gas she was fine the whole time then i found a little bent. Okay, so people, not everyone's listened to the Patreon pod, but here's a fun preview. We talked about pet stuff. Guess what I found on the rug not long after? Like a perfectly preserved lizard torso. Head, not there.

Lower body, gone. Two perfect hands, though. Miles Michaelis visited your house. Yeah, I think we found the source of Babette's discomfort. Don't come back up on the desk. It's not where you belong. Anyway. So Clayton Kershaw, I just cited as an example of someone who has succeeded tremendously with diminished velocity. I said nigh on earlier in this episode. Here's a word I haven't heard someone say in a while.

This was a quote that Wade Miley gave about Clayton Kershaw after Kershaw's latest excellent outing. He's the best lefty we've seen in this game probably since dad gum Koufax. Dad gum, he said dad gum. I'm not gonna do the accent or anything, but he said that's not like a euphemism for it. That's not like a print friendly substitute for a swear word.

That's what he does. He just said dad gum. Yeah. Now he's from Louisiana. I guess that tracks. I don't know that I've ever heard someone say dad gum in the wild. Yeah. But I live in New York. I guess that's probably not super surprising. But I'm heartened to hear that people still say dadgum. We're probably going to get emails from listeners who say dadgum or know people who say dadgum. But how about that? Wade Miley says dadgum. Probably their dads.

Probably. Best lefty we've seen probably since dadgum Koufax. And dadgum Kershaw is still doing great with diminished velocity. But you know how we celebrated Kershaw recently just on the occasion of his 200th win, just because it was a round number and an occasion to talk about him. Yeah. Well, what about his former teammate, Kenley Jansen, on the occasion of his 400th save, which again is not a stat we would normally make much of. But Kenley Jansen, he has recovered his speed somehow. It has come back to him. He is rejuvenated. He is suddenly excellent. So that's nice to see because we talked about

Craig Kimbrell the other day, and I kind of lumped those guys together in a sense because they have almost the same save total. I think Jansen is just like three ahead of Kimbrell now, and their careers have kind of overlapped, and they have very similar war totals and Jaws totals and that sort of thing. But we talked last time about how Kimbrell is still getting some save opportunities, and I guess even more now because Jose Alvarado, who's been amazing for the Phillies,

he's got elbow issues too. Add him to the list. Everybody's hurt. I guess that means that Craig Kimbrell closer to save situations, which is probably not a happy thought for Phillies fans. But as he has declined and still been given high leverage opportunities, Kenley

Jansen is closing and making it look easy. I mean, he's been never like as terrible as Craig Kimbrell has been when he's bottomed out, but he definitely looked like a diminished version of Kenley Jansen. And now he looks like the same old kenny jansen but like maybe better in some ways like mike petriola just wrote about how not only has the speed come back but the shape of the cutter is different now and it's like getting more rise it's like if anything possibly more unhittable than it used to be so nice to to see him still very much trucking along and of course you know he's had heart concerns and everything, but he's putting together quite a career.

Like, you know, Jaws-wise, he's basically like neck and neck with Lee Smith. So if you think Lee Smith should have been a Hall of Famer, I know Kenley Jensen doesn't have as many saves as Lee Smith, and I'm kind of not so high on closers typically as Hall of Fame candidates anyway. But Kenley Jensen's like as close as you can come to one these days, I think. I think that that's right.

And it's, you know, it's cool when guys can kind of recapture form. And when they make, you know, he was so, we felt for so long like we knew exactly what we were getting with Kenley. Like literally from a pitch perspective, right? And then, you know, things sort of declined and drifted and things weren't as effective for him. And then suddenly he wasn't on thegers anymore which still feels wrong yeah even though this isn't new now you know it's a i mean it's a new not dodgers but um it's it's nice it's nice to see him resurgent i've always been a plus we love a we love a converted catcher because a knockout reliever we We love that. Yeah.

One of the just most colorful, like just most enjoyable career progressions and trajectories that any pitcher has had in this era. Just converting to pitching, then just having the dominant unhittable, like as close as you can come to Mariano Cutter. Yeah. And then seeming to fade,

seeming to lose a little speed, and then suddenly it comes back with like a new and even improved Cutter potentially. And no pitch clock

violations for him. No pitch clock violations. That was a big concern too, like slow worker. And he's been totally fine with the clock thus far. Yeah. Yeah.

He's just humming along. Did you find that on the violations leaderboard? Yes. Yes, I did. Handy's just humming along. Did you find that on the violations leaderboard? Yes, I did. Handy, handy little tool. Courtesy of Van Graffs. Good tool. quite a few over the past few days, the L.A. De La Cruz game when he had three batted balls in the same game. I think two homers in a double that were 116 miles per hour or faster.

This was in a triple A game. But as everyone noted, no MLB player, no MLB team has done that in a single game in the whole StatCast era. All the games when Aaron Judge and John Carlos Stanton were single game in the whole stack cast era like all the games when when aaron judge and john carl stanton were playing together in the same game like the yankees never had three batted balls that hard in a single game which seems kind of incredible ellie ellie de la cruz did it in the same game 116.6 117.1 118.8 and three two of the three were batting right-handed, and the third was batting left-handed because he's a switch hitter, too.

And he's 6'5", and he's 21, not that much older than Perez. And he's been tearing up AAA, not AA. So in theory, he's even closer. So when are we going to get to see Elie De la Cruz? It's got to be sometime soon, right? I mean, do you want my honest answer? When will we see him? When does he deserve to be seen? I guess those are— Yeah, those feel like related, thankfully, but distinct questions.

Yes. Related, thankfully, but distinct questions. Yes. But yeah, I mean, I think we're getting to a point where it's like, let's give him a new, a harder challenge and see how he does with it, I think is what the answer should be. Will it be the answer we get? I don't know, Ben. Yeah. I mean, I know it's tough to displace Kevin Newman.

Kevin Newman's got a stranglehold on that shortstop job in Cincinnati, you know, just running that 49 WRC+. So that's tough, I know, for a shortstop to break onto that roster right now. Like, why would you even think that there's room there? Yeah, it's tough, these positional logjams. You know, sometimes you're just blocked by Kevin Newman and what are you going to do? Right? Just unfortunate situation. Yeah. I don't want to be, like, jaded or cynical, but sometimes I feel both, you know.

Well, whenever he arrives, that will be quite fun. Oh, yeah. It's going to be, I just, I feel like we're in a, we're standing on the precipice of just like a great era for huge guys, you know? I don't even, I think that, oh, I'm about to invite something where we're going to get a lot of emails. I think that we need to fill out the beef boy taxonomy in a, in a more complete way because like L.A. De La Cruz, it's different, right? I mean, he is, he is a huge guy. Like, you know, he's 6'5".

6'5", 200. Aerie Paris, 6'8", 220. He's just enormous. He's a construction cream. So like, but it does feel like we're we're on the the precipice of like a a big uh good huge guy era you know maybe it's just a a tall guy era right because we and and like a tall at the at a position you don't expect era and we've been trending this way especially at short stuff for a while now right like we got big we got some we got some strapping fellas at short these days

um in defiance of the name um but like we're doing we're starting to approach a new thing right and once we have like once o'neill cruz comes back um healthy and then when you have ellie in the majors it's like like, we're going to be doing, we're going to be like, well, you know, that's what we're going to be, what we're going to be like.

And we can't call them beef boys. I mean, they are like, but we gotta, I think we need to diversify or not diversify the taxonomy, but like, you know, we have some,

we have some work to do to acknowledge the, the diversity within the taxonomy. Yes. And Beef Boy might not be, I don't remember how it goes in the order. I don't think that's the highest order, right? I think Beef Boy is a sub-classification of a different thing that I don't have a good name for yet. You're talking like the cat diagram where it's like chonker and mega chonker, that kind of thing?

Oh, no, I don't know what that is, but it sounds like a thing I would like. You probably also do. I do like those big chonker cats. All those big chonker cats. They're just like little gifts. I mean, they're not little, but. Yandy Diaz, by the way,

has equaled his home run total from last year already. Maybe the answer is that he had heard about ground beef and hated it. Maybe. Maybe we lit a fire under that he's charbroiled now by our nickname. Yeah. So whether he's Launch Angus or Launch Meat or Meat Loft or whatever we decided on, he's still just cranking dingers out and he looks very, very intimidating at the plate. OK, last couple of things.

One, maybe during your illness, you may have missed an article that Kylie McDaniel did about Shohei Ohtani's free agent earnings. $500 million. Well, yeah. So he surveyed the experts, right? This was kind of a Krasnick, Jesse Rogers style exercise, but specifically about Shohei Otani. He just surveyed the baseball people, 26 executives, agents, and insiders. I always wonder, like, what qualifies as an insider? You know, like, who's an insider who is not an executive and an agent? I want to talk about the taxonomy of insiders while we talk about the taxonomy of beef boys.

But he surveyed these 26. Have you seen the results or can I quiz you about what you think the 26 said? I saw. You saw the headline? I saw the headline. And I was like, yeah, that sounds about right. And then I went back to season one of Stranger Things. They were so young, Ben.

They really were. They're going to be 90 when they see it. They're all as big as Yuri Perez now. Yeah, this is what happens. You don't pay your writers, and then you're going to get 37-year-olds in the midst of a crisis in the next season of Stranger Things. This is what happens. Right. So they asked, Kyle, you got 26 responses from the panel.

And here were their predictions for Otani's contract. There were six people who said under 500 million. Okay. There were 14 who said 500 to 549 million. And then there were six who said 550 or more. Whoa. So it's kind of like a bell curve sort of situation here. So then it averages out to 500 or something?

Yeah, 524. Four, yeah. 524.3 million. Wow. What Kylie did, there were a few predictions that were like he'll take a very short term deal with just an astronomical average annual value. So he sort of he dropped those and just took the ones that actually predicted that he would try to maximize the total dollars and go long term. And with those, it was like an average of 11 years and $524.3 million, which is a $47.5 million average annual value worth every penny, I'm sure.

The high bids, basically. So there were two deals that went over the 600 mark. Wow. the 600 mark. So there was an 11-year 605, which is 55 per, and a 12-year 600 million. So 50 million AAV and 11 years, $600 million total price tag. Not out of the question, according to the agents, insiders, executives, et cetera. But basically six said under 500, six said over 550. And then the bulk of the responses were somewhere right in the middle, which is, again, like not super surprising. You know, it almost has to start with a five.

I mean, barring something going very wrong over the rest of the season, it's hard to imagine that not happening. Yeah. going very wrong over the rest of the season it's hard to imagine that not happening yeah big numbers but uh as kylie explains uh unique unique player unique talent so i mean he was saying that maybe teams would be wary obviously like that amount of money they're always going to be wary but like they can't model Otani really because he's one of a kind. So how do you model the risk there? Is it like more risk because the extra strain on him physically or is it less risk because if he gets hurt doing one thing, he could maybe just do the other thing, right? And like if he hurt his arm somehow, he could be a star

position player. We've seen him DH certainly when his arm somehow, he could be a star position player. We've seen him DH certainly when his arm has not allowed him to pitch. So there's that. And like, how do you project it? No one has done this in so long that there's no like aging curve for two-way players. Like you can project him as two different players. But is that valid? No one knows. There's no like risk model or projection system based on like historical comps that would really tell you anything at this point. So it's just kind of going in and hoping that he can keep doing what he has been doing.

funny in the moment, but like in hindsight, it makes the various teams that were like, oh, we can't sign this guy or that guy or this other dude this offseason. It makes it funny because like on the one hand, you're like, yeah, okay. Some of those contracts were sizable. We talked a lot about that in the offseason. There were guys who signed really big, long, lucrative contracts. But then you hear these numbers and you're like, this isn't about, oh, well, we saved $20 million last offseason, so now we're in the Otani sweepstakes. This is about having will, right? This is about payroll will and having the will to spend

because you're not saving your way to signing Otani, right? First of all, don't be cheap, you know, leading up to Otani. He's going to know. He's going to look at your club and be like, cheap club. You know, you're not paying guys. You're not trying to bring in big free agents. You're bringing in B-list guys. And he wouldn't say it that way because he's nice

and probably wouldn't talk about other players that way. But like, you know, this isn't about a couple of bits and bobs and spare relievers here and there. This is about having the will to be like, this is gonna be for

a front office that is probably even if he goes to a club, which I'm sure he will, that has a history of spending money, is probably going to feel like a terrifyingly large sum. And you just have to have the will to do it and go, but we get Otani at the end, you know? Yeah. So the insiders were asked where he would go, but most of them didn't answer that because I guess it's just too far away or they just didn't want to. Or because they're cowards.

Yeah. But only a handful of teams were mentioned by the people who mention any teams. It's just Dodgers, Dodgers, Dodgers, you know. Yeah. Some Mets and Yankees and Padres just because you can't count the Padres out ever. Because why not? Someone said Giants. I guess the Giants tried to sign every other free agent.

And one person said the Mariners, which— I was not asked if anyone is wondering. Kylie did not call me. You're not the insider who said Mariners? No, I'm not. It's not me. Are you an insider? Would you classify yourself?

Are we insiders? I don't think I'm an insider. I could not pass myself off as an insider would you classify yourself are we insiders i don't think i don't think i'm an insider i cannot pass myself off as an insider yeah i um i'm like um i'm more inside than some i suppose i'm not all the way outside but i'm definitely not all the way inside well sure like what what would be what would that what would that mean ben what would it mean to be all the way inside i guess insider is either you're working for a team or you have built yourself as an mlb insider for some media outlet right yeah i think breaking news and transactions and stuff i think that my when i think to myself you know as i'm lying in bed at night who are the mlb insiders you know anything about that right before you go to

sleep yeah i think to myself well yeah it's people who work for teams or like often people who work for the league. And I will not, I do not say this to in any way slight our friends and colleagues who work over there, but like work for the league in a non-media capacity, right? Like who actually work for the league in a administrative, rulemaking, regulatory role, right? Like who actually work for the league in a administrative rulemaking regulatory role, right? Because that's what it's like to work for Major League Baseball. And then, yes, a handful of national writers who I think of as being particularly plugged in, but I have a take, Ben. You want my take? Okay. Yeah. particularly plugged in, but I'm, I have a take Ben, you want my take? Okay. Yeah. I think, um, being an insider is a lot like having a nickname. You can't give it to yourself. Ah, okay. Yeah. You can't bestow insider status upon yourself. Yeah. One can't be like, I'm a, I'm an insider. And there are probably guys,

you know, folks for whom that is true. Like, you know, if Passon was like, I'm an insider, I'd be like, all right, Jeff, chill. But I would also be like, yeah, that's true. But like, you know, sometimes you'll see folks on Twitter being like, I'm a, you know, they have like insider in their bio and I'm like, no, I don't think that that's right. You know, and I wouldn't say that to them, especially in front of other people, because I wouldn't be generous, but I do think it. Yeah. Yeah. You dip the toe and maybe you're not an insider. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that brings me to the last thing I wanted to talk about here. Mariners related, because I've been thinking there are two teams that I look at, two of the most exciting teams of 2022 who had obvious needs and weaknesses and didn't really address them. And so I'm constantly looking at them and thinking if they had addressed them, how much more fun would they be right now? The Mariners are one of them because the Mariners have had fantastic pitching. In fact, they are leading the major leagues in fan graphs war by a lot.

Yeah. Right? But there was a but coming there, obviously, and it's not Kyle Rowley's. They have the 18th best position player war. Yeah. And the WRC Plus is significantly below average. It's 19th. And this is not a shocker.

Like some individual players not excelling. Surprising. You know, Julio hasn't fully Julio'd yet. Yeah. I think he'll be fine. You'd expect that he will. Right. Yeah.

And then some of the additions haven't really worked out so well thus far, including some that I thought were smart additions, like Colton Wong, let's say, right? They're just some guys who you might expect to pick up. But that was kind of the weakness, right? And you certainly mentioned over the offseason. A couple times, in fact. At least that, hey, they got there. They finally got over the hump. They made it back to the playoffs. Like, keep the good times rolling here, you know? Like, don't stop now. Yeah. And they just didn't do a whole lot of investing in the roster in addition to the investments that they had already made.

And they certainly have made some significant and meaningful ones. And Luis Castillo has been as great as advertised, right? What a—I got— can we take a moment? Sure. Can we just take a brief moment to just, he's so fun to watch, you know? It's so, it's so nice. So that part's good. But then.

That part's great. Right. But there's a bit of an imbalance there. And the other team that I'm putting in this category is the Baltimore Orioles, who are off to a strong start. A stronger start. Rip-roaring, in fact. Yeah, a stronger start than the Mariners. They held their own against the Rays recently.

Yeah, they did. They're not just frisky. They're a good competitive team, I think. And yet, they had an obvious need in an area of weakness as well. And it's kind of, you would hope that the Mariners and the Orioles could Mariners pitching, and you could give the Mariners the Orioles hitting and position playing, then boy, what a team that would be. I have not read the CBA yet, but I think that's against it. Well, I'm just like logistically complicated because of where they are relative to one another, like physically, you know, it would be so tricky. Right. So the Orioles are middle of the pack pitching wise

maybe a little lower the mariners are middle of the pack hitting wise a little lower probably and then if you look at the mariners pitching is again top of the heap and then if you look at the Orioles hitting, it is also quite strong. They are seventh in the majors in WRC+. So every time I look at these teams, I think these are fun, like really great cores here. You know, maybe even more so in the Orioles case because of how they've started. how they've started and they're in just such an extremely tough division though that that that kind of raises the bar for how good they have to be in order to make the playoffs and each time i look at them i just think if you had pushed in the chips a little farther like this could really be a super fun story because gosh the orioles like they just have so much talent and there's maybe more on the way.

But, like, you look at some of the, like, Adley Rutschman is an absolute superstar. Yeah. And, like, there's just so many other good players. And they've done a good job of developing players and getting the best out of some players who not that much was expected from. And just finding kind of a supporting cast and contributors. But the pitching, other than, you know, when Grayson Rodriguez is going and that often looks quite good. Yeah. But and they've had great finds on in some areas of the roster.

Right. And, you know, like, look at what Yenier Cano has done. Right. Like that kind of came out of nowhere. of the roster, right? And, you know, like, look at what Yenir Cano has done, right? Like, that kind of came out of nowhere. But, like, if they had just gone out and signed some pitching to go along with the hitting and just evened out, balanced out the roster a little bit,

then, like, watch out. So, and I guess we could say this about various teams and just say, well, if they had just signed some more guys, like there are only so many guys. So not every team can be good every year and not every team that is maybe not quite good enough can get good enough while all the other teams that are already good enough can stay good enough. You know, like there's a finite, I guess, amount of high level talent here. a finite, I guess, amount of high-level talent here, but it's not like the Mariners and the Orioles were trying really hard and making runs at a lot of top free agents, and they just somehow fell short. They were just like, yeah, we're happy with what we have for now.

Right. I think that, now I'm just like, but how good would Cano be if he were on the ranks? It would be almost impossible for him to be better. Yes, he has a zero ERA. So that's about as good as ERA is. He has not yet allowed a run. He has been pretty superlative. He's been pretty superlative. He's been superlative.

You're not pretty superlative. You're just superlative. So I think that you're right to say that not every team is going to be in the running for every player. And there's a finite number of good players. And those good players come with a particular price tag. And you're not going to win out on all of them, even the ones that you really go in for and try to recruit. But you don't sign any of the ones you don't try to sign. So I think that the decision to sit out is what is often so frustrating. I think that fans react very differently.

And it's hard for them to know, of course, what are earnest, real efforts to try to sign a guy and what is sort of CYA after the fact. Oh, we were in on that guy. Did, oh, we were in on that guy. You know, did you hear that we were in on that guy? Like, there's a lot of that. But there are teams that are trying and are very earnestly attempting to sign guys

to make their club better, and then they lose out on some of them because another team offers more money or a guy has some sort of personal preference that isn't entirely about the money. But I think that more often than not, the money wins out. And so if you're willing to spend it, you are, even if you don't get every guy you want, you're going to get some of the guys you want. And they have committed some amount of payroll. I don't want to like downplay it, especially what

the Mariners have done in terms of extending Castillo after they traded for him, certainly extending Julio. But when you look at where their payroll sits, just like right now for the Mariners, they are 18th. They're tied with the Twins. This is not their luxury tax payroll. Their luxury tax payroll is high, but in terms of real payroll, they're at 157. It goes down in the coming years, even as they bring on some of their bigger commitments.

Obviously, Baltimore has a long way to go. They only have 63 million in payrolls, 85 million in luxury tax payroll. I should say that the Mariners' luxury tax payroll sits around $200 million, so we should be fair to them. But you should probably not be satisfied with one appearance in the playoffs. I think in the offseason, I encouraged them to be like Kylo Ren. And I meant that in a very specific way of saying,

more over and over again. Just that one moment in the film. But don't try to kill more camel because he seems nice. Yeah. And like the Mariners, they signed Julio. So they did that. The Orioles haven't even done that aspect of things. They haven't signed Adley Rutschman. They have basically no long-term commitments whatsoever, like zero dollars beyond next year, I think. So it's just like they're so close. And maybe they thought we won't be that close again. Maybe they thought we're going to run into the plexiglass principle and regression. We talked about this on the Orioles preview because what they're doing is really impressive to have improved by as much

as they did last season. And then thus far, at least not to have taken a step back, but in fact, taken another step forward, seemingly like historically that is extremely rare. And so it would be a shame if they did that and then they did not add. Now, of course, they could add at the deadline potentially once they've established that they're for real. But still, like to come into the season with Cole Irvin, who was sent down in mid-April, or Adam Frazier, who never really seemed to fit that well in that roster anyway. Like Kyle Gibson, OK, like, you know, league average-ish innings eater. Sure, they need someone like that, but that's not like your headline acquisition.

No, it shouldn't be. Exciting team that's on the rise and has this great, young, inexpensive core. Build on the good vibes. Build on the progress. Don't just stop or say, like, we're one year away. So every time i look and they're in roughly the same spot like the mariners right now have a one in four chance to make the playoffs the orioles about one in three different divisional situations obviously but same wildcard race so you know you just kind of wish when i look at those two teams and i see the weaknesses the

the contrasting weaknesses, but the same sort of lack of aggression, at least when it came to this past offseason specifically. Could have done a little more, but they've managed to make it interesting nonetheless, but you'd like to see a little more support from above. Yeah, I think that it's a lot like what we've said over and over again. There are a lot of different modes of talent acquisition in baseball. And right now I think that, you know, you look at the Orioles and what they've done, they've demonstrated that they are really good at the inexpensive ones,

right? The ones where you are able to, because you have the first overall pick, get a generational potentially generational talent in Adley Rutschman. Maybe spend some money while he's not even ARB eligible next year. He's still pre-ARB. So just spend some money because you should do it now. If you are going to constrain yourself and say,

we're not ever going to run a big payroll, well, that's kind of dumb. Don't do that. But if you insist on doing it, deploy the payroll flexibility you have now to win, right? Like, otherwise, what are we doing? Why are we here? You know, if you, you're not going to change divisions in all likelihood, right? Like you're just not. So this is the division you're in. Go in and if you can't do that, then hire someone who can who can like what are we talking about here and with seattle i think part of why i find i'm like granted it's may 11th there's a lot of season left to play and so seattle's fortunes could turn around it would be nice if they could

spend like a day over 500 um but like seattle could go on a run like do i think the rangers are gonna win the west probably not but i look at the West and it's like, well, Houston is vulnerable. They're vulnerable in a way they haven't been in a long time. And that doesn't mean that they won't do things at the deadline to try to get better. That doesn't mean that they can't turn things around. It doesn't mean that the Angels are going to stay in second place in the division. They probably won't do that. Doesn't mean that the Angels are going to stay, you know, in second place in the division. They probably won't do that. But, like, the best team in the division is vulnerable. So, sure seems like this is a year you should try to win the West. Like, this is a year where they could be, you know, justifiably just like, I'm not going to be satisfied by a wild card.

The West is winnable. Let's go win it. Like, I want that energy. And that doesn't seem to be the approach they took. And, you know, did they know that they'd be sitting here on May 11th in fourth place, but that the Astros would only be a game better than them in third? Like, probably not. But maybe bolster your roster better in the offseason so that you're better positioned to take advantage of underperformance above you. I don't know. Who could say?

All right. Let's wrap up with the pass blast, which comes from 2005 and from David Lewis, who is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. 2005 MLB puts minor leaguers in a box. Not literally. Well, kind of literally, I guess. But a 2D box. The batter's box, to be specific. Not like an inhumane kind of confining one.

Stop me if you've heard this before, David says. But in 2005, Major League Baseball wanted to speed up games. To do so, they tried out a new rule in the minor leagues attempting to limit the length of at bats. A new rule ordered hitters to keep at least one foot in the batter's box at all times. If a batter stepped fully out of the box, an automatic strike would be called against them. MLB officials said that if the rule was successful in the minor leagues, it would be called up for use in the majors. Sandy Alderson, MLB executive VP for baseball operations, said the playing rules committee hopes that the adoption of this rule in the minor leagues will encourage players as they progress toward the majors to develop and maintain habits that will improve the pace of play. As part of an initiative to speed up play, the league had shaved 11 minutes

off of the average game length since 2000, but hoped to go even further with additional rules changes. So, like many of the rules changes that were put in place to attempt to speed up the game prior to the pitch clock, it didn't have a whole lot of effect. it did for a year or two and then enforcement would get lax or there'd be loopholes or it just didn't have as dramatic effect as they wanted it to in the first place right because uh it wasn't entirely better stepping out of the box and dawdling and walking around there was some of that certainly but it was also the pitchers playing a big part in that too. So obviously this was not the panacea that MLB wanted. And that's why we got the pitch clock 18 years later. There was a brief moment there where they started doing that stuff in the majors

and it helped. Like, you know, there was a little bit of a downturn in the game lengths, but it wasn't huge and it didn't last very long. And like all the measures were sort of piecemeal and like the enforcement was lacking. And it was just kind of a game by game,

umpire by umpire sort of situation. And no one really wanted to call anyone on it. That was just kind of the consistent theme of a lot of the rules changes like until this year, you know, which they really have made it

consistent and uniform and top down and backed up and whether you like the rules changes or not and i think most people do it's uh like they're actually being enforced which is nice and they're having the intended effect which is satisfying on a certain level once again it's about having the will to do it yes well. Well, we couldn't even get this episode up without another pitcher suffering some sort of forearm ailment. This time it's exciting A's rookie Mason Miller placed on the aisle with forearm tightness. Maybe tightness isn't quite the same as a strain. MRI came back clean for any structural damage. Fingers crossed for no sproing. And the Diekmann watch is on. Jake Diekmann made his Rays debut.

Pitched a scoreless inning. No hits. No walks. One strikeout. However, he hit Harrison Bader with a pitch. That's a zero ERA, but it's a 4.31 FIP. Take that, miraculous Rays. Still, it was his first walkless outing since April 16th.

Maybe they did fix him. Is it too late to lower my estimate? Also, just wanted to relay an update on one of Sam Miller's minor obsessions. I'm sure we must have talked about this in the podcast at some point. I know he wrote about it in 2017. He's been waiting and hoping to see a throw ricochet off of a thrown bat on a play at the plate. So a batter strategically places the bat somewhere near my home plate.

The throw comes in. The throw bounces off the bat and careens away. The runner's safe. It's one of those things that we talked to him about that he's never seen, wanted to see. He had found accounts that it had happened in the past, but had never seen it with his own eyes. And now he has. It actually happened this week, May 9th. The Mariners, Ty France singled, tossed his bat so that it bisected the third baseline a little bit outside of the batter's box. And here's the call. A lot of room out all get to see the thing that we want to see happen on a baseball

field maybe i'll get to see one of my mid-plate appearance pitching changes one of these days. Today's new Effectively Wild theme song comes from Chase Eisman and Tristan Rodman, who collaborated on a song from Paris and Los Angeles as the Gagnés. They've been friends since they met at Toluca Lake Little League. They share a love for Eric Gagné, All-Star Baseball 2002, and the MVP Baseball 2003 soundtrack, and now they love Effectively Wild. If you love Effectively Wild, you can support the podcast by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay almost ad free, and get themselves access to some perks. John M. Bremen, The Challenge Chronicles podcast, Nick Holcomb, Nathaniel Heater, and Greg Stahl.

Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only. And for many patrons at this point, you can be one of them. You can also get access to monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free fan graphs, memberships, and so much more, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. You can also message us through that site if you are a

supporter. If not, you can contact us via email at podcastwithfangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. Baseball podcast. The stat cast is stat blast. TOPS plus when the stats need contrast.

Zips and steamer for the forecast. Common in high. Big boss on a hovercraft. No notes. Minor league free agent draft. Burn the ships. Flames jumping for a nap. Cal FEMA.

Boning on the bat shaft Makers on the butt feet Never say your hot seat Games are always better with the pivot table spreadsheet No ads Subscribers will support us Vroom vroom fast On your slog to rigor mortis Rest in peace Sam

Rest in peace Jeff Rest in peace, Sam. Rest in peace, Jeff. What am I trying to say, Ben? What even words? You know, like if we were picking some, which ones would I pick? Oh, boy. Um...