Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2008: Big Hack Attack

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the sesame-seer Cardinals using a cheeseburger phone to predict home buns (er, runs) by hitters who are dialed in, the varying fortunes of three offseason big spenders (the Mets, Padres, and Rangers) and the stakes of their success, Kumar Rocker’s Tommy John surgery, Dustin May’s flexor strain, the […]

Sometimes I still feel like that little girl Hearing grandma's handheld babies Collecting baseball cards before I could read They say I waste my time Tracking all these stat lines But it's here I've found my kind We're all Effectively Wild Hello and welcome to episode 2008 of Effectively Wild,

a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Meg, how much time have we spent over the years, and this year specifically, speaking about home run celebrations and players predicting things? I think a lot. A lot. Yeah, a lot of time.

A lot of time. I think a lot, you know. them, and then also developing rituals to celebrate home runs. So the Cardinals, not the most fun team in the majors, perhaps this season. We've talked about that too. But now that they've solved their catching problem by reacquiring Wilson Contreras, which is a great move by them, by the way, plugging in Wilson Contreras behind the plate. I really like that for them. And they have allowed four runs in the three games that he's been back there. So how about that? I don't know if he's undergone the William Contreras defensive overhaul, but he's holding

his own. Anyway, the Cardinals have debuted the cheeseburger phone. Okay. So this is not exactly a home run celebration. I think they're one of the few teams, the holdouts, that doesn't have a full home run celebration. Maybe just because the Cardinals haven't been in the most celebratory mood just in general this season, but they do hit a fair number of home runs. So what they're doing now is using a cheeseburger phone to predict

when someone will hit a home run or do something. I'm not sure if it's strictly limited to home runs only. Very hard to explain this tradition. So I will try to let the Cardinals explain it themselves. So here's a clip of Adam Wainwright earlier this week talking to 101 ESPN, the radio station, and explaining the cheeseburger phone. The hamburger phone was Miles Michaels' idea. And we're always on the call, right? Somebody's always on the call, calling somebody. Goldie comes up, I'm on the call. You know what? I'm calling it. You're calling a home run.

You're calling a home run. And so, you know, we look up there and we see the Big Mac sign. And we're like, yeah, we should get, and Miles says, we should get a hamburger phone to represent our calls, but also in honor of Big Mac land. You know, this is part of Bush Stadium. And so we need an actual phone to make these calls to make it more official. And then let's make it a hamburger.

And I'm like, dude, do they even sell hamburger phones? Of course. And sure enough, Alec Burleson brought in the hamburger phone the next day. And it was hilarious. But now when you make a call, you've got to get the phone. You've got to get the hamburger phone out. You've got to pick it up, and you've got to dial the guy's number. And then, you know, there you go.

So last night I called Nolan's home run. But in the first of its kind, I called. I said, look, don't give me high fives after the first home run because Nolan's going to lead off at a home run, and Paul DeYoung's going to come behind him and hit back-to-back home runs to start the inning. You watch. You watch. And Nolan, I've got the phone open.

Nolan goes deep, and everybody's like, are you kidding me? I'm like, don't high-five DeYoung. Don't high-five DeYoung. The pitcher didn't throw him anything close, and they walked Paul DeYoung. So then I took my high-fives. Okay. I don't know if that cleared it up for anyone. I still feel like I'm being punked.

I mean, you sent this to me before we started recording so that I could listen to those audio clips. I was skeptical. I thought I was being had, Ben. I thought you were pulling my leg, as it were. I'm still not convinced that you and Adam Wainwright are engaged in an elaborate conspiracy to make me feel foolish. Yeah, well, I sent you as evidence to back this up

that the Cardinals' Twitter account, in fact, has tweeted photos of Adam Wainwright with the cheeseburger phone. I guess those could be doctored. You can never trust any photos or images you see on the internet these days. But yeah, it appears to be legitimate. What I like about Wainwright's explanation is how he describes the origin story and Miles Michaelis coming up with this. And just very matter-of-factly, just the leap that Michaelis made from like, well, we like to predict things and there's a big max sign. So naturally, we would acquire a cheeseburger phone and use it to make our calls.

It follows. It's logical, right? I mean, if you're in Bush and there's a big back sign and also you like to predict things, then why wouldn't you have a cheeseburger phone on the bench in order to make those calls? I mean, what took them this long to do that? That's what you have to wonder. So after Wednesday's game in which Paul DeYoung did hit a home run. He was asked about it in the postgame. And here's an even shorter clip of DeYoung elaborating on how this works. This may be a little too inside baseball, but I see the cheeseburger phone is out. Are you aware of who the cheeseburger phone is out to call a home run? And was there one for you? And are you mad if they're not calling for a home run from you?

No, each guy gets their own call per game, and they can decide when and who to use it on. And if they get it right, they get another one back. If they don't get the call right, then they lose their call the rest of the game. Did anyone have it on you for that home run? I didn't hear, but somebody always going to claim after the fact that they called it, you know how they work. Okay, so I'm not totally sure that I understand the ground rules here. But, you know, somebody always going to claim after the fact that they called it, you know how they work. Okay. So I'm not totally sure that I understand the ground rules here. I don't understand. I don't understand the, the, I don't understand the burger phone.

What are the rules of the, is anyone on the other end of the burger phone? First of all, you know, there is a cord, right? Like, it's not just the burger. There is, like, it's an actual phone that you could make a call on. When Wainwright says you have to dial the guy's number, I don't know if he literally means you have to, like, pick up the hamburger phone and call that player's phone number or whether that's just a figure of speech. Right. But the principle seems to be that you can't just claim that you called it or call it with no stakes now. You actually have to – it has to be a burger worthy. You have to bring out the burger and make it official if you're going to call someone. And I guess each guy gets one call per game.

I don't know if they need to use it or not. But when they make a call, they have to have it official. They have to have it notarized by BurgerPhone, basically. And then I guess it's like the replay challenge system or like the ball strike challenge system. It's like if you make the call correctly, then you get to make another call. You get to keep going. Whereas if you make an incorrect call, then you are stripped of calls. You have no more calls to make. I don't know if there are any stakes. I don't know if they

are keeping track of this. Is there a leaderboard? Is this crossing multiple games so that they're actually going to assess the soothsaying here? I don't know. I don't know any of that. So I need a more in-depth story. I need Katie Wu or someone to bring the same rigor to this that she and others brought to the Wilson Contreras reporting so that we can get the full story in print here. But basically, it seems to be kind of codifying the tendency toward predictions. And you heard Wainwright say someone's always calling something and De say, someone's always calling something. And de Young said, someone's always calling something.

That's been our quibble to this point. The players are just constantly predicting things. So it means nothing when they call one correctly because someone is always calling everything. So whatever happens, someone probably called it, or at least they could convincingly claim that they called it after the fact.

The thing I like about this is that it kind of gets you on the record, right? But does it, Ben? Where are the calls going? I don't know where the calls are going. I don't know if it's like a bullpen phone where there's an actual person on the other end. I'd like it to be that there's someone who's actually keeping track, right? Right. And actually assessing the records of everyone because otherwise, I just – I don't know what the stakes are.

I guess this is just their version of a home run ritual. But I like the idea that they could record the calls. They could have the phone records, the burger phone records. Right. And they can say, yeah, you actually called this and we will give you credit for that. And if you didn't make the call, then you can't claim after the fact that you knew it was going to happen because you didn't have your burger phone out. And it's a fun visual, I guess. It's something to follow on the broadcast

if someone has their burger phone out. Although if they don't have the burger phone out, that seems like an insult almost, right? Like that reporter was asking DeYoung if anyone had had the burger phone out for his homer and he didn't know. But like if you're Goldschmidt, someone's always gonna have the burger phone out, right? Because you had a lot of homers.

But if you're Paul DeYoung, who has had a fantastic year out of nowhere, but if you're a lighter hitter, then maybe you would not be the subject or object of as many burger calls. And that could be kind of insulting if there's only one burger phone, right? There's only one. I think so. Only one burger phone. Okay. So what happens if, this is like being a teen in the nineties, like what if multiple people want to place a burger call? Right. Yeah. Is the line busy? Is the line busy? Do they get to say, well, you have the burger phone in hand, but I am here to place a similar call, and we do not have multiple lines in the dugout.

I mean, they do, right, if it is going somewhere, because they also have the line to the bullpen. I want to say very clearly that I am not alleging shenanigans on the part of the Cardinals. If there were shenanigans, the vibes would be very different. But it would be deeply funny, Ben. It would be wildly funny if there was some scandal, some cheating, this or that, and the burger phone was implicated. And they were keeping meticulous records because, you know, you got to do that or it doesn't count, you know, the burger phone.

And then they are hoisted on their own burger petard, you know. That would be very funny. Yeah, because you're not allowed to have electronics in the dugout that are, like, active, right? That are internet connected or that can call out. So I don't know. Again, we don't know if the burger phone is connected to anything. We can see the cord trailing off of the burger, but I don't know. Which seems, you know, if it is connected to something, it seems like it has the potential for

causing injury, right? Like what if you get clotheslined by the burger phone, which as an aside, easily the most embarrassing kind of phone to get clotheslined by the burger phone, which as an aside, easily the most embarrassing kind of phone to get clotheslined by. Yes, that would be one of those legendary baseball injuries that we talked about on episode 2000, where it's like, hit the IL because he tripped over the burger phone cord. He took a tumble over the burger phone cord. Now, I imagine that the Cardinals in general, even the light hitting ones, big and strong enough that and the cord probably flimsy enough that no serious injury could befall someone as a result of the burger. But it would be funny. I mean, not funny, but like really, really stepped in it or failed to step over it, I suppose. That would be great, though, if the whole thing is an elaborate cover story for either some sort of cheating scandal or like an actual sports betting scandal.

It's like they're placing, they're calling their bookie on the burger phone. Yeah, they're not just predicting it. They're putting actual money on this. And then the burger phone records will be subpoenaed and we'll know which players will be suspended and banned from baseball for life because the burger phone bets so yeah i i guess i i need to know more and also part of me doesn't really want to know more i just feel like there's so many bits now you know and right i i look you know any writer's room they're gonna throw a lot of bits on the wall. And not all the bits are going to be good bits. Some of the bits, and this is in a collective writer's room, right?

There's 30 different rooms. And some of them are throwing bits that I think they're writing too long, Ben. I think they're over committing to the bit. Now, the question is always, how fair is it to judge the bits? Because some of the bits are clearly meant to be bits amongst themselves. And then some of the bits, they're like, look at our bit. Right. You know, and this feels like a blend, a mix of the private and the public.

And I don't know that I'm convinced or moved by this bit. Maybe this bit is a boring bit, Ben. Maybe. But, you know, like, I just don't think I like prop comedy very much. Yeah, that's the consistent theme across all of the 30 major league writers rooms is that prop comedy features prominently in all of them. Yeah, and I think this just goes to show that a fair resolution for the writers is important because otherwise this is the quality. I don't want to accuse anyone of crossing a picket line.

Just like I don't want to accuse anyone of cheating. But I'm just saying that like I think the bits are really showing that you can't just leave it to anybody. Writing is a skill, you know. Give them a fair contract. Yes. Yeah. This can't be an AI-generated ritual either. But I appreciate that.

This feels exactly like the kind of thing that AI would generate. What are you talking about? AI would be like, Shouldn't be, but yes. Da-da-da-da-da, burger phone. Yeah, well, I don't know whether they wanted to keep this in-house or not,

but it's hard to when there's a visual element to it. When there's actually a burger phone. Yeah, people are going to ask, why is there a burger phone? That's just inevitable. Maybe Miles Michaelis just really likes the film Juno. Mm-o. Well, I'm glad it's burgers and not lizards anymore with him because I'm sort of scarred for life from that episode. Anyway, glad the Cardinals are having fun again, I guess. I guess. We'll let you know if we get any additional details about the burger phone.

Burger phone. So let's talk about a few other teams here. There are a couple of teams that I wanted to touch on because they're in dire straits, maybe, or kind of concerning. Maybe we can talk about the Mets first. Speaking of celebrations, the Mets have their own celebration where they're slapping their own butts now instead of slapping each other's butts or possibly in addition to, but they slapped their own. That's important to say. Wait, Ben. It's important to know if they are only slapping their own butts or if they are slapping their own and other people's butts.

That's important. Right. Well, it's baseball. Everyone's constantly slapping everyone's butts, basically. But this is their new thing, like a post-hit celebration. You know, when you're out on second base after you doubled and you do horns or some sort of hand gesture. Now they're slapping their own butts, right? At least some of them.

Mark Canna notably seems to be a own-butt slapper. Own-butt slapper. And the Mets are another team that haven't had a ton of reason for celebration, right? And they did have reason to celebrate on Wednesday. Yes. Because they had a big multi-comeback walk-off win. And this was Mark Vientos' first game. So he got called up and also he homered.

Yeah. And Francisco Alvarez, who's up now, he homered too. Oh, and Ben, the homer that he hit was, that was a big boy homer. It was. Boy, did it go far. My goodness. And so did Pete Alonso's walk-off in the 10th. So far. Just like the second deck, I think, on both of them.

They were both second deckers. And they needed that because they were coming off a tough loss. Justin Verlander got rocked in his home debut for the Mets. He got booed by the Mets faithful. And we're only a quarter of the way through the season or so. But the Mets, you know, they got off to a decent start. And we've talked about their problems keeping their aged rotation intact and also performing well. And so as it is now, they have gone from being either the favorites or kind of close behind the Braves as favorites in the NL East to being 21 and 23, even after that big win.

Their odds of winning the division down to 5%, according to fan graphs, their odds of making the playoffs down to 51%. That's basically a coin flip. So that's kind of concerning, right? Because this is obviously the highest payroll team in the majors, team that won 100 games last year and had high expectations for this season, even after missing out on Carlos Crea. And it's been one thing after another. And it's been injuries and it another, and it's been injuries, and it's been older players underperforming.

And it's kind of what everyone feared about the Mets, that they're old, right? And they've got a lot of good old players or old players you would have expected or hoped would be good, but a lot of them have not been so good or have not been available or have been both unavailable and not so good. And then bad when they are, yeah.

Right. So they've called up Beatty and they've called up Alvarez and they've called up Vientos now. So this is the youth movement, what passes for one with the Mets, which again, oldest pitching team, I think second oldest hitting team. So to their credit, I suppose, I guess you could have said that they could have been even more aggressive because guys like Vientos and Beatty had great spring trainings and then started in the minors and really raked before finally forcing the issue. But they're kind of in a little bit of a hole right now.

Not one that they can't climb out of, but a lot to worry about, about the fragility and age of this roster, even with the infusion of youth and the cavalry kind of arriving here. When we were preparing our staff predictions, and I can't remember if I shared this on the pod or not, I came Ben so close

to having the incredibly spicy take of them just not making the playoffs at all I just was like I was so close because I really wanted I really wanted the Diamondbacks as a wild card team and then you start to do the shuffling you're like well there are a lot of good teams which team I'm going to say is going to make the playoffs and I was like maybe I will be very spicy and I will say the mets and then i chickened out like a coward ben and that may well prove a good bit of cowardice right a helpful bit of self-protection but part of me is like i said it just been spicy i had an opportunity to be spicy and i i didn't spice. I went like in a very bland direction. It's a bunch of unseasoned potatoes for me.

So that doesn't really say anything insightful about the Mets. It's more my own psychology, but it could be fine. It could end up being just fine. And they could start to play better better they could start to be the beneficiaries of injuries within their own division right because um whatever else you might say about them the braves at least on the pitching side vulnerable from injury right so there's there's a path forward for the mets either from playing better themselves or from, you know, other teams in their division sort of falling off, but it isn't the best. And I will say that they, you know, they're

not possessed of like a super great or particularly deep might be a better way of saying it farm system. So, you know, while I imagine they will try to be aggressive at the deadline, it's like, well, what are they going to do? You know, what are they going to do, Ben? They're, Ben? And the thing about it is, famously, they're not going to get younger. I mean, they're getting a little bit younger because of these call-ups, but everybody just gets older every single day. That is true. And I don't know that all those guys fit so well on the roster because Vientos, obviously Lindor is entrenched at shortstop and then Beatty's been playing third base. And so Vientos, who's kind of like a third baseman, first baseman, you know, Alonso's playing first, right? And so I think Beatty could play a little outfield.

Vientos could play a little outfield, but not the most natural fit there necessarily. So it would be a little bit better, I guess, if the reinforcements were better aligned or filling different holes. Right. And none of those guys famously are pitchers. That is true too. Yeah, right. And that was a game that Kodai Senga started and he was very good. Yes. game that Kodai Senga started and he was very good and yes he's been you know shaky inconsistent like missing tons of bats but also missing the strike zone very often the ghost fork has been as good and as entertaining as advertised I'd say but definitely some control issues at least he's been pitching he's been available but you really do have to be concerned about Scherzer and Verlander

at the top of that rotation, I think, because the hope was like, well, let's keep them healthy so that when we get to the playoffs, then we're starting a playoff series with Verlander and Scherzer. And that'd be great. But also now they have to get to the playoffs.

Gotta get there first. And so neither of those guys has been available and effective enough consistently that you'd feel great about, A, getting to the playoffs, and B, about them being shut down guys when you get there. Which, you know, at their advanced ages, Verlander 40 and Scherzer going on 39, that was always a risk. 39, that was always a risk. Like there's always going to be a greater collapse risk, I suppose, with an older roster where a bunch of guys maybe take steps back at the same time, whether it's, you know, Kana and Marte who are 34, right? Or your old pitchers and you still have Lindor and you still have McNeil and you still have

Nimmo and you still have Alonso. Like there's a very productive position player core there at least, but it's worrisome, you know, like we're, we're coming up on close to the end of that three to five year period that was set for the Mets by Steve Cohen is like, we want to win a championship within that time. And now it's like, well, let's hope we make the playoffs at least and give us a chance to qualify for a World Series. Because look, we've talked before about how there actually have been more expensive teams in the past when you adjust for inflation or baseball inflation.

But a lot of people refer to this as the most expensive roster ever. And one way that you can have an expensive roster is when you invest in old guys and free agents, right? And that's basically what they did. And maybe that's kind of a short-term strategy because of the lack of a player development pipeline. But sometimes that can go wrong and horribly wrong. And I don't know that the Mets are there yet, and I hope that they don't end up there. But there is that kind of risk now, more so than even I envisioned when the season started. I think that from a broader perspective, you want teams that are willing to spend money to be like having a good time while they're doing it, right? Because they, first of all, might be more likely to continue to do so, which I think we think is good for the sport.

And if it is viewed to be a productive means of securing a postseason spot and then, you know, facilitates a deep postseason run, I think other teams look around and are like, well, maybe we should do that too. You know, so I want it to be going better than it is. Yeah. So, you know, and again better than it is. Yeah. So, you know, and again, it might just be fine. It might just end up being fine. But you never want to be quite so dependent on like two just titanic shots, Ben. Titanic. They were such, you know, they were such big shots at the end.

I was like, wow, rude, you know, candidly kind of rude. The Edwin Diaz-less bullpen was a strength early on, but now I think is down to 20th in Fangraph's war. So, again, less of an issue when you're starting rotation isn't going deep into games or can't be counted on if you have a great deep bullpen. But without Diaz, they're a little shorthanded there. So they will continue to get some reinforcements. They're on the point of potentially calling up Gary Sanchez, which may or may not have happened by the time people are hearing this. But they'll get Omar Narvaez back. They'll get Carrasco back sometime soon.

Maybe Quintana will be back at some point this season. So there could be help on the way. And of course, I'm sure they will spare no expense when it comes to midseason reinforcements, if necessary. But yeah, hasn't been the best thus far. And the other team that's kind of in that boat, we touched on briefly last time, but the Padres. They lost again since the last time we talked. They dropped a series to the Royals, which is never great. Doesn't feel good anyway. Yeah. And these are two of the top three teams by payroll, the other being the Yankees,

not off to the best start either, although they've been better lately. But the Padres now are 20 and 24. And I think there was a sense even coming into the season that they hadn't quite clicked the way that they were envisioned to click right after they made all the big additions and everything. They hadn't at least supplanted the Dodgers as the top dogs in the division. But they'd made the playoffs and they knocked off the Dodgers as the top dogs in the division, but they'd made the playoffs and they knocked off the Dodgers in the playoffs. And now it was like, okay, this will be the coronation. They got Sander Bogarts. Now this will be the year. Now they're 20 and 24. They're eight games

back in the West. By the way, the Mets are only six and a half games back in the East. They are behind the Marlins because the Marlins are now 14-1 in one-run games. What the heck is going on there? It's so wild. They're in second place for now. Anyway, the Padres are eight games back, well behind the Dodgers and also the Diamondbacks and the Padres by half a game

and one in the last column as we speak on Thursday. And I feel like there's kind of a lot at stake with this Padres team because they were just seen as like, OK, they're the team that is breaking the mold. They're the small market team that is refusing to fall in line with all the other miserly owners. And they're saying, no, we can spend on the roster and we can make money because we will be a good and fun and entertaining team and people will come to the park. And that has happened. Yeah. But that is also kind of contingent on the team actually being good. Right.

So if this massively backfires, you know, everyone was questioning a few months ago, like, what does this look like long term? You know, like, what will the Padres look like in 2028 or 2029 or wherever, you know, like, what will the payroll be like then? And will everyone be old and will they still be able to spend? But everyone sort of assumed, well, worry about that when it rolls around, because for now, this will be just a great, entertaining, riveting team, tons of star power. They will own San Diego. Perhaps they will own the NOS for the first time in quite a while, and it will all be worthwhile. who were whatever scoffing at the Padres or questioning the Padres or aghast at what the Padres were doing in various anonymous quotes in preseason stories they're probably like if this

backfires if this fails catastrophically then there will be some schadenfreude because it's like you were trying to blow up the spending structure of Major League Baseball, and now you have egg on your face. So from that perspective, there's kind of like a lot riding on the Padres being good, it seems like, and they have not been good. Well, that's true. They have not been good. And I think that what I said probably applies here, too, right, that you want the teams that are willing to spend to have a good time and certainly when they're small market teams like the mets spending is notable for its magnitude but given the media market i think we should have an expectation of big spending from them as a

baseline right it's different when it's the padres and they're just like, but I think that if you are a team executive and you are feeling delight at this not working right now because, well, shame on them for trying to blow up the salary structure. Well, that's a rude and weird way to look at baseball. So stop it. No, I'm just telling you to stop. They don't seem as a

team to be particularly panicked which i think is good but yeah it would be it would be better if they would sort of uh snap to and play the quality of baseball that we were expecting them to now you know you have a team at the top of that division that is also capable and has quite recently been a big spender and managed to not really duck below the luxury tax threshold like they wanted to. So all is not lost in the West, right? But it is a little disconcerting. Yeah. And I don't really understand why it isn't working. I still, I look at this roster and I'm like, this is a powerhouse. How is this team not dominating? I know that they've been bad with runnersitten in other ways, either with timing or injuries.

It's not like everyone got hurt necessarily. Like Tatis is back now. They're largely intact. Like every team is going to have some guys on the IL and some pitchers with injury. But you look at this roster, you look at this lineup, and it's like this team should just be mowing down the competition. Yeah, it should be cruising. Yeah, right. And somehow it is not.

Even though Juan Soto has recovered from his early season slump and has been hitting much, much better of late. The Padres are 19th in WRC+. They're 96th where 100 is average. 19th in WRC Plus, 96th where 100 is average. Manny Machado has not hit, which is weird because who's more consistently great than Manny Machado? And now he is injured. Yeah, he's dinged up. Yeah, a minor hand fracture, which it sounds like is something that won't cause him to miss a ton of time and he might even be able to play through. Although, who knows?

Like, does that sap his, his power, which has not been very evident this season anyway. So that's not the greatest sign. And then I just like, I look at this roster, like, how is,

how are you not better? You have Fernando Tatis, you have Benny Machado, you have Juan Soto, you have Xander Bogarts. Come on. It's like a team full of superstars. I don't know if it's like partly it's, it's just a little, you know won Soto, you've Zander Bogarts. Come on! It's like a team full of superstars. I don't know if it's like

partly it's just a little misshapen in that all the pieces maybe don't fit together so elegantly and that it's so many shortstops just all over the place. But as we've discussed, probably better to have too many shortstops than

too many of any other kind of position, right? And the defense seems to have been a strength. They're, you know, fifth or sixth in DRS so far this year and up there in their first in OAA. So that doesn't seem to have been the issue. It's just that they're not hitting. Like part of it is the lack of timely hitting, and that shouldn't be a long-term concern, I don't think. But, man, like if the Padres don't finally fire on all cylinders at some point, and I'm sure they will.

Like at some point, this will start working and they will start looking like the Padres that we were expecting. But now they have also dug a hole for themselves. Yeah. And they have a lot of ground to make up so yeah so now they're down to like a 12 chance to win the division yeah after having been favorites at the start of the season according to the fangraphs odds dodgers now are at like a three and four or better chance to take the nl West yet again. And the Padres are at about a 62% chance to make the playoffs. So it would really be sort of disastrous if they didn't. And even if they recover enough to kind of, you know, cross the finish line, but barely, that would be seen as a great disappointment.

I mean, not just in the sense that it's like a referendum on baseball's economic system or whatever, but also in the sense that I really was anticipating a fun Padres season. And so were Padres fans who obviously have supported the team with season tickets and great attendance. Well, and I imagine that it'll probably be fine when it comes to that right like you on some level fans are probably aware of the fact that hey this is like a really

good ball club and you might see something really cool at the ballpark even if they're not playing up to our expectation right now like i'm i'm less concerned about the city of San Diego being like, those Padres suck. I don't care about those Padres. I think it would take longer for something like that to happen. I think fans really appreciate when a team has demonstrated a commitment to the roster and the fan base. So I think that there's probably a good amount of goodwill for them to sort of fall back on when it comes to attendance and enthusiasm and whatnot. But, you know, it's not going to be endless. It's not a limitless resource.

So they should probably start winning, you know. And then they don't have to worry about it so much. The thing about it is you just wouldn't have to worry about it quite so much. Yes. And, in fact, after the recent loss to the Royals, I read, I saw a headline that the Padres were booed off the field at home, right? Now, I never know when we talk about teams being booed and Justin Verlander was booed and the Padres were booed, what percentage of people are booing because boos are very audible, even if it's just a

subset of fans making that noise. You know, it's a noise that carries, right? Which maybe that's why we say boo, I guess. I don't know what like the etymology of boo as the words that people use, the sound that people make to express their displeasure. But maybe it's the fact that it's very easy to hear. It's hard to miss people saying boo in unison. So even if it's not that many people, once it rises to the level of like audible enough that it starts getting reported and people say that the team is getting booed, that speaks to some degree of impatience.

So I don't know how long the leash is there. So I don't know how long the leash is there. I mean, regardless of how it works out, you have to applaud the investment, but it does call into question the wisdom of the investment if your return on the investment is not gone so great either. And I guess the positive spin is that it just goes to show that you can't buy a championship in baseball, which I think is true. And I think to some extent is a good thing about baseball in that you can't just spend your way to winning. That said, we do endorse spend your way to winning. That said, we do endorse trying to spend to win. Obviously, there's a correlation, you know, like all else being equal. If you can spend more and afford to recruit better players, then that should make you a better baseball team. And when people complain about buying championships, yeah, I think it would be bad probably for competitive balance if you could just buy championships. If you went back to Yankees in earlier decades sort of situation.

And the Yankees, they were smart about team building, too, during their many dynasties. It wasn't just that they outspent everyone, but they also did have more resources. and there were periods where they were winning just about every year for years and years and years. So that's not great. And I think to the extent that it's, I don't know whether it's a bug or a feature that it's so hard for good teams to win because of the randomness inherent in the playoff structure, but it would be, I guess, a defense against the accusation that teams are just buying their way to contention if both the Mets and the Padres were to flop. But then it would kind of be a double-edged sword because it might also dissuade people from spending because it's like if we invest in the roster and then we end up with disappointment, then why even spend in the first place? So that's why I view it as kind of like, you know, this matters more so than the typical team flopping,

just because these two teams were seen as such outliers, particularly the Padres, when it came to showing that you could do this. I mean, one argument for just spending money, even when things don't quite work out and granted like you know some of the guys they have spent money on have been the guys you know like um in theory you're gonna watch more entertaining baseball if you spend even if you don't end up winning as much as you want to. In theory, you're watching more entertaining baseball. Like if you're, and granted they're losing just like

so much more and they're just like actually so bad. But like, if you were to ask, would you rather be an A's fan or a Padres fan? Easy, right? Easy. And not just because, you know, Petco is such a nice ballpark and the Coliseum is not. So that, I think, is an underreported aspect of why it's good to spend. Because you're going to, somewhere in there, you're going to see something cool, even if it doesn't result in a win all the time. But you'd rather they win. You know, I'd rather they win. Now, is this a weird way for me to actualize my increasingly Diamondbacks-dependent dreams? I mean, Ben, who could say?

You know, who could say? I guess I would rather have hopes high enough that they could be dashed to the degree that I would want to boo, As opposed to the team being almost pre-secured against booing by just having lowered expectations. Just so low that no one would boo because they never expected anything in the first place. That's kind of a dark way to look at it. I guess the most encouraging story this year when it comes to spending and investing and being able to buy a contender would be the Texas Rangers. Yeah, how about that? The Rangers are leading the West, the AL West. And they are 26 and 17.

They are up to a little bit better than a one in three chance to actually win that division. Yeah. a one in three chance to actually win that division. Yeah. And actually, they have almost identical odds of making the playoffs as the Padres, like 62%. So that's a combination of the Astros just being so-so, got off to a slow start, been a bit better lately. Jose Altuve is almost back.

That should help. But the Rangers have been good, despite the fact that some of their high-priced, high-profile acquisitions have not contributed all that much. I mean, Corey Seeger's been hurt. He's almost back, right? And Jacob deGrom, surprise, surprise, has been hurt a lot of the time. Yeah, I hate to break this news to you.

What? Yeah, Jacob deGrom on the injured list. Yeah, I know. Man. Shocker. Yeah, you get list. Yeah, I know. Yeah. You get knocked over by stuff every day. Yes. So does Jacob deGrom, but the Rangers are doing quite well, you know, and they were, when I was forced to pick a flop team at the start of the season, I picked the Rangers because I just figured if they weren't that good, that would qualify as a flop just because they had invested in the roster. Right, exactly. And it seemed like there were

still enough holes on that roster that they were not a favorite for a playoff spot or certainly to win the division. And so even if they weren't bad, if they missed, you know, the playoff odds didn't project them to make the playoffs, but I think probably their ownership did or a lot of other people did. And so if they had missed, you could call that a flop. But thus far, they have not flopped. They have been quite good. And again, like, will they run out of steam as these underperforming teams that we've been talking about pick up steam? Quite possibly.

But then again again they could have seeker they could have de gromble it could all work well who knows but yeah but their offense has been excellent and and that was like the concern about them really was like where's the offense going to come from because they basically purchased an entire pitching staff or starting rotation and then it was like well who, who's going to hit exactly? And thus far, it's the Rays, the Braves, and the Rangers have the three best lineups this year. The Rays, like head and shoulders and midsection ahead of everyone else. But the Rangers, they're right there.

I mean, they've been raking even without Seager for quite some time now. And that's Marcus Semyon, who was one of their big additions along with Seager two off-seasons ago. It's Jonah Heim. Jonah Heim is having a heck of a year. Just a year. Really great. Adelise Garcia has been on a heater. Nathaniel Lowe has been really good, you know, kind of continuing his great second half from last year.

Not quite to that extent. But respectable, for sure. Right, yeah. 10-15 WRC+. Yeah, and Ezekiel Duran and Leone Tavares and Josh Young. Like, all these guys are holding their own or more than that. Like, they're getting offense all up and down you know even guys who've not been starters like travis jankowski and and you know a

few great games from from mitch garver and and josh smith has been good like top to bottom that lineup guys you would not have projected to be that great and have been contributors. So that's been a strength. And the starting rotation has been, I guess, about as healthy as you could have hoped that it would be because that was very much like the Mets. It's like, okay, if all these guys somehow stay healthy and active at the same time, then that would be just dandy.

But mostly they have been other than DeGrom. Like Nathan Evaldi's been the ace thus far. Right. He's been really, really good. And then they had some rotation depth, too. So, you know, someone like Dane Dunning stepping in and he's been pretty good. And John Gray's been pretty good. So it's looking pretty good for the Texas Rangers these days.

So they're sort of the exception to like, you know, they didn't really draft and develop all that well and didn't have a homegrown core, even the way that the Mets did and do. And they were just like an experiment. And can we import an entire team, basically? Right. And just sort of fast forward through the rebuilding process by getting free agents. And that's always a dicey proposition, but it is working well for them thus far. It's a dicey proposition, like on its best day, like the baseline is dicey. And then like the guys they picked to do it were like so high variance from an injury perspective that they

were really just leaning in and like, well, we'll see how this goes. And so far, going pretty well. But there is a version of this. There is an alternate timeline where it is very bad. But we're not living that timeline. We're living in the timeline where everything is seemingly going pretty well for the Rangers rotation. And Jonah Heim has a 144 WRC+. Yeah, the Rangers have the second best run differential in baseball.

Yeah. The Rays are like double them, but still. Yeah, but they're not like out here, you know, squeaking out one run wins, right? They're not Marlins-ing it. That's hard to say, but they're not doing that. So I don't have to say very much, you know, squeaking out one run wins, right? They're not Marlins-ing it. That's hard to say, but they're not doing that. So I don't have to say it very much, you know? Yeah. They're just like playing some good baseball.

Yeah. And the Padres and the Mets, meanwhile, have been outscored by their opponents. So just a tale of two seasons, or I guess three seasons. Three seasons. Or one season. They're all in the same season. I don't know.

It's one or two or three. But you know what I mean. A number, some number of seasons. You know, some seasons. A season. Seasons? Season. So one player who will not be helping the Rangers this season is Kumar Rocker.

And that's, I guess, sort of a segue from the Mets to the Rangers, or it could have been. I think Kumar Rocker must have been the shortest-lived, like, most fleeting top 100 prospect in history. Because on Wednesday, MLB Pipeline named Kumar Rocker to their top 100 prospects list. Okay, so they tweeted at 5.14 p.m. Eastern on May 16th, the MLB Pipeline Twitter account tweeted, the newest member of the top 100 prospects list, Rangers right-hander Kumar Rocker. Okay. 5.14. Follow-up tweet at 6.35.

So less than an hour and a half later, in light of the news of Rocker's impending Tommy John surgery, the Rangers right-hander has been removed from the top 100 list, which is just harsh. Like, let the guy stay on there for a day, you know? Just like, do we have to pile out and pull him from the—he was a top 100 prospect for basically an hour. So it counts. I guess we could say Kumar Rocker was a top 100 prospect. He was on the list. That's like, I don't know what the equivalent of that is. It's like a phantom player, like getting called up to the majors or never getting into a game or like someone who is like

announced and thus is technically in the game, but doesn't actually play because he's pulled immediately after that. It's kind of that, but for prospect list. So, you know, obviously the Mets after drafting Kumar Rocker ended up passing on him because of medical concerns. And probably a lot of people are saying that this vindicates the Mets. Obviously this is like years after that, and this is not necessarily related to what the Mets saw at that time, you know, that they said the Rangers did, that this was like an acute elbow injury, like Rocker had been pitching fairly well in the minors. He's having a good start to the year in high A, yeah. Yeah, and then sproing, right? The elbow went sproing, and now he's going to be gone for a while. So I don't think you can say that, yeah, the Mets were justified in doing what they did because of this injury.

I guess you could say in the sense that Rocker has not made them regret that thus far. You know, I mean, that's kind of been the case. Kind of been the case, you know, that was obviously the case with some of the Astros guys who were drafted and not signed, Brady Aitken, et cetera, where like aspects of how those negotiations were handled and everything definitely could have been better. Right. But also when a team sees some sort of medical concern, well, maybe it's a legitimate concern. You know, maybe it's not just that they're trying to job the player and take a hard line and save some cash. Maybe also they saw something that was legitimately concerning. So, Rutgers, there have been various concerns about his arm angle and his stuff and everything, right? Yeah. And seemed to be rebuilding his status and his hype a little bit and his performance. And so sucks that he then immediately went down with a spring. Yeah.

I think that like the general consensus around the Mets piece of it was that like his medical was rumored to be quite poor. Right. And that wasn't just coming from Mets people. That his medical was rumored to be quite poor. Regardless of that, like there clearly are process issues with the way that the Mets are doing draft stuff, you know, some of which have been replicated in in subsequent seasons. Where they, you know, typically what you do when you have a guy like that, because you can't just, it's not like you roll over your pool space. So normally you have a guy later who, if something goes wrong with your first rounder, you're going to allocate that money to. You're not going to sign him if everything goes right with your first rounder.

But, you know, you have a guy. And I'm one of those. They didn't have that guy. So that was just like last money. And then they got compensation the following year. that guy so that was just like last money and then they got compensation the following year but you know i don't know that thinking about this through the lens of like does this vindicate the mets or not is like particularly useful and it certainly doesn't serve kumar rocker at all um the mets still have process issues with their draft so you know i don't think we get to let

them off the hook for that piece. way to handle his development might be trying to get him to the big leagues as soon as you could so that he gets to pitch there and you get to benefit from his um talent and then like the the start of the season was going well for him and i don't know um if it would have changed like our opinion of him but it looked like things were at least trending in a good way. It's just too bad. I know that people know the lore of him at Vandy in that first go. He was so incredible. Watching him was just so incredible. And if he had been able to have a career, and he may well still have a good career, right?

We're going gonna see how obviously how he comes back on the the other side of this but if his career had been able to look like that like it would have been it would have been amazing and it seems unlikely to look like that ever you know it doesn't mean that he can't have a productive big league career that he might not end up being a guy who contributes to a Rangers playoff team, but certainly doesn't seem likely that his ceiling is ever going to approach what it was that first college season where he was just so lights out. So it's really too bad. And I think that, you know, I hope that it's a story where people think about like,

it's not as if Kumar Rocker and his family didn't participate in the hype, right? Like, I'm sure they wanted their son to be drafted and drafted highly and whatnot. But I do think that we, you know, we just load these guys up with expectations in a way that I don't know really serves them particularly well. When you then end up being a first round pick again, you know, it's just going to raise expectations further. So I hope that the thing that we take away from Kumar Rucker's career is not like a meditation on how we talk about prospect expectations, because that would suggest that he doesn't end up having a productive big league career.

But I think that is part of the story here and is going to probably be the, the one that gets centered for a little while, just because we're not going to see the guy pitch for a bit here. But it sucks. It just sucks. It's really too bad. I feel bad for him. I hope that he ends up on the other side of Tommy John

in a place where he can contribute and do so with a reasonable set of expectations for what he's going to look like coming back. But it really stinks, particularly because the glimpses we got of him when things were going well for him at Vandy were so tantalizing. Yeah. Even I got excited about that as a non-college baseball follower. Right. You were stoked about college baseball. Yeah.

In a way that was like, have you been kidnapped, Ben? Do you need to blink and let us know that you're okay? You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. By the way, just to clarify, Seeger is back. He returned on Wednesday. Oh. Didn't get a hit. I missed that he was officially back. Oh, I thought that he was – well, I made that mistake, too. I thought he was coming back this week but hadn't yet been activated. So, we're both the worst. Speaking of sproings or possible sproings. I really, wait, sorry.

The disconnect between how fun that word is to say and what it means. Profound, Ben. A profound disconnect. I know. I know. I don't know whether that's good or bad. Like, I don't want to. I mean, this is a criticism, Ben.

Okay. I don't want to make light of the fact that, like, it's very bad when a sproing happens. Very bad. But it also, like, cheers me up a little bit when I think about sproing when I'm otherwise thinking about. At least you get to say sproing. Yeah, right. So, Dustin May, now the latest pitcher with the dreaded flexor slash forearm strain that we devoted some time to last week. Dustin May, who's two years removed from Tommy John surgery, right,

and has looked great and is part of why the Dodgers have been quite good. And despite some holes on their roster and in their rotation, he's been sort of the guy, you know. He's been, I mean, along with Kershaw, who's been fantastic too. Like Dustin May has been a centerpiece of that rotation. And now he is out for months, presumably. And that's the best case scenario, you know. Hopefully that this doesn't lead to a second TJ, that this is just like a rest and rehab sort of situation.

But that's a blow to the Dodgers and I guess would be a bigger blow if the Padres were putting up more of a fight here. But it especially sucks. I mean, when it's these guys who were getting this surgery multiple times, like Drew Rasmussen, the threat of a third Tommy John surgery, and he wouldn't be the first to have that happen.

But I mean, knowing what goes into it, I don't know whether that would be better or worse because like at least you've been through it before. You've probably learned some lessons and maybe you've picked up some tips and tricks to Tommy John surgery. Like maybe you can shave a few weeks or something off the rehab time because you know what worked for you the previous time. Not that the previous time stuck, I guess, if you're getting it again. But on the one hand, you might have a handle on how best to come back. On the other hand, your eyes are fully open to how much it's going to suck, like the surgery and being immobilized and then having to get back your sense of like where your arm is

in space and having to go through that whole grueling rehab process for a second or third time, like embarking on that, at least for the first time, you know, I'm sure you hear about it from the doctors and maybe you hear about it from other guys who've gone through it, but it's a first time for you. And maybe you can deceive yourself into thinking, it'll be faster for me or it won't be so bad. And then having been through it before, you can't really deceive yourself. It's going to be what it was the first time. Yeah. And I think on some level, it is probably a comfort that you've survived it previously, that you've been able to mount a successful rehab and return, even if it was only brief, right? So I imagine that that is some amount of comfort, because you just don't know sometimes like what things are survivable.

Yeah, right. Yeah, if your stuff comes back, yeah, it could come back again. So I can see being very, being weirdly relieved on some level, but yeah, like it's just a tremendous amount of work. And you don't know if it's going to go quite the same way that it did before. And like you said, it didn't stick, you know. like you said, it didn't stick, you know? So, yeah, that could be even more dismaying because it's like, at least you could tell yourself, all right, I just got to get through this. I'll come out the other side. I'll be good as new. And if you've had to do it multiple times, then you can't even count on being Tommy John proof for a while after you come back, right? Then it's just like, I'm never safe because even if I had the surgery and I have a brand spanking new ligament, then it could snap, it could sproing also. So that would be sort of extra concerning, I guess. I don't know. Pitchers probably just

always kind of concerned unless they're one of the very few lucky ones who've been relatively unscathed over a long career. For the most part, I would always just sort of feel like, man, you know, I mean, if I were a pitcher and some team came to me with an extension offer, I wouldn't want to sell myself short. But I could see how if you were a pitcher, you might end up with some deal that that people would look at and think, why did you agree to that? But just like you can't ever really. Maybe, you know, young men, they all feel invincible and vulnerable until something bad happens. But if you just look around the league, it would be tough to feel invulnerable as a pitcher because they're all vulnerable. You always can appreciate like the lure of life-changing money, of generational wealth kind of money. But I imagine that it would be a particularly strong pull if you're a pitcher because it's like, well, let's just lock this stuff in while we can, you know? Yeah, right.

Made me think that Kuba Rocker was extremely briefly a top 100 prospect. I guess there are more top 100 prospects than there used to be because there are so many more rankings than there used to be. Sure. And I don't mean just many more outlets ranking prospects, although that's true to some degree. I mean, it I guess used to be nobody. And then it used to be just Baseball America. Right. And then you'd get Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs. Now there's Pipeline and there are other sites that are pretty reputable, too. But it's also that there used to be a preseason list, and that was that. Yeah.

And now there's a preseason list. There's a midseason list. There's often a postseason list, right? Like Fangraphs and Eric updating the board multiple times per year. Or you have something like MLB Pipeline, which is just kind of continuous, right? Yeah. I mean, that's closer to what we're doing, right? It's just like a rolling top 100. Right. Which is really useful in that I can look at these lists and get a current snapshot at any time down to like, this guy just got hurt. So we're pulling him from the list. I mean, that's nice that it used to be that like

late in a season, the best I could do is look at a preseason list. By that point, who knows, the guys have gotten hurt, guys have surprised, guys have regressed. It might not be accurate anymore. So it's really cool that you can get a real-time snapshot of what that system looks like not months ago, but today. the list. Like every time someone graduates, then someone else gets promoted. So it's just going to be more players cycling on and off of those lists. And it's also hard to be like, yeah, he was a top 100 guy. It's like, when? Well, and the other thing is that you don't have records. It's like a day by day, you know, MLB pipeline. I don't know if they have a database somewhere where they could track like here was our top 100 list on May 15th, and here was our top 100. But you can't look at that publicly, right? You can just look at what's the list today, and maybe they might have some

preseason roundups, or you could do a way back machine archive search or something. But it would be hard to track that over time and represent that in some easy to look up way. So it's just it's all much more malleable and amorphous, which I guess is good, but also means it's harder to just strictly compare. Like top 100 guy means that coming into that season, he was one of the top 100 prospects that year. It used to be sort of simple and clean like that. Well, and you have guys tending to graduate more quickly now than they used to because September roster days count toward rookie eligibility. It used to be that, you know, you accrued service in September, certainly, but those days because of call-ups didn't count toward rookie eligibility. And then after 2020, that got changed. So now you have guys, and it depends on the outlet when it comes to that too. Like BA just goes by plate appearances and innings pitch. It doesn't do the,

they don't count active roster days as a qualification for top 100 or not. But a lot of outlets do, including us. So you have guys cycling through potentially much more quickly once they've gotten up on a big league roster and stuck there. Yeah. Well, here's one guy I'm wondering when he will graduate, Jackson Holiday, right, who is on a tear. So if he's not the best prospect in baseball, he's top five, top three, right? And he is the Orioles' top prospect and is making a run at being like the third

Orioles' number one overall prospect in a year or so, which is kind of incredible and speaks to the strength of that system. But he almost cycled the other day, and then I think he followed that up with a five-hit day. So he's playing in high A in the South Atlantic League now, and he is by far the best hitter in that league. At least if you set the plate appearance minimum low enough, if you set it to 70, he's had 78 plate appearances at that level. He is a 216 WRC+. He is hitting 391, 507, 19 in high A thus far. And he's 19 years old. He turned 19 in December. And so

on the preseason Orioles list, Eric Langenhagen had him with a 2028 ETA. And I just asked Eric what that would be now. And he said, probably 2024. So Jackson Holliday's moved up his ETA by like four years

with his hot start to the season. And that makes me wonder where he will play in that Orioles infield. I mean, this is kind of your classic good problem to have, but like they have very recent number one overall prospect, Gunnar Henderson there, right?

Right. And they've already had to move him or find time for him because Jorge Mateo has turned out to be one of the Orioles' most valuable players so far this year. He's above league average bat. He's a plus runner. He's a great fielder at shortstop. So he looked like maybe he could be a utility guy. Now he's seeming more like a starter. And then you also have Henderson. You have other guys like Joey Ortiz and Taron Vavra, who's playing some outfield. But those guys are infielders by trade, too. Like, I don't know where all these pieces fit. I don't know whether they all end up fitting with the Orioles or not. But what a cornucopia, what an embarrassment of infield riches here.

So I don't know, like, who knows when the Orioles will promote someone, even if he's ready to be promoted. But if Jackson Holiday keeps making a case to the point that we're coming into next season, say, and looking at him as someone who should be at the big league level. And if Mateo maintains his performance, and you have Henderson, there's got to be a trade, right? Not everyone fits. Adam Frazier already looks like the odd man out. But even if he's out, maybe this is a solution to the pitching problem that the Orioles have is that one of these guys goes, whether it be at the deadline this year or over the offseason or what. But even if you do the rasturbation exercise of having your dream lineup of all of these prospects and kind of plug them in a year or two down the road. It's just like too many blue chippers for not enough positions. So it's just such a great core that they have assembled

at great cost of sucking for a long time. But it's pretty to look at these days. What if they kept all of the guys who hit the ball only and then they used all the money that they would have spent on other guys, but they don't have to because, again, of all the good guys who hit the ball only. And then they tried to sign Joey and Tommy. Ooh. I mean, I'd love to see them try.

Yeah. They're not going to do that. They're not. You know what, Ben? I feel confident saying this. I don't think they're even going to try. Probably not. They'll make a perfunctory phone call so that they can say in spring training, well—

They'll call on the cheeseburger phone. The cheeseburger phone, which goes where? I don't know. If they call on the Cardinals' cheeseburger phone, does it count as an attempt by the Orioles? I don't know. Just asking questions. Yeah. Yeah, we got an email about the Orioles

from listener Jeff a few months ago or back in March that I've been meaning to answer because he asked in the 2023 Baseball Perspectives Annual chapter about the Orioles, author Lauren Thiessen was quite critical of the years of hardcore tanking the team forced Orioles fans to endure. She suggests that the experience of watching those teams was so bad that would actually diminish the enjoyment fans would experience if the Orioles somehow won a championship at the end of the current rebuild. With this in mind, I pose the following question, how good do the Orioles have to be in the immediate future in order to justify the hardcore tanking of 2019 to 2021? The baseball gods have said that whatever scenario you come up with is something that could only be achieved via tanking.

How much better a result would this have to be than what the Orioles could have achieved without tanking? And Jeff said, I asked the second question because Mike Elias took over the Orioles the same year Farhan Zaidi took over the Giants. Zaidi chose not to tank and bottom out with the Giants choosing to field competitive teams while rebuilding the farm system. However, it is arguable that the Orioles have a brighter immediate future than the Giants right now. So, yeah, like if you can make up for the extreme tanking, you really have to come out the other side of it with a championship caliber core, you know. her core, you know, and the Giants approach has its merits too in that they gave their fans one unbelievable year that probably surprised the Giants themselves, but would not have happened if they had decided to tear things down. And then the past couple of years, the Giants end up sort of in no man's land and it's

not quite so fun. And they're doing their rebuilds in Prospect Generation 2. But the Orioles now, they're exciting. And they're exciting not just at the major league level, but also if you look at someone like Jackson Holiday. So they are making a run at justifying retroactively the way that they got there. they got there because the only way you could justify it is if you end up with the core that the astros did and the success that the astros had or the core that is shaping up on the orioles roster these days where it's not just rutschman and rodriguez and henderson and perhaps soon holiday but it's also the guys that they picked up who they've managed to make better like mateo and santander and Hayes,

et cetera. And of course, Cedric Mullins being a part of that core too. Like it's, it's a fun bunch of boppers that they have there. Yeah. I think that championship quality in, in these moments is not good enough for fans. I think that fans are greedy about this stuff in a way that I don't mean disparagingly. So I think that if they don't win a World Series, that there will be continued resentment from at least some quarters around the way that they were so bad. Because they were so bad. They were extremely, extremely bad. They were so bad. It wasn't a step back or a side shuffle or whatever weird euphemisms teams use when they're like, we're not doing what the Astros did.

We're doing a less intense version. Like, that's not what they embarked on. They were like, nope, we're going to be unwatchable at the big league level for a little while. And, you know, that was in service of being good on the other end. And, you know, that was in service of being good on the other end. But I think when it's that meaningful, it's that austere a time, you know, there are going to be fans who, like, fans look like they're having a great time at Camden Yards right now. You know, they got the weird water thing. I don't understand the water thing, Ben.

They're doing all this stuff with water. You know, have you seen all this water stuff they're up to over there? You don't mean the Homer hose, the dong bong, do you? I don't mean the dong bong. I mean, they're like spraying fans with water. They're doing a, they're doing a thing in the stands where fans get sprayed. And I will tell you, sometimes I watch those games and I see the fans in that section and I can tell them like, oh, that person didn't know that person not aware of what was going to happen to them today. And they seem unhappy about it. There's like a water thing.

And look, we're going to get a number of emails saying, here's what the water thing is, Meg. And I'm here to tell you, I don't want to know. I would like everyone to not email. Not because I don't enjoy your emails. I enjoy your emails so much. But because I want to be able to crack it just from watching the broadcast. And I think I will, because at some point I'm going to tune in at just the right time and they're going to be like, it's about this other thing that happened. And I'm going to be like, oh. Can I tell you the name of it, at least?

Yeah. It's called the birdbath splash zone. Yeah. What? Okay. A birdbath is, look, I get that they're birds, right? They're Orioles. So it's a bird.

We didn't talk about the bird that died, Ben. I know, RIP. We gotta talk about the bird that died. Not right now. Guys, another bird met a cruel fate at the hand of a diamondback and not an actual snake. Anyway, so birdbass are for splish-splash

and they're not for, I mean, it's not like the kind of anyway i don't know about all these bits i think too many bits ben but a lot of bits yeah and this is i think it's related to the dong bong also possibly inspired by but right but they don't want to call it the dong bong they could have a they could have a bong section of the ballpark that would also inspire fans to have a good time. Although I don't know what the rules around recreation are. I don't mind being splashed by water at a ballpark,

especially in the summer in Baltimore. It gets hot and muggy. Muggy. I'd be happy to be splashed. Already sticky. Yeah. But all of that to say, their fans seem like they're having a good time. And, you know,

I think you are not obligated to like hold on to the wound of a rebuild right i'm not saying that like if you are just having a good time watching baseball that's great you should have a good time watching baseball you don't win a special prize for like holding on to the the wound you can let it go if you want to but you can also remember if you want to, right? If you want to have that be part of your experience, like, look, this is really fun, but boy, don't want to do that again. That's also fine. You know, I think there's a lot of ways to be. And then I think that for some quarter of the fan base, not like a specific quarter, but like in some quarters, there's going to be continued angst around it unless they win a World Series.

Yeah. Yeah. The win a World Series standard is tough because just of the nature of baseball. So you could build the best team in baseball and easily not win a World Series, right? I mean, the odds are against the best team in baseball in any given year winning or even multiple years. So for me, I guess I'm, I'm less anti-tanking than the anti-tanking hardliners in the sense that I think if you come out of it on the other side and you build the best team in baseball that has a multi-year period of not necessarily winning one. That's, I think it's just a hard standard to hold a team to, but, but being the favorite to win one,

at least then I think you could say it's justified or at least retroactively, like the joy that you get from that could be comparable to just the shame, the embarrassment, the sadness of watching a truly terrible team for a few years. Not suggesting that's the only way that you can build a great baseball team, right? That would be kind of a false standard also to say that, well, they built the best team in baseball and they did it by tanking and therefore that's the only way they could have done it. But if you do do it that way, you got to back it up, though. That's the thing. Like if you if you do the extreme rebuild like that and there aren't many teams that have gone all in on being truly terrible the way that the Astros did and the way that the Orioles, who are run by multiple former Astros executives, did. Right.

So I don't know that you can lump them in with that many other teams. Like if you start talking about, oh, the Cubs or the Phillies, like some teams did less extreme versions of that. Some teams were just bad for a while. Right. Right. And so you have to draw a distinction between teams that just got old and aged out of contention

or they just were unintentionally terrible for a while as teams have always been. But if you set out to say, we're not going to spend on this roster, we're just going to truly tear it down, not just to get high draft picks because that can be hit or miss in baseball, though it's been pretty hit for the Orioles lately,

but also because by punting on the present entirely and totally and just jettisoning any talent that's not nailed down and setting our sights on the future, then we can acquire prospects and then we can hopefully set up a good player development pipeline and make players better and all of that. So if you do that, if you make good on the promise of truly terrible tanking, which is that it's all going to be worth it in the end, then I would give you some sort of pass, I guess, or at least say, well, it was worth it in the end because of where you got in the end. But you better get there. It's not enough just to like, you know, get to the playoffs,

even if you have some sort of Cinderella run like the Phillies had last year, winning a pennant and everything. And I don't know that you can classify them as the same sort of tanking either. But I'm just saying, you know, like not enough to like be a playoff team or just, you know, be a wildcard team at the other end of it. Like you've got to be great. And the Orioles aren't even quite there yet, but they certainly have the foundation of what could be a great team if they continue to excel at development or if they would actually spend on the roster. if they would actually spend on the roster, which, you know, that's the other thing, I think, is that if you're going to slash payroll and not even try to, like, save face and put a palatable product on the field for a few years, then you better take the money that you weren't spending there and repurpose it a few years down the road to support the core that you have developed. And

the Orioles have not done that as of yet. Everything that you just said is totally reasonable. And I think that being reasonable, we have seen far from a requirement to be a fan of anything, let alone a baseball team. And so I think you're right. I think there are a lot of fans who are going to look at this club and say, you know, go on a postseason run, go on a deep postseason run, spend some money, even if the money you're spending is in service of just retaining the couple of guys who are so good, who you've managed to, you know, bring along in your organization. And I think that that's going to, that's going to satisfy a lot of people.

And that's totally fine for it to, for that to be sufficient for you to be like, feel good about my baseball team, have had an enjoyable experience, would do it again. Maybe not it being such an intense teardown, but going back to the ballpark, rooting for them the next season. But I think that, you know, one of the risks that you run when you do this kind of intense thing is that it can linger for some folks. And I think that that's justifiable too. Yeah. The risk is that in the moment, you don't know whether it's going to work. Right. Right. So like in the end, you might say, okay, we had a happy ending to this story that started horribly, but you don't know in the moment whether there is going to be that payoff. So you have to have, and maybe in the Orioles'

case, it was like, trust us, we've done this before with the Astros, right? Maybe that inspired some confidence, but also some worry. Yeah, I was like, because what we think of with that era of the Astros is trust. Yes. You know, that's the first word that comes to mind is trust. Yes. But they have to sell it effectively because it's just like, trust us. It's all going to be worth it in the end.

But you don't know that. Like, I would take that trade if I were a fan of a team and you asked me, okay, we can be the absolute just worst cellar dwellers, like historically terrible for a few years, but then we will be the best on the other side of that. I'd be more willing to take that than just, you know, we'll muddle along and we'll be a 500-ish team. And maybe if things go right, we will sneak into the playoffs here or there, but we'll never be a favorite.

We'll never build a powerhouse. We'll never feel like we have a real plan. I think I would probably take the former, but again, that's contingent on just it delivering in the end, because if you don't deliver, well, then I'd rather have the team that it's giving me moderately entertaining baseball on a day-to-day basis and at least giving me some hope and chance when the season starts that they might be there at the end, as opposed to just entirely writing off years of my life as a baseball fan and saying there's going to be very little that is rewarding about this period. Well, and like think about how we talked about the Phillies before they went on that run, right? Before their magical postseason, before they were a pennant winner, we were talking about them like this was the rebuild that didn't work, right?

That these guys couldn't manage what the Astros had or, you know, the Cubs had or whatever. That this is, what do you do when the process the process stalls and so it can be very precarious and it is not guaranteed to work i mean i think that the orioles definitely put themselves in a really good position for it to work in some respects and i'm not saying that to excuse some of the stuff that i find distasteful with their lack of spending, etc. But it's like, you know, if you're going to pin your franchise's hopes on anyone, like Adley Rutschman's a good player to do that with, right? And they've had other successes. They've had other guys come along.

We just talked about their great core, but you're not guaranteed to have that. What if, you know, something catastrophic had happened to Rutschman in the course of his development? What if he had gotten blown up at home plate and had never been the same again? You're just always running that risk because baseball is really hard and guys get hurt. And guys who are really good, who you expect to be future franchise cornerstones, sometimes flame out. Sometimes they get Tommy John. Whatever.

A lot of stuff can happen and totally derail it. And, you know, it can swing really dramatically back in the other direction when you have a magical run that starts with you firing your manager and ends with you in the world series, but you're not guaranteed that. So it seems, seems like a lot to bet on, but you're doing that all the time. You're, you're hoping that your five-year plan works well enough for you to be a good baseball team or at least keep your job. Meant to mention, Jackson Holiday dominating the South Atlantic League. That's the league where they're using the pre-tacked ball at least for half a season if they make it that far, just to test it and hopefully come up with a solution where pitchers won't need or won't

want to use foreign substances because the ball is so sticky as it is. And that experiment hasn't gone so great. Lots of complaints about what the ball feels like and how the ball behaves. Just like a lot of carry, apparently. Which I guess is sort of what you'd expect, right? It's almost like they spider-tacked the ball and suddenly tons of carry on fastballs and just huge gains there. And you'd think, I mean, part of the rationale

of having sticky stuff or a pre-tacked ball is giving people good control. But thus far, scoring has been up at that level because strikeouts are up, but also walks are up and wild pitches. Hit-by-pitches, yeah. Yeah, and also walks are up and wild pitches. Hit by pitches. Yeah. And hit by – yeah.

So just like a lot of wildness and balls getting away and guys getting drilled. So it doesn't seem like this is the answer that they might have to go back to the drawing board on this one or at least tinker with the formula. And just wanted to mention, I saw a quote about that in a Baseball America story about these concerns from our pal Morgan Sword. Morgan, who said that's obviously not a desired outcome, referring to the wildness and the three true outcomes. But this has been for years now an iterative process where we go try something, see how it works, and then go back in the lab, tweak it, try again, and we're going to keep at it. He said lab. Literally, he's asking for the lab league here, not South Atlantic League, lab league. This seems like because one of the concerns here is that you have someone like Jackson

Holiday who gets promoted to that level and then perhaps gets promoted from that level and might be facing three different balls over the course of the season because there's a minor league ball, there's this South Atlantic League pre-tac ball, then there's the major league ball that's used at like AAA and et cetera. So especially for a pitcher, you know, imagine you're climbing the ladder and you're using all these different, so there's like a player development concern, there's like a player evaluation concern, perhaps there's a safety concern. Yeah.

Literally go back in the lab and then lab league, right? I've seen some people say, well, they should be testing this in indie ball instead of affiliated ball. Don't even subject the indie leaguers to this. Lab league. This is tailor made for your proposal of lab league. Yes. This is tailor-made for your proposal of Lab League, where you could just have some recently retired players or non-professional players or whoever it is, like competent players who would be playing games and throwing balls with this pre-tack balls. That seems like it would give you a lot of the intelligence that you need before you start using it in a league where players are actually getting like called up having played there recently you know so lab make it make lab league a reality yeah because you know like imagine for a minute you're trying to figure out what the heck to do with andrew abbott or ben brown why do they all

have these like net you know same yeah you know, same, like first, anyway, you know, yeah, these are professional baseball players who have futures, who more than just their mom cares about. Like, what are we, you know? Yeah. Yeah. This is what that situation calls for. Why doesn't anyone listen to me? I mean, like some people do. And I will also admit that I find that to be a questionable choice. So what are we left with? But no one listens to me. Yeah. Noted baseball thinker, Meg Rowley. Right. Yeah. One of the noted baseball thinkers, you know? Yep. Morgan.

you know yep Morgan last thing I wanted to mention I got a tweet from someone who asked me it's early but could Jose Abreu end up being the worst signing in history not attributable to injury I have no idea it's uh it's early and I don't know it wasn't the longest term deal and everything but also what's going on with Jose Abreu, who's been, I think, by fan graphs, were literally the least valuable player in Major League Baseball this season, which has contributed to the Astros' slowish start. Just a complete power outage on the part of a pretty perennially consistent power hitter.

And I know that there were some warning signs last season, and we talked about this, I believe, when the Astros signed him, that he was productive in the second half last year, but in a very different and less powerful way. So in the first half, for instance, he had the same batting average as the second half. I think he hit 304 in the first half and 305 in the second half, but he had 11 homers in the first half to 125 in the second half. And it seemed like the Astros weren't super concerned about that. He was still hitting for a high average with maybe an abnormally high BABIP. It was kind of BABIP inflated, but I guess they bet on the track record.

And also they were just replacing Uli Gurriel, who hadn't given them much offense either. But boy, he has not hit at all. And I know they've talked about it being mechanical and could be fixed but he is homerless he has as we speak played in 42 games 175 plate appearances and he has not homered he is slugging 262 he has a 43 isolated power, which is slugging percentage minus batting average. Just 47 WRC plus from Jose Abreu. Yeah. Just completely power outage and everything kind of offensive outage thus far.

Ben, a lot of those Astros free agent signings and re-signings, they don't look very good right now. They don't look the best. I just don't know what happens when the owner is so involved um yeah i don't have a good explanation other than it really bums me out because he'd been so steady and then you looked last year and you're like well maybe this is you know an encouraging sign like i think we read hit the the change in sort of the shape of his production last year as in some ways encouraging because like, oh, hey, maybe this is him adapting as he ages and we're going to get years more productive Abreu. And it has not been that way so far. It has, in fact, been quite poor. Like, I don't know what I'm looking looking at you know yeah i don't have a good

he's not hitting the ball hard he's not hitting the ball in the air it's just i mean he's he's 36 years old yeah but it's just such a sudden drop sudden yeah dramatic drop and it and it's like is it now knowing what we know now are we looking looking at it and saying, well, maybe this isn't a sudden drop. Maybe last year was just like a well-disguised decline. Right. Because he was still productive. But as you noted, like the shape of that production, very different than in years past. So maybe we just need to recast our understanding of his 2022.

But like that was still a very productive hitter you know even though it was a different version of a brayu than we had seen previously um yeah it just kind of all bums me out like i i felt in the moment when that signing happened like oh i can't believe that the White Sox let this happen because he's been so important to that clubhouse for so long. And now do I have to contemplate them having been right? That feels uncomfortable, too. I don't know how I feel about that.

Yeah, they've been wrong about enough other things, I think. Yeah, I guess that's true. They're still in the red, you know. Red's a more fun color than black, so I feel like we should swap those. You're right, though. I guess between that signing, which was, what, three years and 50-something million, and then Michael Brantley, unfortunately. Yeah, and that one I think actually actively bums me out more

yeah because I just I love watching Michael Brantley hit I love watching him hit and we have not gotten to do that even a little bit

this year yep and then obviously the concerns about the rotation depth exacerbated by McCullers injury

Luis Garcia injury etc etc yeah Montero hasn't been good yeah much more vulnerable than they've been in some time and the Rangers are taking advantage Luis Garcia injury, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Montero hasn't been good. Yeah. Much more vulnerable than they've been in some time. And the Rangers are taking advantage.

Yeah. I'm just now like coming to grips with Rafael Montero's ERA. And I know that his FIP is better, but yikes. Yikes. All right. Yikes. Yikes. All right. So I have a pass blast and we should just note the gallon bird death that you alluded to that does not count toward Michael Bauman's preseason prediction that an animal. Bauman is furious. Yes, because he worded it too narrowly. Apparently, he said that it had to be in a game. In a game. That some animal would die during a Major League Baseball game.

And, of course, Gallen, who killed a bird. Killed a bird. Just warm-up throws, just tossing on the field. And sadly, a bird got in the way. And we don't have great footage of that fact. And there definitely wasn't an explosion, a bird-splosion the way that there was with Randy Johnson. It was a curveball. Right. It was a curveball.

That's even, I think that's more, I mean, I don't want to say any bird death is impressive, you know, RIP the birds. But I mean, they have their little bird bones, as you have noted, right? They have these tiny little bird bones. Yeah. So the Randy Johnson fastball was totally overkill, literally, right? And that's why we got the explosion. Right.

This case, we just got a deflection, and hopefully the birds never knew what hit it. But what hit it was a Zach Gallen curveball. Curveball, yeah. One of many victims of the Zach Gallen curveball this year, but in this case, more literally. A fatality, the first known fatality. Ben, on a scale of very superstitious to not at all superstitious, where do you put yourself on a superstition spectrum? Like, where do you place?

Very low. Very low. Okay. Does this move the needle for you at all? So, you know, Randy Johnson, he killed that bird, right? Yes. Do you know what year he killed the bird in? I don't. I guess it was around the turn of the millennium. Did you know that he killed that bird in 2001?

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Do you know what else happened to the Diamondbacks in 2001? They won the World Series. I remember that well. They won the World Series, Ben. Yeah.

It's not a fond memory for me. Oh, sorry. Yeah, gosh. It's okay. I didn't even mean to do that. I wasn't trying to be clever and then zazz you. It's like the one time I suffered as a fan. It's okay. Yeah, you. I didn't even mean to do that. I wasn't trying to be, like, clever and then zack you. It's like the one time I suffered as a fan. It's okay. Yeah, you're fine. But, you know, I don't need to, like, spring that on you on a Thursday,

just like a random day, and you're, like, getting re-stimulated by young person trauma. But I'm just saying that, like, I know that I am, like, one of the high ones on the Diamondbacks. I'm like, you know, they're now my local team. They have a number of players who I enjoy watching very much. There's a strong Seattle connection because of Corbin Carroll. Zips is just in love, in love with the Diamondbacks, right? So I got Diamondbacks pilled pretty strongly this spring. And I am also, I would say, not a superstitious person, like pretty low on the superstition scale. But I'm just saying that little bird, it inched me a little bit on the spectrum. I'm not saying that I'm going to like, you know, stop washing my clothes or anything like that.

I'm just saying like it moved me. It appreciably moved me along much like Zach Gallin's curveball moved that bird. I just think it's like so impressive that a curveball could kill a bird. I mean, it's still going on the scale of things going fast or slow, it's still going pretty fast. It's a hard object. Going pretty fast. Pretty quickly, yeah. But, you know, like you expect a Randy Johnson fastball. It's amazing he didn't kill more birds, really, when you look back on his career.

Like it was just the one bird that we know of. I mean, they die when they fly into something that is not moving, right? So if they fly into something that is also moving, then I guess that makes sense, even if it's not a large object. Right. Yeah. But you're right. It's a good omen, a bad omen for the bird, but perhaps a good omen for the diamondbacks.

For birds everywhere. And, you know, I will say one of the things I have been most delighted by in my move to the desert, there's so many birds here, Ben. That's nice. You know, there's just like a lot of, I feel like I wake up in a fairy tale every day with all this bird song and then it's like 115 degrees and I was like, oh no, I'm melting, which is also part of a fairy tale, you know, depending on the one you're reading. which is also part of a fairy tale, you know, depending on the one you're reading.

All right. Let's wrap up with the pass blast here from 2008. Just following up on last time, which was about the Barry Bonds 756 home run ball that was stamped with or laser etched with an asterisk by its purchaser, Mark Echo, and then given to the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame did, in fact, display that ball. And maybe to this day, I don't have a live look at Cooperstown. I don't know whether it's out there today. But up until very recently, at least, it has been proudly displayed out there. It's been in a case and everything with a whole display about bonds and home run records and all of that.

bonds and home run records and all of that so i guess that's of a piece with the hall of fame's general attitude about steroids which is anti right and kind of closing the doors as much as they can to those guys so maybe it makes sense that they would want to put the asterisk ball on display but yeah hey they're telling the story of baseball and that is part of the story of baseball and here is part of the story of 2008 coming to us from Pass Blast consultant David Lewis, who is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. He writes, replay comes to Major League Baseball. In late August 2008, Major League Baseball decided to combat umpire errors by officially allowing instant replay to be used to correct calls made in game for the first time. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, staunchly against the use of replay in the past, said,

like everything else in life, there are times that you have to make an adjustment. My opposition to unlimited instant replay is still very much in play. I really think that the game has prospered for well over a century now, doing things the way we did it. And David continues, United States to do so. The NFL adopted replay in 1986, the NHL in 1991, and the NBA in 2002. The first use of instant replay came on September 3, 2008, when Alex Rodriguez hit what appeared to be a home run to left field at Tropicana Field. When the Rays argued that the ball was in fact foul, umpires chose to use replay to review the call, which was eventually upheld. In 2014, replay rules were expanded, allowing managers to challenge specific calls

and broadening the type of plays that could be reviewed. Ben, you know what I'm realizing? What? How little of the 2008 postseason I'm confident I watched. I know I watched some of it but um famously i don't know if you will remember this um in september of 2008 like lehman brothers went bankrupt and then um i started working a bajillion hours a week in jersey city for stretches of it um because of the financial crisis and so like i'm, I'm sure, I don't have, like, a strong memory.

I mean, I have memories of the World Series. Like, I have memories of watching Philly, but I don't, I'm not confident in my postseason memory from that year. I feel like I... You had other things on your mind. Yeah. Wow. What a time.

I guess, Replay, you could look at it as a Pandora's box. They opened it up for a limited use and then it's gotten greater and greater since then. I'm pretty pro-Replay, so I'm fine with it. I wouldn't say it's a Pandora's box. It's a friendly box. I don't know, some less nefarious box. It's a necessary box, right? We've talked about this.

Once the folks at home have a really clear view of what's going on in the field, you have to have replay or the whole thing falls apart. It comes apart at the scene. So people who are mad at replay are really mad at high def television, I think. Yeah. And you couldn't just bring it in for boundary calls or home run calls and then not use it for other things once that turned out to be a viable way to decide that stuff. So, yeah, I understand that some people think there's replay overreach and certainly there are still some frustrating instances of replay and some tweaks that could be made. But I am glad that MLB adopted replay.

Yeah, me too. It took quite a long time. It was probably overdue by then. It had been decades that people had been watching replays and had no way to avail themselves of the replay technology to change an incorrect call. I wonder whether we'll start to see stat casts sort of replace video when it comes to replay. Obviously, if we go to a challenge system for balls and strikes or a full automated ball strike system,

then that would be sort of stat cast substituting. But I saw Tom Tango tweeting like a stat cast image and read out of a ball that was like almost foul, you know, just to determine whether it was fair or foul. And it seemed like there was a lot of precision there where you could tell. And I don't know, maybe it's just as obvious usually when you have high def replays and cameras and lots of different angles that you wouldn't necessarily need to resort to StatCast on that. You know, like for pitch calls, you would, I think, just because of the different angles and just the precision required. And there's always going to be some amount of uncertainty, as there is with Hawkeye and

tennis, for instance. And people accept that there's some slight margin of error, even if the graphic that you see and follow along with in real time doesn't really represent that. But I guess in theory, you could start to use StatCast for all kinds of things. I mean, once they have, they have like limb tracking now, you know, like total body player motion tracking. So you could even use that for something like tags and, you know, slides. I don't know whether it's to the point where it would be more precise than video or whether that's even needed for other things than pitch calls. But we're getting to the point

where I guess you could start to use that for every kind of call or every kind of review. Yeah. I mean, it feels like you got to put those arrays to some kind of use, right? I don't want to slight David Lewis here because he closed this pass blast by saying, additionally, I would be remiss if I squandered the chance to reference the only moment of athletic glory in my life. On July 25th, 2008, my Little League All-Star team won a game 16-8, and as reported by our local newspaper, the Press of Atlantic City,

Northfield's David Lewis made a diving catch in left field with the bases loaded and two outs in the third inning. And David notes, unfortunately, my athletic pursuits were all downhill from there. But at least he had his moment. And he made the newspaper, I guess, third inning. You know, it could have been higher leverage. Could have been later in the game. But I want to take it away from you, David. You know, bases loaded, two outs. Wow.

You're out here criticizing Little League. You know, in addition to just making a great play, I bet he didn't have any idea about the Lehman bankruptcy at any point that year. He was probably totally free of that. I hope so. Yeah. And I wish we had a replay of his great play, but at least it was documented. Okay. A couple of things that occurred to me after we finished recording. The type of officiating I'd really like StatCast to help out with is check swing calls. The imprecision of those has

always frustrated me. Now that we have StatCast bat tracking, it seems like you could come up with a way to use it, but you would need an actual rule, something specific about what constitutes a swing, the angle or the plane that the bat breaks. I think we could work something out there. Get on it, Morgan. Also, the Mets did indeed summon Gary Sanchez back to the majors. It has come to that. Imagine if you had showed that headline of the Mets calling up Gary Sanchez to Yankees fans just a few years back. The Cardinals beat the Dodgers 16-8 and hit seven home runs, including two by Contreras. So I imagine the burger phone

must have been busy. Also, congrats to effectively wild favorite Joey Manessas, who is not off to as great a start this season as I'd like him to be, but he became the latest to join the ranks of MLB players who have taken paternity leave.

So congrats on the sex and the fatherhood. We were talking about the infield logjam that the Orioles are facing. Well, what about the Reds? I know we don't talk about the Reds a whole lot, but they just called up their shortstop prospect, Matt McLean, who was much needed because the Reds have received the least production from the shortstop position of any team this year. They haven't done so great at that position going back some years. So one of their problems has been not enough shortstops, but it seems like it's about to be too many shortstops because almost all the Reds' top prospects are at least nominally shortstops. Not just McLean, but also, of course, Eli De La Cruz, whom we discussed recently, Noel V. Marte, Edwin Arroyo. I talked to Eric Langenhagen about that, too, and he noted that Jose Barrero, who's in the majors now, is the best defender, but will probably strike his way out of

the job. For Eric, Arroyo is a future second baseman. Marte is a future third baseman. So the future Reds shortstop, either Ellie or McLean, and De La Cruz is still mistake prone, but more talented. So that should be a fun positional battle. And again, good problem to have between that wealth of future shortstops or infielders and Hunter Green and Lodolo, who's hurt now, and Ashcraft and Andrew Abbott, I can foresee a future when we might want to talk about the Reds regularly, and for positive reasons. Probably not this year, though. Also, some of you may have heard of an odd A-ball game between the Modesto Nuts and the Inland Empire 66ers on May 12th.

Modesto is the single-A affiliate of the Mariners. Inland Empire is the affiliate of the Angels. And after the top of the first, the manager of Inland Empire went to the umps and brought up an issue with the lineup card. Apparently, the manager of the Inland Empire team and maybe also the umps had been given the wrong lineup card, the lineup card for Saturday's game instead of Friday's. Michael Morales was on the mound and was warming up and was supposed to start for Modesto. But Brandon Schaefer was listed as the starting pitcher on the lineup card. So there was a long delay as they figured out what to do. And Schaefer, who was listed as the starter but was not actually in line to pitch, couldn't go.

So Modesto issued three consecutive intentional walks to lead off the game. And that way, Schaefer's three batter minimum was satisfied. And then Chris Jefferson came in to pitch. There were a bunch of other substitutions and changes in the batting order and defensive alignments. Schaefer's three batter minimum was satisfied. And then Chris Jefferson came into pitch. There were a bunch of other substitutions and changes in the batting order and defensive alignments. There's a weird bug with the box score. If you look where it lists some players as batting in multiple lineup spots, from what I have gleaned, that was just a bug that didn't actually happen. Morales, the original pitcher, apparently couldn't pitch after the string of intentional walks because he wasn't anywhere on the lineup card.

The Modesto lineup cards usually don't list the other starting pitchers at all, so he just wasn't eligible to pitch. Quite an embarrassing incident and an embarrassing box score. But if you were wondering why the heck a game started with three consecutive intentional walks, now you know. Now, you know, finally, I was informed by official Effectively Wild stat keeper John Chenier that the results of the first ever Effectively Wild draft are now official. On episode 201, this was back on May 13th, 2013, Sam and I drafted age 25 and under starting pitchers and projected which ones would have the most wins above replacement player over the next five years and 10 years. And so 10 years have

passed. And I know everyone would have been let down if we didn't follow up on this. So the official certified results from John, the 12 guys I drafted collectively accumulated 157.2 warp over that decade. And the 12 guys Sam drafted accumulated a mere 76.3. So my dozen more than doubled Sam's. I got Clayton Kershaw with the first overall pick and Sam got Steven Strasburg. So that sort of set the tone. Sam also drafted Matt Harvey. But it's tough to feel too good about my victory because another Sam draftee was the late Jose Fernandez. There is a spreadsheet of all of the Effectively Wild competitions and drafts, which I will link to on the show page.

all of the Effectively Wild competitions and drafts, which I will link to on the show page. You can support Effectively Wild and ensure that we keep going long enough to report the results of other long-term drafts by visiting patreon.com slash effectively wild. And 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 entirely ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Christian, Charles Greider, Dave Ekman, Joseph Rosso, and Prussia. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes hosted by me and Meg, playoff live streams later in the year, discounts on merch and ad-free fancrafts memberships, and so much more, patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

If you are a supporter, you can contact us via the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at rPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week,

which means we'll talk to you soon. I chickened out like a coward, Ben. And you know what? That may well serve me well. That may well serve me well. What? Meg, I'm going to say leave it in because, you know, just in case anyone thought that I don't get tongue-tied occasionally. You know, a lot of outlets do, including us.

So you have guys cycling through potentially much more quickly once they've gotten up on a big league roster and stuck there. They're going to graduate quickly or quicklier. What the hell, Ben? Oh, my God. I need... Do I need more coffee or should I have had less coffee? Quicklear?

What the good gravy? Leave it in, Shane. I mean, we're having a day over here, I guess.