Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2009: Safe By a Hair

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up with additional details about the Cardinals’ cheeseburger phone, banter about the hot hitting of Ronald Acuña Jr. and Aaron Judge, answer listener emails (31:13) about home run rituals and the unwritten rules, a prophylactic procedure to prevent Tommy John surgery, whether a runner could be safe because of […]

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It's Effectively Wild It's Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2009 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I have hamburger phone clarity. That is how I am. So I have additional details on how the Cardinals cheeseburger phone functions, which was our question yesterday. We led with this. We included some clips from Adam Wainwright and DeYoung explaining how this hamburger cheeseburger

phone works, but we still had some significant questions, I think, about the process. Yeah. And now we have the deep dive that I was pining for, the print reporter who has chased the story, in this case, Derek Gould of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and has provided many additional details in his gamer for the Cardinals' most recent victory in which they hit seven home runs, which was the most that they had hit in a home game since 1940. And according to this piece, two of the seven were called via the cheeseburger phone, but that's not all we learned here. So the origin story is basically what we said it was yesterday.

This was Miles Michaelis' idea. He pointed out, hey, we're always calling when someone will hit a home run. So we should keep track of this in some way. It should be official. And so inspired by Big Mac Land at Bush, he suggested a hamburger phone. So they found one. He suggested a hamburger phone. So they found one. Alec Burleson was delegated, deputized to find a hamburger phone on Amazon.

He and Michaelis, they decided which one they would buy. They also, however, purchased some hamburger-themed hats that would be part of the celebration worn by the player who hit the homer. worn by the player who hit the homer. However, Burleson tried both of them, the ones that they bought, in the clubhouse at Wrigley, and they were floppy. They were floppy hamburger hats.

Gould writes, more undercooked burger hats than homer burger hats. They sat on Burleson's head like a White Castle slider left in the rain or a Mayor McCheese balloon left behind in the ball pit after losing its air. Very lyrical imagery here used by Derek. You can't just find a big old

hamburger hat somewhere, Burleson revealed, was not what we anticipated. So no hamburger hats for now, although Burleson says still in the works. And I kind of hope that they don't do the hamburger hats because not only is the prop comedy out of control, as you were saying yesterday, but almost every team now has a post

Homer celebration with props. And what I like about this Cardinals, it's not even a celebration. It's a pre-laboration, right? It's an anticipation. Pre-liberation. Yeah, I just coined that. I don't think that's going to catch on. But the thing that sets them apart is that they don't have a post-Homer celebration. They have a pre-Homer ritual, unlike everyone else. So that's a distinction, which I think they should try to preserve because now that almost every team has a post-Homer ritual, then that no longer sets you apart. So, yeah, just keep it in advance, I think. But we were wondering some other things about how this works, right?

Like actually dialing the number. Are they actually placing a call? What is happening here exactly? And Gould had the details here too. So what happens is players are constantly predicting homers for their teammates and then taking credit when one is mashed. With the hamburger, an official call is when a player goes up and punches in the jersey number of a teammate, sometimes multiple times, and then hits the pound key. Okay.

That last button is the chef's kiss. Burgers are measured in portions of pounds. Home runs are pounded. So they have to hit the pound key. Okay. Every player gets one call per game. But if that teammate reaches base, as I was saying yesterday, like a successful replay review, then they retain their call, which I guess they don't have to hit a homer. They just have to reach base for you to retain. Yeah. And then if that teammate homers, bragging rights abound. Okay. So I think a couple of things. First, it's clearly a cheeseburger phone. Yes. You know, there's cheese on this burger on this phone. I'm looking again at the phone and there's cheese on it. So it's a cheeseburger phone. It's not a hamburger phone. No. I just think that this system is unwieldy. I think that if one is trying to provide accurate accounting of the potential home run calls, I don't know that this is really what you want.

You know, I think that in an effort to make the thing in the dugout match the thing in the field, they've made it too. It's too much, Ben. You know, it's too elaborate. It's too elaborate. It's not an easily comprehensible system. What happens when, you know, when they have rookies come up and they have to explain the cheeseburger phone to, to a guy who's been in AAA, I would applaud the AAA player who says, look, I don't want to cause waves. I'm new here. Yeah. But this is nonsense. You know, this is a, you've adopted a nonsense phone system.

That would be Bush League if you rejected the cheeseburger phone. You got to fit in. And is the cord just hanging off the end? If the cord. Yeah, I don't think the cord is attached to anything. If the cord isn't attached to anything, why not just pull it out? Why have it on? It's kind of funny.

It is kind of funny to have an old school phone cord just hanging off of the cheeseburger phone, not actually connected to anything. I guess. that I am on some level so resistant to this, you know, the most important piece of it is my standing objection to prop comedy and just thinking that we're doing too much. But I feel like because these are rituals that clearly are meant to be remarked upon by outside parties, right? That you have, you've created a little system, but you, you want, you want Derek Cole to ask you about your cheeseburger phone. One does not invite, one does not purchase a cheeseburger phone if one does not want the cheeseburger phone remarked upon. And I think that's true of baseball players and non-baseball players. Like you don't buy a

cheeseburger phone and put it in your house and then, you know, hope that when you have people over that they're not going to ask you about it. You are going to ask you about your cheeseburger phone. That's why you buy it. Right. It doesn't blend into the decor. It's not like a subtle touch in your interior decorating. Unless you live at McDonald's, in which case people are going to have other questions. But so, you know, they're meant to be remarked upon, and they are assuming that we will find them charming or funny or, you know, compelling in some way. And I so rarely find them to be any of those things. And so, I feel like I'm being set up to be a bad time. And I'm a good time, Ben. That sounds... I'm fun to hang out with. And I resent it. I really do. Because I think that

it's unfair that I'd be set up to be sort of a downer. And I just, you know, it's not, it's nothing. You've constructed a system of nothing. You know, your pound, it's not a... I think in the Cardinals' defense or baseball players' defense, it's true. When they just bring out a cheeseburger phone, they have to know that people are going to ask them about that. They may not be doing that so that someone will ask them about it. It may be just their thing, but they live in a fishbowl. I mean, you know, it's not their fault that there is so much interest in what they do. I mean, that's a perk. It's a plus in a lot of ways, but it means that they lack a lot of privacy that we do, that we take for granted in our work. So there could be less visible and public ways for them to do this, I suppose.

Wait, you see a little notebook. They do not have to have a cheeseburger phone. Right. Someone would probably ask, hey, what are you scribbling in that notebook? But it would be a little less ostentatious than the cheeseburger phone. It is true. So I'm sure they were aware that if they did this, it's not going to stay quiet and it's going to become a thing and everyone's going to know about the cheeseburger phone. And I assume that they were fine with that. Sure. I'm just saying they weren't necessarily courting that kind of attention.

Sure. It goes with the territory. That's fair. That's a fair note to offer. We do not know the heart of Miles Michael is, right? How could one understand such a thing? It often involves lizards, you know, like it is a complicated instrument that he's working with there. So, fair enough. But I will also say, I think this is nonsense. Oh, it's certainly nonsense. It's a nonsense system. It doesn't make good sense. It makes nonsense.

Contreras likes it and said— Okay, well, I'm glad he's happy because he's had a heck of a time of late. Yeah, he needs to be cheered up, and the Cardinals as a whole need to be cheered up, right? And I think that's part of it. It's almost like— Oh, absolutely. as a whole need to be cheered up, right? And I think that's part of it. It's almost like you're in a bad mood and you force yourself to smile because it might have some psychological effect where if you pretend that you're happy, you look happy, you go through the motions, then maybe you'll start actually feeling happy. And that's kind of what's happening here. So Contreras said,

I don't want to hit a home run and just dead. We have to celebrate. We lost a lot in April, and in May, we're turning it around. We have to celebrate. We lost a lot in April, and in May we're turning it around. We have to celebrate the good moments. So I think that's part of it. Sure. But it is a very strange system and perhaps an inefficient system. I'm still not entirely clear on whether any of this is being tracked or recorded after the game. I get that during the game, if you make a call,

you get immediate feedback on whether the call was correct or not. But is someone charting this? Are we getting stats on who has predicted things correctly or not? I don't know. And that's the part that I would value if we had that. And that's why I think I'm higher on this than I am on some of the celebrations. It's just that I like that there— Because it generates data. In theory, it could, right? It could. Like, you could stat blast about this if someone is keeping track.

But just because it is bringing out into the light what we have often discussed, which is that players are constantly predicting things. Yes. are constantly predicting things. And therefore, if you predict something correctly, it's not really that impressive because you probably predicted a dozen things incorrectly before that. And also someone may be predicting every possible outcome at every possible instance. So it seems like no matter what happens, someone was probably calling it.

So this is just bringing that to the surface and saying, yeah, this is such a trait of baseball players that they are constantly predicting things that we're just going to attach it to this cheeseburger phone and everyone will know because we went up to make a call and flipped open the bun. So I like it in that sense. And I like that it's preemptive and not reactive, I guess, is my take on this. And Bully for the Cardinals. They're having some fun out there. They're trying to change their reputation. But there is an issue in a game like that, right, where they hit seven home runs.

Gould's piece says, in the dugout, staffing the phone was getting tricky. When they happen all in a row like that, we almost don't have time to call the next one because it happened so quick with the pitch clock, Michaelis said. After Gorman's first career homer off a lefty and first of two homers on Thursday, Andrew Kisner rushed to the hamburger. I like that phrase, rushed to the hamburger. That makes this all worthwhile. That pulls me in a slightly different direction because that is objectively a delightful thing to hear. He flipped it open and punched one one a few times and then the required pound sign.

Seconds later, DeYoung, number 11, clanked a homer off the left field foul pole. Kisner hammed up his call. So. I, I, yeah, that, that is charming. You know, that's charming. It's nice to predict home runs for Paul DeYoung because that feels like you've kind of adopted a degree of difficulty that some of these other calls might not have. And that part of my resistance, Ben, might be embarrassment because in our prior episode, I posited the potential humor of a cheating scandal that somehow involved the phone. And I did not call them hamburglars. And it was right there for me, you know? Yeah, you're right. I wish I could tell you that I was eschewing the easy joke, you know, that I thought that, you know, that laugh's beneath me.

I don't need that laugh. Like, I'm above that laugh. No, I just didn't, I didn't have it right then. And I could have, cause it's right there for you. They, you know, if they used the cheeseburger phone, now granted it's a cheeseburger phone and he is called the Hamburglar, which implies that he is burgling hamburgers and not cheeseburgers. Although I don't know that we have like really well-defined lore or canon around the targets that the Hamburglar sought, right? Presumably he was going after cheeseburgers because I imagine that many of the burgers available for burglaring had cheese on them, you know? Yeah. But I didn't think beneath me. I just didn't, you know, I didn't think about it.

And it was right there. If they used the cheeseburger phone, like, to steal signs somehow, Howard wouldn't even do that. I don't even know, Ben. You know, I'm not the mastermind here. The Cardinals are. In this hypothetical scenario, I'm not accusing the Cardinals of anything Hamburglar-wise or otherwise, but they could be Hamburglars. And then I think the banging scheme, I think we could stop talking about it. If that happened, we could move on

from the banging scheme because the Hamburglar scheme... Yeah, it would be overshadowed. Yes. I would argue that while a hamburger islar scheme... Yeah, it would be overshadowed. Yes. Yeah. You know? I would argue that while a hamburger is not a cheeseburger, a cheeseburger is, in fact, a hamburger. Yeah. I would say. It's a hamburger with some cheese on it. It's a hamburger with some cheese on it. Yeah.

Kind of situation here. Right. Yeah. Okay, fine. You know what? That's a good science-based note, really. Like, that feels like you just did a little bit of math for me. You know, you're like, remember geometry, Meg?

It's like that, you know? Well, whether you like it or not, I think we're stuck in it because the Cardinals are doing well. So the final line of this piece. Yeah, they're going to hold on. Yeah, Alec Burleson said, ever since we got it, we've been winning. Now, it certainly seems like a correlation, not causation situation. But now that baseball players, they're superstitious. They bring out the cheeseburger phone and then they rebound from their slow start and they hit a bunch of homers.

They're not going to retire the cheeseburger phone. So this is going to be a season-long feature, I assume. There's such a fascinating blend of confidence and self-doubt as just like a species of people, right? Because like on the one hand, one must be wildly confident, perhaps overconfident to try to do baseball on a professional level because it's so hard, you know, and it's so often marked by failure. But also they're like, well, it's not that we're the best at this, right? It's not that we are 26 of the best guys in the entire world at this thing. It's the cheeseburger phone, you know? We were lost, useless, wandering in the wilderness of bad vibes but then we got this phone on amazon for probably i mean what is you know what we're gonna look it up right now so we're gonna probably we're

gonna do a little we're gonna do a little do to do so should i search hamburger phone or cheeseburger phone hamburger phone i'm trying to like type really loud yes this one this one looks like the one to me i'm getting one i'm getting one for promoted 15 15 so this is a sub one of these is 16 we have a 17 one i mean like this feels like that's the range it's it's roughly 15 bucks yeah you're mispriced this one this one is only 14 but it looks kind of cheap. You know, I'm here to tell you. This one is, what? This is just a fake cheeseburger.

This is just a prop. This is a bakery shop prop display. Chicken hamburger. What on earth? Amazon, you got a lot of garbage on your site. Here to tell you, you know. So anyway, it's not that they have- If they want the premium option, I see one that's like $18.49.

Right, yeah. So it's not that you have a couple of guys who are future Hall of Famers on your team, right? It's not that you have a number of other guys who are exciting young players, right? It's not any of that. It's the sub $20 phone. Amazing. They're just like such funny humans in general. Not ha-ha funny as we have taken pains to say, but funny, you know? Yeah. The sociology of the sport is something.

It's fascinating. It keeps us coming back after all these years. All right. So I have some emails and a little stat blasting, and we're going to meet a major leaguer or two. Just the only thing I wanted to mention, just wanted to marvel for a moment at Ronald Acuna Jr. and what he has done. Not news to anyone, but he is leading the major leagues in war by a non-pitcher. At least Zach Gallin is still just a hair ahead of him. So talented. Yes. But Ronald

Acuna, who has not killed any birds to our knowledge, he's been worth two and a half wins above replacement, according to FanCrafts. that is better than anyone in baseball, better even than his teammate Sean Murphy, who's right behind him. And really, my preseason tongue-in-cheek bold prediction that he could go 50-50, it's not out of the question that that could actually happen right now. Like, he's on pace for the steals, right? I mean, he's close to the league lead. He's got 18 bags already. And the homers, he started a little slow when it came to the homers. He's up to 11 now, and he's hit a little flurry of them. And the thing that Joe Sheehan pointed out in his most recent newsletter is that

if anything, he is underperforming his contact quality, given how hard he's hit the ball. Yeah. He has a 180 WRC plus and a 444 WOBA, but his expected weighted on base average is 487. Yeah. So he has underperformed his expected weighted on base based on his quality of contact by more than 40 points, which is a fair amount. So he's slugging 613, which is a very high number. His expected slugging percentage is 713, 100 points higher than his actual slugging percentage. Now, his expected home run total is only 12, one more than he has. So it's not necessarily that he's been robbed of a bunch of long balls.

But given that, I mean, it's not out of the question, right? Like 40-40 is well within range at this point. And I do think that you would have to discount that slightly just given the high stolen base environment that we find ourselves in. It's not quite as impressive an accomplishment if he were to do that. Still extremely impressive. And if he were to do 50-50, that would be like era adjusted, I think, at least as impressive as a 40-40 used to be before the new stolen base rules and everything. So, man, I mean, it's just it's great to see him back in every possible way after being absent or somewhat diminished for a while. He's a guy I'm going to see if I can articulate the mental distinction that I am drawing here

in a way that is satisfactory. It's like so in 2019, right, we had the we had the wild, is satisfactory. It's like, so in 2019, right, we had the, we had the wild juicy ball, right? It was so juicy. And you had guys who have not been big home run guys, like hitting home runs. And so we had to mentally discount the, the home runs that were being hit at least somewhat because we had to acknowledge the, the strangeness of the offensive environment this change this obvious fundamental change in this big piece of equipment but i don't know about you ben but one thing that i did is like i mentally discounted everyone's home runs a little bit but the guys the big boppers i discounted their home runs less right because they didn't need the help of the ball they you know like aaron judge doesn't need assistance to hit home runs less, right? Because they didn't need the help of the ball. They, you know, like Aaron Judge, he doesn't need assistance to hit home runs.

Like he's going to hit home runs. He's going to hit them far. They're not, you know, he's going to have some wall scrapers, sure. He's going to have a couple that are in the first row in the little league ballpark he plays in. I can't resist the dig at it. It's just right there for me. It's an easy dig, right?

But he's going to do that, but he is not in need of assistance to hit a lot of home runs. And I think that Ronald Zucconi Jr. and Stolen Bases are in a similar space for me. Because even, and I say that even with him having had, you know, the injury stuff and some difficulty coming back from that and what have you. Like, even last year, a year that was below his lofty standards, he's still at 29 stolen bases, right? Right. And so, and this is when he's still coming back for at least part of that season from a devastating injury, right? He only played 119 games. And so I think that Acuna, like, is he going to benefit from the rules,

the various rules? Of course he is, right? But he's a base stealer, you know? That's part of the profile in, I think, a really fundamental way. And so do we need to apply a little discount? I mean, sure, maybe, but not very much of one, I don't think, because he's just, he's a base stealer, you know? It's part of his identity as a player. Does that sit right with you? Yeah, that makes sense. Right. I mean, in 2019, it was documented that it wasn't like anyone was

hitting 60 or 70 homers. Pete Alonso led with 53. It was that everyone it wasn't like anyone was hitting 60 or 70 homers. Pete Alonso led with 53. It was that everyone was hitting 20. It was the guys who usually did not hit as many were being pulled up, but it was sort of disproportionate. With the stolen bases, I'm not sure whether that's true. I know early in the season it seemed like it was more proportionate. true. I know early in the season, it seemed like it was more proportionate. It was like the fast, speedy guys were stealing more, but also the slower guys were stealing more. And it seemed to be kind of benefiting the different quadrants of base stealers to sort of a similar degree. I haven't looked to see whether that continues to be the case. Like this year,

for instance, there are probably some guys who would not normally be base dealers who are stealing some bags here and there also the leading base dealers are stealing more bases than they did last year right sure okay John birdie barely got over the line to 40 right and and this year estuary Ruiz who is leading the majors with 20, I guess he is on pace for 72, which is, you know, not as extreme as some of the forecasts. That's, I guess, about where I figured the leader would end up somewhere around between 60 and 70 or 70-ish. And Ronald Acuna, who's leading the National League, he's got 18 and then it's a step down to 14 or the next guy. So, like, the ceiling has been raised somewhat, right? Sure. Yeah, that's fair.

The floor perhaps also has been raised, although there are still some guys who have not stolen any bases at all. So, the floor is still sort of zero. But you're right. I mean, it's not new that Acudia is a big base dealer. Like, he has been one before. He's stolen 37. Right. Right.

And came close to 40-40 in that 2019 season. I'm just glad that, A, his knee and everything allows him to still be such a speedster and as fast as he was before. and as fast as he was before. And also that despite the fact that he's a masher and he hits the ball incredibly hard and he's hitting lots of homers, he has not pumped the brakes on the steals, right? Which, I mean, I don't know whether that's a good thing or not for his health and longevity,

but typically you do see as guys get older, not only do they slow down a bit, but also maybe their game changes a little and they go more toward power. And then if you're an extremely valuable offensive player without running, then you don't want to jeopardize your health. So you do the Mike Trout, right? He was a great base dealer, at least on a percentage basis.

Now he basically never steals and you still want him in the lineup every day. So it's okay. So you could say, hey, Ronald, you have a 180 WRC plus, like, take it easy. We need you in the lineup every day. And we would benefit from having you in the lineup every day, even if you weren't doing a ton of bases. Because it does take a toll on your body to do that, right? It's not just that you could slide headfirst and break a finger. It's also just like the repeated wear and tear of collisions and just slides.

I mean, that takes something out of you. So I love that he is still just an all-around player like this, and I hope he can keep it up. I'll enjoy it as long as it lasts, as long as that's his game. So I'm just eager to see how high these totals can go. I hope he picks up the home run pace even more. I love how you're like, as a guy gets older, he's 25. I know he's 25. I mean, he had a devastating knee injury.

So like, you know, I get what you're saying also, just for that. But it is like, I was like, is Ronald F. Green Jr. older than I remember him being? Like, you know, sometimes when a guy misses time, his age sneaks up on you, you know? But I was like, no, he's still just 20. Yeah, no, he's still quite young. I also had said a couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that Aaron Judge, who was hurt at the time, A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that Aaron Judge, who was hurt at the time, had basically reverted to pre-2022 Aaron Judge. Like he was still hitting very well, but not at that otherworldly level and also had a little nagging injury and hip stuff. And so it sort of seemed like the Yankees signed him off that superhuman season.

And then maybe he was going back to being a merely great or very good player. But since then, since he returned, he's been absolutely raking and hitting tons and tons of homers and making the Bouchers mad, whether he's side-eyeing or not. So now he is up to, you know, not quite 20-22 offensive levels, but at least over the full season, he's hitting more like 2017 at least when he had his 52 bombs. He's up to a 162 WRC plus. And much like Acudia, he is also underperforming his expected weighted on base average by a pretty wide margin by almost 40 points. So his expected WOBA is less than 20 points lower now than it was last year and still as high as it's been in any season since 2017. So, yeah, Aaron Judge, still very good, still an offensive force. Do you feel individually responsible for that?

Do you feel individually responsible for that? I'm happy to add it to the list of when we point out that someone is not quite playing at the same level and then suddenly they return to that level again. Much happier to have that be our thing than to have it be an effectively wild jinx of some sort. We don't want to jinx anybody. We're anti-jinx. Yeah. Maybe that's, I don't know whether that's just a tendency of ours to when someone's just on a hot streak, it's like, all right, you know, we mentioned it. We just mentioned how well Ronald Acuna is doing. Although in his case, it doesn't feel like he's out over his skis already.

It just feels like he's amazing. Right. When someone's having an unsupported hot streak, I suppose I'm a little less likely to talk about it because I just figure it's kind of fluky and random and it probably won't last. And so maybe I'm less likely to bring that up. Whereas when someone who's not doing as well as I think comes to my mind, like we talked about Jose Abreu on the last pod. I'm guessing Jose Abreu is going to be better than he's been to this point. So it won't be because we brought him up on the podcast, much like the Cardinals aren't playing better because they got a cheeseburger phone. It's if anything, the timing was ripe for the Cardinals to be better and hopefully for Jose

Abreu to be better. But it makes me feel better when we can point out someone who is struggling a little or underperforming slightly. And then we can help resuscitate them instead of having to bring someone back down to earth. Yeah. I mean, we, again, we're a good time. I'd like to think so. You know? Or, I mean, not always. I have been accused of being a bummer in service

of this very podcast, but I think in general, we would prefer to be a good time. Yeah. All right. Well, here are a few questions we've gotten from listeners. So here's one from Henry who says, a hypothetical that I've been thinking about for a while now and even more frequently due to the recent conversations about the season's over the top home run celebrations is how far would a team or dugout have to go in order to get the other team so offended that they would resort to beating a player or some other form of retribution? In other words, how intense a dugout celebration would be required that it would break the unwritten rules? Or are dugout shenanigans so modern that there are no unwritten rules that relate to dugout conduct that could even be perceived as being violated.

So can you even take it too far at this point where you would upset your opponent? Oh, what a good question, because my instinct is that you probably don't have to take it very far at all because, again, such sensitive creatures, baseball players, you know, on some level they have manners akin to Regency England. But we haven't seen that. So, I am making an unsupported assumption, I think. I think that if you involved signs that were pointed at the other dugout and said, like, you suck, then you'd get beans you know like if you were holding up a sign that said you suck and your mom smells like you'd get beans

or you could go a sassy route and be like hey don't throw that again you know and then they'd be like i'm gonna throw it right into your butt, you know? So, like, pick a place that bean balls often get, you know, directed. Is that your butt? So, I do think that if you were to sort of break the fourth wall, which is funny because you're breaking the fourth wall often, but you're, like, doing that to the camera if you um shift the gaze of the dugout toward the other dugout then i think it it would very quickly devolve into into nonsense uh and hurt feelings but these teams seem to recognize that like you know you're the dugout is like it's a clubhouse and unless you are volleying things from your clubhouse to the opposing clubhouse and i I don't mean clubhouse, I mean like clubhouse like in a little rascals kind of way, you know, not in like chirp at each other or if you were to throw a physical object or, again, if you were to have a sign that was clearly meant to be taken in by the other

dugout, then I think you get into immediate trouble. But if you don't do that, it seems as if it's like a, you know, there's like a shield and you get to do what you do over there. And it's none of the other dugouts business. That seems to be the rule right now. Right. And also, I guess it's like a mutually assured celebration sort of situation now. It's like brinksmanship. It's like everyone's doing it.

Right. So I think that kind of inoculates you because if your team is doing a celebration, then how can you get upset if the other team is doing a celebration? Basically, every team is doing a celebration of some sort now. So, yes, unless you were to venture out of the dugout into neutral territory or you were to make it personal and more of a taunt than a celebration, then I think you're probably safe at this point. And I wonder whether that will have any crossover, whether that will bleed out into on-field celebrations, because there are still ruffled feathers sometimes when players celebrate on the field,

even though the spirit is the same, seemingly, as the in-dugout home run ritual, right? Oh, sure. generally, I think, but then it is more likely to be taken as an affront, right, or to be viewed as being directed at a particular player. So I just, I wonder whether this is normalizing celebrations and exuberance in such a way that it will break down those barriers on the field, which have already been in the process of being broken down. And that's probably enabled the dugout home run celebration, right? Just because, you know, we could say that it's totally kosher now, but it wouldn't have been decades ago. Oh, definitely not. You know, you might have had the Mets home run Apple at Shea or Citi Field, something like that. But the actual players doing a thing or, you know, you have home teams setting off fireworks, et cetera.

But like the players themselves celebrating, even if it was within the dugout until the past decade or so, I think that would have been frowned upon. So I think just in general, there's been greater acceptance of that. But I wonder whether this will then amplify that because everyone's bringing out the props and celebrating. will then amplify that because everyone's bringing out the props and celebrating. Yeah. It's not a large leap from that to demonstrating that exhilaration on the field and then probably the other team being a little less quick to take offense. Yeah. I think this could be an important behavioral shift.

And that makes me, again, wish that I enjoyed it more because I think that that loosening up is to the sport's benefit. Like, it's, you know, almost certain to make things more enjoyable both for players and for fans. And I wish I enjoyed the actual doing of it more than I have been able to so far. You know, I just, I like costumes, you know, but props, I don't know about, I don't know about props. We have such a bias toward the new and the fresh and the unfamiliar that even something like bat flips, right? I mean, I'm fine with bat flips, but I don't get super excited whenever I see a bat flip now because it's pretty common, you know, I have fine with bat flips, but I don't get super excited whenever I see a bat flip now because it's pretty common.

I have no issue with it. But like the whole sort of celebrating bat flips, that feels like it's died down a bit just because it became common and it wasn't transgressive anymore. And at that point, it becomes just par for the course. It's de rigueur. It's a little bit boring. You know, it might still be more exciting than no bat flip. And I know bat flips are not brand new and they're exciting examples, isolated examples going back decades. The famous Tom Lawless bat flip, for instance.

But when it's not trailblazing and pioneering, then it's just part of the scenery. So that happens to everything pretty quickly. And then maybe we get excited if someone bat flips on a walk. It's like, oh, well, that's unusual. You don't usually see that. Or if Wander Franco ball flips in the middle of throwing to first base, well, that's exciting because that's new. And the home run celebrations when they first started, and we've documented these have been going on in some shape or form for about 10 years at this point, longer. So when they started, okay, this is new and novel and interesting. And now everyone's doing it.

And I don't really have a problem with it. It's just I'm a little less tickled by it. And that's why I kind of enjoy the hamburger phone a little more than I enjoy the idea of a hamburger hat after the home run. Right. Yeah. I'm surprised that they have not been able to find a hamburger hat to their – they're going to get stuff sent to the ballpark now. Probably, yes. You know, somebody's going to be like, I will supply you with the, know stiff hamburger you require yeah i like how they're like

oh it's too floppy it's like what it's a it's a ham like what you know they need you just need some like um you need like a like wire you know underneath it to give it a substructure that can support the firm burger. You need a well-done burger. Is that what we are given to understand? It's a slightly toasted kind of puffy bun. Yeah. You said, just to save ourselves for some emails, I think you referred to a beanball in the butt, like a plunking. Do you think of a beanball as being specifically headhunting, like a bean, you know, coming from your throwing at someone's head? Or would you say any intentional hit by pitch at this point could be described as a beanball? Because I think I've heard it that way.

Originally, I would say it's specifically thrown at the head. But I think that it has broadened over time as people have become less comfortable looking like absolute psychopaths in public, right? So it's like it used to be, I think you are correct, that a beanball used to mean specifically, you know, your head hunting. And then people were like, that's monstrous behavior because why are you doing that? And now I think that it's very, like, when was the last time you saw, can you think of a recent instance of a guy seemingly actually head hunting? I'm sure that we're going to get emails now. See, you asked this question of me to prevent emails, and now we're going to get some emails.

But it is certainly less frequent. I know that there really are psychopaths, but you don't want to seem like that guy. That guy seems like a dick, you know? And so I think that when it, it appears that it is an intentional plunking, um, and plunk is a fun word to say. It has like a nice mouthfeel, you know? So, um, maybe plunking would be a better way of describing it. But I think that our understanding of beanball has broadened as we have, um, decided to be less maladjusted in public. Yeah. Now beanball is just when Akil Badu gets hit in the beans as he's trying to steal second base.

And again, not just the beans as we are given to understand. Yeah. The whole package. Here's a question from Richard who says, I was watching the Phillies and Brandon Marsh made me wonder if someone grew a super long beard, could they slide head first and have the beard touch the base similar to a hand? I guess it might take some talent to flip it forward like a rope. I imagine it would be difficult to get it there and then equally hard to make it stay, right? Yes. You've got to maintain contact with the bag and, you know, beards can be so fickle, blow here and there all around, you know, if it's got the length. Although maybe if it were braided, you know, if it got really long and you could braid it and then it would have some heft to it that really made it like flop.

Yeah, or you put some sort of product in it that made it retain its shape so that it was pointing outward from your face. Because I think we've gotten the… Like you're gelling it so that it sticks. Right, right. I would find that distracting at the plate, right? Because it would be in your peripheral. You'd, like, see it down there. That raises the question of what happens if you get hit by a pitch in the beard.

If there's a beard ball, not a bean ball, but what happens in that case? Because I think we've talked about the scenario of, like, the sliding gloves, the oven mitts that players have. Like, why can't you just have a giant one that reaches all the way to second base? And, you know, there's some umpire discretion there. I think there's some limits on equipment. But can you limit facial hair in that way? Well, I mean, I guess that the easy answer is apparently yes, because the Yankees do it.

But as we have covered, I am shocked that that has not resulted in litigation. I think that I want to offer a different take on hair generally. Are you ready for my, my take on this? Okay. I'm worried that the, the men who play baseball are not using enough conditioner.

You know, sometimes I watch these guys and I'm like, your hair looks very dry. It looks, and I don't need it to be as obviously wet as Marsha's hair is. I'm talking about, it looks undernourished. It doesn't look conditioned. It doesn't look tended to. And I just would like to say to all of these men, you know, like buy some conditioner and like to, you know, treat it nice. Some of you have had the potential for beautiful flowing locks and yet very dry, looks brittle. And we have the technology to solve this problem. And some of it smells so good. And then you'll be walking through the clubhouse and people will be like, what's that delightful whiff of coconut or lavender?

And they have ones that come in like man smells that don't have an actual smell. They're like verbs that are supposed to be smells, which like you guys just can relax with all of it is what I'm saying. But like, you know, they do make like, man, conditioner if you're like worried about these things. Have you seen man wipes out in the wild, Ben? Yes. Are you guys okay? I'm worried about all of you.

I think you're deeply troubled maybe. At least a segment of you like seem like you need some to to chill about some stuff i'm just saying but one thing that you should all not chill about is just condition your tresses you know and then walk through and be like and then and you don't even have to say like it was it's me i'm the one who smells like coconut i'm the one who smells like lavender you know those are conditioner smells that i have enjoyed personally. I'm just saying condition.

And they got all kinds of beard oils I am given to understand because we're approaching the month of June and so every other Instagram ad I have is like Father's Day gifts and I'm like, I'm not getting my dad beard oil. He's a grown man. He can buy that for himself if he wants it. But

you can oil your beards. Condition those too. If if you're gonna have it on your face every day like take care of it i'm just saying like some of you i guess having a hat on at all times probably discourages you from really going all in on hair care because why you got hair hanging down below your hat yes the people who have a lot of hair yeah like yeah if it's if it's visible despite the hat or if it's just on your face then by all means put some care into it but i would i don't really know i googled the beard thing i found an example of uh mike napoli sliding into second base about 10 years ago when he was extremely bearded and friend of the show, Alex Spear of the Boston

Globe tweeted, if Napoli's beard had touched second before the tag, would he have been safe? And if his beard had been tagged, et cetera, and no one really had an answer for him at the time. I would think that- I think Mike Napoli needed to condition his beard. This one's looking kind of shaggy. It looks better now that he's a base coach, candidly. Well, maybe I'm taking that back. Sorry. I got to some new photos on Google. Oh, no. Well, I think the beard would count. I think that's an extension of your body. It's growing out of you. And therefore, I think so. Now, if you were to shape it in such a way or whip it around in such a way that it actually became a competitive advantage, then we might see some legislation or we might see an umpire say Brandon Marsh, I don't think that you would see someone say that does not count as a bit of Brandon because that's his beard. A bit of Brandon.

Goodness. Now people are going to ask, should he be conditioning? And I'm going to say it's hard to tell because of how wet his hair is. He does have, like, a kind of wiry, you know, he's got one of those beards that, but he seems like he's trying to do a thing, you know? He's affecting a look. I don't mean he's, like, affecting it like it's a total affectation, like it's not genuine to him, but it does seem like it is particular.

It's a particular look he's going for. But, yeah, just, you know, just buy some conditioner. That's all. Oh, he's got a, you know, I'm looking at pictures of him as a very young man. Beautiful head of hair. Beautiful head of hair on this young man. My goodness. He was conditioning then.

I don't know if he's conditioning now. All right. Here's a question from Ian who says, I was watching the Giants D-backs game and once Casey Schmidt, Casey Schmidt, Casey Schmidt, Casey Schmidt, yes, Casey Schmidt got his eighth hit. The Giants broadcast started talking about how Schmidt is tied with Willie McCovey for most hits for a Giants rookie through their first three games. While talking about this, the broadcasters mentioned how it's cool for Schmidt to be

on the same list as a Hall of Famer, which made me think of this question. What percentage of current MLB players are on some meaningful statistical list? Let's say top four with a Hall of Famer. By meaningful statistical list, I just mean the qualifiers aren't something like rookies called up in August or players with two last names but are actually relevant to baseball, like the number of hits through the first three games for the San Francisco Giants rookies. That's a meaningful statistical list. Do your answers change for unlimited qualifiers versus some limiting number of qualifiers? Well, yeah, I would think so, right? If you get unlimited qualifiers, I imagine you could shoehorn almost anyone

onto a list with a Hall of Famer, right? So if it's limited qualifiers, the meaningful distinction is doing a lot of work there, obviously. Like we're already talking a fair number of qualifiers here with this Schmidt-McCovey example, because we're talking about most hits for a Giants rookie through their first three games. Right. So we're limiting it to one team, one franchise, rookies only, three. Limited number of games.

Right. And first three games. Right. In a particular sequence. Yeah. And it's still cool. I think that's worth mentioning when someone starts a career the way that Casey Schmidt did. But yeah, that's already a number of qualifiers. So I would think,

I mean, again, we could haggle over how to define meaningful and when the qualifiers get out of control. But you could probably torture the stats in such a way that you could put any player on a list with a Hall of Famer if you had no regard for meaning or qualifiers. But, like, actually cool, you know, make me say, wow, huh, that's worth actually pointing out and bringing into the world. I don't know.

Like probably. 20%? Yeah. I was actually kind of dancing around that number in my head. I think 20% seems fair. Yeah. 20? Sure.

Yeah. And even at that level, I think most of them would be more like, huh, than wow. Than like, wow, yeah. Yeah. But maybe we can try this as an exercise or listeners feel free to try this at home. Just randomly select some unremarkable major leaguers or, you know, maybe some of them will be remarkable. Some of them will not. Just randomly select them and then see whether you can

get some of them on a list with Hall of Famers. Some of them may be Hall of Famers, but re-roll, keep selecting, find some non-special players. They're all special in their own way, but not ones you would expect to see on a list with Hall of Famers. And then see if you can engineer a list that they would both be on. I bet it's quite feasible. Yeah, I think you will end up going, huh, like this isn't hard more than you maybe expect to. Yep.

All right. Chase says, what if there were a prophylactic surgery to strengthen the flexor tendon and prevent Tommy John repair? What if this surgery not only prevented injury but led to a velocity increase? Would MLB ban this surgery? How would the surgery affect development and recruitment?

Would teams pay for these surgeries for their prospects? Would players who can't pay for the surgery themselves never make the majors? From a resident doctor who thanks you for getting me through another night shift. So there has been a perception. It's a myth, but it's one that I have seen. It's a persistent myth. Yeah, medical people take pains to point out that it's not true that Tommy John surgery itself

is prophylactic in this way, that it would make sense to have a preemptive Tommy John surgery because, hey, you're going to have it at some point, might as well get it out of the way. And also a perception that you might come back throwing harder, which is not typically true. You might come back throwing harder than you were immediately before the injury when you had a damaged UCL. But you will not suddenly throw harder. I mean, I guess it could happen

to someone at some time, but you certainly should not expect that to happen. You might be in better shape after the rehab than you were before. You might be stronger, but you could get stronger without having surgery. And not everyone comes back even at the same level that they were or comes back at all. And not everyone ends up having Tommy John surgery. And those who do may have to have it again at some point. So it's not like I've got to have it at some point. I may as well have it when I'm an amateur and then I'll be healthy my whole career. It doesn't work like that. Right. So I do not know of any documented examples of a healthy player who has actually had preemptive Tommy John surgery. But yeah,

but I have read articles where surgeons, doctors, elbow experts have said that they've been asked about it by players or by parents, like, should we do this? Can we do this? You know, or people even trying to have it done, but a responsible doctor is not going to do that. Right. Yeah. So it certainly has not been widespread, but people have thought that it might make sense to do that. So, if there were an actual surgery that you could have preemptively to prevent a ligament sproing and to not have to have Tommy John repair, then I think it depends, obviously, on what the risks and what the rehab process are like. I mean, if the risks are significant to it, it might not make sense. But if you could come back in a fairly short amount of time and you could significantly improve your odds of not having to have a ligament repair, then I don't think MLB would ban it. I mean, it'd be tough because you wouldn't want players to feel obligated to have a surgery is the thing.

And that's kind of what Chase is getting at here. And like, you know, you wouldn't want like some players to be able to afford that and others not. Which would happen the instant that this is like put on offer, right? Like, oh, by the way, not going to be covered by insurance.

Yeah, right. Not going to be equally accessible. Elected surgery, right. Yeah. And there are already enough imbalances when it comes to access to coaching and fields and equipment and everything else. So that would be bad. Yeah. If there were a way to prevent Tommy John surgery, though, that would be good.

Yeah. If there were a way to prevent Tommy John surgery, though, that would be good. Yeah. You know, like in general. Like we've talked about the hypothetical of like having bionic players basically. Which at some point will become an issue. I mean, you know, we already have LASIK surgery and we have other performance enhancers. Right. So go gadget arm right around the corner. Yeah, exactly.

Right. Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement Enhancement to play in one league or the other without letting on. So I don't really know. This would be good in the sense that you'd have fewer time of John surgeries, but it would definitely make for some complications. So like ideally, it couldn't be mandatory, but I guess maybe the ideal version of this would be like every player who's in the minor league system affiliated with a team has the option to have it, let's say. Like the team offers that it would perform the surgery free of charge for anyone in the system. There would still be issues because like in amateur ball, like are some schools going to start offering it or not? And then is there going to be like pressure put on the player to have this surgery?

And what would that be like? So, yeah, it would be kind of tough in some ways, but it's tough the current situation too where people are constantly blowing out their arms. Yeah, I think that the way it way that we would look at it. I think you would need to have like a very, you'd need to have proactive sort of negotiation around this within, probably within the CBA, both minor and major league, because you don't want guys feeling pressure to go under the knife electively, but there are going to be players for whom this might make, you know, make the difference between having a career versus not,

right? And not just because of potential velocity gain, but because of having a workable ligament that can sustain a workload over a season, right? So, I think that those questions would be front and center, but I think you'd need to have bargaining around it because no matter how voluntary you say it is, you really do need protection within the system to prevent guys from having to succumb to some pressure to have it. And there would be guys, like there are guys who just throw really hard, you know, and might be like, why would I screw with my ligament? It's fine. Like, and I throw really hard, so I'm not going to get a surgery that I have to recover from just to throw what may be a little bit harder, right?

But it seems like it would be quite tricky. Yeah, it'd be better in a way if it did not enhance performance, but merely preserved performance. Like if it did yield some velocity boost, then probably everyone would want to have it or would feel pressure to have it. Whereas if it only safeguarded you, then people would still want to have it, but it wouldn't help you reach a new level of performance and maybe you'd take your chances. But yeah, that would be if it did both, if it were not only for health reasons, but also for performance reasons, which are always intertwined to some degree. But that would get very complicated and troublesome because, yeah, then you'd be doing it to get an extra tick on your fastball or something instead of actually managing to stay on the field.

It would be, in a sense, cleaner, less complicated if you could say it was purely to stay healthy instead of actually making you better at baseball. Yeah, yeah. All right. Here's one from Eric in Washington, D.C. I got into a conversation today about the hot start Marcella Meyer is off to this year and the fact that no matter how well he plays, he's not going to get called up this year. I said he could hit 600 and he still wouldn't get the call. But that got me thinking, is that actually true? To put it another way, what would a minor league player, especially one who's not considered particularly close to getting the call, have to do to force the hand of their team to give them a shot in the bigs? considered particularly close to getting the call, have to do to force the hand of their team to give them a shot in the bigs?

How high a batting average, for example, would they have to carry? And for how long before the major league team would be willing to take a flyer on them? What if a player got on base every time they came to the plate or got a hit every at bat or a home run every at bat? How long would it take before the big league club felt it was worth their interest to see if they could do it in the majors? Hmm. Hmm, Ben. Hmm. What a good... We talked last time about Jackson Holiday and how his hot start had moved his ETA up

maybe multiple years. So if a player were just getting a hit every time or were unhittable and you'd get promoted to the next level, like once it became clear that you were not challenged at that level.

And if you keep climbing the ladder and you're still doing that at AAA, I think it's absolutely possible that you could get called up that very year. If you're just so dominant, I mean, if you're the best player in the league, there would be no justification for holding you down. Obviously, there could still be some service time questions and concerns, and he needs to work on his defense, et cetera. But if someone's hitting a home run every at-bat, then I don't see any reasonable way, really, that you could keep them down. You'd just say, like, you forced the issue. I mean,

we were forced to adjust and you would want that player up, right? I mean, other than service time stuff, you wouldn't really be looking for a reason to keep that player down. I mean, most teams would be happy to have someone who's unbeatable out of nowhere. So you would worry a little bit about their psychology and are they ready for the major league lifestyle and everything that goes with that? And how would they adapt to failure if this didn't continue at the major league level? And would it be damaging if we're talking about an 18-year-old kid or something, someone who just got drafted, right, but is just otherworldly, supernaturally productive, I still think, like, you'd get moved along pretty quickly. I mean, even today, there are some players who are sort of in the express lane, right? I mean, basically everyone has some sort of minor league service, but the guys will come up, you know, the year after they get drafted

or even in some extreme examples the same year. There's obviously precedent for that. There's precedent for players skipping the minors entirely in the past. So I think if someone were hitting 600,

hitting home runs every time, like, yeah, you'd get called up. Even with all of the measures in place in the CBA to try to combat service time, there are still some good incentives to manipulate service time. I think that if you are, particularly if you're in the system of a team that's remotely competitive, if you're producing like that, it's going to be really hard for them to not call you up. Because if you're hitting 600, if you're hitting

a home run once a game at AAA and they don't call you up, maybe finally someone would win a grievance. At a certain point, I think you're right that there are certainly other considerations for players beyond their performance on the field that teams in good faith can take into account when they're determining their promotion schedule. And I don't think that that's purely a hokum in service of them manipulating service time. There's definitely some of that that goes on, I'm sure. But we're really high on Ethan Salas, right? He's a 16-year-old who is playing the most difficult position on the field. Like, he's fantastic.

But if he were hitting, you know, if he got promoted to AAA this year and he were hitting 600 and he was getting a home run, like, I think it would be fine for the Pad to be like right but he's like 16 you know or by that time 17 you know i think it would be reasonable for them to be like maybe that's a lot to ask like of a kid to go catch you darvish you know like and i wouldn't look at them and be like yeah yeah yeah i get it you're just trying to gain his service like no he's like he can't yeah, yeah, I get it. You're just trying to gain his service. It's like, no, he's like, he can't vote legally here, right? He can't buy cigarettes. Like, don't smoke, Ethan. Like, you're a professional athlete. It's bad for you no matter what.

Like, don't do it. You know what I mean? Like, so I think there's other stuff that can go into that decision. But if you're like 19 and you're hitting 600 in AAA and you do that for, you know, a stretch, like, come on, come on. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. Right. I mean, Marcelo Meyer is 20.

Right. And he's been in the minors for a few years now. I mean, he was drafted in 2021. Yeah. He's in high A. The Red Sox need shortstop help. Yeah. They sure do. AA, the Red Sox need shortstop help, right?

Yeah, they sure do. They have the third least production of any team out of their shortstop position ahead of only the Reds and the A's. So if Marcelo Meyer— The Reds, you know, no shortstops to be had there. Well, yeah, they're about to have a surplus of shortstops, but they haven't for the past several years. But Marcelo Meyer has a 926 OPS in high A so far. That's nice. And yeah, it's highly unrealistic that he could be the answer there

this season, that he could get called up. But if we're in an unrealistic scenario here where Marcelo Meyer is not batting 319, but he's batting 600, then yeah, he sure as heck would be in double A by now. And if he's in double A and he's owning that level, then you can get called up straight from there. So yeah, it could absolutely happen. All right. Well, we haven't answered a pedantic question in quite some time. I'll just do one quick one here. Kirk says, how can you not be pedantic about baseball? I was scrolling through the MLB app just now and saw this video title on a clip from today's Mariners-Tigers game describing a swinging strikeout. Boyd fans Hernandez, indicating that Boyd got Hernandez to strike out swinging. Wouldn't it be more correct as Hernandez fans Boyd, seeing as Hernandez is the one doing the fanning motion by swinging and missing at the pitch. Boyd's also the one enjoying the breeze

from the aggressive swing and a miss, not Hernandez, right? Inverting this phrasing also makes more sense when viewed from a power dynamic perspective, as Boyd, the victor in this scenario, is getting the palm frond fan treatment like an ancient pharaoh might have. And so maybe we've had fanning backwards all along.

I get this. I think there's an argument, but we understand the pitcher-hitter relationship to go in a particular direction a lot of the time, right? Yes, exactly. And this would be in defiance of that. And so that is why I'm fine with fan being a thing that like pitchers do to hitters and not the other way around because of how we, you know, understand the progress of that action,

the direction it goes. But I get it. I get it. I get it. Yeah. Hitting is reactive. So the pitcher is eliciting the fanning, even if he's not actually performing the fanning motion. I think he is the one who is initiating it, right? And also, we need some word to describe the pitcher getting that strikeout.

And fanning is useful to say that. Now, I sometimes argue with myself over when we can use certain strikeout terms to describe swinging or looking strikeouts, right? Like you can't say that you fanned someone if he didn't swing and miss for strike three, right? Probably not. But then there are fewer options available to you, so that can get kind of complicated. But yes, I think I'm fine with fanning, but I had never really thought about the fact that, in fact, it is the batter who is doing the fanning, not being fanned. Yeah. All right.

Last one. This is from Patreon supporter Crust, who says, the recent fan interference situation during the A's Yankees game sparked some discussion in my group chat. My friend Ben, not me, another Ben, thinks it would be fun to make fan interference part of the game. His idea is that to make baseball more exciting, fans should be able to reach over the wall and maybe even jump onto the field to try to catch the ball. If you drop it, you get ejected. But if you catch it, then you are now the fielder. And the player has to swap with you and sit in the stands. Terrible. My mind has been racing with how wild this idea could potentially get.

Would you have to limit the rule that only fans of the same team could interfere so there aren't dozens of opposing fans trying to sabotage? How long would the successful interfering fans have to stay on the field? An inning? the whole game? I'm laughing to myself at work right now thinking of Aaron Judge being moved into the stands and then racing around to every fly ball Zach Campbell style doing his best to get back into the game. And yes, this is one of those amusing ideas that would be disastrous in practice. Oh, yeah. We have discussed a similar scenario, right, where it's fans can catch foul balls into the stands, right? So it's not that they leap onto the field and that they

commit fan interference necessarily, but that balls into the stands are in play, basically. And we kind of gamed out all the implications of that. And it very quickly becomes a dystopian scenario. Oh, yeah. You know, you have injuries and people fighting each other or you have ringers out there. Right. Professional people who are situated so that they can make those catches and then it's not really amateur fans anymore. That was episode 1426. This is the same sort of scenario.

And so it would be similarly disastrous. It's funnier possibly in that I like the idea of a fielder having to trade places with a fan who manages to catch that ball. But for many, many other reasons, it's just a terrible idea. Just so bad. Just so much potential for mayhem and injury. Well, and people don't, people so rarely make good plans, you know, Ben? Like when, I always love the moment where like the broadcast camera finds people and they become aware of the broadcast camera finding them. And then like, they're so excited. And the only thing they know to do is like wave, right? And go, ah, that's me.

Yeah, they get self-conscious and they have to ham it up somehow. Yeah. But they don't have like a, you know, for all the prop comedy we're seeing, right? They're not prepared. They don't have a funny gag. They don't have like a bit. They don't have a little routine. They're just waving.

All they know how to do is go and that's fine because like you don't have to have a please don't bring you know don't it's better that they not have a plan it's more authentic right it's genuine it's so funny it's like there i am up on the screen but like you have the the confidence of wanting to attract attention to yourself and then not knowing what to do afterward. And I think that this would be the same thing because so many people would be like, oh, I'd catch it. I won't get ejected. I'll catch it. Think how long games would go.

My goodness. Like, oh, my God. So much delay. Yeah. And then would you even want to be on the field? That's a question that we've considered before, too. No. Just remind people. No. You would not. I would not. You would not. You'd think you do. And then you'd get out there and you'd penalty box, right, and being forced to just cool his heels for a while while the fan who usurped him just gets to be out in the field instead.

But yeah, just play this out in your mind. And after a few minutes, it becomes, well, there's a reason why it's called fan interference. It is interference. It does interfere with the game. And would I watch this once? Sure. Would we want just like an anarchy kind of pro wrestling sort of style game? XFL meets baseball. This would be a great rule for that brand of baseball, I think, for Major League Baseball. Probably not so much. We need a day. You know how in school you'd have like spirit week? Did you ever have spirit week? Have we talked about this before? I'm seeing a thing on the pod where I'm like, this is rolling around in the memory banks in a way that makes me think we've talked about it before.

You've mentioned it. I did not have a spirit week. You did not have spirit weeks. But you know how people have had spirit weeks. We need like a spirit day where all of the nonsense rules can find purchase somewhere and then we'll have gotten it out of our systems and we can be like, yeah, we did it. That was a bad idea. Let's never do it again. But we have a lot of fun. And you know, if you have different rules in different games, we could probably fit all of them. Like the purge, but for baseball, basically. Just get it out of our system. And hopefully with far fewer casualties. Yes. All right.

There are like 10 of those movies now. Yeah, I know. There are so many. It's like, haven't we seen people getting killed enough, maybe? I don't know. Clearly not. Clearly not, apparently. All right.

Let's meet some major leaguers. Yeah. Meet a major leaguer. I am very eager to meet this nascent major leaguer. It's the thrilling debut of somebody new. Let's meet this mysterious Major Leaguer. We meet a major leaguer who has recently made it to the major leagues and has thus deserved and earned the honor of being recognized as one of the few in the grand scheme of things ever to make it there. Yes. And will we admit that this particular major leaguer was interesting to us primarily not because just because of the great story, but also because of the name. I mean, yeah, Ben, we're not above that, clearly. We're going to meet Josh Walker,

who is a pitcher. Makes you nervous. So, Josh Walker is from New York. He attended high school in Slate Hill, New York, where he played football, baseball, and also swam. Uh-huh. There you go. And then after high school, played college baseball first at the University of South Florida, where things didn't seem to go well, and then transferred to the University of New Haven in 2016. 2017, which was his senior season, he had a 3-1 record and a 2-4-0 ERA over 30 innings and was taken in the 37th round of the draft by the New York Mets. And things, I will say, were kind of rough for him after that.

So this is per a Sal Interdonato article in the Times-Herald record. My apologies, Sal, if I'm saying your last name incorrectly. Walker was ready to make his first start for the Class A St. Lucie Mets of the Florida State League when his vehicle was broadsided by a driver making an illegal turn less than a mile from the team's facility in April of 2019. Walker's pitching arm took the brunt of the collision. though there were no fractures or breaks. Walker experienced steady pain. Tests revealed a nerve popping over Walker's bone and shooting pain to his forearm. And I would just like to say, blah. And he was limited to just

six innings in 2019, I think, of the rehab variety. And then, of course, lost the 2020 season, as all minor leaguers said. I think worked primarily on his own that year. In 2021, he logged 115.2 innings across three levels, posting a 3-7-3 ERA and 98 strikeouts. And then this past offseason, and here I'm quoting from a piece by Jim Fuller, special to NewHavenChargers.com, which is the University of New Haven chargers.com, which is the, um, university of new Haven's, uh, website Walker worked to improve his velocity after having previously emphasized improvements in command and control in prior off seasons. One of the big points of emphasis I had in this off season was kind of to gain some velocity Walker said, I think I worked on my control and command in the zone in the past where I had issues with that. I sharpened that up last season. And that was a big reason

that allowed me to jump through the system. I always lived around the low 90s and couldn't really break that barrier, even though I had tried different things mechanically, tried tinkering with stuff, and I couldn't make a decent below jump. So that's why I invested some time to come down to Cressy and work with my trainer, former MLB pitcher Willie Frazier. Between those two things, I'm trying to figure out what I had to do mechanically to be able to move better and quicker. I have thrown a couple of bullpens in live batting practices, and usually in bullpens all last season, I would sit anywhere from 86 to 88 in the bullpen, and come game time with the adrenaline going, I was usually 90 to 92. So far,

the bullpens I've been on, on the Raider, my bullpens have been 90 to 92. And in one live simulated game, I was 92 to 94. I hope I didn't live anywhere from 93 to 95 for the season. So he started the year in Syracuse. He made nine appearances in Syracuse, all out of the bullpen with 18 strikeouts and six walks and 13 and a third innings. He had allowed six runs, but only one of them was earned, good for an 068 ERA and a 234 FIP. He was called up and debuted on May 16th. He threw one inning, facing five, and walking two.

He didn't strike anyone out, but he didn't allow any runs either. His fastball averaged 94.5 miles per hour. He relies mostly on a four-seamer, but also threw a curveball and a changeup. And he's still on the Mets. So, that is Josh Walker. Yeah. Not a great walker, really. He's walked about three per nine in his minor league career.

So, not terrible control. No. And he's a big guy. He's a large man. 6'6", 225 and looks it. Yeah, he's a big imposing dude. And obviously, like, when you think about someone who was a 37th round pick, a round that does not exist anymore. When you think about someone who had, like, what sounds like a very scary and damaging car accident.

Like, these constellation of things often combine to someone just not playing Major League Baseball, but not Josh Walker. Yep. Congrats to Josh Walker. And he replaced David Peterson, I believe, on the Mets roster. They were both drafted by the Mets in 2017, but Peterson was a first rounder and Walker, as you said, was a 37th rounder. So different paths that they took to intersect in that transaction. But welcome to the majors, Josh Walker. My guy, so you had a 37th rounder. I can see you that and raise you to undrafted. Wow. My guy is Garrett Acton.

And most of these players are just not on my radar at all. Like I've never heard of them until they make the majors, which is why we want to shine a little spotlight on them here. Just because they're more major leaguers than ever. And many of them are largely anonymous. largely anonymous. And when Josh Walker comes along 28 years old and makes it despite all those adverse circumstances, you want to give him a pat on the back on the podcast. Now, Garrett Acton has been on my radar for a couple of years because I was working on a feature for The Ringer about deception, and it was focused on Yusmero Petit and how he hides the ball, hid the ball so well, and that made him more effective than you would think given his very pedestrian velocity.

And somehow it came to my attention that Garrett Acton, who was in the A's system, was also a big deception guy. And I remember talking to Eric Langenhagen about him way back then, and we screen shared and we analyzed his delivery together to figure out the deception. And it's a really weird motion that he has. And if you look up some video quickly and I'll link to him getting his first strikeout, he's sort of like a short armor. And it's kind of like herky-jerky, and he hides the ball. And he's one of those guys where the ball just gets on top of you.

And hitters say that about him, right, that it's hard to pick up the pitch. And so he was undrafted. He was transferred from St. Louis to Illinois and then went from being a swing man who was not particularly effective to being a standout closer for a couple seasons for the Illini. And then the A's signed him as a non-drafted free agent in 2020 after that shortened draft. And he was dominant in 2021. He struck out more than 40 percent of the hitters he faced at the lower levels. And then even in 2022, he struck out more than 30% in relief. He got all the way up to AAA Las Vegas.

Here's his scouting report from the Baseball America Prospect Handbook from this spring when he was ranked the 27 prospect in the A's system. Acton attacks hitters with brute force. He has added velocity since turning pro and parks his fastball in the upper 90s. The pitch has good shape, generating whiffs at the top of the strike zone. Acton pitches from the stretch

and his shorter arm action creates some deception against right-handed hitters. Left-handers fared much better against Acton in 2022. His favorite secondary is a mid-80s slider that has sharp vertical break and flashes above average. He turned to his upper 80s changeup less than 10% of the time, but the pitch showed above-average potential and could become more of a factor against lefties. He has smoothed out his delivery since turning pro, but his fair command is best suited for shorter outings. So they projected him as a future seventh or eighth inning option. And obviously, the A's have had the worst bullpen in baseball.

What have they not been the worst at? So they called up Garrett Acton, and he made his debut on Mother's Day, and his mother was in attendance. Yeah, she had planned to be in attendance at his game in called up, and no longer really could give her the Aviators hat. Got to give her an A's hat instead. But it was probably a present enough that he made the majors, I would imagine. And so she got to go see him there too.

And he came in on Sunday and he pitched really well. So he had a very strong debut. And he pitched really well. So he had a very strong debut. He pitched an inning and two-thirds, a perfect inning and two-thirds, retired a couple runners and got a couple outs coming in mid-inning and then pitched a clean inning himself. And it was just a nice, heartwarming arrival. So, you know, he was named a perfect game first team All-American, but he was unselected in the draft and the A's just plucked him out of relative obscurity. He was drafted as a 35th rounder out of high school by the White Sox, and then he decided to go to college and then was not drafted after that. So he now throws pretty hard. Like he topped out at 97. He averaged 96. And he has that deception. So I think he had a second outing that was not quite as successful. But perhaps he will be a staple of the A's bullpen because not that high a bar, really not a tough group to crack these days. But I'm just always fascinated by guys with good deception, guys who hide the ball somehow or there's something just about their delivery that makes it hard to pick up their pitches and makes their stuff play up. And Garrett Echton seems like one of them.

So he's only 24. And as far as I know, did not get into any car accidents or anything along the way. But he's weird. You know, you watch him. It's just it's weird. Like Tess in her fan graphs, imminent big leaguers report for the A's this year noted he throws with a short arm action and an over the top release point and has impressive arm speed, etc. So it's just like you watch him and you will remember the Garrett Acton release and delivery because he doesn't look like most guys. So welcome to the big leagues,

Garrett Acton. Do you watch, did you ever watch Mystery Science 03000, Ben? Yeah. You and MSTK, T3, what am I trying to say? Yeah, you know how you abbreviate that. Yeah, you know how you abbreviate that. Yeah, you know how you abbreviate that. Did you watch the Netflix ones? No, I have not seen that.

They did Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Star Crash from 1978, and one of the characters is named Acton. And I thought of him when Garrett Acton debuted because I have some but not many references. So, all right. Well, I got to give you a stat blast here. But did you see this email we got from a Patreon supporter mid pod from Runrin, who alerted us to a new video that was just posted on the MLB YouTube account. And the title is the big boys mic'd up on play loud. The Brewers, Rowdy Tellez, the Royals, Vinny Pasquantino crack us up. So this is an example of players mic'd up on the field, but not conversing, just mic'd up. And then you hear about it after the game, which we approve of. And I have no reservations and no objections about that the way I do to live on Game On Field interviews.

But this clip, this video starts with Luke Voigt talking to them and saying, welcome to the all-beef team, baby. Welcome to the all-beef team, baby. Yeah, what a trio of Luke Voigt and Roddy Tellez and Vinny Pascottino. Yeah. Luke Voigt, welcome to the all-beef team. I love it. He's basically embracing beef boys here. He didn't quite say it, but he came quite close to saying it.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I love it. Luke Voigt. All right. Thank you to Runrun for letting us know about that. Great find. Oh, look at these beef boys. See, and this is the right way to do it.

Do it mic'd up after the fact. Yeah. All right. So I'll just give you a stat blast here. They'll take a data set sorted by sunset like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Deistaplast! to day stop last. Okay, so that last segment is presented by MLB

Tops Now yet again. And we have explained the premise of Tops Now, and we've heard from some people who have availed themselves of the potential of Tops Now and have gotten themselves some cool baseball cards. So, again, something happens on a baseball field in a baseball game. And then the very next day, you can go get a baseball card of that thing.

It is memorialized, immortalized forever on cardboard. Or as long as the cardboard lasts, that kind of depends on you. on cardboard, or as long as the cardboard lasts, that kind of depends on you if you put it in one of those nice plastic cases and preserve it so that you can get it graded someday when it's worth a zillion dollars. Not promising that it will be worth a zillion dollars. You can just go get it, and it could be a sentimental keepsake for you, and some fun moment happens on the field. I would say the majority of the individual plays and highlights and standout performances that we discuss on this podcast probably do end up becoming Tops Now cards. And we're not doing that as SpawnCon. When we record, often we don't know what the

Tops Now cards will be because we're recording right after it happens and then the cards are announced and become available for purchase the next day. So we're just as much in the dark as anyone else. The Tops Now cards, they're a surprise to us. They're a surprise to Tops themselves until the games actually take place. There's no way for them to pre-print the Tops Now cards or if there is, please let us know

how you are seeing the future and you're able to pre-produce those cards. But I don't think they are. They can just turn them around really fast. They have the printing presses all set up, all ready to go. I would actually be interested in touring the Tops facility. I assume it's not like a different facility for Tops Now specifically. It's like these are the really rapid turnaround Topps printing machines.

Maybe it's the same machines. Maybe they have like those moving walkways like they do in airports. So you can get where you're going faster, you know? Could be, yeah. Or it's some sort of assembly line or, but you know, I assume that people are swinging into action. I mean, they're conferencing late into the night.

I would love to know just the timeline, like at what hour. I mean, games don't go as late as they used to. But now, you know, there are still some games that are late into the night. You never know. Like someone's got to be burning the midnight oil just in case someone has some extreme performance and then declares, all right, this is now worthy. We're going to print up a card to this baby. We got to get the presses into action here.

Hot off the presses. So Tops Now, your hero, your team, your moment. And just go to Tops.com or click the link on the show page that will take you directly to the most recent Tops Now offerings and act fast, act now, act soon, or else that crop of Tops Now cards will be gone, replaced by yet another. All right. So little stat blasting today. We got approximately a zillion emails from people who pointed out that as of last week, the AL East, AL Central standings were strange. So basically, the AL East and AL Central looked like one big division because every AL East team had a better record than all of the AL Central teams. So it was just like if you ordered them, then it would just be all the AL East teams at the top and then all the AL Central teams. So people wanted to know if that was weird, had that happened before, where you could have stacked them that way, where all the teams from one division would have been above all the teams from another division. And frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson looked into this.

Find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. Ryan Nelson looked into this. Find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. And what he found out is the division record thing isn't as unusual as maybe it seemed. So as late as September 28th, 2005, the entire NL East had a better record than the entire NL West. And we've talked about the 2005 NL West before, one of those weird divisions where every team was 500 or better. So as late as September 28th of that season, the whole NL East had better records than the whole NL West. When the 1994 strike-shortened season ended, the entire AL West, another one of those weird divisions, was worse than every other AL team East or Central. one of those weird divisions was worse than every other AL team East or Central.

So that was about 115 games into the season. In 1996, as late as June 23rd, the entire NL Central was worse than the entire NL West. And in 1995, they made it to May 29th, although that season was strike shortened as well at the beginning. So that was only about 30 games in. So Ryan concluded he thinks those are the only four that could be deeper into the season than this year. But also that puts the season fifth of 55 seasons in the divisional era. So barely top 10 percent. So weird, but not unprecedented.

It's definitely strange for a division to be as strong as the AL East has been this year or as weak as the AL Central has been this year. I mean, those could end up being the strongest and weakest divisions ever or certainly among them. But the actual confluence of one entire division being better than the other. Not unprecedented, just unusual, which tends to be the answer a lot of the time. Okay. Now, one thing I got curious about, one of the home runs that was hit by the Cardinals was an Andrew Kisner home run, and that was under strange circumstances. This was a few days ago. This was May 15th, I think. Andrew Kisner entered the game in the eighth inning as a pinch runner and then came to bat later in the inning and he hit a grand slam. And there were various fun facts shared about how weird that was. But the thing was, he hit without a position

designation. So when you enter as a pinch hitter, I believe like if your team bats around, if you come in and you pinch hit and then you get to hit again in that inning, I believe you're still a pinch hitter for the purposes of your positional designation. But if you enter as a pinch runner and then you bat later in that inning, you're nothing. Like, you don't have a position designation. You're just, you're positionless, I believe. It's just a weird kind of nothing position. You just fall into this abyss, this nebula. I don't know what to call you.

But the MLB scoring changes, at scoring changes on Twitter account was tweeting about this Kisner home run and and called it just being a nothing, which is, you know, maybe more negative than the connotation there. You're not a nothing, but but positionally speaking, you're sort of nothing at that point. So it's a weird kind of limbo you fall into. a weird kind of limbo you fall into. So I was just curious to see whether anyone had hit more than one home run as a nothing, you know, while listed as having no position. And according to baseball reference stat head, no, one is the max number of home runs that anyone has hit as a nothing. But I did want to look up just who has hit as a nothing

the most times. And there does seem to be a leader in that category. So just most career plate appearances by someone with no position, just other, is John Cangellosi, who hit this way six times during his career from 1987 to 1995. There are several other guys who had four. And, you know, some of the guys toward the top of this leaderboard are players you might expect, you know, guys who came in as substitutes a lot, like Andy Chavez is on there and Manny Mota is on there and John Vanderwaal is on there. But John Cangellosi is in his own class because he's at six and no one else had more than four. And Cangellosi, like that was kind of his game. Like he's designated as an outfielder and pinch hitter, according to baseball reference. And he was kind of a classic like fourth or fifth outfielder slash pinch hitter slash pinch runner type of guy. Like he made a whole 13 year career out of that. You know, there were years where he started, but he never played in more than 137 games or had more than 525 plate appearances in a season. And even that was kind of an outlier. There were a lot of years where he had barely more plate appearances than games. You know, he was like a defensive

replacement. He was a part-timer. He was a substitute. And so he ended up hitting as a nothing six times. And he did quite well as a nothing. Perhaps he should have been a nothing more often because in those six plate appearances, five at bats, he got two hits. He did hit a home run. He had four runs batted in. He walked once. He struck out once. So that's a cool 1,500 OPS for John Cangellosi while a nothing.

So he was really something as a nothing. while a nothing. So he was really something as a nothing. So congrats to John Cangellosi for being at the top of that weird leaderboard. And I have one more weird leaderboard for you. And this was prompted by something that came up in the StatBlast channel of our Discord group just on Friday. And it made me curious because it was tweeted by Christopher Kamka, who tweets all sorts of fun White Sox baseball facts. And he's a producer for White Sox baseball and NBC Sports Chicago. He tweeted that tonight, Friday, makes 162 straight games. Or actually, this was Wednesday, May 17th, that he tweeted this. Tonight makes 162 straight games for the White Sox where they started a right-handed pitcher. Sounds weird, right? No

lefties starting games for them. And really, last time I checked, which was when Jake Diekman, the lefty, went from the White Sox to the Rays, they only had one lefty on their whole pitching staff, Aaron Bummer. So they just have been very light on lefties. And so we got curious, of course, about the longest such streaks. And Ryan looked this up too. The longest streak of just having righties start puts this White Sox streak to shame. So the White Sox go at 162 or whatever they're up to now. The 1992 through 1997 Dodgers had a streak of 681 consecutive games started by a right-handed pitcher, which is just wild. And part of the reason Ryan noted is that they only had 11 starters in that entire span. Wow. Yeah. That also seems impossible. I mean, somehow that happened, like incredible continuity and I guess good health

records and everything. But the starters that they had during that span were Ramon Martinez, Tom Candiotti, Pedro Estacio, Hideo Nomo, Ismael Valdez, Kevin Gross, Oral Hirscheiser, Chan Ho Park, Kevin Tappany, Willie Banks, and Pedro Martinez with a mere three starts. So 681 consecutive games started by Reddies. The next longest streak Ryan found is 474 by the 2013 to 2016 Brewers. Then after that, the 93 to 96 Cubs with 422. And then the Guardians had 417 also fairly recently from August 30th, 2017 to April 5th, 2021.

They had a very long streak. So this sort of thing happens actually more than I would have guessed. I just would not have guessed that you could go several seasons without a lefty starting for you, but they're just more starters these days, I guess, just in general, certainly more relievers, but you know, you have openers these days and you have guys getting hurt all the time and guys cycling in and out and needing rest and so forth. So it's probably less likely it's harder for this to happen now. But there have been some extremely protracted extended streaks of this nature. Asked about lefties also. You'd figure it'd be harder to have a streak of nothing but lefties.

Oops all southpaws, I guess. Yeah. So the record for lefties is ancient. It's from 19th century baseball when the 1887 to 1888 Baltimore Orioles had 44 straight lefty starts. It was just two pitchers, Matt Kilroy and Phenomenal Smith. Phenomenal Smith, which is one of those fun 19th century baseball names.

One might say it's phenomenal. You might, yeah. Although his actual name was John Francis Smith, which is not as phenomenal, but much more colorful to go with Phenomenal Smith. If you want like modern times, then the record is the 2014 Rockies had 20 straight starts by left-handed pitchers. Brett Anderson, Jorge de la Rosa, Johan Flandre, Pedro Hernandez, Tyler Matzik, and Franklin Morales. Even that sounds, I mean, that's like, you're talking like three weeks of nothing but lefties. That's like four turns through the rotation, just nothing but lefties. That even sounds incredible and improbable to me, but it happened not all that long ago. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. All right. Just been here now, And I have an additional detail on that long, long streak of the Dodgers starting exclusively right handers. The exact dates were September 25th, 1992. That was the start date. So Bob Ojeda was the last lefty to start before the streak on September 24th, 1992. And then the streak went all the way to July 13th, 1997, when Dennis Reyes, the lefty, started for the Dodgers and won. That is nuts. For what it's worth, that Dodgers team from 93 through 96, when they had zero left-handed starters any of those seasons, had the seventh most wins in the majors. And if we throw in 97, when the streak continued for about half of that season, then they move up to sixth most wins in the majors. Reminds me of a study Russell Carlton did about a decade ago at Baseball Prospectus where he found that batters didn't appear to do any better when they were facing a starter of the same handedness that they had faced the game before.

So he concluded that the idea of breaking up lefties and righties in the rotation is overrated. Maybe so is the idea of having any lefties at all. Then again, I guess if one of the reasons why you have no lefties is that none of your righties gets hurt and they make all their starts, then no wonder those Dodgers did well. Been thinking about this ever since we answered the question about the player being safe by a beard, just growing really long facial hair that would arrive at the base before the rest of him did. What about really long hair on the top of your head? What if Rapunzel played baseball?

the top of your head? What if Rapunzel played baseball? Couldn't she just throw her hair ahead of her from one base to the next and be safe without ever being in danger of being tagged out? I'm looking at a UPI story published last August, headlined Florida woman with world's longest locks grows hair to 110 feet. This was about a 60 year old woman named Asha Mandela who holds the Guinness world record for longest locks, as in hair, and she first was awarded this record in 2009 when her hair was measured at 19 feet and six and a half inches. She said she first started growing it when she moved to the U.S. more than 40 years ago, and according to the story from last year, the record holder said her hair has now reached a length of 110 feet. Now, if she's been growing it for 40 years and it got to roughly 20 feet by 2009, I don't know how it would have then gotten from 20 to 110

between 2009 and 2022, so I'm not sure the 110 foot measurement was verified. But let's say it were. Couldn't she just stand on first base and sling her hair to second? And if she could sling it just right so it rested on the second base bag, she could just go hand over hand as if it were a rope following the hair from first to second, and technically she'd be on second base the entire time. Of course, the problem with having really long hair is that you can also be tagged on the hair, and that would count too. But if you could just get a really old person who's been growing their hair their whole life and could just sort of lasso the next base, I think possibly you could break baseball. Someone please look into this. Also, Aaron Judge homered again after we spoke. What I meant to mention about Ronald Acuna is that

he also isn't striking out anymore. Not only is he hitting for more power than ever, he's striking out less than 14% of the time. He was usually a mid to high 20% strikeout rate guy. So he's cut his strikeout rate almost in half while hitting for all this power and maybe should have had more power than he has. Oh, and Meg introduced you to 28-year-old Mets lefty Josh Walker today. But I want to make sure that you've heard of another 28-year-old Mets lefty who made his debut this season, Zach Muckenhurn. Yes, Zach Muckenhurn. He was only up briefly and then was sent back down to Syracuse, but he has been a big leaguer. So please meet major leaguer Zach Muckernhern. Oh, and Meg

mentioned Man Wipes earlier. The actual name of the product, which has come up on the podcast before because they sent some samples to Quique Hernandez after he soiled himself, as well as to the Giants after they encountered some digestive issues after visiting Mexico. Its name is possibly bro-ier than man wipes, dude wipes. Okay, before we leave you, I've got to give you the Pass Blast, which comes from 2009 and also from David Lewis, an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. This one's kind of a continuation of the Pass Blast from 2006.

Remember, that was about the cutting edge Rockies and their embrace of video iPods to review footage of games. Well, here's the Pass Blast for 2009. Video iPods, baseball's greatest innovation. In 2009, the video iPod returned to the baseball player development spotlight. This time, however, it was marketed not to major leaguers, but to young ballplayers. On March 5th, 2009, Major League Baseball and Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. teamed up to launch GetGreat.com, a subscription-based website that would provide instructional videos for young players and their coaches. Said Ripken, I kind of see a coach having a practice going to go over rundowns that day,

and they decide to download the section onto an iPod. They can actually have a preview of what they're going to talk about first, and it's in a form they can easily understand. And you can actually carry that out support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep us going, help us stay ad free aside from our stat blast sponsorship and get themselves access to some perks. Christian, Steve Discala, Shane Allen, Xander Berg, and Chris Laskowski. Thanks to all of you. and so much more, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a patron, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can email us at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild.

You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at ewpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That will do it for us for today and this week. Thanks as always for listening. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will for them to listen to people talk I wanna hear about baseball with new ones

and puppy and stats Yeah, yeah Don't wanna hear about pitcher wins or about gambling odds All they want to hear about is my child having vitals

and the texture of the hair on the arm growing out of one's head Gross, gross Outro Music