Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2012: Double Clutch

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s prediction concerning the Padres’ and Rangers’ rest-of-season performance with runners in scoring position, then (14:08) answer listener emails about the ultimate Quadruple-A player, leaving runners on base for the opposing team, immaculate-inning edge cases, tanking for Shohei Ohtani, setting up a lifelong Google Alert for a player, […]

Does baseball look the same to you as it does to me? When we look at baseball, how much do we see? Well, the curveballs bend and the home runs fly More to the game than meets the eye To get the stats compiled and the stories filed Fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it down on Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2012 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindbergh of The

Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Aircrafts. Hello, Meg. Hello. I have a prediction to make. I know, this is a first in podcast history. We're 2,000 plus episodes in. I'm going to finally make a prediction. That's not true. I think I've made a few predictions. I've had to over the years, but it's not a common occurrence for me.

But I'm just going to make a prediction. So, as you are aware, the Texas Rangers have scored a lot of runs this season. The Padres have not. Okay. So as we speak here on Friday afternoon, the Rangers are tied with the Rays for the most runs scored in the majors. The Padres are 25th. So if you saw that coming before the season started, then please write in and document your prediction if you made that prediction, because I will be duly impressed. I did not predict that. However, I will make a prediction about the rest of the season. I should say some of that is park effects, but not that much really. So if you look at just WRC Plus park adjusted, the Rangers are second in baseball behind the Rays,

and the Padres move all the way up to 18th, which is better than 25th, but still not where they want to be or where most people thought they would be. And part of the reason why the Rangers are so high and the Padres are so low, not the whole reason, but a significant factor, is the fact that the

Rangers have been incredibly clutch and the Padres have been incredibly unclutch, like historically so. Maybe not historically so for the first couple months of the season, but if it continued for the rest of the season, then it would be historic. And I don't think it's going to continue, which is part of my prediction here. I'm not necessarily going out on a limb to say that the Rangers will be less clutch than they've been and the Padres will be more clutch than they've been. But what I'm saying is that the Padres will be more clutch than the Rangers for the rest of the season. So we're taking extreme clutch, extreme unclutch. I am saying that the extreme unclutch team is going to be more clutch than the clutch team from this point in the season onward. Maybe not for the full season, but from this day forward, I think that will be true.

So your prediction is that Lara's regression, basically? Are you mocking the boldness of my prediction? I finally made a prediction for the first time. Don't disparage my prediction. I might be engaged in a little light ribbing, shall we say. I'm not just saying that the gap is going to narrow and that the Rangers will be a little less clutch and the Padres will be a little more clutch. I'm saying they're going to switch positions. The Padres are going to out-clutch the Rangers from be a little less clutch and the Padres will be a little more clutch. I'm saying they're going to switch positions.

The Padres are going to out-clutch the Rangers from now on. Maybe that's still not a very bold prediction. But there are a lot of people who believe in clutch, you know, and believe that it is sustainable and that it means something and that it's repeatable in the face of much evidence to the contrary, I would say. And if you're watching the Rangers this year, you're probably impressed by their clutchness. And if you're watching the Padres, you're probably quite upset by their lack of clutchness. We've gotten some emails from people who are. So I'm suggesting that it will not only not continue, but the positions will flip. I mean, we're talking here. So you could go by OPS with runners in scoring position.

You could do by leverage. I'll just do runners in scoring position because that's what I stat-headed already. And if you do that, so this season, just runners in scoring position, if we go by OPS, the Padres have a 6.05 OPS with runners in scoring position, if we go by OPS, the Padres have a 6.05 OPS with runners in scoring position, which would be the 20th lowest of all time. And that's not accounting for shortened seasons or anything. And it would be the lowest OPS with runners in scoring position since it looks like I'm scanning the list 1981 1981, which was itself a strike-shortened season. So, again, there are wacky things that happen in small samples. I don't expect this to hold up.

That's part of the prediction. But it would be that historically extreme if we go by TOPS+, that old stat head, stat blast favorite. Then the Padres are currently second worst of all time, better than only the 1914 St. Louis Browns. That does feel pretty extreme. It is. It is definitely extreme. The Padres have hit 184, 286, 318 with runners in scoring position in 480 plate appearances so far.

So that's a 73 TOPS plus, which is just comparing their OPS with runners in scoring position to their overall OPS. And low is bad. 100 would mean that they hit the same in both splits. You want to be higher, if anything. Yeah. They are a whole lot lower. Lower.

you want to be higher, if anything. Yeah. They are a whole lot lower. Lower. If I sort this descending instead of ascending, then we end up with the Rangers toward the top of the leaderboards. Funny how that works. Then you're just the Rangers.

Yeah. It's much better to be the Rangers so far this season. But the Rangers have a 920 OPS with runners in scoring position. They have hit 332, 382, 538 in 525 plate appearances. So they have more plate appearances with runners in scoring position

than the Padres do. But I'd imagine a lot of that is just because they have gotten hits with runners in scoring position where the Padres keep making outs and then the inning is over and then they don't get to have another play appearance with runners in scoring position. So the Rangers have been amazing

in those situations. 920 OPS, that is third highest next to, funnily enough, the 2020 Padres. Short season, of course, although not that much longer than we have played so far this season. Short season, of course, although not that much longer than we have played so far this season. So that just goes to show this is not something that really persists from season to season. Typically, the Padres weren't horrifically unclutched last year. And then you have to go back to the 1930 Yankees, who had a whole lot of great hitters. And they had a 923 OPS with runners in scoring position. And they had a 923 OPS with runners in scoring position. If we do T-OPS plus, the Rangers are at 132 so far this year, which would be the 12th highest ever.

And the reason why I don't think this will persist and that they will even swap places is, A, it's a smaller sample. And we know that these things don't tend to continue when they're super extreme. And also, everyone thought the Padres would be a better hitting team than the Rangers. I mean, this is wild that this has happened. I look at the Padres lineup and I don't understand it. And I look at the Rangers lineup and I don't really understand that either. I was like, hey, if the Rangers pitching is good, maybe it'll be enough to carry that offense. Nope. Not quite worked out that way.

And the Padres line up lots of big names. Not so much the big production, but largely because of these failures with runners in scoring position. But if you look at the two teams' respective OPSs with the bases empty, then the Padres are 10th highest in baseball with a 727 OPS and the Rangers are 17th with a 703. So with nobody on base, the Padres have hit better than the Rangers so far this season. And that's obviously a bigger sample, like twice as big as the runners in scoring position sample, but it doesn't help you as much because if you're the Padres, you get guys on base and then you don't drive any of them in. But it's a bigger sample and the Padres have hit better than the Rangers, which buoys my optimism about the Padres reversing course here. So I don't have any stakes or anything. I guess if this doesn't happen, then people can just remind me that I was wrong. And if it does happen, then I can crow about it on a podcast at the end of the season, I guess.

I don't know. I don't know how to make this interesting. We don't do sports betting here. So, I'm just saying it. My reputation is on the line. Because you so rarely make voluntary predictions, right? Maybe that's the way that we want to differentiate this because we do make some predictions. I guess all of our predictions are on some level voluntary because it's our podcast. And if we

really didn't want to do it, we could be like, no, that's stupid. We shall not. But we don't do that because we sometimes have to bow to expectation, Ben, you know? And particularly at the start of the year or as we approach the postseason, predictions are sort of expected of people in our line of work. And we are nothing if not people pleasers. And so, we do it even though it doesn't please us. But you're making a voluntary prediction, which suggests conviction. a voluntary prediction, which suggests conviction. And I think it's reasonable conviction because I, again, cannot just emphasize enough how anodyne a prediction I find this to be. So, I will point it out to you, probably, maybe, if I remember. I might not remember, Ben.

Yeah. I think I will remember because this is just so out of character for me. I mean, I might not remember, Ben. as opposed to a preseason staff post where someone says you must make a prediction. And my choices are either to resign or to make that prediction. I guess you're the managing editor of FanGraphs, so you could lay down the law and say no more predictions. But you wouldn't do that because you're a good managing editor and you know that people want there to be a predictions post and they will click on it. I do. And I, you know, you don't always have to do things to satisfy the readership, but I think that you want to be in conversation with your audience and they like predictions. They do like them. It's unavoidable, Ben. You just leave the whole long sigh in.

Yeah. I don't know if people come to us for our prescience. We're not providing fantasy tips. We're not providing betting tips. That's for sure. So I don't know why people come to us, but I don't think it's because we're so great at predicting baseball. I make no claims to being super prescient. We just observe and react and hopefully we bring some banter that is fun and we notice some things that people might not notice otherwise. But predictions, not a big part of the podcast, but we'll see how this one goes. Yeah. You know, I think people just think that we're nice, you know? I hope so.

And that I am right about Zach Allen. That's another thing that people think, Ben. Yeah, definitely right about Zach Allen. Another really risky prediction there. Zach Allen. That's another thing that people think, Ben. Yeah, definitely right about Zach Allen. Another really risky prediction there. Zach Allen, he's good. Yeah. I mean, to our audience, I don't think this is a risky prediction. But I think that the mainstream baseball fan probably does think there's more to this. Or at least that it signifies something in terms of predictiveness. Because whenever a

team has a great record in one-run games, you always hear this team knows how to win, and someone will write a story about it, and the players and the manager will say, oh, it's our attitude, and it's our small ball, and it's our bullpen, and it's this and that, right? There's always a reason. Do you ever hear a player say, yeah, that seems fluky. Like, we just won a bunch of one-run games. Boy, we're sure lucking out here. Gosh, our record should probably be worse than it is. No, they always attribute it to something, right?

Preparation or character or whatever it is. And you probably have to think that way to some extent, right? Preparation or character or whatever it is. And you probably have to think that way to some extent, right? I mean, baseball players acknowledge that there's a lot of randomness, and I think that's probably on some level why they're so superstitious. They just want some illusion of control over their careers, which are largely out of their control in any given game, certainly. And so probably to go out there every day and feel like you can contribute and feel like you're the master of your destiny. You have to feel like, yeah, we won because we wanted it more or our fundamentals are more sound or whatever explanation you come up with. And I guess there's no way to prove that

wrong, but you can just demonstrate that there seems to be very little consistency to it from season to season or even within a season. So if you did have some great ability that was more skill than luck, it seems not to be sustainable, really. So I think there are people who, if I said the clutchest team of the year and one of the clutchest all time on pace, and then the most unclutch that I'm saying, there's so little to that in terms of predictive power that they will actually change places from this point on over the rest of the season. I think some people would consider that. You'd shock some. Yeah. So we'll see.

We'll see. All right. So we've got some emails to answer and then some stat blasts. And this is a question from Sean that was sort of a response to an episode last week. Sean says a question on episode 2009 about how good a prospect would have to be to force their hand into the majors got me thinking about another hypothetical. The hypothetical player has a 1,000 OBP in AAA and below, but a zero OBP in the majors. For a pitcher, I guess the equivalent would be someone threw a perfect game every time in AAA but failed to get a single out every time he made an appearance in the majors. How long do you think it would take teams to give up on this player? How many teams would have to give up on them before they stopped getting chances? And would it be useful to the Major League Club to have a game-breaking player like this

in AAA? Well, I think a lot would go into the question of, like, how long it would take the team to give up on their on the player because i mean surely you would have a an incredible reputation as a prospect if you had an obp that high in triple a but i think it part of it might depend on like what what had you done previously what were the other pieces of your profile right right? Like, are you a player at a premium defensive position? So is there, are you a speedster? You know, is there other stuff in the profile that they think might play at some point

once you either get on base or other ways that you might contribute to the team? If you really didn't reach base for a long time. If you have a zero OBP, it doesn't matter what else you do, really. Yeah, part of it is going to depend on the club, I guess. But like, if you really have a zero OBP, it doesn't matter what else you do. Yeah. Part of it is going to depend on the club, I guess. But like if you really have a zero, zero, and you're a prospect, like they're probably going to send you down for a tune-up after, what, two weeks? Yeah.

Two weeks, maybe? That's probably on the outside. Although I guess if you had a 1,000 OBP, then you might get a longer leash if you were that good. This is so extreme that it becomes kind of supernatural, right? This is almost in the Ghani Jones category of like if this happened, you would question reality. Right. You could question whether there was some higher power or lower power influencing events here. Some higher power or lower power influencing events here.

Right. So you can imagine that it was a little less extreme, perhaps within the realm of plausibility. Right. And there have been some cases like that, of course, of the classic quadruple A player who seemingly couldn't perform in the majors. Somewhere between actual real-life examples and this hypothetical, I think you'd keep getting shots if you were one of the best players at that level. I don't see how you couldn't, right? Like, the only way that I could imagine it not earning you continued shots is if there's some giveaway that's associated with the performance, some explanation. So it's not just how the heck is this happening, but it's like either the player is just breaking out in a flop sweat whenever he's in the majors, you know, like there's some stress, anxiety aspect to this that for whatever reason, he's just impervious to pressure in triple a

but that as soon as he makes the majors he's just can't compete can't maintain his composure is like a guy clearly having heart palpitations right like if it were that then probably you wouldn't keep putting the guy out there and you would hopefully get him some counseling of some sort and maybe he could work through that potentially but then it wouldn't be a mystery at least or if it were like the the hole of all holes in the swing or something i think you should rephrase that you need to think carefully about are we doing we doing phrasing anymore? Yeah. I maybe should have said that differently. But if there were some obvious way in which he was susceptible to big league pitching, that would just be an extreme version of actual real life examples, right?

Where it's like can't catch up to a big league fastball or can't hit a big league slider or whatever it is. And it's just feasting on AAA stuff. So this would be a more pronounced version of that. Again, like the difference between the levels and the stuff that you're facing at the levels is not so extreme. It should account for that. AAA is like four-fifths the caliber of play, I believe, analytically speaking. So I don't know if there would be just like a tipping point. Like there's this something about your swing or your strike zone sense or your stuff as a pitcher that it makes you totally dominant at AAA and then just completely incompetent in the majors.

I don't know what that would be. I'm trying to imagine like the hierarchy of potential explanations that a club would look to before they got to like ghosts, you know? Like, I think the first thing you would assume with this dramatic of a decline, like, be like is he hurt like is there a physical explanation for what's happening here and then you'd be like is he like anxious or overwhelmed to your point like is the the level getting to him in a way that we couldn't have anticipated until he was here is uh this just like the most profoundly unlucky stretch of a big leaguers career because like there are guys there are guys who go you know over 30 but they tend to walk at least a

little bit right like they get they lean into one and get hit by a pitcher they're on base at least like one time if he got sent down and then he was, you know, he had 1,000 OBP again, how long until they brought him back up, you know? And then they try it again. I think there would be a fair amount of back and forth. There would be a contemplation of ghosts. I think he would take a while before he'd get released, though, right? Because you would be like—

Why would he ever, really? Right. You just have him be organizational filler at some point. But you'd just leave him at AAA probably until— Probably. You know, something weird happened. At some point, he would get outrated off the 40 man. But if he has a zero OBP, like, is he getting claimed right away?

I don't know. Like, maybe not. Maybe not, Ben. But some club would be like, we can fix that guy. He's not actually haunted because that's not real. Right. He'd get chances indefinitely, I think. For a long time, yeah.

I guess that he would be a draw at the minor league level, right? Oh, yeah. The best player in that league. Some major league teams own their affiliates and some don't. But if you want to boost your attendance at AAA or whatever level it is, then you would want him on the roster. Right. And winning is not considered so important at the minor league level, but it's not totally unimportant. And fans want to see a good team. Right. So just purely for ticket sales, like he's going to have a job as long as he wants one. So I don't think you're going to cut him loose. You might say, well, we're not going to give you another shot in the majors. And he might say someone else will and would ask for his release or be granted his release, but he's going to be employed. going to be employed. So I guess even if you think there's no hope that he'll make the majors and if he were like blocking a top prospect at the same position or something, then maybe you would have no choice but to say you're the best player at this level, but we can no longer employ you because you are incapable of performing in the majors. That'd be a tough conversation to have but i wonder just how big a sample this guy would get like at what point do you just concede he can't hack it he looks

incredible at this level and and then it's like a superman kryptonite kind of thing where triple a is is the son of of earth and the rays just activate the powers he's such a nerd yeah it's just like it's just like that or or they would say we have to get him out of here he's full of ghosts yeah you would have to question that at some point but i mean you really would not have well that at some point you would don't think you would really you would feel bad for this person. Oh, you'd feel terrible for him. Which would be weird because most of the time when he's in AAA, he'd be the best player on the field. Right.

He'd be getting constant affirmation and validation. And, wow, I'm so great. I'm so dominant. And yet everyone would be pitying him at the same time because they know. I think people would assume that it's a mental block of some sort, right? I mean, you'd have to assume that because the only other explanation is something supernatural seemingly. So it would probably be seen as a sign of weakness, I think, on his part, which would be unfortunate. Yeah, I think that at some point you'd be like, are we being unkind to this person, giving him continued professional opportunities? Like, are we engaged?

Right. Yeah, it'd be like yips, sort of, right? Yeah. Except that it wouldn't be as apparent that the yips were happening, I assume, in this situation. Again, like, if he's just swinging before the pitcher releases the ball or something, you know, it's like batting yips. It's just like the ball goes by and then he starts to swing or something. Okay, that's a little bit different. I'm assuming in this scenario that he looks like a normal baseball player and somehow what comes out is

a zero OBP. I guess the yips are a form of haunting. Yeah. There are people who are haunted by it and cannot explain why it's happening. So, yes. Yeah. It's like, it's really, you know, baseball's wonderful, but it does speak to like its dark underbelly that it can inspire in people. It's like, Hey, the, you know how your performance has been terrible. Well, guess what? It can get worse.

And that's a, you know, that's a profound part. I don't want to minimize it by saying it's haunting. I don't want anyone to walk away being like, Meg, she's insensitive. Like I think it can really mess with people.

I think this thing we love, I think it can really get them, bring them low. Very much so. Man, I should have made my Padres-Rangers prediction, my bold prediction, the jaw-dropping that I went way out on a limb. But on Thursday, they had a huge clutch hit because Rugnet Odor hit a three-run homer in the top of the ninth with runners on first and second and two outs. And the Padres came back to win that game. So I really, I should have made this prediction a day earlier and then everyone

would have been super impressed, but perhaps the regression has already begun. I still would have questioned bold. I think I would have, I think I would have had even more questions, Ben. Is it really? Is it bold? Bold? My predictions are so chalky that when I try to make them bold, it's like a regular prediction for anyone else. Although I thought I did

a pretty decent job on the bold predictions pod. I think some of them actually qualified as bold, but I'm just, I'm out of practice. I've never been in practice when it comes to making bold predictions.

Because usually what that means is I am going to be wrong now. Right. But in an entertaining way, hopefully. I'm choosing to be wrong, but in a way that you will get a chuckle out of. Yeah. Right. Bauman and I have talked about this a little bit, that we have to do it again, Ben.

I think it has to be a recurring tradition, an annual tradition, because I feel like I've learned so much about dialing in that level of boldness. And I don't know if I really understood the answer before we did it the last time. I mean, I did, but I also was so profoundly tired that I was like, I don't know. I did prep, and I feel like that is enough. But it wasn't enough. I should have really sat with it for longer and in a clearer frame of mind than I was able to offer. So we have to do it again so that I can try to win. I do feel I haven't compared our respective rosters, but I am feeling a little bit heartened about how I might perform in the

minor league free agent draft. Oh yeah. I have not actually looked that up. Cause I, I haven't really comped again. I haven't comped the rosters, but if you remember Ben, I took Brent Honeywell, despite the fact that he did not have a contract at the time. And he has thrown 26.2 innings. He's faced 112 batters, Ben. Yeah. For your San Diego Padres. They're now your San Diego Padres because of your, quote-unquote, bold predictions related to them.

So I'm not saying I'm going to win, but I feel like I know scoped that one pretty well, and I'm proud saying I'm going to win, but I feel like I no scoped that one pretty well. And I'm proud of myself. Yeah. And I'm going to say it now because invariably I'm not going to win and I will come in last and I will have to admit to failure once more. But this was a good pick. Yeah. Brent Honeywell is like the Nabil Krismat of 2023. I can't believe you.

Nabil Krizmat of 2023. I can't believe you. I'm still so salty about that, Ben, that you scooped Krizmat out from under me. I can't believe it. Oh, I'm living it all over. We got to talk about something else. I'm going to yell at you. Sorry. Not sorry. All right. Jeff in San Francisco. What's that city called? Jeff in San Francisco. Yeah, there are lots of songs about that city. I have a question about tanking. One of the arguments against tanking is that better draft position in baseball isn't as valuable as in other sports because of a higher degree of unpredictability. Here's a scenario I thought of recently. Time travel back to 2016.

Shohei Otani is coming to MLB for the 2018 season, but the league and players union have agreed to an international draft at the end of the 2017 season where the team with the worst record gets the first overall pick. Would it be acceptable to tank in that situation? Assume that you know for certain that Ohtani would be the player he has become. Here's another way to look at it. The Seattle Mariners won 78 games in 2017. Would it be worth it to Mariners fans for that team to win 15 fewer games in order to get at least six years of Shohei Otani? How would Mariners fans react if it was discovered later that the team passed up six years of Otani in order to not tank for one year? So tanking for Otani. I'm in the tank for Otani as it is. So I can't really.

It's hard because I guess if we know that Otani is Otani, you know, because sometimes like you'll tank for, remember when they're like tank for Torque and then I'm like, don't. Maybe you shouldn't have done that. Yeah. Like was there a ton of tanking for harper i guess would be the most obvious example or strasburg rutschman people talked about rutschman that way and they would have been right i mean maybe not to the degree that they're right about would have been right about otani but um you know that one Do you remember briefly on draft night, Ben, when people were like, are the Orioles going to do something goofy and not take Richmond?

And I was like, I beg of them to just, just draft the generational catcher, just do it. And then they did. And I managed to stay mad at them for a little while. Cause it was like something in your prior behavior made people think this was plausible for a minute and I had to be stressed about it. So you owe me an apology. Anyway, the Orioles, by the way, are doing a press conference at like 445. I don't imagine that it's a Richmond extension, but I will say, Mike, and I'm calling

you by your first name despite the fact that we are not acquainted. If you do a Richmond extension at 445 p.m. the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, I will send you a mean note. Yes, I will provide an update on the outro so as not to leave our listeners in response. I don't think it's that. I bet they're going to be like, look at our City Connects that no one likes. Don't you actually like them? I bet it'll be that. Yeah. When they announce cryptically, when a team says so-and-so is going to be speaking to the media, it's always like, oh my gosh, what happened? Right. And it's like, just do it at 9 a.m. so that we can write about it during business hours.

Like, why? Just put out a press release and then do the press conference. Yeah. But it's usually not as exciting as people dream about it being. What were we talking? Oh, tanking. Right. Tanking for Otani is going to be Otani, which was, I think, a pretty reasonable thing to be like, yeah, he's going to be Otani. Then, sure. You know what I think? Sure.

Because our playoff odds prior to opening day on 2018 had the Mariners projected to win 77.8 games and had like 9% chance of making the postseason. And what happened? They didn't make the postseason. Like, I think that there are years where a team should be reasonably clear-eyed about, like, what are their chances, you know? Like, what are the chances that they're actually going to do it? Now, if you're the Mariners, it kind of depends. Like, when do you make that decision? Because also, also, Ben, the Seattle Mariners, on the final day of July relevant for trade deadline purposes in that year they had almost 60% chance of making the postseason so do you make a decision going in that you're gonna be bad or do you make the decision over the course of the year

like I think that it's reasonable to be a little squishy on it, even though I would have preferred to have Otani be a Mariner. But see, by September 1st, their playoff odds were like 11.4%. So at that point, if your odds are that low on the 1st of September, then I think what you do, Ben, is you say, where's that guy who gets a zero OBP when he comes from the majors? Bring that cat up for a couple of weeks. Let's see what he can do. But I don't know. I want to discourage teams from employing tanking because I think part of the problem with the strategy is that there is,

I mean, and now I think teams are less inclined to do it just in general because when a lot of teams try to do the thing, then the odds of you getting the first pick and also now you have the, you know, the draft lottery stuff. So like, you know, there are some rules in place to try to disincentivize teams from doing this. And there are market forces in place that often disincentivize teams from doing this. But I think that part of what is the problem with the tanking approach

is that it gives a false sense of certainty to clubs and to their fans that it's going to work because most of the time you don't know that it's that otani is going to be Otani. And most of the time, you don't even have Otani in professional baseball in Japan to point to and be like, we can feel reasonably confident, right? I think that it was pretty obvious that, like, Rutschman was going to be a good big leaguer. But it felt obvious to a lot of people that Torca was going to be one, too, like, including us. So, you know, I think that part of why it can be an alienating strategy to fans is that

you don't know. You just don't know, right? Because sometimes the guy you take is really good, and even with him being really good, the rest of the club is bad. And it doesn't matter that he was really good because you haven't done the other stuff to elevate your club. So I think you don't want to have teams being like, oh, this is definitely going to work because sometimes you're the Tigers. Yeah. And even with Rutschman, who was as close to can't miss as it gets, he still took three years to get to the majors after being drafted 1-1. Right now, could have been faster. Perhaps the Orioles could have promoted him more quickly.

He could have not gotten hurt at an inopportune time, and he might have been up a little sooner, et cetera. But still, you're looking even for a number one overall pick coming out of college. Right. It's still often going to be multiple years if everything works out well. So there's just so much time and so much uncertainty that it doesn't really make sense because the prospects are always younger and unproven in pro ball. It's not like in the NBA where you have a Victor Wimbanyama and he's playing at a high

level internationally and there's a long history of NBA top draft picks being stars immediately, right? It's not like you have to go to the minors and ride the bus for years and years, right? So I think it's probably for the best because NBA tanking gets extremely transparent and ugly and teams get fined for it. And even when this year, the Mavericks and just everything that was going on, right? And it's harder to tank in that way in baseball, I think, on a game level. You can certainly tank at the start of the season and what you do over the offseason. But on an individual game level in the NBA, you just sit one or two guys and you're basically throwing in the towel. Whereas in baseball, it takes much more than that.

And it would be even more obvious because no one player is making up as high a percentage of your roster and is contributing as much to wins and losses. So that is probably is the caliber of player and proven player where it might actually make sense. And also, you could argue that it's not even anti-fun in the way that tanking often is because you get Otani, right? And so if you had Otani for six season, that makes up for a whole lot of losing in the season prior, right? Because he's just a once-in-a-century type player. You're the only team that gets an Otani. And he's there right away.

Yes, right. Right? He's there right away. That's the other big difference because Otani was just going to be in the big leagues the following season wherever he signed. So, you know, you don't even have to wait. Except for the people that said he should start in the minors because he couldn't hit big league pitching. I don't hold a grudge or anything about that. All right. Question from Sam, Patreon supporter, who says,

When it comes to fringe, however you define it, cases, do you think future Hall of Fame voters, yes, a Hall of Fame question in May, will consider the time missed during 2020 and put those candidates over the top? Is this something that as a voter you would consider? Was there any noticeable trend for guys impacted by the 90s lockout and strike? I know war isn't everything, but a guy finishing at 56 and getting a bump to 60 or 61 war would be a big deal for some voters, I would imagine. So, yeah, I guess you would get some slight consideration of that. It doesn't seem to have been a big factor for guys who miss time with the strike, right? Like, it'll get mentioned, you know, Jay Jaffe might mention it in a write-up.

He might say he was having a great season in 94 and it was cut short. And if he'd had a full season, 94, 95, then his numbers would look a little bit better. But I don't know that anyone puts you in because of that expected production that you missed, right? Because you can do that with strikes, you can do that with lockouts, you can do that with war years. Injury.

Yeah. Injury, I guess, is also a kind of absence. Maybe it's different because it actually reflects on your ability to perform as opposed to just not even getting the opportunity because they weren't playing baseball games. But if players were away at war in the service, then that's something that gets mentioned. And people will sometimes fill in the blanks with a Bob Feller or a Ted Williams and say, well, extrapolating from his production, if he'd had those years, Joe DiMaggio, then he'd have this many war, this many homers. DiMaggio, then he'd have this many war, this many homers. But I don't know if there are cases of players getting in based on that. Like, yeah, maybe if it was he's right on the borderline and like an illustrious career, but is a little light on like counting stat achievements. Like maybe then you say, well, you know, he went to war.

Like, is that, you know? So I think sometimes like that plays a part. But yeah, generally, I don't think, I think people are pretty resistant to filling in those gaps. I think they are correctly quick to sometimes point out how unfair some of those gaps can be, right? That it's something outside the control of the individual, right? Like, you had to go to war. There was a strike. There was a pandemic. Like like whatever. But I think that we are careful to not assume production and assume production at the same level just because the absence is one that's outside the player's control. Because like once you start doing that, like where do you draw the line with that? Yeah, there are cases like Edgar Martinez, let's say, who was probably qualified to be a big leaguer before he became one, right? Or David Ortiz or someone like that who was either blocked by another player or maybe was mis-evaluated. They were not the player who was amazing at AAA and couldn't hit it all in the majors. They just weren't given a shot for whatever reason.

And then you might say, well, if he'd been up a year or two or three earlier, then those numbers would be great. But you are, it's still a hypothetical. It's not actual production. So it's hard to just write that in there as if he actually did that, you know, what you would project him to have done. So I seem to recall Jay maybe writing about players whose cases may have been hurt by the shortened season and the missed time. But I don't know if he suggested that we should just sort of fill in the blanks with what we think they would have done. But I think you do kind of have to hold it against them while apologizing for it, I guess. Yeah, I think because I think you're right that it's so it seems like every generation is marked by something in that way, right?

And so, to excuse it away would suggest that it's like an aberration in a way that it really isn't. And again, you can't, you don't know. Like, maybe the great hitter would have stunk that year. Like, we just don't know. And I think because we can't have great confidence, or at least we can't say for sure, you're not going to just fill it in. You're not. Yeah. And I guess to some extent, you're judged against your peers and your contemporaries, right? Who, in theory, also would have missed that time. With the Hall of Fame, you're also judged against previous generations and subsequent generations with something like Jaws, but also your war and your stats and you're on the ballot, entering the ballot at the same time as your contemporaries.

And so if everyone's numbers were suppressed a bit by something, then you might still look as impressive relative to the competition, the immediate contemporary competition. So you might not be penalized quite as much. Yeah. All right. Question from Benjamin, who says, I've set up one Google alert in my life for Jamal Weeks. I'm guessing around 2011 when I was playing in a dynasty fantasy baseball league. It was never very useful for me, but every few months I'll get an alert that he's been a guest on some podcast I've never heard of, or he's hosting a celebrity kickball tournament. CeCe Sabathia and Dee Gordon participated. It's kind of interesting to follow his life this way.

I'd never know anything about him otherwise. My question is, let's say Google Alerts had been around since the beginning of baseball, and you could choose one baseball-related person to get alerts on for their entire life. Who would you choose? Since it's their entire life, I think their life should already be over to be eligible for selection. Oh, no. I think this is mainly because of the next sentence.

So, no, Ben, you cannot just pick Shohei. That's much too easy. I don't think they should have to overlap your life either. You are immortal in this scenario. Oh, but if you're immortal, could you choose someone from the future? Maybe that's too much. Who would you be most interested to learn about? Obviously, the baseball part is important, but it's their entire life. Do you just want to know about a decade-long career and never be alerted to their existence again? Or do you want somebody who has an interesting post-career life? I have some ideas, but wouldn't want to sway your choices. So yeah, you figure most players, their baseball playing career is hopefully just a fraction of their life. And I guess the other thing is that, do I need a Google alert on them if they're playing? Do I need that? I can find out what they're doing if they're doing something interesting, right? Like, I wouldn't need a Google alert about Shohei Otani currently because I'm pretty sure I see everything that is published about Shohei Otani in every medium. So So it would be overwhelming if I got Google alerts. It'd all be redundant.

Oh, yep. Saw that, saw that, saw that. So it would maybe have to be either a less prominent player who was doing something really interesting that was not being covered widely and obviously, or like if you were a Williams-Astadio fan and you were only getting Google alerts from Effectively Wild podcast episodes every couple days and no one else was talking about him as much, he got plenty of publicity as it was.

But maybe a more obscure player would be more interesting just because you wouldn't want to be overwhelmed. And also if it were a superstar, then you would just hear about things anyway. But then maybe the post or I suppose pre-playing life would be more important because hopefully it's the bulk of their career, right?

And if it's just someone who's good at baseball, then you're going to be getting a lot of alerts about he had a good game. And then for the rest of his life, it'll just be stuff about his baseball career, right? It'll just be his number was retired and he's at an autograph signing ceremony and he made the Hall of Fame and he talked to a group of kids or whatever it would be, but it wouldn't be super interesting probably. I mean, maybe not, but I think that a lot more ballplayers fall into the, I'm going to cite two alive people because I don't want, I've already talked enough about ghosts, but like I would imagine,

and perhaps they do not rise to this level of prominence from a coaching perspective. But I think that you would end up with a lot more former players who are like Dave Roberts types than John Jaso types, right? Where like their path post-playing leads them to a coaching role, a managerial role. Maybe they end up in player dev in some capacity. Maybe they open a facility where they're like trying to help guys fix their swings. Like I, a lot of these guys stay kind of adjacent to the game at the very least, even, or, you know, in the case of many of them, like we'll end up being sort of central figures in the game, in leadership at the league or managerial capacity. A lot more of them than, like, I'm going to go be on a boat. Well, yeah, I was actually going to say JSO because it's unusual.

Right. You wouldn't get many alerts for John JSO. So maybe that's perfect because I get too many notifications as it is. The ones that you did get would be like, where in the world is John Jaso? Like, John Jaso's on a tropical island. He's sailing around in some beautiful locale. He's taking in just the scenery. Right. He's eating swordfish. Yeah. It'd be calming. It would be therapeutic to hear about where John Jaso was unless you questioned your own life choices and would think every time, why am I not on the boat like John Jaso?

Right. Maybe you would be. Maybe it would inspire you to make a change in your life. So I think he'd be on my list. Yeah. So I guess. But he's still alive, so. Right.

Yeah. We can't count him. But in the future, he won't be. Yes. Maybe, or maybe he's found the secret to immortal life. I just mean that he is a mortal, you know, he's a mortal man. If anyone has found the fountain of youth, it's probably John J. Sobh. Yeah.

But you'd want a character, right? So, you'd either want someone with a really interesting post-baseball life and career where it's like the first line of their obituary is not about them being a baseball player. It's, oh, and also they were a baseball, you know, some, like a politician, Jim Bunning, you know, not that I would want an alert about Jim Bunning specifically necessarily, but someone who goes on to be a prominent politician after being a good baseball player or an actor, you know, one of the major leaguers who had a long career in Hollywood, like Chuck Connors or Mike Donlan or someone like that, or Bob Uecker, right, who fortunately is still with us. But Bob Uecker, he's a character.

He'll say funny stuff. He'll make you laugh. And he was in movies. He was like a celebrity. He was a pitchman. That'd be kind of fun. But I think that there's a lot of safety in not knowing what they're doing, right? Yeah. Like, imagine if you had at one point been a Curt Schilling fan, right? a lot of safety in not knowing what they're doing. Right. Yeah. Like imagine,

imagine if you had at one point been a Curt Schilling fan, right. It would be better. I mean, I guess it's sort of cowardly to say that, right. We should confront these things, you know,

in a steely eyed, open eyed sort of way, like adults do when people turn out to be disappointing. But like, there is something to be said for like i enjoyed this guy a lot while he played he brought me entertainment and and and high highs and i have no idea who he has turned into or you know he has not had an opportunity to reveal who he always was because sometimes that disappoints us you know so i wonder if i would want to know i think that when you don't have a microphone put in front of you every day the stuff that sucks we just don't have to find out about. And again,

is that a little cowardly of me? Like, yeah, I'll own that piece, Ben, you know? I'll own it. But if you get to pick anybody, then you could steer clear. Right. You could pick someone who doesn't suck. Yeah. At least to our knowledge. Yeah. Right. But this is the thing we don't know because we don't know them. Because we didn't have a Google alert set up. Yeah. So this is the thing we don't know because we don't know them because we didn't have a Google alert set up. Yeah. But I think just taking some kind of character like like a Rube Waddell or Satchel Paige or Babe Ruth. Right. Like Babe Ruth. Now you'd be inundated with Google alerts. Yeah. Google alerts because he was one of the most famous men in America, right? But, but. There would be that weird week where you kept getting them like, did he murder his wife? Right.

Did he eat too many hot dogs? Yeah, there'd be, no, but not as far as we know. But again, we didn't have the Google Alerts set up. But if, if you had a celebrity, like a larger-life figure, kind of a folk hero type who were just like constantly showing up places and doing things off the field that were really interesting or doing things on the field, in Satchel Paige's case, that were really interesting and might not have been well covered in the mainstream press at the time. So it would have been handy to have a Google alert. But Rube Waddell, just like, what did Rube do today? Having that. But Rube Waddell, just like what did Rube do today? Having that kind of Rube Waddell digest would be fun. Or someone who had some sort of scandal, but not like a scandal where you don't want to hear about it, but a scandal where you kind of do want to hear about it.

Like it's kind of juicy in some way. Like I was thinking of players who went on to be politicians. Yeah. Raul Mondesi went on to be a politician and became the mayor of his hometown, San Cristobal, in the Dominican Republic. And then after being the mayor and serving a six-year term, he was then sentenced to eight years in prison on corruption charges because of his tenure as mayor. So that's kind of interesting. I don't know all the details. There are players who committed serious crimes and it's like sad, right? Or they had something terrible happen to them. Maybe someone like, I was reading this

article recently about this pitcher, Byron McLaughlin, who's pretty obscure. He pitched just here and there. He was sort of a swingman for the Mariners in the late 70s and 1980 and pitched briefly for the California Angels as well. 0.4 career war, not a distinguished player, but he is like a fugitive from justice. He's like an international criminal now. Just read from his Wikipedia page, which has a tiny portion of the detail that the Sports

Illustrated feature that I read and will link to had. But after his career, McLaughlin allegedly worked in the counterfeit. Counterfeit is actually a good screw up because that is kind of what he was doing here. Was he selling knockoff shoes? Yes. The counterfeit consumer goods industry in Mexico making knockoff athletic footwear. Really? Which included shoes designed to look like Converse, Vans, and Adidas.

In 1990, he was arrested for trafficking the counterfeit shoes. I'm going to keep saying counterfeit. Counterfeit shoes. Yeah, definitely. And money laundering. He pleaded guilty to the money laundering charges and proceeded to post bail. Before being sentenced, McLaughlin fled and his current whereabouts are unknown. What? Oh, see, this is perfect yeah first first of all first of all shane sorry for the weird volume spike that i just uh committed there but second second this is like the perfect kind of scandal because look i don't want to i don't want to um downplay like the great pain that like fake converse might bring to converse but also like no one's really being hurt here right

like it's fake shoes yeah it's not a violent crime yeah yeah and he's a man of mystery he's on the lam and no one knows where he is and this story like he almost turned himself in at one point and then he disappeared again so it's if you were getting Google alerts about him, that would be bad news for him because then he might be apprehended, right? I think he was in France possibly. He'd have to be extradited. Oh my gosh. I need a long form podcast about this. Someone do a big podcast on this, please. Yeah. Well, maybe we could, maybe we can get him on the show, but he's, he's now 67 years old and he's still at large. He's out there. If we got him on the show, would we have to like talk to authorities? I think we'd have to. We might end up having a weird conversation with like law enforcement.

Yeah. Voice masking from an undisclosed location. Yeah. But all right. Well, that's my pick, I guess. Byron McLaughlin. Although, again, you wouldn't be getting that many Google alerts because no one knows where he is or what he's doing. But if you did,

then it'd be a really exciting Google alert and you wouldn't be bombarded by Google alerts about his baseball career because that comparatively was not nearly as interesting. So someone like that,

I think, would work. Wow. Wow. Ben someone like that, I think, would work. Wow. Wow. Ben, you know, are you busy? You should write another book. Just write it on that guy. Byron McLaughlin. Yeah.

Maybe. Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea. You have that one for free. All right. Question from David. Johan Oviedo's recent achievement of pitching an immaculate inning got me thinking about the new rules in immaculate innings.

And then he gives us four scenarios and he wants to know whether they would qualify as immaculate innings. So the first one is a combination of eight pitched strikes and one batter clock violation. Now, we actually answered this before the fact. Episode 1907, we discussed whether an eight-pitch immaculate inning with a pitch clock violation should count as an immaculate inning. And I was thinking just now, no, that I wouldn't count it. I went back to the Effectively Wild Wiki, the invaluable resource. Thank you, as always, to Raymond Chen, who is the primary keeper of the wiki these days, although he would certainly welcome assistance from anyone who's interested. But the summary of that episode says, Ben thinks it's still an immaculate inning,

but it should get a special name. He can't come up with a good name for it, though. Clock-assisted immaculate inning devalues the feat too much. So apparently, I previously said that it should still count. Meg doesn't think it will happen frequently enough, if at all, to need a special name.

Well, that is certainly true. It's a good way to get around this question. It probably won't happen. I'm an artful dodger. Yeah. I think I'm changing my answer, if that actually was my answer, because it is still immaculate is the thing but immaculate inning conveys something that is different from that right well i guess i'm back into saying that we just need a different term for it but then it's no longer an immaculate inning this is a specific

thing right it's nine pitches and they're all strikes and that's that. So if one of them is not a pitch but it's just a violation, that is less impressive certainly, right? Like if you get spotted a strike by the batter taking too long, then that's not as impressive as an immaculate inning the way that we think of them. And so I don't think it should be lumped together with those. Do you think that that should be an immaculate inning? It is still immaculate. Yeah, but it's – Nothing bad happened. those do you think that that should be an immaculate ending it is still immaculate no one yeah but it's nothing bad happened but i think it needs to be your own business you need to you know because it's an achievement and i get it like i don't think you can be gifted yeah

and and i know that i have historically been someone who has advocated for us having like a greater appreciation of the work that goes into a walk, for instance, right? It's not just charity. Like there's skill involved, right? And work in a walk, work in a walk, you're working it, you know? But this feels like, no, it has to be, it needs to be just you. It's just got to be you up there, you know? Yeah. You can't get a gift if a batter swings at a terrible pitch. Right. And it's not really because your pitch was so enticing and deceptive. It's just he had a really bad swing, didn't see the pitch. Or if an umpire gives you a gift call, those things can happen. But you're still contributing more to it, I think, than if the batter just takes too long to be alert to you. But then the next scenario that David proposes is a combination of nine pitch strikes

and one pitcher clock violation. So it's nine pitch strikes like an immaculate inning, but there was a ball assessed at some point because the pitcher had a clock violation. Yeah, I don't think so, right?

I mean, it's still you threw nine pitches and they were all strikes and that's that. So it meets the criteria. But there was a ball. It wasn't a ball that you threw, but there was still a ball. It's still imperfect.

It doesn't seem immaculate to me. I agree. I agree. OK. Are those positions consistent? I hope so. I hope so. Anyway, I'm already being inconsistent if I've changed my answer. I think they're consistent because the unifying philosophy is that you, the pitcher, have to do all the stuff and all of the stuff has to be good. I think that that's consistent, right?

I think so. All right. So the third scenario, it's extra innings. The manager orders the first batter intentionally walked and then you throw nine straight strikes. So there's the zombie runner.

Can you have an immaculate inning if there's a zombie runner at all, I guess is a question. But I guess you can. I guess you shouldn't be held responsible for Rob Manfred's sins. But if it's extra innings and the manager says you have to walk the first guy. Yeah.

So it's not your fault. It's not your choice. And of course, you're not throwing actual pitches. It's just automatic. And then you throw nine strikes. Yeah, right. And bing, bing, boom. Nobody scores.

Yeah. I think that does count. Oh, man. I kind of think that counts, too. I think that does count. Oh, man. I kind of think that counts, too. I think that counts. Yeah, because it's not your fault. The pitcher clock violation is your fault. In this case, it's the manager's fault that you were forced to walk someone.

Right. All right. And then the last scenario, again, extra innings. The zombie runner scores through a combination of a stolen base, a catcher error, a passed ball, a wild pitch, and a balk. Now, wait. If there's a wild pitch, that's your fault, right? If there's a balk, that's your fault. That's your fault. If a zombie runner scores, though, through no fault of your own, right, if there's a stolen base, I guess even a stolen base is sort of your fault, right, because you can prevent the stolen base.

But if there are only errors, I mean, yeah, if there's a catcher's, what if there are, like, catcher's interference or something? Is there a scenario where that runner can score through no faults of your own? And meanwhile, all you do is throw nine straight strikes, but stuff happens and that runner scores anyway. So in this case, maybe there's not even a ball thrown, but the runner comes around. Look, the zombie runner ruins everything. So the zombie runner ruins the immaculate inning or at least leads to a lot of qualifiers and it just doesn't feel quite as immaculate as it would have. The inning itself doesn't feel quite as immaculate because it's been spoiled by this runner appearing out of nowhere. So, I don't know. Maybe I would say almost anything with Zombie Runner except, I guess, that intentional walk scenario perhaps. I don't know if it counts. Yeah, I think this is another argument to get rid of the zombie runner, Ben. Just what we needed. Another argument.

Another argument. We were running out of reasons and evidence and arguments. Finally, we have a new angle on this, the effect on immaculate innings. Yeah. All right. Speaking of that, Matthew, Patreon supporter, says, This was initially cooked up as a zombie runner alternative, but I think the hypothetical would work for any point in the game. Although, please feel free to get into any distinctions worth drawing here. What if any runners left on base at the end of a half inning for one team are left on base for the other team. Now, sometimes I think we've heard the scenario of your runners carry over, the runners that you've left on base carry

over to your next offensive inning, but this is different. This is the runners you leave on base at the end of the half inning are then left on base for your opponent in the top half or the bottom half. Okay matthew says obviously scoring would go way up but how would teams approach this i could see this essentially snuffing out two out rallies since it may be better to just concede the third out rather than risk leaving runners on for the opposing team right like if you're the padres and you haven't been able to buy a hit with runners in scoring position if you get runners in scoring position i guess you're already in trouble because they're just going to be left over for your opponent so would stolen bases become more valuable bunts

tagging up the risk of losing a base runner all of a sudden goes down if it becomes more imperative to get the existing runners home rather than layer on more base runners that could confer an advantage on the other team? Or like every other change to baseball recently, is the answer just that everybody will now only swing for the fences? On the other side, would pitchers be more willing to walk batters? Would managers risk intentionally walking batters to try to start with runners for their own half of the inning? Would the defense lose incentive to turn double plays? Did I just make baseball way more boring?

I think you may have, Matthew. Get all sorts of strange incentives here to do worse if you're pitching because if you put runners on, gosh, and then they get stranded and then you get to start the next inning with them, then that would be beneficial. Man, this almost breaks my brain when I think about this one. This is not the way that baseball is supposed to work. This goes against the nature. And how do you pick which of the guys on the other team are on the bases yeah that's a

good question do the they change uniforms and suddenly their turncoats right because like you need those guys as fielders presumably at least a couple like if there are multiple then only one of them could potentially be the dh so like you need those guys in the next inning because you can't double disadvantage your opponent by giving them the base runners and also taking those fielders away. That is a good point. Yeah. But then does the other team get to pick? Because then they're going to put their vroom vroom guys out there. Yeah. And what if the vroom vroom guy is supposed to hit? Is he then disqualified from being on base because he has to hit still? Much to consider. Right.

I was going to say it could be your positional counterpart or your counterpart in the batting order, but that wouldn't work because batting orders aren't synced up. And so it's not like you'd have the same people up in the same innings, so you'd have to bat out of order unless you had maybe designated runners for this, right? Just runners in reserve who get to be your replacement runners, like your guys who stand in for the other team's stranded runners. And then maybe they'd have to be acceptable to both sides. to both sides. It would be like a voir dire sort of situation where each side

has to approve the other team's replacement runners or just everyone gets to designate replacement runners and then everyone gets a Terrence Gore

or the closest equivalent to Terrence Gore that they can find. Oh, Ben, you're reminding me that I have to call to see if I have jury duty. Uh-oh.

Yeah. I might have jury duty. Could be a problem. Let me know if I need a new co-host while you do your constitutional obligation. They never- Can I tell you something? When one of your moms is a lawyer actively still, and the other one of your moms was a public defender for seven years, guess who never gets impaneled? This girl.

Yeah. I was once. My mom is a lawyer, but no longer practicing. So maybe that doesn't get me out of jury duty. I think the public defender thing, prosecutors are like, thank you for your service. Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of a nice window into the justice system. I felt like I was doing my duty as a citizen. I also felt weird about passing judgment on a fellow person, but also was kind of interested in the proceedings. It was not a negative experience for me as much as many people try to get out of it. Of course, I was not on a case that lasted for a really long time. So that's probably part of it.

Anyway, maybe we've considered all of the problems with this or at least enough of them to say that this is probably a bad idea. But there would be a lot of strange strategy. Obviously, you would be doing some things that now would be considered self-defeating. But in this case, they would actually be beneficial in theory. So you'd have to decide where to draw the line. And would players be willing to go along with that and sacrifice their own performance to help the team in the next half inning? This would be weird. a hypothetical baseball scenario. Well, you've come to the right place. Let's say Barry Bonds was only allowed to use a 30-inch bat his whole career as opposed to his typical 34-inch bat. How does this impact his career?

Some of my friends thought he would still be great. I think he would not be a serviceable major league player. The shortest bat in recorded history was Tony Gwynn at 32 inches. I've seen some say 31. I don't know if that was actually the shortest ever, but when you Google it, it does suggest Tony Gwynn at 31 or 32 inches. So if you take a couple inches away from the shortest bat and give that to Barry Bonds.

Now, of course, there's that famous John Boyce video, which is about Barry Bonds, if he never brought a bat to the plate or if he never swung. Of course, he'd have to have a bat at least to pose a threat that he might swing. But just because he walked to such an incredible degree at his peaks that he still would have been pretty productive, even if he never swung, assuming that pitchers continued to throw him pitches outside the strike zone at the same rate. So going by that, if you were to subtract a couple inches from his bat and pitchers didn't say, okay, now we don't have to worry about Barry Bonds anymore, so we can just lay it in there because he can't reach it. I feel like Barry Bonds at the peak of his preternatural powers probably would have still been pretty good with the shortest bat ever. Like, maybe not like one of those replica mini bats that you get as a giveaway. That might be too short even for Barry Bonds. But just taking a few inches away, like they probably should have taken a few inches away just to make up for his other advantages and the way that he was dominating the sport. It would have been only fair to lop a couple inches off the end of his bat.

I think he would be okay. Like, wouldn't you just, you'd move closer to the plate, right? And he could handle the inside pitches. He'd get jammed, but he'd move so that he could cover the strike zone. Like, as long as the bat's big enough to reach pitches in the strike zone, which I think it still would be, and he wasn't really swinging at pitches outside the strike zone anyway,

and he was hitting everything he swung at, so I think he would have been okay. I mean, I guess there'd be less momentum behind the bat, and maybe he might generate more bat speed, though, because it would be light. And so maybe that would compensate for the fact that there wasn't as much oomph behind it. I don't know. I think you could have some more significant impairments for peak Barry Bonds and he'd still be playable for sure. I'm trying to imagine what the podcast would have been like if we had been doing

it yeah i thought about that too yeah like i i don't want to imply that effectively wild has not over the years talked a lot about barry bonds because spoiler we we have but not as much as we probably would have you know and then it's well, first if it was like while he was active and then, you know, and then we're still doing the podcast, what episode would we be on? We'd be so, wow. But would we have embraced Trout with the same enthusiasm or would we have been like we've, you know,

we've had our main character for a long time. But then, you know, you spend half of every episode talking about how horny you are for Ohtani. So, like, you know, you spend half of every episode talking about how horny you were for Ohtani. So, like, you know, maybe it would be exactly the same, Ben. Maybe it would be exactly the same. But Ohtani's doing things that even Bonds didn't do. Whereas Trout, I guess he had a greater start to his career even than Barry Bonds did, even

though pre-PD's Bonds was incredible, too. But, yeah, maybe we would have been a little less impressed because if we'd been talking about him in the moment before it was glaringly obvious that he was cheating and also at a time when people weren't as aware of his off the field transgressions and domestic abuse allegations and all of that, things that have made me less likely to glorify Barry Bonds, the baseball player. Right. Right. Yeah, peak Bonds. I think probably this would have been just a daily Barry Bonds podcast, basically, because he just he broke baseball to a degree that it really has not been broken before. So I think it's just every episode would have been a Barry Bonds stat blast, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of which, let us do a little stat blasting. Yay! Let us do a little step blasting. Yay. Yay. All right. So the StatBlast is brought to you today by Topps Now, which, as we have extolled the virtues of before and we have filled you in about is the very rapid turnaround tops baseball card product. Something exciting happens in a baseball game. And next thing you

know, there's a baseball card about it. The very next day, you can sign up for the mailing list. They will email you. We are on the mailing list. So every day we are informed what the new tops now cards are. And it's a nice little summary of the exciting stuff that happened in the previous day. It's like looking at a little highlights package. What was Tops Now worthy the previous night? Oh, all right. And you can go get yourself a card if that is something of importance to you. So Tops Now, the tagline, is your hero, your team, your moment.

They have rejected my suggestion of it's not tops later, it's tops now. That's my tagline just to remind everyone when they should go get the cards now or else they will no longer be available. I don't want to alarm anyone, but it's very much like the infomercials act now, right? Because supplies are limited and the infomercials are usually lying to you. They just want you to call up, but Tops Now, that is actually the case. There's a limited supply or at least a limited time window in which you can acquire the cards. So go do it. And if you're looking at your podcast app or the show page for this podcast, you will see a link to Tops Now that will take you to the latest cards, and you can browse the archive and see what you missed as well. So I think our stat blast today, at least one of them, might lend itself to Tops Nowification.

So this was an inquiry actually in the stat blast channel of the Patreon discord group some time ago, a listener named Zach noted that Gio Urshela started at first base for the Angels, but moved to shortstop in the fifth inning. First base to shortstop feels like it would be a relatively rare in-game move. Shortstop to first base might be more common for situations where teams want to bolster defense late. What is the rarest permutation for in-game defensive moves? As in, how often does someone move from, say, center field to catcher within a game, etc.? Probably best to ignore pitchers entirely, as we did. So, Ryan Nelson, Frequent Stat Blast Consultant, find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. He has looked this up. He used play-by-play data from RetroSheet. So this dates back to 1916,

but it becomes more complete over time. And it's mostly complete by World War II. It's entirely complete by the mid-70s. So there are 56 possible permutations of in-game position changes because we're excluding pitchers. So it's eight positions you can start in and seven you can move to. So eight times seven, that is 56 possible permutations. He included games where there were more than two positions played by a player, but I think only included the first two for those games. It doesn't make that big a difference. This is a large sample as it is. So I hate to put you on the spot or quiz you because I hate to be put on the spot or quizzed. And I don't want the tables to turn. Maybe we could do this like family feud style, because the thing is, you can't be wrong because every possible

permutation is represented here. So everyone has happened. Every two position switch from one position to the next has happened at some point in a game. But if I were to say to you, what do you think might be among the more common, let's say, position switches within a game? So someone starts at one position, they go to another. Starts at one, they go to another. Yeah. What would you expect to be somewhere close to the top of the leaderboard? I might expect um

see now i just feel bad whatever whatever my mind instantly goes blank whenever someone quizzes me in a podcast setting okay let me try. Wait, no, stop. Let me try. You've seen some baseball games. You've seen some players switch positions. Sometimes, Ben, they'll

go from center field to an outfield corner. Yes, they will. Is that a good one? That's a good one. In fact, the most common position switch. Really? Is from center field to left field. Yes!

I'm so happy. Ding, ding, ding. Oh, God. So, in this sample, 8,152 instances of a player going from center to left. And then number two is right to left. Right to left. Right. Because you bring in a superior defender late in the game.

You bring in your good alignment. Right. And then third is center to right. Oh, I feel so vindicated, Ben. Wow. Wow. Yeah, I don't know that you went way out on a limb here any more than I did with my Padres Rangers, but

the pressure was on. Yeah, I was on the freaking spot, man. Yes. Yes, you were. And you pulled it out. So, the ends of my fingers feel weird. This is why I don't do this more often. I know, because you're nice. Yeah. And if you do this to me, then which would be payback, turnabout is fair play,

but it makes both of us miserable. I think it's probably a good listening experience because people get to guess along with us. Yeah. I mean, they could just pause the podcast and think about it. But then sometimes, Ben, at the end of it, they think I'm stupid. Well, yeah. It might also be so agonizing to listen to one of us struggle. You know what I think of when we do these? I'm not going to brag.

I don't mean it in a bragging way, but like, I know that I know there are people, I know there are people who work for teams who listen to our podcast and then sometimes they'll say something, I know it's stupid. And then they're going to be like, she's the dumbest girl in school. It makes me so stressed. Special allowances for anything said on a podcast. We're half aware of anything we are saying at any time. And I immediately forget at least 70% of it. I forget it instantaneously and then feel

anxiety that it was dumb for days. Well, this was not. You nailed it. So, center to left, right to left, center to right, and left to right. Those are the top four. Okay. And then sixth is right to center. Right. Seventh is left to center. Ninth is, well, I will skip that one for the moment. That's not an outfield to outfield one. Oh, okay. But even the corner to center is is pretty common pretty common right sometimes your position to the harder right because like i would think maybe a guy gets hurt or maybe like um

maybe you have a defensive standout in center field and then you have to pinch hit for him late in the game and so then you move the less defensively good corner to center because, you know, of your options, that's the best one. Like you're like, well, right filter, go over there. Yeah. I know how baseball happens sometimes, Ben. Now that you've proved your baseball bona fides now, the pressure is off. Everything from here on out is just, it's gravy. I mean, you've already won.

So would you care to hazard a guess about the most common infield swap? So infield to infield swap? I would think that... No, I'm so nervous again. No, the pressure's off this time. No, it's back on. No.

It's nice when we get to laugh during a Friday show. It's a really nice way to go into the weekend when you're laughing. Because I was yelling at Mike Elias earlier, but now I'm just laughing at my own potential stupidity. If you take long enough to answer this, we might know what Mike Elias' press conference is about. Oh, that's right. No, I won't take that long. We've only got an hour to go. That would be way too long.

Poor Shane. We have to release him. So, what if it's... Is it the shortstop moving to second base? It is actually the second base moving to shortstop. Okay, yeah. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, okay. You're in the neighborhood there. Yeah, you know, you've got the double play partners. Juststop. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You're in the neighborhood there.

Yeah. You know, you've got the double play partners. It just says reverse them a little bit. Okay. Short to second is up there too. It's up there. Okay. So, all right.

I won't make you go through every position on this list. There are 56 of them. How often, how often, Ben, here's one I have a question about. Here's one I'm curious about. How often does the catcher play anything else? Yeah, okay. So I was going to ask you if you wanted to guess or if you were willing to guess because obviously you'd rather not. I'd rather not.

But the least common positions, which is you would think would figure, would factor in catchers fairly often, right? Because catchers are their own thing. Yeah. Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, how often does a catcher go and do something else? Like first base or something? Yeah. Okay.

So let me, so the 10 most common, again, to recap, center to left, right to left, center to right, left to right, second to short, right to center, left to center, second to third, left to first, left field, first base. So there's an outfield to infield, but left fielders and first basemen, often kind of the same cohort there. Third base to short, third to first. So just swapping corners. All right. So those are the top ones. And then the others that are, I guess, fairly common, like more than 2,000 instances, you have third to second, short to second, as you said. Sure. So those are the common swaps. So the least common swaps yes catcher is involved yeah in the one two three

four five six least common swaps is is all catcher involved and really like the catcher to other position is it's kind of its own separate group Like the next least common that does not involve a catcher is still more than twice as common as the catcher one that comes next. So I'll give you the least common that does not involve a catcher, which is right field to shortstop. There are 101 instances in this sample of right field to shortstop. But that's even rarer than I guess the most common catcher related swap is catcher to third. So catcher to third base has happened 202 times. I guess that makes sense. I mean, you know, you think of like Russell Martin,

they're third basemen who are catching at times. Sure. And then like left field to catcher, okay, that happens semi-often. Right field to catcher, almost as often. And then I'm becoming less frequent as we go here. Short stop to center field. That is quite rare,

although you would think that the skill sets are sometimes similar, right? I mean, you know, maybe. Why don't we get a catcher playing center field? Yeah, right. Well, we have, right? It has happened. Yeah, but not very often, I would imagine.

No, you got your BGOs and you got your VAR often, I would imagine. And right field to shortstop, as I said, is the least frequent one that does not involve a catcher. Then you get to the weird ones that are catchers. So catcher to second base, that has happened 58 times. Center field to catcher, 24 times. Second base to catcher, 20 times. Catcher to shortstop, 14 times. Catcher to shortstop, 14 times. Catcher to center field, 11 times.

And the least common position switch is shortstop to catcher, which is included 10 times in this data. Shortstop to catcher. So obviously I've got to look up what the instances of shortstop to catcher were right here. And maybe some of them are weird, extreme circumstances, but Russell Martin actually did that twice. It would appear in 2018, he went shortstop to catcher. He started a couple games at shortstop, which may have come up on the podcast previously. But that was 2018. He did it twice. Tony Walters did it two times for the Rockies in 2016.

Brad Ausmus did it in 2005. And then Michael Barrett in 99. Mike Heath in 1990. Jamie Quirk in 87, as well as Mike Heath again in 87, Dave Roberts, different Dave Roberts in 1980, Ron Slocum in 1970, Mike Sandlock twice in 1945, and Bobby Bragan once in 1944. So it happens, and it has happened in the not-too-distant past. So what did I say was the second least frequent? Oh, yeah, catcher to center field, right? So let's see who has gone catcher to center field.

We've got 11 instances of this, and yeah, Dalton Varshow are the three most recent. So he did it. Oh, sure. Oh, Dalton, you scamp. I'm not sure if Ryan has updated his sample to include 2022, but he did it three times in 2021. Eli Marrero did it twice in 2002. Scott Hemond did it in 1993. Hemond or Haymond? Craig Beggio did it in 2002. Scott Hemond did it in 1993, Hemond or Haymond. Craig Bejio did it in 1991. And then Ed Kirkpatrick in 1970, Raleigh Hemsley in 1932, and Wally Shang twice in 1920. And I

guess I'll give you one more, which is catcher to shortstop. So the third least frequent. That has happened 14 times. Yeah, I guess I gave you shortstop to catcher already. So catcher to shortstop is probably not super interesting. It's probably some of the same guys, right? So maybe I'll give you second base to catcher, okay? There were 20 instances of second base to catcher, and they are Brad Osmus, Scott Heyman, Craig Biggio, Jose Oquendo, Ted Sizemore, Lenny Randall, Dick Green, Cookie Rojas, Ron Brand, Don Zimmer, Rojas again, Al Lopez, Bernie Freeberg and Ivy Wingo.

So you do see some of the same names, as you would expect, I guess, if anyone's going to do catcher and something else, there's probably going to be a good deal of overlap there. So I will put the full graphic online. I will link to this on the show page in case you want to quiz and stump your friends or possibly podcast co-hosts. This will be a fun party game. game. Just all 56 positional permutations up on the big board, and you can play and see how many you can knock off. But they are all on there somewhere, but you can try to get them in the right order. And I will also link to the spreadsheet so that you can look at the specific examples as well. All right. Quicker one. This is a stat blast question that came from two of our listeners so one was ian who said i was watching a giants game and thought of a question for the pod this season jd davis and michael conforto were expected to be and for the most part have been significant contributors to

the giants along with wilmer flores all three of them used to play for the mets which feels to me like a lot of former mets players 11 and a half% of the 26-man roster are former Mets. So I was wondering which team has the highest percentage of players from a single other MLB team. Another possibility to investigate which team has the highest percentage of players who played together for another team. So not just for that franchise at any time, but on the same team in year. Conforto, for instance, played with both Flores and Davis, but Davis and Flores did not play together. So I'm not

sure what the best way to count in this case is. And he notes, in my thinking, I'm not counting if a player was on a minor league affiliate for another MLB team, but that could be an interesting way to consider this. Also, I only looked at the current active 26-man roster, if you count Ross Stripling and Jack Peterson, who were both on the IL when this message was sent. The Giants have four players who at one point played for the Dodgers as well, Stripling, Peterson, Scott Alexander, and Alex Wood. We also coincidentally got another question along the same lines from Michael, Patreon supporter, who said, for a stat blast idea, have you done most team members for team X that all previously played for team Y? Thinking about the days when the A's were a de facto farm team for the Yankees.

So no, I don't think we had done this one, but we did it now. And by we, I mean Ryan Nelson, who looked this one up as well. So turns out that these Giants and their former Mets and Dodgers, nowhere near the most players from a franchise that have played together on another franchise. There have been some teams where a whole lot of them, like the majority of players on the roster, had played for some other franchise, which seems sort of strange, but it has happened. So here's what I will give you. Ryan wrote to me. Initially, he did it this way. So the question was about the most players who had previously played one franchise to be teammates on another

team. What he first looked up was that variant of the question, the most players who had played on one specific team to then be teammates on another team. So basically, how many former Mariners versus how many former 1999 Mariners, let's say. So it seems like the record for most shared players between two teams is 10. Somehow, the 1951 Cardinals and the 1951 Pirates actually shared 10 players on their rosters that year.

It looks like a couple trades and some cut players make up the 10. But Ryan says, I think the spirit of the question is in different seasons. Yeah, I think we're not talking about same season, although that's interesting too. So in that case, the record is nine, which has happened a few times. The 1919 Red Sox and 1923 Yankees shared nine players. Bullet Joe Bush, Waite Hoyt, Sad Sam Jones, Carl Mays, Mike McNally, Herb Pennock, Babe Ruth, famously, Wally Shang, Everett Scott. The 1951 Tigers and the 1953 Browns shared nine players. I won't read all of them, but I'll put them in a doc and link to it. The 1954 Yankees and 1955 Orioles shared nine players. The 1956 Yankees

and 1957 A's shared nine players. So that was what prompted Michael's question, that period when the A's were basically functioning as a farm team for the Yankees and given them lots of good players. So they are at the top here or close to it, 56 Yankees and 57 A's, Bob Serv, Rip Coleman, Billy Hunter, Billy Marlin, Mickey McDermott, Tom Morgan, Irv Norin, Lou Skizis, and Ralph Terry. Lou Skizis. I'm not definitely promising that I am pronouncing that correctly. But these are mostly older years, Ryan notes, when there were fewer teams. So that makes sense.

Everything was just more incestuous back then. You know, you had, I mean, maybe hopefully not literally, but like you had eight teams in a league. So you were going to have more overlap probably. Right. Like you had eight teams in a league, so you were going to have more overlap probably, right? So the highest number since 1960 for both teams is seven, which has happened 11 times since 1960. Most recently, the 2005 Marlins and the 2007 Mets had seven players in common. So Luis Castillo, Jeff Conine, Carlos Delgado, Damian Easley, Paul LaDuca, Guillermo Mota, and Jason Vargas.

Okay. So now Ryan also ran it the other way. So not restricting it to the same season, but just saying they played for that franchise formerly. You do it that way, the numbers are going to be bigger. So the 1955 White Sox had 14 former Orioles and the 1955 Orioles had 14 former Yankees. So that is the record. 14. That's most of your team, right? So I think there were big trades here between these teams. So that's a big part of it, right? That's driving that number. I won't even read all the names because it would take a while and I'm not sure how to pronounce some of them. But again, I will link to it. The record since 2007, though,

is 10 by the 2007 Mets who had 10 former Dodgers, 10 former Dodgers on the 2007 Mets. Sandy Almar, Marlon Anderson, Sean Green, Ricky Lede, Paul LaDuca, Pedro Martinez, Guillermo Mota, Chan Ho Park, Aaron Seeley, and Jose Valentin. All former Dodgers on the 2007 Mets. So that's sort of weird. Seven happened three times in 2021. Former Blue Jays on the 2021 Brewers, former Cubs on the 2021 Nationals,

and former Padres on the 2021 Guardians. So those are the answers. Do you think it would be weird or would it be nice to be with a bunch of your former teammates or at least players who had played for your former team in a different setting? I think it would mostly be nice. I mean, I'm sure that there would be guys who are like, I don't want to deal with this guy again. Right. I thought I got rid of you. You're here again. Are you following me? Yeah. I thought I was able to move on from this, but also it might really be nice to have familiar faces because there's a lot of up and down and here and there and everywhere. And so to be like, oh, hey, you know? Right. It would be nice. And sometimes there is a tendency for executives to reacquire their former players, right?

Yes. So they might go to another team and then they might go get all the guys they got the first time. Yeah, like everyone who's ever played for AJ Prowler. Right. Or I wonder if you would be like pre-Clubhouse chemistry-ed, assuming, of course, that these guys got along before. But there wouldn't have to be a getting to know you phase. Now, if they hated each other, then it might be even worse.

But presumably, you would find out that they hated each other before you put them on the same team again, one would hope. But, yeah, there wouldn't be – you wouldn't have to do icebreakers. You would already know each other and you could reminisce, right? I mean, you get together with former friends or colleagues. Half of what you do class went to college with me, including me, because I went to Regis High School. It's a Jesuit school. And then I went to Georgetown, which is also a Jesuit school. It's not really why I went to them, but it worked out that way. And that was kind of part of why I went to that college was like, oh, all these people I know will be there. That'll be nice. Right. It wasn't necessarily that they were all close

friends of mine, some more than others, and some became better friends in college than they'd been in high school or less. But it was kind of nice to know, hey, I'm going to be in this new environment, but I'll kind of have some people I know, whereas most of the other freshmen will be like totally fish out of water. And like, I'll have a little friend group if I want one, you know? And I was hesitant to like room with them because I was like, would it be bad if I just room with someone I'm already friends with? Would that prevent me from making new friends or would I be too insular or something, which is a weird thing for me to think about because I'm

pretty insular as it is. But that thought at least crossed my mind. I was trying to be social and branch out and meet new people at that time in my life. But it was kind of nice to know, hey, some familiar faces, right? So it might be nice on a baseball team too. Yeah. I guess it wouldn't matter as much as in some other sports where teamwork really matters. plug and play more so than say you're talking about the NBA, then it's like you have to figure like the on-court chemistry of the players and do their skills suit each other? And do they know, oh, he's going to pass to me, like I need to be prepared for that, right? And all those tendencies that might gel well with each other. Whereas in baseball, you're kind of doing your own thing. I

mean, with the exception of pitchers and catchers, you're sort of discrete units, right? And there's a little bit of on-field coordination, but not nearly as much as in some sports. Sure, sure. Yeah, it's like, you know, it would have less of an impact than like getting a bunch of like basketball players together, right? Presumably. But yeah, it was just a funny way to put it, Ben. Yeah. All right. Ben here. Back a little later. And I meant to tell you earlier that my open mindedness when it came to college roommates didn't really work out all that well for me. My freshman roommate was fine, but we weren't friends. Never really hung out outside the room. Then I ended up living with someone from my high school for the next few years. Oh, well, I tried. Also, no, the Orioles did not sign Adley Rutschman to an extension. Sorry to disappoint you or keep you in suspense. Mike Goliath just offered some more run-of-the-mill Orioles updates and talked about the trade deadline.

Another deflating team executive will talk to the media announcement. Though it's better to talk than not to talk, unless you're John Angelos and you make everyone mad on the rare occasions that you do. I'll give you a pass blast, which comes to us from David Lewis, who is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. It also comes to us from 2012, and David writes, New tech helps umps beat the heat. In 2012, technology reportedly developed for the military was adapted for use by Major League umpires. Cooling technology, worn in vests, caps, and slipped inside shirt pockets,

helped umpires remain comfortable and in the game as on-field temperatures climbed toward triple digits. Cooling technology, worn in vests, caps, and slipped-inside shirt pockets, helped umpires remain comfortable and in the game as on-field temperatures climbed toward triple digits. A June 2012 Associated Press article detailed the products, which were met with overwhelming praise by MLB umpires. According to the article, the technology used was first developed for the military during the Gulf War. Umpires had used cooling products in the past, including a liquid-filled vest and traditional ice packs, but did not find them effective enough. One ump, Bill Welke, praised the product, saying, it can really be the difference maker in finishing the game when the conditions are that difficult. Another, Tim Cheetah, said, this stuff really works. It's like dropping the temperature outside by 20 degrees. This new technology would prove to have quite an impact on working conditions for umps. To a fan or player, it might not seem like much, the article said. To umpires, it's a godsend.

In addition to keeping them cool and hopefully preventing them from overheating, I wonder if it improved their calls. One would think it would certainly improve their moods, maybe make them a little less hot-tempered because they were a little less hot. And there have been studies that show that umpires' pitch calling accuracy decreases when it gets very hot. So this cooling tech can't have hurt. A couple of little follow-ups. We got a thoughtful bit of feedback from a listener about our discussion about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence the other day and the Dodgers Pride Night Invitation, Disinvitation, and Reinvitation. We talked about how the loudest voices calling for the disinvitation were from groups that had a track record of open homophobia and opposition to Pride Nights and LGBTQ plus people in general. But this was a

thoughtful email from listener Greg, who's been a professor of theology and religious studies for years and is about to be the executive director of a center of theology at another university. He wanted to draw a distinction between the people who were actually calling for that dissemination and his slight discomfort at some of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence's methods. He said, I wanted to offer a slightly different perspective. Many of us Catholics who support the kind of work that the Sisters do find ourselves conflicted because of the imagery that the Sisters use. A gay Catholic journalist and friend who has written on the horrendous ways that the Catholic Church has treated and continues to treat LGBTQ plus persons wrote yesterday, What causes me some unease about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, however, especially at this particular moment, is that their costumes mock women, religious sisters who wield relatively little power, especially in the church.

These women are often responsible for creating some of the most LGBT affirming spaces in an institution that can regularly feel unwelcoming to the community. For the religious sisters I know, it would take more than a man in a silly costume telling body jokes to offend them. Still, I cannot quite shake the feeling that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are, at least in some ways, punching down. You link to a piece in America Magazine, which I had read and will link on the show page, which quotes some local Catholic nuns as saying they have no problem with the sisters whatsoever and they do support their work and their invitation to Pride Night. The sisters, for their part, have claimed that they aren't actually anti-Catholic, that they're emulating nuns, they're using irreverent humor to call attention to their charity work, and so on. Greg continues, none of this is to say that the Dodgers shouldn't

have invited the sisters or anything like that. I applaud the sisters for their work. I just wanted to point out that the discomfort of many of us Catholics is not about Pride Night at all in this case, but about the mockery of a group of women who have a history of caring for the marginalized, particularly for those in the LGBTQ plus community. I think that's a reasonable stance. But our broader point when we discuss that is that while there may be many Catholics who are welcoming of LGBTQ plus people and might also feel some slight discomfort about the sisters' use of religious imagery. The people who vocally objected to their inclusion do not share that position. And I don't think this would have become quite the controversy it did without

those people organizing call-in campaigns and trying to drum up opposition from a distance. And Greg said, yes, the loudest voices against the sisters were those who object in general to inclusion at all. And that's a major problem. I don't want to gloss over that reality. I just wanted to point out that even some of us Catholics who are welcoming feel some perhaps understandable discomfort with the sisters, though I do understand

that the imagery they use is intended to point out the ways in which religion has been complicit in the marginalization and hatred of LGBTQ plus persons, and any discomfort I feel with the sisters pales in comparison to the ways in which the LGBTQ plus community has been treated by many in the church. He said his discomfort was sufficient enough to want to express it, but he's self-aware enough to know that such discomfort needs to be held in tension with the ways in which the LGBTQ plus community has experienced profound exclusion by those who share my faith. So thanks, Greg, wanted to share that perspective. Craig Calcaterra just wrote something about this in his newsletter the other day about a similar protest that arose

over merchandise that was being sold at Target for Pride Month. It caused the same sort of homophobic culture warrior outcry, which Target acquiesced to. Craig wrote, whether it's Bud Light or the Los Angeles Dodgers or Target or book publishers or school boards or anyone else, people need to wrap their minds around the fact that the outrage they're encountering for simply acknowledging the existence of gay and trans people is not some organic groundswell of genuine public opinion. It is a calculated and systematic campaign of hate and eliminationist sentiment from a small politicized minority that has as its end the exact reaction that Target has now given them. And the Dodgers came close to giving them that

reaction too. I am not religious or observant myself, but I was raised Catholic, First Communion, Confirmation, Catholic schools from start to finish, the whole deal. And I'd say that these sisters of perpetual indulgence, even with the Catholic cosplay, act in ways that seem much more Christian than their most vocal critics in this instance. On a much lighter note, yes, we saw that Pete Alonzo said that he was hitting and he had to poop, so he swung at the first pitch, he hit a home run, and he ran back to the dugout. Don't worry, no need to alert us. If we did have a Google alert about players, it would probably be poop related. We got an email from listener and Patreon supporter Andrew

about a name screw up on the A's radio broadcast on Thursday. This one was interesting because the announcer thought he had mixed up names, but actually hadn't and corrected himself unnecessarily. Here's the clip. J.P. Crawford leads on for the Mariners bottom in the first. The A's lead 2-0 in Crawford, France and Rodriguez against J.P. Sears. A lot of J.P.'s around the American League now. They are, yeah. Just thinking about that, right?

Well, did I say J.P. France? You did, but the Astros have a pitcher named J.P. France. They do. But Ty France is on deck, and J.P. Sears is on the mound. So he didn't actually call J.P. Sears J.P. France. He just thought he did. That's a variation on our normal name mix-ups. The confusion for me is that J.P. France uses periods after the J&P.

J.P. Sears does not. No periods. Which can be confusing for a writer and editor who has to keep players' period preferences straight now when they use their initials. to keep players' period preferences straight now when they use their initials. I feel like CeCe Sabathia was a trailblazer in this arena because in 2008, he decided that he wanted to be referred to as CeCe without the periods. When the Brewers acquired him, one of their PR people told media members that he wanted it to be CeCe, no periods. But then Sabathia himself said, I guess I'd go no periods. So he didn't sound so adamant about it. And in fact, later that year, he said, you guys write it however you want.

That got blown way out of proportion. It's not a big deal. I always try to follow players' preferences when it comes to pronunciation or diacritical marks, but periods between initials, that's tough to commit to memory. Hopefully most players don't take it much more seriously than CeCe. You can take supporting this podcast seriously by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay almost ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Mono AF, three games to love, Gus,

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