Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2013: The League Looks More Level

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Pete Alonso‘s, um, emergency swing, the activations (6:25) of four players (Liam Hendriks, Michael Soroka, Paul Blackburn, and Royce Lewis), the small leads in most divisions (12:03) and the leveling out of the league (A’s aside), José Abreu‘s first homer “trot” of the season, and an umpire comment […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2013 of Effectively Wild, a fanCrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of FanCrafts and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing great. How are you? Well, my mentions are once again full of pooping. Because of Pete Alonso? of pete alonzo and i i had said like it's so nice to have these tender kisses be the source of so many mentions as opposed to my usual beat where people are pooping and then pete alonzo had to tell a story and then everyone was like hey here's a pooping guy for you yeah you know and i love when people are like in case you haven't seen it and i'm like i don't know if you understand how well

known for this particular beat i have become but but the odds are good I have seen it. You only wrote one thing about this, right? I mean, you wrote the Archie Bradley thing, and then we've talked about it. I wrote about what can potentially be a precursor to pooping, which was the farting and the forceful. Inspired by the. Breaking Lind. Yes, the Adam Lind example that Jeff and I talked about on the podcast. Yeah, thank you for that.

Just with the rosin, the poof. Yeah, poof. It seemed to probably be a rosin poof. It was a rosin poof. I don't think he farted forcefully enough to expel rosin from his pants. But I think the combination of those two articles has made this maybe. But yeah, the Archie Bradley one was definitely the most salient example, you know. Yeah, I did have to do a little sleuthing. or the moment like we did with Kike Hernandez on the podcast when he came out and said that he did it but didn't specify exactly when it happened. So there's no homework to do this time. It's just a funny story that reminds us that everybody poops, as the book says, and that includes major leaguers and that includes major leaguers during baseball games sometimes. So he had to go and he

mistimed it and he realized that he really had to go and he was due up. And so he decided to swing at the first pitch because he had to. It was an emergency. And he hit a home run because he hits a lot of home runs. And he made haste back to the dugout and took care of business. I'm fascinated by the fact that, like, really this is a story about an absence of pooping, you know, until the very end. Yeah. But it's not like Archie Bradley, where there was, like, a little bit of dew, maybe, in his pants.

Right, yeah. That's not what happened here, as far as we know. So, anyway, yeah, I saw it, friends. Yes, don't worry. I heard. It has been brought to Meg's attention. Yeah, it's been, it got escalated friends. Yes, don't worry. I heard. It has been brought to Meg's attention. Yeah, it's been, it got escalated up to me, don't you worry. That made its way up the chain.

The last time we talked about a player revealing that he had maybe actually proved himself a little bit, we got a very forceful email from a listener who said he hated every moment of us talking about it. It was the worst thing he had ever heard on the podcast. And so to that listener, I want to say, I am sorry. But hopefully, you felt like you had enough of a warning up top to distance yourself from this segment. We'll be sure there's a time. There was no mishap here. Nothing actually went awry. It was a close call, but it's a cautionary tale, not just for baseball players and for people in general, but also for writers because things can become your beat

with just one or two times tackling that topic. So you have to be careful. You just become the person who covers that thing. It's good to specialize. Like you do sometimes hear that advice. I've become more of a generalist in my career, but sometimes you will hear people say, yeah, you should specialize.

You should find a niche. You should be the expert in that thing. In one thing, yeah. And you have done that. You didn't intend to do it exactly in this area. Yeah, I didn't. It wasn't my intent. When the bird died on the field when will

brandon killed that bird yeah i messaged bauman about it and i was like how is it that you get like the bird deaths and i got stuck with poop and he was like which of us is really losing here like these are both terrible things so what i really need in my life is for jordan alvarez to hit a home run and go kiss somebody so that's that's the only way to wash clean the slate. That is my mentions. Anyway, here we are. It reminds me of in college, my friends and I, I'm sure probably everyone's friends, we would spot people on campus now and then who would do something, say something, do something that stuck out to us for some reason. And we didn't know them,

and we never really saw them again, and they weren't fully 3D people to us. They were just people that we encountered in the background of our lives. And whatever that one salient thing that they did that happened to stick out to us was, it would be known to us by that for the rest of- Right. Like, oh, he's a poop guy. Yeah, right. It's like, oh, there's that guy who did or said that thing that one time, right? Because it's just like a character, like a background character in your life. Now, you're a background character in their life. You know, they're the protagonist in their life. You might be a background character to them.

But to us, it's just like, oh, yeah, there's that guy who did that thing that one time. And I guess that has happened to you with the poop articles with baseball. But I hope and think that you're known for much more than that. Yeah. All right. So we've got a few things to talk about today, and then we will have a stat blast and a pass blast. So I guess we should relate some good news about pitchers returning to action because it seems like so often we're lamenting the loss of pitchers and pitchers hurting themselves that we should note when

pitchers come back, especially if it's a pitcher who's been gone for some serious reason. And we are recording on Monday afternoon and we are happy to report. I mean, we're not breaking this news. We're not reporting it. We're relaying the news that Liam Hendricks is back with the White Sox. He is cancer-free and he is back in baseball. And Jeff Passan had a nice piece about him and about the whole journey that he's gone through over the past year or more and just the past five months or so of actual treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which I had not realized until I read the piece was stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is more treatable and survivable for that particular kind of cancer than other kinds when you hear stage four. But still, that's a scary, serious thing. And he probably would have been back

sooner if it had been up to him, but he is healthy and he is raring to go and the White Sox will be thrilled to have him. They could certainly use him on the field as well, and in the clubhouse because everyone loves Liam Hendricks. So, you're going to get a boost from having Liam Hendricks around regardless of the circumstances. But also, hey, Liam Hendricks is back. So, there's your good news about baseball for today. Yeah, it's just like a lovely bit of a lift, you know, because it's more than good news about baseball, right? It's like good news about, you know, people. It's people news. So, yeah, it's such a relief. And I hope that things kind of go well for him as he comes back and that he remains healthy and cancer-free for many, many years to come. And another return on Monday, Michael Soroka is back, who obviously was missing from action for a lot longer than Hendrix, not for a life-threatening reason, but for a career-threatening reason or reasons.

And on Monday, this will have happened by the time people are listening to this, but Soroka is back and he's actually going to be facing Paul Blackburn, who's also back and is making his season debut for the Oakland A's. So, hey, it's okay now, A's fans. Paul Blackburn, 2022 All-Star is back. I mean, it can't hurt to have Paul Blackburn back. I don't think that's quite going to do it for them, but every win or loss avoidance matters for the Oakland A's these days. But the headline is that Soroka has returned. Yes. He has not pitched in the majors since 2020. Yeah. It has been a really long time.

Really long time. Soroka in the majors. Of course, he was an all-star in 2019. He was sixth place in the Cy Young race. He was the rookie of the year, runner-up. And then even 2020, he was missing for most of that shortened season. So it has been years and years and entries after entry since he returned. So Atlanta, not quite as in need of reinforcements and pitching as the White Sox are, although certainly the Braves have been shorthanded

when it comes to pitching and have lost their fair share of pitchers too. But nice to see Soroka return as well. Not a moment too soon, given some of their other losses. But, yeah, it's really, they should work on the technology to better protect elbows or maybe just clone Spencer Strider. Yeah, that would help, too. One or the other, you know. But then do you have to wait, know for the clone to well you can do the star wars accelerated aging thing but there are all

kinds of ethical issues with that as well yeah it's really a problem remember do you remember being a kid and being like really worried about dolly the sheep oh yeah yeah right funny so soroka successive Achilles tears, right? Terrible. Just like reading about his injuries, it just sounded not only just damaging to his career, but like painful and especially demoralizing. Yeah, man. And there were other injuries along the way, too. So, yeah, I'm just seeing that those three guys are back, especially Hendrix and also to a lesser extent Soroka.

That was a nice boost because, you know, I went to MLB Trade Rumors and the first headline I saw was Lance McCullers no longer throwing off a mound. Yeah, I know. I was like, oh, isn't it really good? Yeah, I was wondering, is he throwing off something else now? I don't think so. Where is he throwing? No, I think he had moved back to throwing off flat ground ground but i don't know if he's throwing at all now yeah yeah that astros rotation also a fair share of injuries there too and not a ton of depth that they built in anyway we gotta take

our opportunities to be pleased about pitcher health yeah so that's what we're doing this time we don't want to be all doom and gloom. Sometimes pitchers come back, too. Sometimes they come back. Well, and not the only notable return from injury, you know who else is back who, speaking of injuries that just sound really painful, Royce Lewis got activated off the injured list. So, he's back in action.

Max Kepler, too. But are we at the point where we're like, hey, how could I be back in action. Max Kepler, too. But are we at the point where we're like, hey, how could I be? Well, there's Max Kepler. But anyway, Royce Lewis is back. And he had just like the knees of, you know, an octogenarian. But it seems like he's going to be back and hopefully playing well for the Twins. The Minnesota Twins with, as we speak, a one-game lead over the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central.

Weird. The Twins are one game over.500 and also one game in first place. That division. I don't want to harp on it too much, but gosh, that division. It's so bad. It's really so bad. Really so bad. It's really so bad. Really so bad. And, you know, not to be totally outdone, like the NL Central is not much better.

No, no, it's not. Yeah, and I was actually just looking at the standings as a whole, and there's not a single division where the division leaders lead is as many as five games. The max, as we speak, is four and a half. In the East, NL East, yeah. Yeah, and also the AL East. I think the Rays are up four and a half currently. Four. Yeah.

Oh, that's right. Yeah. Was there a game that I missed? Maybe. I don't know. I don't know if that's historically significant. I have not stat blasted that to see how common it is. Yes, the standings I had to refresh and look at that. The lead is now half game smaller, at least. But I don't know if with things because, as we noted, the Rays, who have by far the best record in baseball still, they have not run away with things because all the

teams in that division are good. And the Orioles have been great too lately, and the Yankees have been good. And so there's not that much of a gap there. So in the Central, now that Twins lead has expanded to a game and a half since I last refreshed. So that's much more happening all around us. So comfortable game and a half lead. Now there's still only one in the last column. Anyway, you've got a game and a half lead in the Central. You've got a two and a half game lead in the AL West. You have a game and a half lead in the NL Central.

You have a game and a half lead in the NL West. So everything's kind of close now, which is good, I think. Now, there's obviously a difference between having a close race where every team, you know, I was going to say every team is trash. That sounds harsh. We did just dump on the AL Central, but I won't go that far. I will say every team is mediocre, kinder, and maybe more accurate. So every team is mediocre in that division. So that's a little less exciting than in a division where you have maybe a little less parity overall, but the top two or the top three are close and they're actually good teams, right? Like how enhanced is a pennant race, if you can even call it a pennant race when we're still in May as we speak, but how much more exciting is a pennant race in a good division or between good teams at a pennant race in a mediocre division or between bad teams

given the same margin the same separation um 50 i don't know i don't have like a meaningfully more yeah a lot a bushel a peck um you know several altuveys and a smaller number of judges. Like, you know, a lot? It's a lot. Yeah, it's definitely a lot. Yeah, because it just feels like a matter of who will fail less, right, when it's an AL Central. It's just no one's seizing the division. No one's carpeing the division.

It's just everyone is slogging along, and some are slogging a little bit better than others. But that's basically it. It just it doesn't feel like anyone is winning. It just feels like different degrees of losing. I mean, literally, the Twins are the only non-losing team in the NL Central and barely. So that's. There are only two teams at or above 500 in the nl central and it you know the the pirates are at 500 and the brewers are three games up so it's like this is not very and and

sometimes you look at it and you think to yourself wow the pirates are playing 500 ball and that does suggest like a a step forward right that's good like're plucky, they're frisky, they're, you know, they're not quite where the Diamondbacks are, but like they're, they can give you a problem if they put their minds to it. And that's good. But you want that team to be like in third or fourth place in a good division race, right? Like, you want them to be ascendant and then the next year take a step forward and be, like, at the top with a little bit of room to spare. But, yeah, it's, man, there's some bleak baseball being played this year, Ben. Like, there's a lot of really good baseball being played, and that's very exciting. And Pirates, D-backs, a number of teams sort of taking a step forward. Orioles, right?

And so that's really thrilling. But it's sure being weighed down at least slightly by, like, not just the A's of the world, but just a lot of mediocre muck. There's a lot of muck out there. Yeah. Well, there aren't that many elite teams this season. Well, there aren't that many elite teams this season. You have the Rays, who are still on pace for 112 or so wins, right? Lost again today. Yeah. And if you draw some arbitrary starting point and end point and just skip all the games they won at the very start of the season, then they're not quite on that same sort of pace. And one of my semi-bold predictions in the podcast we did before the season started, I felt I had to qualify the boldness,

but I... Did I make you feel bad last time, Ben? I didn't mean to make you feel bad. Yeah. But I predicted that no team would win more than 97 games. Right. Obviously, the Rays are on pace to win many more than that still. But if you look at the projections, I think, yes, this is updated for the Rays' most recent loss. The Rays are projected to win 96 games, according to the FanGraph's depth charts, and the Braves are also projected to win 96. And that's it. They're the top. So currently, no one is actually projected to win more than 97 or even 97. Now, that's assuming that the Rays are a rest of season 539 winning percentage team, according to the projections and factoring in the strength of schedule and everything. And as we've discussed, the Rays do seem a little more vulnerable than you would think, given their record, just because of the competition, but also because of all the my prediction to come true, at least certain numbers, not the on-pace numbers, but the projecting numbers, which even at this point in the season,

the projections, the preseason projections, I think, still more predictive than the season-to-date record. And certainly the updated rest-of-season projections are always a good gauge. So if two teams are on pace for 96, and there are a few other that are on pace for 90 plus, then there's still a very good chance that the Rays or someone else will end up over 97. But currently, at least the projections would say that that is not likely to happen for any one particular team, which is unusual given recent years where we've had so much stratification and there's been big separations between the best teams and the worst teams. Now, you have the A's this year, so there's still going to be a big separation. Negative 199 run differential, Ben. Yes, but they have Paul Blackburn back.

But I – sure. Okay. Yes. I, and look, far be it from me to discount the healing powers of Paul Blackburn. I'm happy for him that he is back, but 199. Yeah. No, I mean, they're, they're playing at a Cleveland Spiders 1899 pace. So unfathomable just because of that season that they're having the gap between the best and the worst performing teams will still be sizable, but the top end is lower than it's been. And I think that's reflected in the fact that no team has opened up a huge division lead because no team seems unstoppable or seems like a juggernaut. And the teams that have seemed like that have maybe taken a step back or other teams have taken a step forward. And I think on the whole, that's probably good, right?

I think that's good. I think it can be compelling when you have some super teams too. And you have just the Dodgers are incredible and the Astros are incredible. Like when there are certain teams you can point to and say, wow, that's a great baseball team right there as opposed to that's a good team. That's a contending team. But it has some holes. It has some flaws. But on the whole, it's probably for the best. It leads to fewer non-competitive games or non-meaningful games over the course of a season, obviously. And Rob

Arthur has documented that at Baseball Perspectives that in recent years, there have just been more games that just didn't matter as much in a playoff odd sense, playoff import, or were just more lopsided in terms of the expected victor. So if there is a great evening out, that would be kind of a correction to where we've been for the past several seasons. I think that if everyone is pretty good and clustered tight, then yes. I still think that there are systemic incentives

that exist that might push us to a future that looks a lot like the centrals. But we have bucked that trajectory this year. Or at least we've bucked it enough. That's a, I think buck is an underutilized verb. Where's Lewis Hummer? How about that? Oh, all right.

Yeah, welcome back. Two torn ACLs? No, they're not going to stop him. I mean, they did for a while, which is fine because, ouch. Yeah. When you have the same entry, it's the same as Soroka with the multiple Achilles or pitchers with the multiple TJs. It's just, man, it just, yes, you know what you're getting into, but that can be good in some ways and bad in other ways. Yeah. It's got to be demoralizing. And it also makes you feel like, especially if it's something where, at least with the

TJ, it's like you're getting a new fresh ligament in there every time. I mean, I guess you're doing some similar repairs in other parts of the body, but when you're repeatedly injuring the same part, then you have to wonder, is that going to affect the function there? Right. Or is that going to affect the function there? Right. Or is that going to affect you psychologically, just your level of confidence in that body part? Right.

Or is there some structural weakness there where that will keep recurring? So I don't know whether it's better or worse for your long-term prognosis to injure the same body part repeatedly versus injuring different body parts, like assuming that they're not just accidents and sort of freak injuries, but like, you know, would it be better to pull your hamstring over and over again? Or would it be better to pull your hamstring once and your calf once and your quad once? It'd be better not to pull any of them, obviously. But I wonder whether it bodes better for you if you spread it around or if it's concentrated in a single spot, which might suggest that you can't conquer that vulnerability. But then again, if you could, maybe that's your only problem.

Right, yeah. I think it would really—this is such a cheap answer, but it would depend, I think. And I think it depends, too too on the position that you're being asked to play, right? If you are, you know, a shortstop, like, or, you know, you're trying to be a fast guy, you know, you're trying to be a quick boy and you have repeated lower leg or knee stuff, like at a certain point, you're going to be like, I'm going to be slower probably, maybe, like, am I going to be able to return to the level of quickness? Is the step going to be good?

And Lewis, his positional future is clouded by the Correa of it all. Although he's hurt now too, so I don't know, man. But I think it would really depend. I think that neither helps you avoid being thought of as injury prone, which is probably its own problem. But yeah, if you're just doing, I don't know, if you have the same thing over and over. Plus, you just have to having to do that rehab again and again. ACLs, Achilles, like anything where you are like, I could hear it snap. It's like, oh, God.

So, that's what I have. It's like, oh, yeah. So that's what I have to say about that, Ben. So I think that I wouldn't want every team to be 81 and 81. I mean, that would be so weird if it happened that that actually would be fun one time. But I wouldn't want every team to just be indistinguishable from all the others. But I also don't think it's the best when the gaps have been as big as they have in some recent years. So I think this is a step in the right direction. It does make me think that we will have a greater chance of lamenting the lack of tiebreakers now, Game 163s, Games 163. now, game 163s, games 163. If we have closer races and greater odds of ties or multi-way ties,

then we might lament the loss of tiebreakers even more than we have just kind of conceptually, if it becomes something that changes things in practice. But on the whole, I'm happy that the standings have largely leveled out, I guess, especially in the National League. Right. There's just not a lot of, you know, you don't have your Rays and your A's in the National League. So everyone really is tightly clustered. Well, and I think you're right that like it's fun. It can be fun to have super team. But when like when super teams are accompanied by like really, really bad teams, then don't you kind of look sideways at the super teams a little bit? And it's like, how super are you? You really super?

You know, you super duper? Are you good and taking advantage of a competitive environment that is kind of full of muck? Right. Yes. I think that's that's an important point. That's an important point. So I do think that there are some teams that are not depressing in the ways that they have been in recent years. Like I was a guest on a Reds radio pregame show recently.

Oh. Even though we have a bit here, a running bit going back to the beginning of the podcast of not talking about the Reds. I was asked to talk about the Reds. It's like that song in that Pixar movie, you know? Right, exactly. We'll talk about the Reds. I was asked to talk about the Reds. It's like that song in that Pixar movie, you know? Yeah, right, exactly. We'll talk about the Reds. Yeah. I haven't seen it, and so I don't know if that joke works, you know?

But I don't need feedback on it. Just let it fly on its own. It's fending for itself now. Not the first time I've been on that Reds pregame show, but I think probably the most optimistic I was able to be on the Reds pregame show because, I think probably the most optimistic I was able to be on the Reds pregame show because, you know, I was talking about prospects arriving and things looking up.

All the many infielders. So many. They've had a shortage for years and now they have too many. It's like when we call up Elie de la Cruz, where is he going to play? And how are we going to sort out this shortstop situation? And where's Jonathan India going to play? And these are the proverbial good problems to have. These are not problems that the Reds have had recently. So you look at just all of their infield prospects, their surfeit of shortstops, and how great a change that represents from recent events.

And then you look at the top of the rotation and the young guys there. And again, the big question is, are they going to spend? And is ownership going to support that team? But they turned around the farm system to the point that, yeah, that team, it's not bad to watch right now. It might get even more watchable if De La Cruz and others show up soon. If Joey Votto returns at some point, that would be nice from a sentimental perspective. Although they might actually have so many players that it's like, can we afford to play Joey Votto and block the young guys, which wouldn't have been such a problem recently.

So that's just one example of a team that was either depressing to talk about or just so unremarkable that we ended up not talking about them very much. And I mentioned our running podcast bit on that pregame show, and I was like, look, I don't know if the Reds are going to be a very good team as soon as even next season, let's say, but they are a team that we will have to talk about and we will want to talk about. And there will be reasons to talk about them other than their owner saying something at a luncheon every now and then. So that's encouraging. Yes, right.

I mean, I think he has a stick in the team too, but it's just an important, you know, for, I haven't seen it, but I'm given to understand that it's an important distinction for all the succession heads out there, you know, that's a sign. Yes, I was up all night writing about succession.

Were you? If you couldn't tell. But there are teams, and even like the Nationals were expected to be terrible. They haven't been that terrible. Like, they've been bad, but like run of the mill bad. Yeah, like, as we're recording, they're 23 and 30. So, you know. It's bad.

It's not the, man, every kind of blah team in baseball is probably sending fruit baskets to the A's. Yeah, the existence of the A's is just, well, we're not the A's. We're not the A's. Like, even the Rockies aren't the A's. No. Even the Colorado Rockies, not the A's. Not even close. Even the Royals are not the A's, although the Royals are disconcertingly close.

They're flirting with being the A's in a way that really should make everyone uncomfortable. Yes, although not with the same degree of intention, I think. No. And, you know, with a stadium deal secured, right? Yeah, well, they're working on that, I guess, at least. But the Royals were, there were reasons to be kind of excited about the Royals, and those reasons have not paid off thus far. How about that? their record suggests, which I guess is only some small consolation. But they're five games back in the division because divisions are so close. The White Sox are six games back in their division, right? Even though they started the season the way that they started it. The Cardinals, even with the way they started the season, they're tied with the Cubs in the standings.

They're five games back. These teams are within reach. The Reds are four games back, right? So, They're five games back. These teams are within reach. The Reds are four games back, right? So, you know, you have hope and faith, as Bud Selig said, right? So almost every team at this point can kind of count itself not completely out of it. I think that's nice. Yeah, I think that that's nice.

It's a good thing, you know? But also, man, it's just hard to forget that they exist, you know? They're trying so hard to have us not think about them at all. That's what I was saying last week about how, like, I can't look away and I feel bad, but I'm riveted to these, right? In the way that I used to be by the super teams, it's like, how high can they go? How many games can this Dodgers team win? There's something about the extremes that is compelling. So I have to balance that, I guess, with my league-wide sense that it's probably better for more teams to be competitive and more matchups to be competitive.

And yet in terms of individual storylines, I'm drawn to the teams that are historically great or historically terrible. I'm drawn to the teams that are historically great or historically terrible. So there's been a lot of fodder in that arena lately, which has not been good for baseball, but has led to a lot of content, I guess. So sort of mixed incentives there, maybe comes to extremes, we talked about Jose Abreu and his homerlessness, and he is no longer homerless. He has homered finally. He is on the board. He has hit one homer. One homer. Now, he has not really improved his stats overall that much since we talked about him. He has a 49 WRC+, which was roughly where he was the last time we talked about him.

He has a 49 WRC+, which was roughly where he was the last time we talked about him. But he has a homer, and his homer was notable not just because it was his first, but also because he sprinted around the bases. This was not a home run trot. This was a home run sprint by someone who you don't really associate with sprinting. His sprint speed on this home run trot, if we can call it that, was 26.2 feet per second. His sprint speed on the season is 25.4. So he home run trotted faster than his sprint speed on the season,

which has to be pretty unusual, I would think. It was the second fastest home run trot of the season, according to MLB.com. The article did not specify which the first was, which, come on, if you're going to tell me it was the second fastest, tell me what the fastest was. You're sparking my curiosity here. But I'm guessing it was someone faster than Jose Braves. So he sprinted around the bases. He slid into the dugout, basically, as if he was sliding into home plate because he was just so euphoric that he had finally hit a home run. That should count toward his sprint speed. I agree. Sprint speed, they eliminate non-competitive runs. They try to

narrow it down to just close plays where you're actually running all out so that your slow runs don't drag down your sprint speed. But for him, they got to include, they got to make a special exception for this home run trot because this was him at top speed. And it's funny because baseball is an extremely silly sport. People had to talk about like whether this was an unwritten rules violation for him to do this. So Dusty Baker had to defend him and say he an unwritten rules violation for him to do this. So Dusty Baker had to defend him and say he wasn't trying to show up anybody. He was just happy for himself and his team was happy for him. Oh, good grief.

This was against the A's, of course. So the A's. The Astros hit seven homers, I think, in that game. So if you're going to hit one finally, I guess odds are maybe if you break that slide against anyone, maybe it'll be the A's. So I don't know if it didn't seem to make him any less exuberant, the fact that this came against Oakland A's pitching. But A's manager Mark Kotze also said, I have the utmost respect for Abreu and his career and what he's accomplished. I'm sure it was a lot of frustration going into that time frame and for him, a lot of excitement. And it showed.

So don't worry. No one's mad at Jose Abreu. No one's going to plunk Jose Abreu from the sound of it. But what a silly thing that we even have to say that. Cooler heads prevailed, more reasonable. I mean, not prevailed. That makes it sound like there was someone who was angling to be agitated. What I mean is like- I don't know if anyone was. It may just be that writers asked them about this and it wasn't actually a controversy at all, but they were asked to comment about it. I have no idea. That's me

going, ah, sorry. Yeah. Anyway, happy for Jose Abreu. Yeah. He hits another one someday. And I know that you were always on the watch for umpire hot mic situations. I am.

And we had one over the weekend and it was a doozy. Oh, yeah. Just this is not like a broadcaster hot mic situation. Some of those can be fun, too. They're not all Brenneman situations. But the umpire hot mic situations may be the best of the best, right? I mean, whether it's ass in the jackpot, whether it's some of the previous examples we've talked about of umps being mic'd up on the field, like this was the thing you were, I think, maybe most psyched

about with umps being mic'd up on the field. As I recall, you were fully in favor of this, just from a clarity perspective, explaining what is actually happening to people in the ballpark and on the broadcast, but also umps mic'd up. There was a greater possibility that they would say something while their mic was active. And that has happened wonderfully from time to time. So in this case, there was a Marlins challenge over the weekend in a Marlins-Angels game on Saturday. And the Marlins challenged a call in the 10th inning. They thought that Angels catcher Matt Thijs had never touched home plate on what was called a double play.

And the Marlins challenged. And an umpire was seemingly caught mocking the challenge. Yeah. So is Thijs on home plate seemingly caught mocking the challenge. Yeah. So is Theis on home plate? That's the question. Might be off. Might be overturned. Now, home plate umpire C.B. Buckner had a really good look at it. Miami's challenging the out call at home plate.

The Marlins are going to challenge that. They got their heads up their ass. Go. He said they got their heads up their ass. The Marlins are going to challenge that. They got their heads up their ass. He said they got their heads up their ass. The Marlins are challenging they got their heads up their ass. And the fun part, I mean, there were many fun parts, but the fun part was that the call was reversed. Yeah. And it was overturned and the Marlins got another run, which was important. I mean, it was a game that went to extras, and the Marlins ended up winning 8-5.

This was an important run. So if he was, in fact, saying that the Marlins had their heads up their ass for challenging this call, then he was very wrong. But it echoed, it reverberated in his stadium. It's like, you know, there's that little PA PA sound, like heads up their ass, up their ass. Yeah. Yeah. It like reverberates through. Yeah.

Yeah. Which I guess you want as an umpire to maintain impartiality. Yeah. Now, maybe it doesn't matter because the ump who was saying this. He doesn't get to decide, right? Yeah. He's not determining their success or failure on the challenge. Yeah. Now, maybe it doesn't matter because the ump who was saying this. He doesn't get to decide, right? Yeah. He's not determining their success or failure on the challenge. Yeah.

But still, if the replay umps were listening to this and they heard their colleague say, call into question the challenge, you might already worry, like, would replay umps be hesitant to overturn one of their colleagues' calls? I don't know that there's any evidence to that fact. I think we're all used to the fact that umpires are fallible now and they want to get these calls right with replay. But if the ump is overheard saying that this call was like so obviously correct that a team was misguided and challenging, then you wonder, could that possibly influence the review? But it certainly wasn't decisive in this case. It's a funny moment to get miffed. Like on the one hand, I guess, because it was the 10th inning, right? Yes. So like on the one hand, you're like ready to go home. You're like, I anticipated working a certain amount this day and I'm now working more than that

amount and I'm ready to go home. So on the one hand you understand, but on the other hand, it's like, you, that's absolutely the time to challenge. Like even if you have a low probability of winning the challenge and getting the outcome you want, like you can't take them with you. So you may as well challenge in that moment and try to get a run and, you know, go home a winner. Like, with more margin. It's such a funny time to get miffed because it's like, even if they don't think it's going to work, they should still do it.

Like, they should still do it. That seems like good use of replay. That's a good strategy. So it makes him sound even grumpier than he was because of the moment that he was. I was like, no, like that should be doing that.

Yeah. All right. One email today. This is from Lister and Patreon supporter, Joe, who said I was watching the MLB TV highlights. And the first one was Starling Marte's go ahead opposite field Homer field homer. Now, this was a highlight we'll link to on the show page. This was May 21st. And Joe writes, I've had this nagging feeling this season that the ball is jumping off of bats this

year in ways that don't seem normal, and this homer pushed me to ask you whether there's anything to this. It's very possible that my couple of years hiatus from watching games on TV made me miss the really juiced ball. So seeing the less juiced ball, but still way juicier than 2004 ball is throwing me off. But is there anything unusual about this year's home run rate? Marte's swing here looks like a fly out to medium deep right center, not a clear homer. Or is it just me? I think it surprises me a little bit off the bat. It's not the greatest disconnect between swing and contact and result that I've ever seen, but I don't know whether off the bat I would have immediately assumed that was a homer as opposed to maybe a wall ball or a deep gapper. So I see what Joe's saying. And especially if he has been away for a

while and he missed the peak of the juiced ball era, that he might come back and be like, whoa, the ball didn't used to travel. Whereas we are acclimated to the ball traveling like that. So there probably is something to that. But there's also something to the idea that the ball is still quite lively, just like in a historical sense. Like we don't talk about that and fixate on that as much as we did when the ball first really started jumping mid-2015 and then into 2016 and then 2017 was a spike, and then 2019 was wild. Wild. But we are still, so far this year, the home run rate on contact, so that is home runs divided by at-bats minus strikeouts,

so a percentage of the non-strikeout at-bats that are home runs. Right. 4.6%, and again, it's still May, so you would expect this to increase as the weather warms up. But even now, comparing to previous full season rates, this is the fifth highest home run per contact rate ever, right? So we don't talk about this that much because 2019 was 5.5% and 2020 was 5.3% and 2021 was 5.0% and 2017 was 4.9%. So comparatively speaking, 4.6 is not that high. This is back to roughly 2018 or 2016 levels.

But when 2016 happened, we were like, whoa, right? Because it's so influenced by the preceding seasons, the surrounding seasons, that it's like we were just numb to the ball jumping off the bat because we all saw 2017, we all saw 2019. Now everything looks comparatively tame, but if you just woke up and missed the rest of this high home run era, then you would be like, whoa, what the heck is happening here? Why is this not the constant? If you're Rip Van Winkle and you're coming back to baseball, I mean, I guess Rip Van Winkle, well, if he went to sleep for 100 years, then, you know, he still would have been in the live ball era. He would have seen Babe Ruth if he was 100 years ago. But it really is so dependent on what happened just before, which makes things seem extreme or not by comparison. Well, and then my brain started doing really weird things in 2019 where sometimes I would be first in the beginning of 2019 I was like how is that a home run how is that a home run how is that a home run over and over and over again because the ball was so juicy it felt like it was dripping juice and then I got to

a point in that season where I had like flipped all the way around and I was like how is that not a home run like isn't that a home run isn't everything a home run is there are there any hits that aren't home yeah right like and so it can i think it can be like pretty profoundly disorienting and that's been that's been a big source of the complaint right it's like what calibrating yourself to the to the juiciness of the ball at the beginning of every new season is exhausting it's like I don't know what. It's like, I'm in my late 30s. Am I in my late 30s now? My mid 30s.

I'm still 36. What is that? Is that your, that's still your mid, right? I think that's mid. Yeah, because otherwise, what's mid? Like only 35 is mid? No, so when you're on either side, that's mid. Will I still be in my mid 30s in a couple of weeks when I turn 37? Yes.

I'm going to charitably say yes. Oh, man. I had to think about it, though. I'm going to return to the home run thing in a hot second, but I had to take one of the cats to get booster shots. She had to get vaccine shots. And they had a little poster on the wall in the vet's office while we were waiting for the the vet to come in um on the life stages of cats and i think um well we shouldn't do the kitten one because that's weird but i i think that we should adopt their um life stages nomenclature because

you go junior prime mature senior and then geriatric and i think that that's great we need something other than kitten because don't call people kittens. That's gross. But, like, their prime range, they put the age of the cat, and then they put the human equivalent. And their prime runs from 28 to 40. And then mature, which sounds so distinguished, Ben, like, you know, like you're a philanthropist, runs from 44 to 56. I think it's great. It's a new, it's our new approach, you know? I don't want to have to fill out age-specific boxes when I, like, do surveys and stuff. I just want to be able to say, no, I'm prime. I'm a prime. I'm a prime gal. You know, I'm in my prime still.

Well, Don Lemon recently learned that it can be dangerous to pronounce when a person or a woman's prime is. Yes. So that could be problematic, too. But I can declare myself to be in my prime. Yes, you can label yourself that way. Yeah, don't do what Don Lemon did. That was bad. Anyway, getting back to the home runs.

This one didn't super surprise me. It looked like, and I guess we could look up the stat cast on it, but it struck me as one that, you know, was like a high arcing home run. Because it didn't go so deep. It was in a deep fish part of the park. But it wasn't like it got planted, you know, like, ah. It wasn't a wall scraper, but it wasn't like, you know what I mean? So, it didn't a wall scraper but it wasn't like you know what i mean so it didn't i don't know maybe i'm maybe i need to recalibrate my home run detection instruments

you know joe does i guess it needs a tune-up it needs an update right because the ball has been updated multiple times well really allegedly well we know of. Updated implies an intent that I think is lacking. At least one update that was actually intentional. Yes, true. And that people said, oh, the ball is dead now, right? Like people were calling last year's ball dead. Yeah. And I was like, relative to very recent seasons, sure.

Right. But the 2022 home run rate on contact was the eighth highest ever. It was below only the very most recent seasons. It was higher than the peak of the PED era, higher than 2000, 2001, 99, et cetera. So even that, like dead ball, I mean, only in comparison to the very recent seasons, not the whole sweep of history. So yeah, it is highly dependent on what has happened lately. Anyway, I do think that baseball player aging helps us get used to the idea of mortality. Like it can be a reminder of mortality in an unpleasant way. But look, we talk about baseball players' primes all the time, right? It's just, Yes. idea of how that plays out over a full lifespan, the athletic lifespan, which is sort of depressingly

short, but we use the same sort of terms for it, right? I mean, one day you're a young up-and-comer, you're a prospect, you're whatever term we use for young prospect and players. Sometimes we just call them youngsters, you know? Yeah. And then you're in your prime next thing you know, and then you snap your fingers and you're past your prime, right? You're on the wrong side of 30, as people say. You're mature. You're mature. You're a mature player.

We got to reframe our mindset, Ben. You're not past your prime. You're mature. Again. Yeah. Distinguished. Get some chunky glasses in a fun color, you know, some fun and some big jewelry. And it's like you're, you know, helping to fund an art installation.

Yeah. Rich Hill is on the low end of that mature range. Right. The cat-adjusted mature range. Yeah. That's encouraging. There you go. Okay.

All right. And one follow-up we talked about and we answered an email about various scenarios and whether they would qualify as immaculate innings or not, especially with the pitch clock included and possible violations. So just one more along those lines from Manuel who said, I had another hypothetical scenario for the immaculate innings slash pitch clock situation. Let's say a pitcher throws nine pitches all for strikes, but the hitter had a pitch clock violation called. For example, first two hitters go down swinging on three pitches each, but the third hitter gets an automatic called strike for the first pitch of his at bat, then swings at the first pitch, second strike, hits a foul ball on the second pitch to extend the at bat, and strikes out swinging on the third and last pitch of the at-bat. Would you consider this an immaculate inning?

Even if there were technically 10 strikes, the pitcher threw nine strikes and pitches, all four strikes, and the pitcher wasn't at fault for the violation called on the hitter. So we talked about whether an eight-pitch inning plus a pitch clock violation for the ninth strike would qualify. This is an extra strike. It's nine actual pitches that you were throwing all strikes. But then there is also a pitch clock violation on top of that. Hmm. When the pitcher throws his first pitch to the batter in this scenario, the batter's already down 0-1, right?

Yes, that's right so he the batter is already down oh one pitcher is ahead does it change the behavior of the hitter like is he but he does foul it off so does it matter like i'm just trying to understand, does this shift? I mean, it obviously shifts the balance of the at-bat in the pitcher's favor. Someone, because he's just ahead. Right. Yeah. You'd have a different mindset. You'd have a different mindset. So maybe that's enough to change it and be like, yeah.

Yes. Yeah. You know what I mean? I think I agree. I think I agree. Yeah. I'm going to say no. Doesn't count. I'm going to say no. Doesn't yeah. Yes. Yeah. You know what I mean? I think I agree. I think I agree. Yeah. I'm going to say no. Doesn't count.

I'm going to say no. Doesn't count. Okay. And two other responses we got to emails we answered. We talked about a hypothetical of a player who's incredible in AAA and can't hit at all in the majors. Just like the most extreme AAA player you could ever imagine. I meant to mention that player would probably try his hand overseas at some point. Oh, yeah.

We were talking about him just trying over and over again at AAA, maybe getting a shot every now and then. But you got to figure that that guy would at least go to NPB and see whether his allergy to the majors also applies to other countries' major leagues or not. Right. Because the pay would be better. It's a higher level of competition. So that would probably be a recourse for that player. I don't know whether it would help them conquer whatever it is that's holding them back in the big leagues, but they could at least find out the limits of this ailment. Right.

They would come to understand sort of what the situation is. Yes. Unless they had a reputation before a team approached them about going overseas that they were haunted. Well, yeah, it would be a risk because international leagues often you only have so many roster spots you can devote to foreign players. And so are you going to spend one of those? On a guy who's haunted?

Right. But it would happen. They would at least find out. And then the other response, we talked about a hypothetical scenario where the runners that a team strands at the end of an inning are then inherited by the opposing team when the next half inning starts. And we talked about how would you decide which runners they are, who actually stays on the bases. Right. And some people pointed out that you could just handle that

the way that they handle the zombie runner. Sure. Which is that you can just have the people who made the last out would just be up there and be those runners. So that would be one way to solve that problem, which is not the only issue with that hypothetical. But we were talking about how you'd handle that.

So there is a framework for handling that same sort of situation. And people were like, I can't believe they didn't think of it. And I am here to say, well, sure, maybe. But also, we don't like the extra inning stuff. So, of course, it wouldn't be a thing we'd gravitate toward without direction. Well, that is a great face-saving explanation. Thank you. And also a great segue into the StatBlast because that is kind of going to be the topic today.

So, let's play the StatBlast song. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. on. Here's today's stat blast. week in this space, in this segment. And we tell you the way it works, works the same way this week as it worked last week. And that's that there is something exciting that happens in a baseball game and they make a card of that thing. Just a quick turnaround. You don't have to wait the way you once had to wait for the start of the next season and the new set comes out. And maybe there's a card that highlights something that happened that previous season and you say, oh yeah, that happened. But more likely there is no card to commemorate that because it's one of a zillion things that happened during a baseball season.

And maybe it's a fun fact on someone's card if the card has fun facts, but you don't have a dedicated card produced for that. That was not the way that baseball cards worked. Well, it's the way they work now, or it's at least the way that Topps now works. So something cool happens. You say, hey, that would be a cool collectible. I want to display that somewhere. It's a nice keepsake.

I was at that game. I'm a fan of that team or that player. That was a really cool thing that happened. And what do you know? There is instantly a baseball card of that that you can player. That was a really cool thing that happened. And what do you know, there is instantly a baseball card of that that you can purchase the very next day, get it shipped to you for free once you pay the price for the card itself. I always feel like I have to clarify. Truth in advertising, like the entire thing is not free, but the shipping is free. But the shipping is free.

Yeah. People are probably familiar with the concept of free shipping and it not necessarily implying a free product. But just to clarify. Just in case. We just want, you know, we want there to be truth in advertising. I don't want to get tops in trouble here. Yeah. Ben, I don't know for sure because we haven't seen the cards. But I wouldn't be surprised, for instance, if that Royce Lewis home run wasn't a Tops Now card.

That seems Tps Now worthy. I would think that Liam Hendricks, whether his return gets a card or his first outing gets a card, like Liam Hendricks, I would guess he's going to get himself a Topps Now card again. We have no foreknowledge of the Topps Now card selection. We don't. But generally when I see them, I'm like, yep, that makes sense. And rarely do I see them and We don't. day. So check out Tops Now. There's a link on the show page. And the tagline goes, your hero, your team, your moment. And our hero for this segment is actually going to be a guest stop blaster. We're going to have a little help with this one. I don't think there is a stauncher ally in baseball media when it comes to the zombie runner than Rob Maines of Baseball Prospectus. It makes me happy every time I read

one of his pieces because so often he will mention the zombie runner with scorn and spite that normally only I can muster. So not only is he an ally just in the general campaign against the zombie runner, but also in the campaign to call it the zombie runner. And you just can't take that for granted when you read baseball writing these days. So naturally, I perked up when Rob wrote something about the zombie runner last week, because I know that like me, Rob is always looking for ammunition in the fight, which is not to suggest that he would be biased in his research. Not at all. Never. However, if he did uncover something that was notable about the zombie runner, then he might be motivated to bring it to our attention.

So, Rob joins us now. Hello, Rob. Welcome back. Hi, Ben. Hi, Meg. So, you wrote about the impact of the zombie runner on home field advantage. How did you get interested in this topic? Well, I wasn't intending to go after the zombie runner. It just worked out

that way. I was talking to my parents on a Zoom call, and my dad, who really doesn't care about baseball but tries to ask a question of me just to feign interest, asked me whether home teams do better in extra inning games. And my inclination was to say, well, sure, because you can walk a team off, you know, you know exactly how many runs you have to score. It would seem that the ability to score runs without having the other team respond would, you know, that would be an advantage. When I looked at the numbers, though, it turned out that was not the case. When I looked at the numbers, though, it turned out that was not the case. Overall, teams win about 54% of home games and roughly only 52 percent of games that are in extra innings

two percentage points less which is you know it's not a big difference but over a sample of going back you know more than two decades that's not a small sample size and so i was looking at the individual years and lo and behold guess what i out? That the teams playing before the zombie runner, that's in the years 1998 to 2019, the difference in their winning percentage from the first nine innings to extra inning games was they dropped about 18 points of winning percentage. They went from 540 to 521. In the three years that we've had the zombie runner, 20, 21, and 22, teams have still won about 54% of their games

in the first nine innings. But you go into extra innings, they've actually been under 500, 249 and 251, which is not only not what you would intuitively expect, it's also not what you'd expect based on the data. You'd expect the teams would do maybe a little bit worse, not that much worse. And it raises a question that I think is valid, which is what is going on that is exacerbating what's an existing situation that seems to go against home teams?

And what's the zombie runner doing to make that situation worse? Right. Do you have an explanation for why home teams historically have not done as well in extra inning games as in non-extra inning games? Do I personally? No. Does one of our smart commenters and baseball prospectus? Yes. A guy came up with a possibility that I thought about, and I think it may make sense.

And, you know, it's the old don't bring in your best reliever in the tie game when you're on the road. It may be a situation that if you go into extra innings and you're the home team, you're not necessarily going to have your closer on the mound to start the 10th. However, if the visiting team can score in the top of the 10th or the top of the 11th or whatever, they are more likely to bring in their closer if they haven't burned him already. So I think it could be, and I haven't looked at the data to check this, but I think that explanation does make sense that the kind of first mover advantage for the visiting team may give them an advantage in terms of bullpen strategy as well. Yeah. And it may have been another BB commenter who mentioned this, but could it also be just that extra inning games tend to be toss-ups? I mean, by their nature, the fact that they go to extra innings, they're close games.

And so some of the randomness that comes into one-run games, extra inning games often are one-run games or are similarly close. And I guess you could say that, well, we'll get into this when we talk about the zombie runner, that maybe the longer the game goes, the greater the advantage could be for the home team if it's kind of cumulative, if it's not concentrated in certain innings. And I know there's some research that says that maybe it's the first inning when the home field advantage is most pronounced that visiting pitchers do worse. But if it was kind of an incremental advantage, the more you play and the longer you play, than maybe if the game didn't go as long.

If you're talking about it's tied for most of the game and then the separator is however many innings you play in extras, then there would be less time for the home team to accumulate that advantage. Does that make some sort of sense? Yeah, that actually does. That was a second test that one of the readers suggested I do. It said, why don't you look at games that are tied after eight and see how the home team does? And what I did is I made a subset of that tied after eight but completed within nine. So you don't have the pollution of what might happen in extra innings going on. And sure enough, again, the home team's winning percentage dropped by about two percentage points. percentage drop by about two percentage points. Now, the corollary of that, which made me think is, well, maybe it's just a basic question that the teams that wind up going into extra innings

are not the better teams, that the best teams, they win and then they don't have to play beyond that. And I look at home teams and I looked into that theory. That was my theory. Completely wrong. There's absolutely no relationship between team one lost record and propensity to play extra inning games at home. So scratch that. But I think the idea that close games just tend to sort of throw the home field advantage for a loop makes sense. Okay. So you dove into the year-by-year data to see whether this theory made sense, this hypothesis that the zombie runner has made it harder for home teams to win an extra inning.

So what happens when you look at it more granularly and go season by season? Yeah, that's where, and in my defense of what I'm going to say, which is sort of going to torpedo some of my hypothesis, I did write my entire baseball prospectus annual essay this year on the evils of the zombie runner. So I'm not trying to clear anybody here. However, if you look at it year by year, in 2020, home teams were 34 and 34 in extra innings. In 2021, they were 102 and 114. That's a 472 winning percentage. However,

last season, they were 113 and 103, which is 52.3%, which is about, you know, in line with long-term averages. And we're not far into the season, but home teams have been sensational in extra innings so far this year. They're 36 and 25. That's a 590 winning percentage. And so I had an idea that maybe it's a matter of what I call dissimilation. Maybe home teams went into this with some strategies, I'm not sure which ones, that didn't seem to work out. They refined them. Maybe it's using your better relievers in the top of the 10th. I'm not sure that now they're doing better in extra innings. So I think that there may be, you know, we may see what happened in 20 and 21 dissipate. Okay. So we still don't have a huge sample of zombie runner seasons. Of course, 2020 was a shortened season. So when I saw your article, this sparked a memory in me of a years old article that talked about the impact of the zombie runner

on home field advantage in the minors, which at the time that piece was published, suggested that there had been a similar impact, that it was harder for home teams to win with the zombie runner. And since the zombie runner has been in effect in the minors since 2018, and you've got lots of teams and lots of levels and a bigger sample there, I suggested that you try to look into that. It's kind of tough to acquire that data, but you did with assistance from some people at BP. So does that support or refute our hypothesis here? Yeah, and all hail to Robert

Au at Baseball Perspectives for getting this data for me. Unfortunately, we may not have gotten exactly the results that you and I might have wanted, or the three of us might have wanted. And what I did is I looked at the four years before the zombie runner, you know, 14, 15, 16, 17, and then the four years after, 18, 19, 21, and 22. And I looked at four, and you know, they fiddled with the minor leagues, so not all leagues were around for all eight seasons. But for leagues that were in operation for all eight of those years, I broke down AAA, AA, A, and rookie ball. And one thing I will say about the minor leagues is that you don't have as pronounced a home field advantage as you do in the majors. And it's maybe about a 52.5% or so home team winning percentage.

And think about it. If you're a Class A team and you've got a short right field fence, you can't build a team of all left-handed pull hitters. You know, you can't optimize your roster for your home park the way you can in the majors. So you've got that to work with. But here's what I found. Triple A. If you look over the four years before the zombie runner was in, the AAA teams won 52.6% of their games complete within nine innings.

They won 53.5% afterwards. So they actually did nine points better after nine innings than they did before. Once the zombie runner came in, they had a 515 winning percentage in the first nine innings, went down. Their winning percentage in extras actually went up 53.9%. So they had a 24 point increase in their winning percentage post zombie runner, which nets out to being that they were 15 points better with the zombie runner in extra innings than without. So then looked at AA, and I won't give you all the numbers here, but in AA, teams did about nine points worse in the first nine innings before the zombie runner, and they did

about nine points worse in the first nine innings after the zombie runner. So the zombie runner and they did about nine points worse in the first nine innings after the zombie runner so the zombie runner didn't make a difference and make things worse didn't make it better class a where you've got a fairly robust sample because there are a lot of teams to play a ball 14 points worse in extra innings before the zombie runner and 17 points worse uh after we got the zombie runner so that's a little bit more in line with what we saw in the majors, but it's not a big difference. And then rookie ball, 24 points worse before the zombie runner, 16 points worse after. So they actually got a little bit better as well. So overall, what we got is that minor league teams, before the zombie runner came into effect, were about 11 points worse in their winning percentage in extra innings than they were in the first nine innings of games. That was their deficit, 11 points.

With the zombie runner, that deficit dropped to nine points. with a zombie runner, that deficit dropped to nine points. So they've actually done negligibly better with a zombie runner than without. So that made me think, okay, is there a pattern to this in terms of the years? Is this acclimation theory make any sense? And here are the winning percentage of minor league teams in extra innings starting in 2018, which is the first year they all had the zombie runner. 5-16, it dropped down to 5-03 in 2019. But then 2021 jumped up to 5-23, and 2022 jumped up to 5-25. Now, on one hand, you look at that and you say, yeah, maybe there is some sort of learning process

that you have to do in extra innings games once you have the zombie runner. On the other hand, if there is a learning process, you'd think that's something that the major league teams might have been aware of before this thing all started. And we saw pretty horrendous records in extra innings games in the first two years, at least, of the zombie runner. So the sample size in the minors, which is obviously more robust, would suggest that maybe what we've seen in the majors so far is a mirage, but I hope not. Well, as we were saying, if there's something to the idea that there's less of a home field advantage in extra innings just because it's close and also because there are just fewer extra innings in which the home team can separate itself, then it would make sense in theory that with the zombie runner shortening extra inning games so that there are fewer extra innings even than there were before, then there's even less time now for the home team to separate itself. And so that might have some modest muting effects on home field advantage, but it would be small, presumably. it seems like, yes, the zombie runner has certainly hurt home field advantage. But if you look at the minors and if you break it down season by season in the majors, then it looks more and more like

that may just have been a blip. But time will tell unless somehow we are spared the scourge of the zombie runner. Right. By the way, with the asterisk, of course, that home teams in general do worse in the minors than the majors. So there's less of an advantage for them to fritter away, I guess. Well, here's my question for both of you. Would this actually be a bad thing, right? Because what we're talking about is, I'll add this to the pile of reasons to oppose the zombie runner, and I was thinking about whether that's true. Obviously, I'm inclined to take anything as further support. Like, yes, another reason to say that the zombie runner is bad. But this would be far down the list, I think, on my personal list of arguments against the zombie runner if it had a tiny effect on minimizing home field advantage.

I guess that gets to the question of, is home field advantage good? I mean, it's a fact, it's reality, not just in baseball, but pretty much every sport, and it's incredibly consistent over time. But is it a bug or is it a feature or is it neither? Does it actually sway our enjoyment of sports or baseball specifically one way or the other? Hmm, what a good question, Ben. Does it actually sway our enjoyment of sports or baseball specifically one way or the other?

Hmm. What a good question, Ben. Does it sway? I guess if you want to make an argument in favor of home field advantage, you might argue that in general it's nice for the fans who actually go to the ballpark? Question mark? for the fans who actually go to the ballpark question mark because presumably not always but they are often going to be fans of the home team they are going to root root root for the home team as it were and so maybe it is good to have a slight home field advantage to satisfy the folks who actually make their way out to the ballpark,

even if it's only a marginal one, you know. And like, it's not as if you go in and you're like, I'm definitely going to see a win today because, you know, home team, you know, home team. That's not the way that you interact with it, but maybe it's good that it's slightly more likely that they see a win. I don't know. I was thinking that too, although I guess then the question is, when does it become too much advantage? Because what if the home team just won the vast majority of the time and home fans always went home happy? Well, that would be bad, right? Because then the outcome would be too predictable. If you just won all your home games and lost all your road games, then that would be boring. There'd be no suspense. And so you could say, okay, well, if suspense is good, if you want uncertainty in the outcome, then actually it would be better for there to be no home field advantage whatsoever, right?

So that's kind of if you take it to the logical extremes, either home field advantage is good, therefore we want home teams to win more. It would be better if they won't even more. And then you think, well, actually that would be bad. So if we take that to the logical extreme, then maybe it's bad to have any edge, but I think you're kind of right. Like it's not enough to notice really, you know, it's like you can't, you could go to the ballpark every day and you wouldn't actually be able to perceive. I mean, you win 54% of your home games roughly. You wouldn't even notice that, especially if you're not going to every single game. So it's just a little nudge.

It's just a little extra likelihood of the home fans going home happy. But it's so subtle that they don't perceive it as affecting the uncertainty of the outcome. So maybe it's just the right amount of edge. I feel like it's dialed in at a good level. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a little bit of a straw man argument, but it's better than it is in just about every other sport, right? NFL, NHL, and NBA, I think, have more pronounced. And I think soccer?

I don't know. But they all have better home team advantages, I believe, than MLB does. So if it's a bug, it's less of a bug here than elsewhere. And I guess the other advantage, because people might hear you say that and wonder why, right? And home field advantage, like what subject has inspired more research over the years than the cipher, the mystery of home field advantage? Everyone trying to figure out why does it exist? Why is it more pronounced in some sports than others? Just the literature in baseball alone, people trying to determine, well, is it that you

know the nooks and crannies of the ballpark? Is it that you get to sleep in your own bed before the game and you're better rested and you didn't have to travel and you're not jet lagged or you know the batter's eye or whatever it is, right? Or maybe it's the officiating, as people have suggested. Maybe it's the umpires who were subtly swayed by not wanting to anger the home crowd and be booed on close call. So there's just such a body of work over the decades of people trying to answer those questions that for geeks like us who are interested in the minutiae of sports, we just devoted this segment to talking about whether the zombie runner has slightly, slightly made home teams a little bit less likely to win in extra innings. And I'm just, I'm interested in that. I'm interested in why that would be.

So for the kind of people who get into the nitty gritty, I guess it's given us a lot to talk about over the decades. Yeah. So Rob, we will link to your article on the show page. Thank you for looking into this so diligently and for carrying on the campaign against the zombie runners. We are just voices wandering in the wilderness, crying out and largely being ignored. But I'm glad that we're keeping it up. Yeah. And thanks for the idea of looking at the minor league teams, even though the answer

wasn't quite as satisfactory as we might have wanted. Yeah, again, I don't know if I have a horse in this race. I definitely am anti-zombie runner, but I just, I don't know how much this affects my anti. I'm already all the way anti. Right, you can't be, you know, and for you, you're animated about it, Ben. Yeah, and I don't think this is something that will really help the cause. I don't think this will produce a lot of converts, even if we could convincingly demonstrate that it did subtly suppress home field advantage. I don't think that would change a lot of minds and switch people over into the anti-zombie runner camp. So it may be neutral. It's just, it's kind of curious. And I was curious. So before we let you go, Rob, that was not the only piece you wrote last week. You wrote a piece headlined, The Man Who Got the Disabled List Changed to the Injured List, which shared a little bit of history that I was not aware of.

And judging by the comments and the Twitter reaction, a lot of other people were not aware of. So can you tell us why you wrote about this? There was a specific reason why you did it now and why you got interested, how you got interested in this change from the DL to the IL, which we've all become accustomed to. Yeah, and I was not aware of the history either until this event occurred. I have a cousin, until this event occurred. I have a cousin, first cousin once removed, who lived in Boston, and I used to see him once a year or so. And he had a disability. He was a Paralympian,

was on the U.S. Paralympic soccer team twice, and was a disability advocate. And that's pretty much what I knew of him, of my cousin Ben Wolf. His wife, also a disability advocate, is a physician, but was an eight-time winner of some international marathons in the wheelchair division. And was also a Paralympian. And they have two young and adorable kids. And Eli, who was only 45, tragically died in April. And when I was at his memorial service, somebody mentioned that he had gotten Major League Baseball to change the disabled list to the injured list. Major League Baseball to change the disabled list to the injured list. And so I asked about this, and the person who had mentioned this in her eulogy said that I should contact Billy Bean at MLB, who I think everyone listening is familiar with him and his role in MLB's DEI initiatives. Right. Not the YConnor's Billy Bean,

the Billy Bean without the E at the end. Right, right, right, the B-E-A-N run. And he told me of the history of this and that Eli had written him a letter, not emailed, but written him a letter in the fall of 2018 saying that he felt that the disabled list should not be called that. The reason being that, and this is a name that baseball has used since 1915, if I remember right.

And virtually every other sport, it's an injured list or an injured reserve list, but baseball uses the terminology disabled. And Eli wrote that the term, to call it a disabled list, to say that players can't perform because they're disabled, implies that people with disabilities can't perform athletic feats. And obviously that's not true. He and his wife, for example Millions of others are examples. And he said that injured would be a better moniker for the injured list. I talked to another disability advocate who had worked with Eli on a number of initiatives. And he told me that Eli had sent a similar letter to MLB earlier during Bud Selig's term. And it was politely answered, but nothing came of it. And what Billy said, the difference this time was, for one thing, this was something that had

to get approved by the Players Association as well as by MLB. And this was between CBA negotiations. So the lines of communication were pretty open and congenial. And Billy said that when he brought it to Dan Halen and to Rob Manfred, they were very supportive. What the other person I spoke with who worked with Eli, a retired professor named Ted Fay, told me is that Billy was the difference in that he advocated for this. He just said, this makes a lot of sense. And this was not a long, drawn-out process.

He got the letter late in 2018. And in early 2019, Jeff Passon broke the news that MLB was going to change the disabled list to the injured list. And there's an article you can access on Sabre that talks about some of the online reactions to this. And as I said in my article, you'd get exactly the kind of reactions from exactly the type of the people you'd expect to react that way. But by and large, this went pretty smoothly. But by and large, this went pretty smoothly. And Eli and Billy and other people at MLB kind of worked with teams, worked with broadcast crews, just it make sense to call it the injured list, not only is it given the argument that Eli said the right thing to do, but it's a simple thing

to do. And it's, I think, a meaningful change, one that I was not aware of its genesis. I didn't really understand the import of it, but one I think that makes the sport better. really understand the import of it, but one I think that makes the sport better. Yeah, I think so too. It's such a simple change. I mean, it was like flipping a switch, okay, it's called this and not that now. And obviously there was a bit of an adjustment period, a hundred years of habit of calling it one thing and then having to learn to call it a slightly different thing. And you still hear people in the wild will call it the DL from time to time, just out of ingrained habit, you grew up with that term. But it's the simplest thing. And if you just get used to it, then you don't even think about it anymore,

really. It just becomes the new term, the new habit. So it's just such a simple thing. And as you said, just a more accurate term and a less exclusionary term. Just a nice change overall and maybe, you know, a high impact one relative to the effort it took to implement it. as other sports do use injured and injured reserve as the vernacular. I mean, you're right that there was a transition, but I was struck at the time by how quickly, you know, there are still times where you'll turn on a Guardians game and the visiting broadcast will slip up and refer to them by their old name. But I don't really see that happen very often anymore. And I think because we already had, you know, for folks who are fans of other sports, they already had this frame of reference. It was a really easy shift. And yeah, there were some trolls at the time, but even that response, I think, was fairly muted when you think about how that segment of the MLB fan base sometimes reacts to any kind of change that's perceived to be progressive or toward greater inclusion. Right.

Right. Yeah. And I guess also just the fact that he made the same appeal, I assume that the letter he wrote both times was probably pretty similar. worked one time and did not work the other time just as a product of, you know, not his appeal, presumably, or of the righteousness of the cause, but just because maybe it was society as a whole had changed in some ways that made people more receptive to it at MLB. But it also might just be that there was literally one person who had a job and a position there to do something about that and to be open to that who was not there previously, which I guess that position existing is a product of that larger societal change. in place who would have that be something kind of in their remit or something that they would be receptive to that could make all the difference between something being embraced or not. Well, condolences on Eli's loss or the loss of Eli, but I'm glad you could bring that story to light. It's a nice legacy. It is. I just, you know, I'm sorry I found out about it the way I did, obviously. Well, thanks so much for joining us today to talk about both of these things and to

do research into the zombie runner. And we're always happy to have you on. Always enjoy reading you and highly recommend that others do as well. Well, thanks. Great talking to you two again. Appreciate it. All right. So we will wrap up with the pass blast, which comes to us from David Lewis, who is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. Also comes to us from 2013. The league bans home plate collisions, David writes. At the 2013 winter meetings,

Major League Baseball's playing rules committee voted to prohibit potentially dangerous collisions on plays at the plate. Then San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy, a former catcher himself, made a presentation to the committee in support of the rule change. He summed his position up well, saying, I think it's better to be proactive before we carry a guy off the field paralyzed and think, why didn't we change this rule? Some supported the rule on principle but worried about its implementation and how it might affect how the game was played. Then Tigers manager Brad Osmus, also a former catcher, said, I'm a little bit old school in the sense that I don't want to turn home plate into

just another tag play. This is a run. This is the difference between possibly making the playoffs and not making the playoffs. It should matter a little bit more. In my mind, I'd love to see something that if there's a collision, any hit above the shoulders, maybe the runner is out. I don't know how it's going to pan out. Mets GM Sandy Alderson spoke on behalf of the rules committee explaining why the proposed change came about and why they voted to support it. Ultimately, what we want to do is change the culture of acceptance that these plays are ordinary and routine and an accepted part of the game, that the risks and individual risks, the costs associated in terms of health and injury, just no longer warrant the status quo. The new rule, David concludes, while not fully worked out by the time of the winter meetings

vote, sought to treat plays at the plate like tag plays at other bases. The catcher would need to provide the runner a lane and would risk an obstruction penalty if he did not. Similarly, the runner would be penalized if he chose to barrel into the catcher instead of taking the provided lane. You can make those plays without putting your body on the line, Angels manager Mike Socha, another former catcher, said.

I think that's what the game is trying to get to. After passing through the rules committee, the collision rule was approved by the MLBPA and was used beginning with 2014 spring training. Good rule. Glad we have it. Still sometimes confusion about this rule, right? About the way it's applied, but also I think the way it's understood by fans sometimes, like did you have possession and are you allowed to be there or not? so i think there's still a little bit of uncertainty sometimes about what is actually allowed but we've definitely cut back significantly on the dangerous kind of complaint collisions and i don't miss them

so happy to have this rule yeah i i think um they get beat up enough back there without having to risk such a terrible, you know, career altering, in some cases potentially career ending and certainly damaging to them as people. So it's good. This is good. Yeah. to say that even though people refer to this as the Buster Posey rule, there was a gap between this rule being instituted and Buster Posey's injury, which happened in May 2011. And again, this was very late 2013. And obviously, the Posey injury, I think, contributed to the acceptance of all of this and the idea that, okay, maybe we should do something about this. And you had Bruce Bochy, who is Posey's manager, making a case for it. Although even Posey at the

time said that he wasn't supporting it just to protect Posey or because of Posey, that Bochy actually remembered a different catcher collision with Gary Bennett, whom Bochy managed with the Padres in 2003. And Brian Jordan, the former football player, just ran into Bennett at the plate. So it was not just one injury that prompted Bochy to support this or for MLB to change it. And in fact, as Grant has noted, the proximate cause was to Alex Avila. Yeah.

has noted the proximate cause was to Alex Avila. Yeah, Alex Avila was injured in the ALCS that year, and that really started or renewed the conversation. It doesn't help that Buster Posey's injury is specifically mentioned in MLB's glossary, Entry on Collisions at Home Plate. Right, yeah, right. So, you know, much like we might be fighting an uphill battle both against the zombie runner rule as a rule the Eddie Stanky draft, which was episode 1813, that was a whole episode where we drafted rules that were prompted primarily by one player or one person. But it gets really kind of squishy because it's like, was it actually that one person or was

that part of a larger trend? And after the fact, it just gets associated with the famous player, larger trend and after the fact, it just gets associated with the famous player, oh, Buster Posey. We know Buster Posey should be a Hall of Famer, probably will be, whereas Alex Avila, maybe not the household name that Buster Posey was and is. So it's like after the fact, hey, 2011, 2013, that's basically the same, whereas at the time, that's a couple of years. It seems like a long time. But decades or centuries later, it's like, yeah, that's the same time, essentially. But it's interesting because

Andrew McCutcheon recently spoke up to advocate a similar rule for base blocking at other bases. So this was something that he said just earlier this month that he feels that there needs to be another rule change for other bases because players are running much more with the steal rules and everything, the pick off and step off rules. are up, although it does seem that they're, if anything, going down slightly as the season goes on, not going up. You know, you wondered, like, who's going to just figure this out as the season goes along? Will runners exploit this even more or will defenses manage to counter it? It seems like, if anything, the latter is happening more than the former. But the point is, more running going on.

And so McCutcheon said it's inevitable that someone is going to get hurt. The only thing we can do is slide cleats first and possibly injure the fielder or injure both of us. If MLB is all about preventing injuries like they do at the plate with the catcher, why isn't there a rule that says if you're receiving the ball on a steel attempt, you can't block the base? So this is really about the idea of like lowering the leg and just kind of blocking the base with a knee, you know, with something hard that the runner could run into. And McCutcheon, this article mentions the Posey injury and the catcher rule and does sort of lump those two together. But McCutcheon using the same rationale that was mustered at the time in support of that catcher rule he said it seems like something really bad has to happen before a rule change

that makes perfect sense can take place why not do something now to protect the players and also maintain the integrity of the game to me it makes perfect sense to say you can't block the base that's it if the throw takes you there okay I get it but you can't intentionally camp out in the lane. So we'll see whether McCutcheon speaking out in support of this is enough to really get it on the radar during the offseason. The committee decided to monitor the impact of the extra room for runners provided by the larger base and revisit whether to act after the 2023 season. So I guess this is something that was being considered even before McCutcheon's comments. Yeah, I think that unfortunately it often takes takes something catastrophic happening, but if we can be a little bit proactive and forward-looking, it's not hard to anticipate the downside scenarios here, right?

The worst-case scenarios. They're easy to sort out, so let's get ahead of it maybe. Yeah. If I beat the throw and the fielder is already there, he said, and I'm sliding, there is nothing I can do except be out. My only option is to take the other guy out. That's all I have. I just don't understand how there isn't a rule there.

So there might be some infielders who had a conflicting perspective with the outfielder and runner, Andrew McCutcheon. But, you know, he said, I think about it all the time, especially now with my knees and my ankle. Other teams know that too. You might have somebody who says, I know his ankle is bothering him, so I'm going to drop my leg in front of the base. If he slides, maybe I can get him out of the game. That could happen. Someone could be thinking that way or almost anyone knowing that they have something that hurts and trying to target that. Although I'm sure that that does happen. Hopefully not to Andrew McCutcheon. But I guess on the home plate collisions, maybe it's even more imperative because A, the stakes involved with a run scoring or not, but also you maybe have time to work up a fuller head of steam if you're running from first or from second and you're coming all the way around, right? And maybe you have more momentum once you finally barrel into home plate than you do when you're sliding into second.

Like there's not, I guess you have time to reach your top speed. I just, I don't know whether the same force would apply there, I guess. Plus catchers wear protective equipment that middle infielders don't. They could just park themselves at the plate with impunity and runners could come in at greater ramming speed, posing less danger to the catchers, but maybe more to themselves. But, you know, it's always, it's been dangerous out there for the pivot men. ramming speed posing less danger to the catchers, but maybe more to themselves. But it's always, it's been dangerous out there for the pivot men too, for the second baseman. Like historically speaking, they have not aged so well relative to some other positions aside from catcher. And a theory on that is that it's because of like double plays and everything. And

there've been some rules changes on that too. But McCutcheon advocating for another one here. So for all we know, future pass blasters will look back at 2023 as the year when they changed this rule about sliding. Yeah. Ben back here. Just wanted to add that the changes to pivots

and slide rules that I referenced a second ago, that was in 2016. MLB mandated that slides on potential double plays will require runners to make a bona fide attempt to reach and remain on the base. So runners were newly prohibited from altering their route to the base just to initiate contact with a fielder. That was reviewable and was prompted by a couple of controversial slides late in the previous season. It was also, I suppose, important to add that, because replay review at the same time expanded to include the neighborhood play. So you couldn't just faint at second base on a pivot anymore.

You could be caught doing that now. And so if you weren't going to give the pivot people that chance to dance out of the way, then you also had to make it tougher for runners to try to take them out. So one rules change maybe begets another, and maybe that will happen again after this season. All right, well, here's a roundup of the results of those pitchers who returned to action on Monday. Liam Hendricks pitched the eighth inning for the White Sox.

He gave up a couple runs, but he got a great reception. And in that A's Braves game, Paul Blackburn gave up one run over four innings. Michael Soroka gave up four runs over six innings. And the little old A's beat the Braves seven to two. What did I tell you? All they needed was getting Paul Blackburn back. Also, here's a follow-up for you from episode 1996. You may recall I advocated for greater prevalence of exit speeds being displayed on baseball broadcasts.

Pitch velocities are ubiquitous. You see them on every single pitch. And I thought, hey, it might be information overload for some, but I'd kind of like to see exit speeds on batted balls because every now and then there's a situation where I see a ball off the bat and I think, how hard was that hit? Is that going to get out?

There's only a few seconds of suspense, but if I saw that number and I saw that it was hit hard enough and seemed to be hit at the right trajectory, then I might have greater confidence that, yeah, that ball's gone. Well, here's something I heard on the Angels broadcast on Saturday. This is talking about the home run that Brandon Drury hit the game before. It was opposite field. It was his first home run in 16 games. I asked him, did you know you got it? Because it carried well to right field. He said at first, no. And then he looked at the video board and he saw the exit velo of 105. And he said, oh yeah, I got it. How about that? In real time, running down the line with the ball in the air,

he caught the exit velo. Yeah. Most hitters realize that when they exit velocity plus the launch angle, it should mean a home run. And that's exactly what it was for Brandon Drury. So they showed footage of Drury breaking out of the box and you could see his eyes drift over to some display board and take in the exit speed. So I'm just saying, if even a hitter consults the exit speed in the seconds after he hits a ball to see if it's going to get out, well, as an audience, we have a lot less information

than the hitter does. I think it would be useful to see sometimes in an unobtrusive way, just there if you want it. Maybe Brandon Drury would agree. And finally, no spoilers for the succession heads out there, but some of you saw a viral TikTok in the days leading up to the finale that predicted how the series would end based on a purported baseball connection to one of the characters, Tom Wamsgans. According to this video, which was everywhere, supposedly Tom Wamsgans was named after Bill Wamsgans, the baseball player for Cleveland a century or so ago who recorded an unassisted triple play in the World Series, the only one of its kind. And so according to this theory, that name connection

was a prediction about the end of the series. And this alleged connection had been mentioned a couple of years earlier, but it caught everyone's eye this time with all the interest in the series finale. And I always thought it was sort of suspect because the names are spelled differently. Whamsgams had two S's at the end. Whamsgams just has one. And also most of the makers of Succession are British. Are they going to know a baseball player from a century ago and make that obscure reference to the 1920 World Series? And the answer is no, they were not. And they did not. So Stefan Fatsis of Slate and the Hang Up and Listen podcast actually reached out to a Succession executive producer who said that, no, there was nothing to that. When they picked that name, they had no idea where their story was going to go.

The name was just the name of a relative of a Succession staff member. So there was no substance to this rumor. It did do wonders for Bill Whamsgam's awareness. It was kind of fun to think that there might be an obscure baseball connection in Succession, which, of course, is a baseball show and was one as of the very first episode, when there was what, in retrospect, was a pretty strange baseball scene that Sam Miller recently wrote about. Anyway, you can't trust everything you hear on TikTok about baseball connections in prestige TV shows. However, you can trust Effectively Wild to keep cranking out podcasts. And we do that with assistance from our listeners who support us on Patreon at

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