Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2014: Clocks and Bonds

Episode Date: June 3, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s 500th EW episode, the architectural concept of the “Thomasson,” a forthcoming HBO documentary about Barry Bonds, the rebound of Juan Soto, common misconceptions about WAR, the declines of Noah Syndergaard and Kris Bryant, the NL West, MLB broadcasting Padres games, an MLB-MLBPA ad deal, a rules update, […]

Baseball is a simulation, it's all just one big math equation. You're all about these stats we've compiled, cause you listen to Effectively Wild. With Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley, come for the ball, banter's free. The ball banters free. Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big conversation. Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2014 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I am reliably informed by listener and Patreon supporter Chris Hannell, who keeps track of these things, that this is your 500th episode of Effectively Wild, including your guest appearances prior to becoming a host. So, happy 500th. Thank you. Wow. That's surprising to me. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. Surprisingly high or low?

High. Yeah, it's a lot. You've been doing this for a while. Yeah, I mean, that's true. And I was not like an infrequent guest, but that means that like I've been on almost a quarter of the episodes. Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. How about that?

You're one of the four hosts and you've been on almost a quarter of the episodes. Soon you will have been. So, yeah. Congrats. Happy to have you. Oh, hey. Hey, thanks, Pat. You know, I'm happy to be here. It's nice. It's good. Congrats. Happy to have you. Oh, hey. Hey, thanks, Ben. You know, I'm happy to be here.

It's nice. It's good. Yeah. So, we haven't recorded for a few days. So, we've got a grab bag of topics to discuss here. I learned something this week about baseball and also about the wider world, courtesy of a Twitter thread that we were copying on by listener one. And this might be common knowledge in the art and architecture world, but I believe

it was new to me unless somehow I knew it at some point and then forgot it. There was a 99% invisible episode about this several years ago. But there is a player named Gary Thomason, or there was. He was an MLB player, mostly in the 70s from 1972 to 1980, and had not the most distinguished career. And after he finished up his big league career, which was largely with the Giants, although he was with the Yankees in 1978, won a World Series ring. But after his career, he went to Japan. He went to NPB. And in 1981, he became the highest paid player there. He signed a three-year, $1.2 million deal with the Yomiuri Giants. And he didn't do so great. He did okay in his first year, but he struck out a lot

of times, 132 times, which I think was four fewer than the Central League record at the time. And he sat out the last week of the year and didn't break the record but came close. And he was nicknamed the giant human fan because of how often he struck out. Not super nice, I guess. But he did at least hit for a little power and wasn't just, you know, a complete non-contributor that year. And then the following year, he got hurt and he really didn't hit at all. 506 OPS, played in 47 games, and that was the end of Gary Thomason's even less distinguished NPB career. less distinguished NPB career, but he has gone on to have a sort of second life because an artist in Japan named Genpei Akasagawa, he coined this term called the Thomason, which is what he named

a feature of the urban landscape that is basically like a leftover artifact, just kind of an architectural leftover that is still maintained, but no longer serves any purpose. So like a stairway to nowhere, you know, like the thing that the stairway is going up to is blocked off, but the stairway is still there and maybe it's still maintained or a useless bridge that's like a bridge over a dried up river or something like there's no need for a bridge anymore but the bridge is still there and so it's still maintained or a useless doorway so it's blocked and you can't actually go into it and he kind of chronicled these things and he was looking for a term and so so he nicknamed them, coined the term the Thomason after Gary Thomason because this artist was a big baseball fan. And it struck him that that is what Gary Thomason was during his Yomuri Giants career.

like an intact person object that was sort of obsolete and kind of useless, but still like maintained, still present, still upkeep on the person. So, yeah. So, this is like a commonly used term now in the architectural world. I don't know how many people know that this is the etymology of it, but maybe a lot of them do, because if you just heard that a useless staircase was called a Thomason, you might Google to find out why, right? And then you would know, which I do know. But it's an eponym, I guess. It's like a thing named after a person's name.

And it's kind of creative and also kind of harsh, I guess, to poor Gary Thomason. So there are various stories that come out about this. And often it will say that he declined comment for the story, which I guess makes sense, right? Probably doesn't love this. No. At least he lives on. At least he's known to a new generation, but not for a very complimentary reason. Yeah.

I mean, I thought the human fan thing was worse enough. I didn't know it could get worse. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine you're like, oh, I'm walking through my neighborhood. I'm noticing this useless building. You know what it reminds me of? This person whose career they worked very hard on. he was for the Yomiuri Giants, but still kind of creative. I guess it's an apt term once you do the

legwork to figure out what it means. Can you imagine you get another interview request and you're just like, no, not again. I have a stated policy. I do not need to be reminded of my own failings as a, I would probably start to get kind of nasty when I was called about that. You know, I'd start to be, I'd start to be rude. And I might preface my rudeness by saying, look, I know that, you know, you didn't ask me every other time I've been asked about this, but also, I'm going to be a little rude to you right now. I'm going to indulge in some rudeness. Yeah. So I'm going to be a little rude to you right now. I'm going to indulge in some rudeness. Yeah. There's one story I found that quoted the guy who came up with this term.

According to Akasagawa, who's a huge baseball fan, Thomason, quote, had a fully formed body and yet served no purpose to the world. But just like those fences and banisters he found around Tokyo, the man was still being maintained. Wow. Yikes. He may have served man was still being maintained. Wow. Yeah. Yikes. He may have served some purpose to the world. Yeah. Perhaps he didn't serve a purpose to the Yomiuri Giants.

Right, sure. But, like, you don't need to overstate that case, I don't think. Goodness. Well, that's my little tidbit about baseball and the world that I learned today. Yeah, geez. I mean, it's sure something. Also, documentary news. We were talking about some baseball documentaries recently, and we mentioned, I think, that a Barry Bonds documentary might be a subject that we would be intrigued by.

And what do you know? There is a Barry Bonds documentary on the way from HBO. And it's executive produced by Ezra Edelman of O.J. Made in America. And also the creators of 3030 and the executive producers of The Last Dance. So I guess you could reduce this to it's The Last Dance, but for Barry Bonds, sort of. Except. He's not participating, right? Right. Yes, you could reduce this to it's the last dance, but for Barry Bonds, sort of, except. He's not participating, right? Right.

Currently, he is not slated to participate. The press release says that the opportunity for Bonds to actively participate and share his firsthand experiences remains available. So if Barry Bonds wants to be in the Barry Bonds documentary, then they're open to that. But currently, he has not agreed to be in the Barry Potts documentary, then they're open to that. But currently, he has not agreed to be in it, it sounds like. And I guess that differentiates it from The Last Dance, right? Because Michael was not only all over that, but had a hand in creating it, which is often the case with these sports docs these days. Yeah, very often that participation is front and center and part of the selling point

of the doc. And, you know, as we noted last time, it's not that you can't create something that sort of honestly engages with the subject of the documentary, but it does raise some important questions about objectivity and, you know, how you can maintain sort of an appropriate distance from the subject and what have you. I think that I saw, I'm hesitant, even more than usual, to like cite a tweet these days just because it's really, Ben, it's really going badly over there. I don't know if you noticed that. But I think that I saw that, it doesn't sound like Barry Bonds is super stoked on this. I wouldn't be surprised. might look like, but it doesn't sound like he's keen, at least at this juncture. So it'll be interesting to see how that might differentiate it from other, as you noted, docs that we've

seen lately where the subject has been front and center. Yeah. The release said that it will include a diverse cast of influential figures from Barry Bonds' life and career. So, of course, if they're allies of Bonds, friends of Bonds, I don't know whether he will discourage their participation if he is really dead set against this. But if they do get a lot of people who covered Bonds and played with Bonds, I'd be into this. I would like for him to participate and be open and honest about things, right? I mean, that would be the most intriguing to me if he were involved in something, not necessarily in a creative producing capacity,

like having Final Cut or anything like that, but just being in it and just wanting to set records straight or come clean about things. That would be really interesting. But even if he doesn't participate, it could still be interesting depending on who they talk to and what they unearth here. And's people who are dead or retired or their careers are over. But also, I wonder, just because earlier eras, baseball was a bigger deal on the national stage and baseball players were bigger national celebrities. And so maybe it's easier to get a green light to do a doc on

Barry Bonds than it would be to do a doc about a player today other than perhaps Shohei Otani. So I wonder whether this wave of baseball documentaries we're seeing will be like a last gasp, like hearkening back to a time when baseball figures were national celebrities in the way that could command a documentary on HBO. celebrities in the way that could command a documentary on HBO or whether it's just the passage of time. And so we will get documentaries about today's players too once 20 or 30 years go by. Anyway, I'm into this. I'm into the idea of an A-Rod documentary and I'm into the idea of a Barry Bonds documentary contingent on how that goes. The A-Rod one, at least it was reported that he was interested in having a documentary. And I don't really know. There's a whole thing about him having gum disease that came out the other day. You know, he will not be a silent sufferer.

No, I guess not. But yeah, and Jeter had his documentary, too. And so the news after that was like, well, Jeter had one. A-Rod wants one, too. Oh, of course. And I said I'd be more interested in the A-Rod doc if he actually really got down and dirty and kind of had his sort of, you know, self-evaluation and was honest about everything. But are you actually going to get that from A-Rod or Bonds? Who knows? Probably not. We can look at a variety of sort of, you know, when you're sort of assessing the profile

of Bonds, right? And his legacy both within the game and as a celebrity and a sports figure, like it's not universally good and it's not universally bad. It's a complicated picture. And I think that it is one that is worth really trying to grapple with and get your arms around. And I don't know, you know, where I fall on the participation aiding or detracting from that goal. I think it really depends on the subject. hard for me to say but i liked like feels like a weird word to describe the oj doc which is a rough watch but a worthwhile one you know obviously thankfully this subject isn't as tragic but there are you know dark and and uncomfortable parts of his life um even away from the steroid use um arguably that say more about him I might offer than even the steroid use does. So I want it to really try to grapple with all of that.

Just like I am curious how it talks about how he was covered because some of that coverage, I think, was sort of a mess of his own making just because of the relationship he had with the press. But also some of that coverage, I think, was sort of a mess of his own making just because of the relationship he had with the press. But also, some of that coverage definitely was gnarly and pointed and not flattering in a way that didn't really have anything to do with him. It had a lot to do with reporters feeling tricked. So, I think it's a, you know, it's all a very, it's a soup with a lot of ingredients. What is the metaphor I'm trying to search for here? Anyway, I hope that it does justice to his life, the place, and sort of position he holds within the culture broadly, within baseball specifically.

Because I think that telling that story with all of its nuances is worthwhile. And I think that there's evidence that this creative team has managed to do that before. And so, I'll be interested to see like what, you know, does this inspire him if he ultimately decides not to participate, does it inspire him to sort of give his own answer and create his own documentary? We've seen some of that, right? Where not the winning time was a documentary, which I think people kind of got confused by. But right, like we saw the dramatization of that era of the Lakers on HBO, and that has inspired other more theoretically documentary minded pursuits by the people who lived through that era of Lakers basketball as sort of an answer to something that they felt didn't do justice

and didn't represent them fairly. So it'll be interesting to see kind of what the, the ripple effects of that are and like who I'm always fascinated when they're like competing documentaries by who is present in both and absent from one versus the other. Um, so, you know, there's a lot that could be unpacked there. But it's sort of, I don't know. It's always funny when news like this comes out because I'm like, we don't have anything to react to yet. And if what they are endeavoring to do is something as well produced and sort of deeply realized as the OJ doc. Like, we probably won't see this for a while, right? Yeah, probably.

I hope they take their time with it. Yeah. Yeah, it's probably years on the horizon, especially if his participation is, you know, theoretically still possible. I imagine that at some point there's a fork in the road where they have to, like, do a version with him him or without him and then they just have to move on. So anyway. Well, I'm sure we'll discuss it whenever we get to see it.

Oh, yeah. You know, that'll be 500 episodes from now. It could be. Maybe we'll get dueling Bond stocks like we got dueling Fire Festival talks. But we'll see. So I wanted to mention one player who has righted the ship and a couple who are sinking with it, seemingly. Juan Soto, we haven't mentioned him lately. I mentioned him when he started slowly and mentioned him when he seemed to heat up. his stats to the point that his numbers now are essentially the same as they were prior to last

season, just career to date. Like he's basically Juan Soto again, more or less. He has a 154 WRC plus. I think it was even higher than that a day or two ago. And if you look at his first four seasons, let's say through 2021, he had a 156 WRC Plus through those years. So despite his extremely slow start, he has rebounded. And not only the slow start, but the slow-ish second half that he had with San Diego after the trade last year is more or less back to being Juan Soto. I mean, he's walked like 22% of the time. He's got the isolated power up over 200. Again, the average is higher, not like winning a batting title high, but 259 above average at least.

And obviously with as much as he walks, the OPP is up there. He's slugging almost 500. So more or less looking like himself. And the expected stats are still even stronger than the actual stats thus far, which suggests that he might have some room to improve. So it doesn't look like the disaster scenario where Juan Soto can't hit for some reason in San Diego or the pitch clock is his Achilles heel somehow. Right, yeah. Doesn't look like that's going to happen. No. Looks like he's going to be okay.

Yeah. Yeah, he really just appears to be himself again. It's, you know, you look at, I don't have to like tell our listeners how war works, but it is impressive when you're looking at sort of where he stacks up league-wide from a war perspective, because the rest of his profile is like still the same, where it's like, you know, he's not an incredible fielder. He's not an incredible base runner, but he is now 15th. He's tied with a couple of guys, right? He has the same, the literal same war as, Estrada's still on here, that's amazing.

Nimmo, Bogarts, Corbin Carroll, you know, the undefeatable, no, that's not true, they've lost games, but the really very good now, Diamondbacks, everybody's saying so. And, you know, he's within 0.1 wins of trout and goldschmidt and he's not really doing much in terms of his defense or his base running but he's just hitting really well and has a 154 wrc plus and you know that'll play it'll play wow he's really he's really walking sometimes when you say like a guy's walking as much as he's striking out, you're like, oh, no. But then you're like, wow, he's walking 21% of the time.

Right. Actually, it's good. It's fine. Yeah. And there was some concern that maybe he was being too selective or too passive. Sure. He was walking so much he wasn't swinging at hittable pitches that he could really crush. But he seems to have figured it out.

And he's won Soto. I was never worried about him because he's clearly like a preternatural offensive talent, right? So if things were going to change a little bit, then he could roll with those changes eventually after a little adjustment period. So now I guess we're all back on Juan Soto extension slash eventual free agency watch with him.

But good that he's back. And the Padres have even hit kind of well with Henderson's scoring position lately. So that's heartening. And you just said that you don't need to tell our listeners how war works. And I think that is probably true for a lot of our listeners. But man, being exposed to the comments in the Facebook group by people who are still swarming to this controversial post about Mike Trout passing Ken Griffey Jr. in baseball reference war. It's just hundreds and hundreds of comments still coming in, many by people who were not

members of the group and were somehow just attracted to this, like, moths to a flame. I don't know how they saw it. But if they're not members in the group, then as a moderator, I get a notification to approve their comment or deny it. And so many of the comments evince a lack of understanding of how war works. And many people suggesting, aside from just the, this a made-up stat by nerds or whatever, which that's always a strange criticism to me, the made-up stat thing. Because, like, all of baseball is made up. It's all made up.

I guess I see what they mean in that it's not tracking, like, a one-to-one event on the field. Right. Someone singled and ended up at first base. That's a single. the field. Someone singled and ended up at first base. That's a single. We can kind of count those, except even that gets sort of squishy and nebulous with errors and who knows what else. But I sort of see what they mean. But the whole exercise is sort of made up. So really, the criticism that I've seen often here is that Mike Trout's teammates are bad and thus that is inflating his war because it depends on the replacements, I guess, on the actual team, which is, of course, a misunderstanding of how war works. That's not how it works, Ben.

No, in fact, that's a big part of the way it works is that it is consistent across teams so that in theory, at least, you can compare people across teams with a consistent baseline, right? I mean, I guess I understand why you would think that if you did no research. Sure. Oh, sure. Yeah. There are a lot of people leaving comments like, I still don't know how this works. Like, I still don't get it. I can't calculate it. It's like, look, you can look this stuff up. It's not that hard to find a convenient explanation. And you may not be able to calculate it all yourself. But that doesn't mean it's invalid. I mean, the formula is out there. The actual calculations can get a little hairy. But that's because it's a little more complex. And

we need a little more complex stat to answer a more complex question, I think. But I don't know. The whole idea that it's just completely made up always just throws me for a loop because it's obviously based on all the stuff that's happening on the field. It's not like some entirely theoretical construct, really. I mean, the idea of the replacement player is semi-theoretical. We're not talking about a specific individual player, but it is based on historically who the replacement players have been,

like who fits that definition, the guys who are just kind of the best called up, the freely available talent. And you can classify that based on just who has been that in the past and how they've performed. But it's not just completely imaginary. It's based on the hits and it's based on the outs and it's based on the defense and all of that. And there's different levels of precision with some of those things, but it's really based on what they do on the field. So bad. I struggle, you know. Within every managing editor of FanGraphs, there are two wolves, you know, because, is that how that expression goes?

I don't know. There are two wolves, you know. I think it's really important for folks who view the game the way that we do, who look to metrics like war to help them understand baseball and think, help everyone more accurately describe baseball, to have humility about advanced stats. Like, I think that's very important because it is, even now, even post-Moneyball, even with Major League Baseball as an entity, like, heavily invested in stat cast and, you know, a purveyor of stats and a maintainer of savants. I think it's really important for us to have humility around these questions because we don't want to assume a greater engagement and understanding of something like war or even something like WRC Plus or OPS Plus

than is really present in the sort of general population. is really present in the sort of general population. And I think that if our goal is to help people understand those statistics and also make a case for why they are more descriptive and give us a better understanding of the game, particularly as it's played now when teams are thinking about baseball from an analytical perspective, I think that you're always going to be more likely to persuade if you enter that conversation with some humility and without an

air of superiority, right? And that applies to a lot of things, not just baseball. And I think that the argument that baseball was played and thought of one way for a really long time, and that these advancements are relatively recent, like, explains why there's still this knowledge gap and is a compelling one, right? So, I think that, you know, you want to go into it not by being like, well, you dumb dummy, why are you such a dumb dummy? Because, like, you're not going to persuade and you are going to sound like a jerk because you're being one. So, there's that but then there's the part of me that's like you are voicing this befuddlement on the very instrument namely the internet that

holds for you the answers to your own befuddlement and so i find these you know understandings of moments like this to to war they war within me because i don't want to be a dick but i also want people to like google it's like when people will and you know like our argument here is maybe becoming less compelling because like google seems like it's worse now than it used to be so you know but i think the broad idea still stands where it's like, there's a glossary entry at Fangraphs. You know, there's a glossary entry at Baseball Reference. There's a glossary entry on MLB.com.

And so you come to me on this internet and you besmirch my stat when you could simply type into the space, to the nav bar, like, what is WAR? And then you're going to have to specify because, you know, we picked an acronym that means a different thing, but the answers are out there. They're out there for you. And I think that if you read all about it and you say, you know, I get it, but this isn't a compelling way for me to understand the game. That's fine. Like, on some level, there's the statistical conversation, right? There's the conversation about how do we, as people who understand the game this way, work to best quantify and articulate a stat like war and make sure that it is refined such that it adequately explains the game. And then there's like the aesthetic conversation that sits on top of that,

which is like, is this how you understand baseball? And I think it's fine for people not to look at war and find it compelling. I find it compelling. I think that if you take time to understand what it means and what its limitations are, that other people will find it compelling. But like at the end of the day, my project is not to like convert your fill-in relative who's slightly older than you here to the cause of war. And I don't have to because like teams understand baseball the way we understand baseball. They understand baseball the way we do

plus a bunch more data that we can't wrangle, right? And so, like, part of why you come to this conversation with humility is that you won. And it's so easy to be nice because you don't, like, baseball happens in the way that we understand it. And sometimes that's why baseball gets in its own way, right? So, like, come to it with humility. And also, like, why are we still – we should just close the thread, Ben. Maybe we should just close the thread. Maybe. I'm always fascinated by people who find our little corner of Facebook. I am so fascinated by how many people are in that group and do not listen to the podcast.

What is that? I still don't understand. And I feel free to voice this question and be flummoxed by it and kind of wonder, like, why are you here? Because they're not listening to the pod anyway, so I don't want to worry about bothering those people because they're not listening to me right now. Anyway. Well, it's a good discussion group. There are a lot of people who listen to the pod, and there are a lot of people who patiently answered these comments by people who were questioning things or didn't understand how things work and they laid it out for them, which was nice. So I don't know if that's the most

direct route to get answers to what does war mean or how does war work, but that's one way you could do it. So thanks to the patient question answers in the group. I was going to talk though about a couple of guys who are sub-replacement level or right around replacement level, depending on your war metric. One is Noah Sindergaard, who made some headlines this week for sort of a sad quote. He was quoted as saying, I would give away my hypothetical firstborn to be the old me, which is quite sad. On like a couple of levels. Yeah, right.

Right. Well, I don't want to laugh at it. It's sad. Hopefully it's easier to give away your hypothetical firstborn than your actual firstborn, right? I mean, that's the whole Rumpelstiltskin story, right? Right, man. Found out it's a tough one. You actually have one.

You don't want to give them away. But also, yeah, I mean, you probably should value certain things more highly than being able to throw a really fast fastball. But hey, it's a sign of how competitive he is and probably also how fun it was to be Thor and to be dominant and to throw really hard. But also, this seems to be revealing because it seems to be a consistent theme with him. Going back to, well, last talking about the glory days and how he was signing with the Dodgers because they hoped that they could help improve his performance, but not necessarily that they could turn back time and make him the Thor of old. And that seemed to be what he had his heart set on. And that's the thing. that we talked about the other day with Bumgarner being unwilling, unable to change his mindset, really, and adjust to how he was pitching with more diminished stuff. It sounds like

Syndergaard's got a little of that going on because when he was signed, this is back in December, he talked about, the pitches I threw last year, I just want to throw those away. I fully intend on being a different pitcher next year. I just want to throw those away. I fully intend on being a different pitcher next year. I see no excuse as to why I can't get back to 100 miles per hour. And even farther than that, just doesn't make any sense. And he was fairly effective last year. Like not in the way that he had been before, but he was getting guys out, you know? Yeah. Not in the way that he had been before, but he was getting guys out, you know?

Yeah. And yet he was unhappy and unsatisfied with that. He's like, no, I got to throw 100. I got to throw harder than 100. Arguably, that's how he got hurt in the first place, that mentality of wanting to throw as hard as he possibly could or harder than he possibly could. But to come back from the injury and feel the same way, like, I understand why it must be hard to let that go. But it happens to every pitcher eventually, right? I mean, not as suddenly maybe as it's happened to him.

And he's lost additional fastball speed this year, even relative to last year. But he's 30. And yeah, there's the occasional Jacob deGrom who throws harder every year. Right. Possibly to his detriment when it comes to- Yeah, you've been begging him, Ben. You've been begging him. I have been begging him, yes, to just take a little off. But he has been able to do it

whenever he's actually pitching, which is less and less often. But Syndergaard, he's just like, I'm one mechanical tweak away from getting it all back. Like he has talked about this and he's acknowledged that it seems to be a psychological thing. And he's had counseling and hypnotism

and all sorts of things to kind of get himself out of his head. But it seems like he believes that there is just, he's one tweak away from getting all of that velo back and being his old self. And I mean, look, I wish him the best. I hope that that's the case. But typically, it doesn't come back, right, when it goes. And it always goes at some point. And some pitchers make adjustments and others don't. And they just keep chasing this high that they can't recapture again. Yeah.

I'm sure people have tried to talk to him about this, but it's just like you got to let that version of you go. I mean, you're older now and you got hurt and it's not the same ligament anymore. And maybe you're not the same picture anymore and maybe you could still find a way to be effective but it's not by just trying to throw as hard as you possibly can or as hard as you used to because you can't do that anymore it's such an interesting blend of like being simultaneously willing to change right seeking the tools by which to change, right? Seeking the tools by which to change, but only in one direction, right? You know, when he was first talking about signing with LA, I was like, oh, this is different than Bumgarner because what he is asking for is like, I come before you in a position

of diminished performance and need to figure out how to, how to change, but he wasn't really trying to change. He was trying to get back and that's a different project, right? It's not like he went to the Dodgers and said, Hey, I don't have that anymore. There's not a hundred miles an hour in this arm. So what else can I do to be maybe not exactly that guy, but a more effective version of myself, one who can prolong a career and be an effective starter, pitch in a playoff rotation. And so I find this sort of blend of things to be so human. Like, I can't help but feel sympathy for it because I can only imagine, like you said, what it must have felt like to be that guy on the mount. Like, it had to have felt, you would have felt like a god. You would have felt invincible

being able to do what he did because what he did was, like, spectacular. Yeah. being able to do what he did because what he did was like spectacular yeah and so i can understand just like being so desperate to recapture that feeling and having probably on some level correctly and understanding that that exact feeling is only going to be enabled by something approximating the velocity that you used to have. There are plenty of pitchers who are really good who don't throw as hard as Syndergaard did. So I don't mean to say that the only means to that is Velo. Just like there are a bunch of pitchers who throw really hard and are bad.

It's not a perfect one-to-one, but his velocity and the way he commanded that fastball really did enable a lot of other stuff and unlock a lot else in his repertoire. So, I get it. And it makes you feel for the guy because it's not like – how old is Noah Syndergaard? He's only 30. Right. Like, he's – He's still this hulking guy. He probably looks at himself in the mirror and he's like –

Right. He's physically intimidating still. Yeah. And, you know, he he probably you're right when he looks at himself. He's like, well, I'm the same guy I was. But, you know, he does seem to have a I don't even know if humility is quite the right word, but like a self-awareness about where he is that does differentiate him, I think, importantly from Bumgarner, who was like aware that he wasn't as good, but was still, you know, Cinderhurst's out here talking about how he's the weakest link on the Dodgers, you know? Yeah. So, you're just like, ugh. You know, it makes you feel a way for him, but yeah, it's not going to be the same. No, you know, you're just not going to be that guy. And that doesn't mean that there isn't a version of him that can't be useful, but you have to, I think, accept where you are in your career

before you can start to really manifest the changes that you would need to in other parts of your repertoire that might buoy that performance in a different way. And the Dodgers aren't the only team that can help a pitcher do that, but they're certainly one of the teams that can. So I don't know that we have an answer to the question of what Syndergaard could look like at this stage in his career, because I don't know that he's quite accepted where he is such that he's kind of working in the changes he might otherwise need to. Yeah, you're right. He's like, I'm willing to change. I'm willing to do things differently in service of getting back to being the pitcher I was instead of I'm willing to change

and do things differently instead of being a different kind of pitcher who doesn't throw 100, but maybe finds other ways to be effective. So maybe not, again, not as dominant as he was, but still playoff caliber, perhaps, you know, who knows? We don't really know what's in there. Yeah. The other guy I was going to mention

who it surprised me to learn that he's only 31 is Chris Bryant. Yeah, back on the shelf, eh? Yeah. He fouled a ball off his foot and he's on the IL with a bruised left heel. So that doesn't sound super serious. He had been healthy and active this whole season, unlike last season when he had plantar fasciitis and back issues. And this year, he has been out there most of the year, but he has not played particularly well. He did, I think, finally hit a home run at Coors Field. So that was something. But he's only hit five of them in 214 plate appearances. He has an 87 WRC plus or OPS plus. And what I had not noticed is that

he seems to have lost a step, I guess you could say. In 2021, he was 71st percentile in sprint speed. Then 2022, amid all the injuries, he's down to 50th percentile. This year, 35th percentile. Amid all the injuries, he's down to 50th percentile. This year, 35th percentile. Yeah, and 17th percentile in outfield jump, according to StatCast. So I don't know if that is just the lingering after effects of last year's injuries or whether he's been nursing something else this season. But it seems like the raw tools have maybe taken a step back. And I was sort of surprised to see that he's actually only 31, but it's a weird trajectory to a career for him to play at an MVP level and actually be MVP in his first three seasons and win the World Series with

the Cubs. I mean, you couldn't ask for a better start to a career. And then just kind of unremarkable since then. I mean, he's had a couple all-star seasons since then. But he's had also some bad seasons, some lackluster seasons, more and more injuries. And now only 31. The Rockies obviously loved him and had pined for him for a long, long time and went and got him with a contract that I think surprised people when they signed him to it. And then he missed most of last season, hit fairly well when he was actually

active. But this year, I mean, he's already played more games and made more play appearances this year than he did all of last season. But the production has not really been there. So it's sort of a continued downward trajectory for Chris Bryant. Didn't really see things going this way for him. are times when not that there are so many guys where we can make a direct comp for brian but it's like we are in some ways more keenly aware of the drop-off when it is as dramatic and you're like this is a former you know rookie of the year an mvp and you know a guy who was so ready for the majors that like the cubs manipulated his service time and it made even the people who don't really care about service time manipulation be like, oh, come on, you know? So, like, it was such a dramatic fall and, you know, you situate him within the context of that Cubs core that really could, they won a World Series, so I don't want to say that they didn't do anything, but like the expectations were so high for that group and then after that World Series year kind of fell off, right? And so, you put him within the context of all of that, and it's—I keep thinking about, like, oh, I kind of know, like, how the first couple lines of, like, a Jay Jaffe Hall of Fame profile would go for Bryant, right?

And that's a weird thing to be able to say about a guy who is, you know, only in his early 30s. So, yeah, it is dramatic. I think it goes to show, like, the role that the injury stuff can play. You know, you wonder, in a guy who has dealt with the injury stuff and then had, like, a shortened 2020 that was also injury-plagued, and it's like like if that year had been normal like what would it have looked like would he have been you know able to sort of right the ship and post a normal healthy season it's a weird thing because you can point to specific stuff and say like it's injuries it's having you know the wrench of 2020 thrown in there but then you look at you know this year and you're like,

eh, it's probably not going to get better. He's not going to become more athletic. And he was signed by a team that rather than saying like, oh, we're going to kind of try to commit him to the part of the defensive spectrum where he is going to add the most value, they're like, no, this is our corner outfielder. And it's like, maybe that's the right choice because his fielding really did fall off as the injuries compounded. But like, then do you really give like a corner outfielder $182 million? And like, whatever.

The Rockies should give Chris Bryant money. It's nice to live in Denver. But it remains a kind of confounding signing. The Rockies are so weird, Ben. They sure are. And they are in last place in a division that is led, as we speak, by the Diamondbacks and the Dodgers, tied with identical 34-23 records. Equally good clubs, no difference between them. Not any bit of daylight between those teams.

Those are just two really good clubs that both have the best record in the National League. Man, Diamondbacks. The NL West race, it always turns out differently from what I expect. It's always, I guess the consistent theme is maybe the Dodgers being good and the Padres maybe not being as good as expected, but it turned into a three-team race with the Giants and the Padres in 2021 and then really was a two-team race because the Giants were so great that year. And this year, the Padres are still seven and a half games back of those two leaders with the Giants in between.

But yeah, Diamondbacks are really making this interesting. Also, speaking of the Diamondbacks, I remembered a bit of nonsense I wanted to ask you about. So, Ben, the other day, the Diamondbacks won on a Corbin Carroll walk-off. Yeah. And it was Corbin Carroll's first walk-off. Did you watch any of this? No. I should have sent you this before, but we're doing it live.

So, Corbin Carroll walks them off, right? And Corbin Carroll, famously very fast, famously a fast guy. He's a fast guy. He's a speed. He's a, you know, he's not a vroom vroom guy because he is a much better hitter than the theoretical vroom vroom guy. Because I think we understood the limitations of the vroom vroom guy. But vroom vroom, very fast. And so he walks them off and his teammates start to come to him. And I love to do, you know, the baseball men.

And they didn't take off Corbin Carroll's shirt, at least that I saw. But one famous thing that happens during walk-offs is oftenly that they get him as naked as he can be and still stay on broadcast television. And sometimes they are covered in stuff, you know, they get sticky Gatorade thrown on them or water or gum or seeds, you know, they become a receptacle of detritus and stick because that's apparently how men celebrate with each other. And so, I thought to myself, you know, like, if Corbin Carroll had an aversion to any of those potential substances or actions, he would just run away. And there are guys on his team who could catch him. You oh yeah they are fast i

guess as a team but they're a fast club generally i mean not all of them but like you know they have they have a number of fast guys on their club and so you know if someone really put their minds to it it's like you could have some fast guys chase after that fast guy although not all of the fast guys because you know alec thomas think, is still down in AAA. But, you know, like, Jake McCarthy was back, so you do a fast. Could go after him with whatever substance. But it was clear that Corbin Carroll likes his teammates and did not intend to flee. And, you know, I don't really actually know anything about him, but I thought, you know, you're choosing to stay because you have the means to go.

And that was kind of nice. Yeah. Well, if you're being celebrated, then I imagine that's nice. Yeah. But I would not, there's so much about me that is different from a baseball player, a professional one, or even just a normal one, but a professional one, especially. But I would really be mad in my heart about the Gatorade thing. It's so sticky, Ben. It's so sticky. And it's a weird color. They decided that people should drink blue drinks. I don't know why we decided that as a culture, but very blue drinks. And so, I wouldn't enjoy that part. I would be like, isn't there water,

just water, plain water to douse me with? Like it's sticky. And Corbin Carroll has long hair, you know? And potentially ill-advised facial hair if we're being totally candid about it. And so you would get in his beard and his hair and then he'd be sticky. And not for very long, right? No, the saving grace is, yeah, you're going to shower anyway, right? If you're the sideline reporter, though, who's sticking the microphone in Corbin Carroll's face, potentially, and you get Gatoraded, that's not so fun. And to be clear, the clip I saw did not include a dousing. So, I don't know if he was doused. I do think the ballplayers in general have gotten much better about waiting to throw the Gatorade until the sideline reporter has gotten out of the way. Like, there's like a real, I need some stat cast on that. Like,

there's real strategy around that. Seems like common courtesy not to douse the reporter. Because sometimes they're wearing like a leather jacket and then they got Gatorade on their leather jacket. It's going to ruin it. So anyway, that was me doing a couple minutes on Corbin Carroll and pro-social behavior and also stickiness. It's just like an un—it's not a pleasant—it's not pleasant, you know, to be sticky. No, it's not. And if you want to keep track of that NL West race, if you want to see if the Padres are going to come back, then you are watching them in a different place now than you were at the beginning of this week. You're not watching them on valleysally's anymore. Wow. What a segue. It was a little elaborate. There were a couple steps

to that one. No, I think that was very good. Give yourself some credit. That's what happens when you're on more than just 500 episodes. Yeah. You only get that sort of segue ability after 2000 plus. All right. It'll come for me eventually. The domino fell. I mean, this was the milestone, right, that MLB actually took over a team's broadcasts. We had been waiting for this to happen for a while, ever since Diamond Sports Group, which runs the ballet broadcasts, declared bankruptcy. And so the question was, when were they going to default? Were they just not going to do the payments? And they didn't do

a payment. They missed a payment for the Padres. And because of that, the rights reverted back to MLB. And MLB was ready for this. And they had hired a bunch of local TV executives and they had hired a bunch of local TV executives, and they had a plan in place. Rob Manfred at least said that they got less than 24 hours warning that this was going to happen, but no games were missed, and you can now watch Padres games on MLB TV. Now, there's still a blackout of local games. Now, there's still a blackout of local games. If you're in San Diego, if you're in market, you cannot get the regular MLB TV for everyone and just see Padres games. You have to get the in-market streaming as part of that, too.

So it's an additional cost. It's, what, like $20 a month, something like that. Yeah. But you can now get Padres games through MLB TV and through a bunch of other local cable providers and TV providers, right? There's a bunch of ways that you can watch Padres games in that market. And in fact, many more people, now millions more in theory, have access to Padres games than did before.

And the Padres pay the local broadcasters already. So it's the same broadcasting crew and the camera people and all of that. They are freelance from what I read and will continue to be. So it's sort of the same broadcasters, kind of a different broadcast, maybe a different broadcast, a better broadcast in some ways. But there was continuity of service. And then there was another legal case where Diamond sued to try to get reduced rates on some of the other teams. And the judge ruled in favor of MLB and said, no, a contract is a contract. You have to pay what you agreed to pay.

Even though the landscape has changed, that's not MLB's problem. You agreed to this rate. So that could be a prelude to more missed payments and more teams' rights reverting to MLB. So this was a watershed. This was a milestone moment. This was, I don't want to say the first crack. I guess there had been cracks before. This was, I don't want to say the first crack.

I guess there had been cracks before. But this is a real splintering in the foundation and MLB stepping in to reinforce it and seemingly handling it well or as well as could have been expected. So now we will see just how many more dominoes fall and what this all leads to years down the road it pains me to say that like yeah they did uh they were on top of this one rob got it right i i was so relieved i wasn't surprised by this because this is the arrangement for a lot of teams but that booth is one of my favorite booths to watch and so i was like if we're gonna lose that potteries booth because diamond sports was over leveraged when they bought these regional sports networks i'm gonna write a letter yeah but i didn't have i didn't have to write a letter

ben yeah it'll be interesting to see kind of what the ripple effects of this are how how broad the effect ends up being you know the the san diego case was a little different than the other four which i believe it was the Rangers, the Diamondbacks. The Twins, Rangers, Diamondbacks, Guardians. Yeah. My understanding is that those teams didn't themselves own a stake in the RSN, and San Diego did. They owned part of it, right? So I think that that made them, that was part of why they were treated separately from that group of four.

In addition to it seeming like their rights package was meaningfully more lucrative than those other teams. So there's that piece of it too. I don't know quite yet what I think in terms of what this is likely to do from a league-wide revenue perspective. Some of it is going to depend a lot on what is the actual insololvency how broad does the actual insolvency ends up end up being i love that diamond sports was like we could have made the payments but and it's like yeah you're i'm i have sufficient liquidity t-shirt is inspiring me to ask questions better so i you know, the breadth of the insolvency will determine a lot. I think that as we have said, like there does remain a lot of interest in watching baseball locally, even when it comes to teams that are bad, that you would think would not

have good ratings. But I, I wonder like what percentage of that viewership is the result of, well, I already have cable, and hey, there are A's games on, and so I'm going to watch A's games, but the A's are bad. So if I had to buy a separate streaming service to watch the A's, I would elect to not do that, just to pick a random team, you know, off the top of my head. So I am curious to see what is the pickup like in San Diego on the in-market stream option, because that might give us some amount of signal, although the Padres, even though they've kind of underperformed expectation this season are exciting and they have names that people like and they are the biggest sort of footprint of professional sports in San Diego, right? So it's not like those folks are going to go watch something else necessarily. So I don't know if that will end

up being a particularly strong signal about what other markets might look like. I am in theory what other markets might look like, I am in theory supportive of the notion that teams might have to realign the quality of play with revenue, right? If you have to put a good product on the field to inspire a consumer in your market to pay extra to watch just your games, well, you probably have to be pretty good. And that seems good, but I don't know if it is great for player salaries, if there's more variability year to year on that stuff. Anytime you give owners an excuse to spend less money, they will try to do it, But owners are still going to be incentivized to maximize the value of those deals because they want to make money. So how those things push and pull against one another, I'll be really curious to see. The fact that I know that MLB, I think we

learned a little more concretely, was trying to buy those networks in the run-up to Bally being Bally, and their bid was less, which is why they didn't end up securing the broadcast rights, but it was still a multi-billion dollar deal, right, that they were proposing. So I'm not, like, panicked about this indicating all the money's about to drain out of the system and we are going to see you know

salaries depressed as a result of that but i do think that we are going to see a shift in access and as that is getting sorted out it will probably be offered as an excuse to spend less on player salary even if it ends up being sort of a short-term blip. And I just don't know. It might be a long-term blip. It might be a really dramatic shift. It might be a legitimate, you know, there might really be reason to expect that revenue is going to fall or that at the very least, it isn't going to keep growing and growing and growing and growing, which it has largely done. Yeah, because the Padres were in line to get something like 60 million this year. And it's hard to imagine that they would make that much from in-market streaming options plus advertising.

And MLB has said that it will make those teams at least 80 percent whole, right? At least for this year. So it's not like they're going to get nothing, but they will get less probably than they would have gotten and who knows what happens in future years. So yeah, it could lead to some kind of recalibration or it could lead to some teams deciding to spend more because now they actually have to put a compelling product on

the field because people are not just going to get their games as a result of just having some cable package. They have to opt in. So you have to give them something that they want to watch. You can't just kind of write in that revenue year after year before the season even starts, regardless of whether you've made an effort that season or not. So, that could be kind of good, at least in some places at some time. So, yeah, it's all very uncertain, but it took a step toward becoming more concrete this week. Yeah. And I don't know, I've been trying to decide like what my posture toward this should be, because you don't want to be Pollyanna-ish and be like, oh, I'll be great. But you don't want to be pollyanna-ish and be like oh i'll be great but you don't want to be overly concerned and be like if this is the sky is falling i don't want to sound like jimmy stewart just then but um we're gonna enter a new era of it when you look at other

businesses that have had pivots to streaming it's not like they're not making money you know but the um attractiveness of what is on the platform might inspire you to say, like, subscribe to Disney+, but leave Peacock alone. Except watch Poker Face because it's really good. Yeah, we did a bonus podcast about that. Although I'd love more details, but MLB and the Players Association made an agreement this week that MLB did to make marketing easier for players in the league. So MLB took over group player rights negotiations from MLB Players Inc., which is the business arm of the Players Union. So in the past, you had to negotiate if you're an advertiser with both of those parties. So you would have to negotiate with MLB for the rights to use uniforms and logos. And then you'd have to do a separate negotiation with the Players

Association for the rights to show three or more active players. So sometimes you would see retired players instead because you didn't have to go through that process. Or sometimes you would see players without the uniforms or logos, like you just do one or the other. And that was kind of cumbersome. And so either you would end up using retired players or the managing director of MLB Players Inc. said from a negotiating standpoint, I was limited. I wasn't able to maximize the value of the player rights too often. Potential partners are calling me up saying we just brokered a deal with MLB. We want to use players. They lay out what they want to do and they don't have the budget for it.

So now, for instance, there's this Dairy Queen official MLB partner. So they have group player rights for ads where Freddie Freeman and Chris Bryant, who we just spoke about, and Ozzy Albies and Byron Buxton are in there. And you can kind of get everything. It's like a one-stop shop. So group player rights are game footage and highlights or appearances by more than two players. If it's just one or two, then you negotiate with the players and their agents. But if it's a few players, then you've got to get the Players Association involved. Except now, the Players Association has kind of packaged that with MLB so that MLB can

just say, we will handle this. And what I haven't really seen reported is like what the terms of that are. Like, I assume the MLBPA thought this will work out well for us because we can get more sponsors and more people will want to do this because they just have to, it's part of the same process. They don't have to do separate negotiations, but obviously they want to ensure that they're still getting their fair share. So I wonder whether, like, did they sell this for a certain amount or are they getting a percentage? Did they get to consult and have input on this? I don't know.

I saw an MLB press release about this and I saw an Ad Age piece about this and it was pretty light on those details. And I guess all the business of baseball reporters are tied up now with the Diamond Sports Group broadcast stuff. So I am curious about just how this works and why the PA thought it was in their best interest. But I guess this means that we, in theory, might see more advertising campaigns that actually use groups of players instead of, I don't know, like Super Mega Baseball 4 came out today and it uses a lot of retired players. I don't know if that's because this process was difficult or not, but maybe we will see fewer instances of like players in generic uniforms, although I guess you might still

see those with individual players or just, I don't know, team uniforms and logos without actual players involved. I guess it's,

in theory, a good thing to get that under one umbrella as long as everyone's getting their cut and I assume

that they wouldn't have signed away the rights without ensuring that they would. Yeah, it seems unlikely to me that they would have been like, oh, no, we forgot about the money part.

Right. Yeah. We just want to make things easier for advertisers and MLB. We don't worry about the members of our union. Now, I'm sure that's not what they thought, but interested in seeing more details there. So just a few more observations. One, I saw this tweet by Sam Blum of The Athletic who said, Shohei Otani said after the game today that when he goes through slumps, he often notices various mechanical flaws causing the issues.

His recent slump, he said, had to do with the height of where he was gripping the bat. Seems like he got that fixed because he had a two-homer game and he hit a homer the day before the two homer game so he broke out of the slump but this is a conversation that we've had before about slumps and the root cause of them yeah and how even though it seems like maybe they're kind of random maybe often there is an underlying cause that we can't detect and you get these mechanical issues that crop up from time to time and then the the player corrects them. And Otani kind of confirmed that, that when he slumps, often he finds that there's some mechanical flaw causing it. But I'm always curious, like, the height of where he was gripping the bat, I don't know exactly what that means, but like, he was literally holding the bat at a different point on the bat. Like, how does that happen all of a sudden? Like, you're Shohei Otani. You've been playing baseball your entire life. You're as committed to baseball as anyone is committed to anything.

How many times have you held a bat? How many times have you swung? It sounds difficult to conceive that, like, you might realize, oh, oops, I'm holding this thing in the wrong place. Forgot where to hold this bat. I mean, I know he has to pitch and everything too. He has to hold the ball a lot. So it's probably pretty confusing going back and forth from the ball to the bat. But you'd think that he would have a handle, no pun intended, on where to grip the bat at this point. It's probably more complicated than that tweet makes it sound.

But like, it's always, it's often, it sounds like it's a simple thing. It's like, I was crouching too much or I was standing too straight up or I was turned too much this way or I was not turned enough that way, right? It's like, how did these things get out of whack? You do this every day and yet constantly,

it's vigilance that's required. It's like having to look at data or look at video and say, am I doing something differently from what I was doing when I was having success? And then often they find that they are. And I guess maybe if you're slumping, you might just look for something that's different and it might be kind of a confirmation bias thing but also i'm sure there legitimately is something different a lot of the time and it's just odd given that what could be more natural and habitual you would think for players at this level and yet they can do stuff differently without even realizing it and that can somehow screw them up i think that you're right and that it is probably more complicated than this and is a little surprising.

But do you ever just like have a day where you're like, I'm sitting weird? I do. Do you ever just have a day where you like look up and you're like, I'm sitting kind of funny? Yeah, right. Or you think too hard about what you're doing and then suddenly you're conscious of it. Right, like braiding your hair. Well, I take your word for it, but yes. It's always my comp where it's like you think about braiding your hair for even one second and you can't do it because your fingers are like, we're fingers?

Right, yeah. I've had that with like typing in pins on computers or passwords. It's like my fingers know the pattern. But then when I stop and wait and think, wait, what is my pin? What is my password? It's like, oh, do I stop and wait and think, wait, what is my pin? What is my password? It's like, oh, do I actually know what it is? Yeah, like I have to have my hands on the keyboard to do it. And I do that probably many times a day. So I guess that's a good comp. But also, these guys are the best in the world at doing this thing. So I imagine that they're better at

everything than I am or at these particular things. So it still sort of surprises me that they can get out of whack. But I guess like you get fatigued and you play every day. So that would be an argument in favor of you would be so in the habit that you wouldn't suddenly do something differently. But you wear down. Yeah, you wear down. As a result of that. You have an injury. Right.

Yeah. So I guess it's not that hard to break a habit or at least to get slightly out of whack. And I guess it only takes a slight change to make a big difference at times where it might even be difficult for us to look like frame by frame, side by side and actually see the difference. But to Shohei Otani, he can feel. It's a big difference. Right. Yeah. He can feel that difference that might be almost imperceptible to anyone else. Right. Like I think that how small those changes can be. And sometimes it's like a bunch of small changes at once. And then when you combine them, you're just out of whack. Also, like I'm a great sitter, Ben. So I don't know why you would say it's different. It's different. It's not because you've talked about falling out of your chair at times, which, as we discussed, you fall on the transfer from sitting to standing. Yeah, the sitting wasn't the problem. In fact, I was such a good sitter that part of my body was like, I can go insensate now.

And then, you know, once I stood up, it was like, oh, no, it was a bad idea. Yeah, but sometimes you're just sitting in your chair like, I'm twisted weird and my back's going to hurt tomorrow. You're 30s, man. They humble you. I still sit like a little kid and I wonder when I'm going to stop doing that. What do you mean? Like crisscross applesauce? Yeah, sometimes that or I'll just like put a knee like I'm sitting right now and my knee is like at my chin.

It's like the bottom of my foot is resting on. And I don't see like real adults sitting like that. And I wonder, I don't see people like in the cubicle just like sprawling, you know, like. Well, part of that is the relative flexibility of your and stretching your pants relative to a cubicle. Yes, and I'm not being observed. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so maybe it's just the social norms that I'm not being forced to conform to a certain way of sitting. I don't know.

But I always think, like, when am I going to be too old to sit like this? But not yet. Oh, Ben, I just had an insight about you. That's the first. I hope you're not. So, like, you famously have the false idea that stretching is bad, like you're an anti-stretching person. Static stretching, at least, yes.

But maybe you're stretching all the time because of how you sit. And so, you are actually pro-stretch. That could be. I'm just efficiently stretching while I'm just sitting. Yeah, I think we cracked it. Maybe so. So there's that piece of it. I mean, I do think that when one feels observed, it does alter your behavior. And so, you know, it was like when everyone started working from, not everyone, but when more people started working from home because of the pandemic. And then they were like, let's do Zoom.

And I was like, you guys have not thought this through. Like, why are you wanting to be on camera all the time? The best part of working from home is being able to walk around like a gremlin and no one knows. Strongly agree. Yes. I look like a gremlin right now. You know, I look like a weird little guy. I am sitting, I am sitting well though. So it's fine. I'm like in a good, I'm in a good sitting spot. I'm not going to sit on the couch later and be like,

oh, my back is messed up because I was sitting like a weirdo today. No, sitting like a champ, but looking like a gremlin. You know, land of contrast over here. Here's a little update and a bit of good news. We haven't talked as much about injuries lately. There was a while there where every episode we were bemoaning and lamenting injuries. And recently, we celebrated the return of some players from the injured list. I saw an update from Derek Rhodes of Baseball Perspectives who noted early in the 2023 season, there were at times 20 to 30 percent more players on the IL than at similar points in 2021 and 2022. That trend has finally cooled. As of yesterday, this was a few days ago, the number of players currently on the IL is almost the exact same as this time in 2021 and 2022.

So we have had the impulse to talk about injuries a little less because there have been fewer injuries. And now the season is more in line with recent seasons. Still too many injuries in recent seasons. And this season, Chris Sale is hurt again now, right? We're waiting to hear how seriously. But the league as a whole, a few fewer injuries, which is encouraging. And also, I think, good because there was starting to be a drumbeat of, is the pitch clock breaking people? Right. And I don't want that to be the case because I like the pitch clock and I like most

of the effects of the pitch clock. And I thought it was a little premature to blame it on the pitch clock, but you at least had to entertain the possibility. Yeah, I had to ask the question for sure. Right. So it would be nice if there turns out not to be super strong evidence that the pitch clock is contributing to injuries so that we can continue to have a nice thing without worrying about the ramifications. And it's funny because it's like there still have been injuries and we care about all the injuries, but some injuries have a bigger, obvious impact on our quality of play than others just because of the, you know, stature of the player involved. I'm not, everyone should be injury-free. I'm saying that sometimes, you know, blah, blah, blah. But like, you know, Cedric Mullins got hurt.

That stinks. But it does feel like the pace has slowed in an appreciable way. And hopefully, you know, whatever role the pitch clock might play, like I'll be very curious to see what next spring looks like, especially when guys have had an entire year,

you know, the pitch clock being there or not probably didn't contribute to Cedric Mullins getting hurt, but all the pitchers seems like, you know. So it's like if you've had an entire year of playing under those conditions and you have a second, what I guess will, for a lot of these guys, feel like their first really normal, quote-unquote normal spring in a second, what I guess will for a lot of these guys feel like their first really normal,

quote unquote, normal spring in a while, right? Because you won't have had the pandemic, you won't have had a lockout, and you won't have had all the new rule changes. It's like, no, really, this one is normal. You're going to get to have normal at some point, and then we're going to have to start ramping up to the next EVA negotiation. But anyway, I'll be very curious to see kind of what early spring and early season injury rates look like next year. But it is nice that we are starting to seemingly get some sort of reprieve this year because it is a profound bummer when the guys get hurt and then you can't watch them play baseball and you know that they are in discomfort.

So, it's bad. Yeah. Ben Clemens did a little roundup for Fangraphs, your website, about the effects of the new rules, including the pitch clock. And he made a point that despite the uptick in stolen bases, that that hasn't actually increased run scoring all that much. No, it has not. He found that even with teams being much more successful when they attempt to steal, not attempting to steal that much more, but somewhat more, but really just being more successful when they do attempt it, that that's only like 0.07 runs per team per game that that accounts for.

And the run scoring league-wide is up a good deal more than that. But mostly, I think, because the ball has been a bit livelier this year. And so steals, he concluded, have accounted for only about 10% of the uptick in scoring, which itself is not like a massive uptick in scoring. And so that is interesting that that's led to an aesthetic change for sure, but hasn't really changed the scoring environment all that much. And neither has the pitch clock, as far as we can tell, and pitch clock violations. And neither has the shift restrictions, which I guess you could say that the shift restrictions were supposed to produce some impact on scoring. So I guess you

could say it's a failure that that hasn't seemed to do much more. And that my prediction that MLB will force the pie slice rule upon us next season, I'm still feeling fairly confident and apprehensive about. But Ben said it's kind of a win that you've instituted, or maybe it was a commenter pointed this out on Ben's piece, that the fact that they instituted all these significant changes, and yet it hasn't really had much of an effect on the scoring environment. And the fact that there's been any change seems to be probably because of the ball. I guess you could say that that is a win, that that has kind of helped MLB, because if they put these things in place and suddenly scoring were way, way up or way, way down and things were just dramatically different than that could have led to a larger backlash. But as it is, they've gotten the shorter games, they've gotten more steals, and it off, maybe, by just the run environment being completely different than the way it was. So even though you could say that the shift ban was supposed to increase offense and maybe it hasn't worked as intended, maybe it has helped with just acceptance of these changes and people's embrace of them. has helped with just acceptance of these changes and people's embrace of them that at least when it comes to like scores from day to day, it's not like we're suddenly in wacky land where everyone's scoring 10 runs a game or something because then there might have been a bigger

backlash to baseball being different all of a sudden. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that for them to be able to thread the needle of seemingly affecting the aesthetic of the game while not changing it so dramatically that traditionalists are like, ah! Like, that was a tricky needle to thread. Yeah. And then you're like, why don't they make the little holes on the needles bigger? It's because they have to go through whatever the fabric is. And then you get too big. Sure.

That's fine. And one guy who has not been able to stop the running game is Francisco Alvarez of the Mets. Yeah. 12% caught stealing rate. Yeah. But he's been good even as a catcher. I mean, he's continuing to hit well. of a surprise to some people that he has been one of the better rated defensive catchers this year by most of the defensive graders out there, right? I think he's tied for the league lead

in defensive runs saved among catchers, which I don't know that anyone would have forecasted that for Francisco Alvarez. And he's a little lower on the BP leaderboard baseball respect. Still, though, eighth overall among catchers this year. So, I mean, that was supposed to be the problem, right? That the bat was good, but the defense could be an issue. And even though he gets a good pop time and has a good arm, the accuracy hasn't been there. He hasn't done a great job of corralling the running game. But everything else seems to be going pretty well.

And the framing has graded out quite well thus far. So more than playable. And I know the Mets are about to have a catcher crush and three catchers. The Mets are about to have a catcher crush and three catchers, but he has certainly made the case for continued playing time back there because it's not even like defensive liability who makes up for it with his bat necessarily. It's like he's kind of making up for it with his glove too. And also some of the Mets veteran pitchers, which, you know, almost all of their pitchers are veteran pitchers, but have complimented his pitch calling and his pitch selection, like Verlander and Scherzer and Carrasco and Robertson. Like, they've all tipped their caps to him and his sequencing. So, that's got to be encouraging that that's not even reputed to be his strength, and yet

it has been far from a weakness. Yeah. Jade made his way to the ballpark yesterday, wrote about Alvarez for Fingrass.com. And yeah, when I was editing it, I was struck by how universal the praise has been. And, you know, others have reported on the praise that he's received from that staff also Scherzer, who, as you may know, Ben, has struggled at times this season. You know, it hasn't been a smooth ride for Max Scherzer, but he seems to have a great deal of confidence in Alvarez. And I don't mean to say that he would throw a young teammate under the bus, but he seems like a blunt guy, you know, like a direct. Direct is maybe a more precise way of describing him. So, I think that if he were unhappy, he maybe wouldn't say that, but he also wouldn't puff him up. You know, he wouldn't say he's great when he thinks he's

garbage. So, I think that that's pretty telling and it would be good if the manager heard those quotes and thought, you know i think we have a primary catcher because sometimes sometimes the the show alter of it all proving to be a weird wrinkle in the in the catching situation in queens like a weird it's kind of weird wrinkle you know because it seems like there's an obvious hierarchy emerging of like who is the guy you want back there and given a lot of time to. And it's not always the guy that the manager seems to think is that guy. It's a weird thing that's going on.

Buck, I don't know what your plan is. And in other news about 21-year-olds, Jordan Walker's back, a newly turned 21-year-old. But he's back on the Cardinals. The outfield situation has thinned out a little bit. And the vibes are a lot better than they used to be. So Jordan Walker, back in the big leagues, he didn't tear up AAA or anything, but he was

fine. He was hitting better of late, and hopefully the defense has been better too, and there's more of an opportunity and less of a crowd out there these days with some injuries and some other underperformers. So we will see what Jordan Walker can do. And wanted to point people's attention to a fun article by Jake Mintz, friend of the show, half of Cespedes Family Barbecue, who wrote for Fox Sports about the college baseball team shattering hit-by-pitch records that is

playing in the D3 World Series and, in fact, has already played in the D3 World Series. They played on Friday, and they lost to the number one seed. But fun story, this team basically has based its entire identity. It's the Misericordia team in D3 has kind of constructed its offensive strategy around getting hit by pitches. So they broke the record. They were hit 153 times in 52 games. So that's almost three hit batters per game, which is an all-time NCAA record. And they made it all the way to the World Series, where they lost to Johns Hopkins. But they've been doing this for a few years. This season was the most extreme yet. I'll just quote from Jake here. Since 2014, the Cougars have averaged 111 hit-by- season. These student athletes are not soldiers of fortune or accidental baseball magnets, but rather practitioners of patience and pain.

Their monk-like approach is part of a unified and effective strategy designed to win ball games. Mr. Accordio wants you to hit them again and again and again until they score enough runs, steal enough bases, bunt enough runners over, and beat you. And then there's a quote, Some of these guys will stand there, not move, and take one off the ribs like a f***ing maniac, explained Dante Salerno, a current D3 assistant and former Misericordia outfielder. When you get hit by a pitch in that program, said Jeremy Dekoudis,

a 2017 graduate and the all-time program leader in hit-by-pitches, there are 30-plus guys on the bench going absolutely apeshit for you. So this whole team, they've found the one weird trick, I guess, the way to win is just to get plunked a ton. And around 2011, I guess, they came up with this idea of what happens if you just don't really try to get out of the way. And then the coach says, so we introduced that to the program. The kids bought into it. Our on-base percentages went way up. And now it's something that our whole team takes a lot of pride in.

It's taken on a whole new meaning for us year after year. And Jake comps it to like basketball programs that only shot three pointers or football teams that never punted. And this team, he writes, wants kids in the grit and grind small ball mold, overlooked undersized athletes who can make contact, wreak havoc on the base pass

and aren't afraid of getting plunked. And the coach, this is a former Misericordia player and assistant coach who's now at a different college. It's an identity. It's not a perfect science. But if you look at the roster, it's full of 5'8", 165-pound, hard-nosed kids who can flat-out run. So this must be a very bruised team, but they've made it work for them, I guess. And this former player says, I can remember multiple instances, whether it's batting practice, cage work, scrimmages, whatever, where if you move out of the way, you are going to lose your at bat. And if you avoid a pitch in a game, you'll have 30 plus guys on your own team chirping at you.

Other folks around the team spoke of a reward system for hit-by-pitches in practice where the plunkies were granted extra swings in the cage. There are tales of teammates competing with one another to get the most free bases, wagering cases of beer and bragging rights. Alumni tell stories of iconic plunkings and talk about hit-by-pitch takers like heroes. It's just apparently, like, they do make some concessions to safety. and talk about hit-by-pitch takers like heroes. Apparently, they do make some concessions to safety. I got so stressed reading this article, Ben.

I was so stressed. You're not shamed for getting out of the way if it's up near your head, or if you're a speed guy who has a ball thrown by your legs or feet, then you're allowed to, like if you're endangering your life or your livelihood, then you are allowed to get out of the way. But otherwise, it seems like there's extreme peer pressure to take one for the team. crossed over until like it's gone too far or whether like everyone comes to this program with the understanding that if I'm going to play for this team, I just got to take one for the team. And I'm enthusiastic about taking one for the team. It's definitely an extreme implementation of this strategy. Like, I guess one of the stars on the roster is this guy called Garrett McElhaney, a lefty hitting 5'5 outfielder who has a.404 batting average and 41 steals, but also leads the country with 30 hit-by-pitches and a.598 on-base percentage. So, obviously, if he's batting.404 and has a.598 OBP with only 30 hit-by-pitches, he's doing other things right, too. Right, yeah, it's not just that. But the hit-by-pitches, he's doing other things right, too. Right. Yeah. It's not just that.

But the hit-by-pitches are contributing to that. And the surprising thing, Jake says, is that no one's mad about this, apparently. Like, no one's calling them cheap or cheaters or Bush League or anything. Like, apparently people admire and respect them. So, it's unusual. They lost on Friday. They only got hit twice by pitches. So I guess that was a below average number of hit by pitches for them. So I guess that's part of why they lost, although they lost by five runs. So it would have taken a few more plunkings to make up that deficit, but kind of a wild story. I think that when you are getting plunked, but you are not perceived as leaning in,

then people are like, that's kind of gritty. You know, that's what they think about it. They think it's gritty. And then I would also say, yeah, but it's stressful to be gritty. So just be, you know, you take good care of yourself. Because yeah, sure sure allowances are being made for bones you don't want to break any bones you don't want to get hit in the head but like take care of your yes i'm about to say something um i'm about to use a phrase that is probably

terrible like take care of your tender flesh you know like all your soft parts you want to yeah gotta you know people are like out here acting as if it doesn't hurt to get hit in your soft parts. And like it hurts less and you're not going to break anything probably. But like it still hurts to get hit in the butt, you know, by a baseball. It still hurts. So, you know, just take care of all your tender flesh. Yeah. I guess the plus side here, I mean, this strategy is viable in D3 especially, I would think, because—

Because their command is terrible. Right, right. The pitchers are wild. And also, they don't throw as hard. I was asking Jake, like, what's the average fastball velocity in D3? And he says it can vary quite dramatically because you'll have some teams and people doing weighted ball work and they'll be throwing upper 80s. But he said average 83 or 84, which, again, that's still going to sting, but you're less likely to get seriously injured, I guess, if it's 83, 84 instead of 93, 94 or 99 or 100, right?

Or at least to be able to get out of the way if it's in a place where it might seriously, seriously injure you. So it's probably a little safer and also probably more feasible to do this. And I asked Jake and Bauman also about like, well, don't you have to try to get out of the way? Because in the majors, you're at least supposed to try to get out of the way or else you can be called for not a hit by pitch because you made no effort to get out of the way. And it seems like either that's just not written quite the same way at that level, or it's interpreted differently. It's not

enforced quite as much that like unless you're deliberately attempting to get hit, you could kind of freeze and still be awarded first, you know, like if the ball is going to hit you and you don't necessarily try to get out of the way, but you don't try to get into the way either, you can kind of get away with it. And I guess, you know, if they're just getting a bunch of like five foot six scrappers here who are good at getting hit by pitches, probably not a whole lot of them have like high level professional baseball futures. So, you know, if they're just leaving it all on the field and putting their bodies on the line here in D3. This could be the peak of their athletic careers. So I guess do it for the story.

Do it for the glory that you're going to get at this level. But, man, I mean, it's probably not a strategy that could be ported to higher levels, I guess. We didn't try to do this with the Sonoma Stompers. Maybe it would have been viable in the Pacific Association too, but I think we would have felt guilty telling players to put their bodies on the line like this. But if they're all

buying in and they know coming into it that this is the way that this team plays, I guess it's nothing new for them. I mean, it does still make me stressed, but yes, I agree. I still feel stressed. Like, I'm just worried about their gender.

Yeah, me too. All right. So, we have a past blast, which comes to us from David Lewis, who is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. As an architectural historian, he probably knows about Thomassons, I would imagine. He probably could have told me about that. But here's the pass blast for 2014. Fall league on the clock. In 2014, Major League Baseball announced a series of rules to be tested during the Arizona Fall League with hopes of speeding up the pace of play. Earlier in the year, Commissioner Bud Selig stated that he was aggravated by the increasing length of games.

The average game time during the 2014 season had grown to three hours and eight minutes. Selig, who would leave office in January 2015, wanted to see progress made on the issue before the end of his tenure. In September 2014, the league created a new committee to address pace of play, and on October 1st, they released the rules they hoped would address the problem.

Six new rules were announced, all to be tested during the Arizona Fall League season. These rules included limiting the break between innings to 2 minutes and 5 seconds and limiting pitching changes to 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Intentional walks would now be given by a manager's signal as opposed to throwing four pitches outside of the zone. Furthermore, teams were limited to three time-out conferences at the pitcher's mound per game, except in the event of injury. Additionally, batters were required to keep at least one foot in the batter's box throughout nitbat.

Finally, perhaps the biggest change to the game was the use of a 20-second pitch clock. The new rules proved their effectiveness almost immediately. One of the first games to use the pitch timer clocked in at just two hours and 14 minutes, almost an hour shorter than the average MLB game that year. So that was 2014. That was almost a decade ago. And it took that long to phase the pitch clock in bit by bit, league by league, get everyone comfortable with it in a way that maybe wasn't done the first time around when they first tried to implement it back in the 60s. This time it was, we'll go super gradually and we'll get everyone comfortable with this and then we'll be able to bump it up to the highest level and people will accept it.

But yeah, this was, I guess, the beginning of the road to where we are today. Many of those rules have been implemented and become permanent, and some have been discarded as ineffective. But clearly on the trail to 2023 now. And this is why everyone should make a trip to the Fall League, like, at least once in your, your you know tenure as a baseball fan i i don't need to take a pitch clock segment to a filibuster on behalf of the fall league but to briefly say it is it is some of my very favorite baseball ben it's some of the most fun time and mostly because of the the guys that you get to see you know they bring them all together in one place you don't have to go to florida you can just stay in arizona you know if you're a person who's already in arizona and you get to see stuff

that they're trying out and some of it is not good and some of it is the challenge system and then you become an evangelist um but it gives you a little uh insight it lets you see it in game action and uh i think have a more informed sort of perspective on it. And, you know, it's like a nice time in the desert. It's not a lot of people. Tickets are cheap. So come on down to the Fall League, I say. It's a good time. Pro Fall League over here.

I have not been, but it sounds appealing. I mean, you get to see a whole bunch of great prospects in one place, right? And often you get kind of a preview of rules changes that we're going to see at higher levels. I mean, I'm into it. It's like I'm into weird baseball, right? So I was into this Misericordia article. And for an afternoon, at least, I was paying attention to college baseball, D3, no less. I was looking at live scoreboards for the D3 World Series. Yep. At lower levels of baseball, you know, non-professional or just farther from the majors,

they permit greater extremes, right? And so you can have a team that just plunks its way to the World Series, right? And with a bunch of players with builds that might not make them major leaguers at some point, but it's viable at that level.

That is one of the fun, appealing things of non-major league baseball. So I'm into it. See, these are the words of a man who I'm going to be able to get psyched about college baseball next year. That's what these words are. These are the words of such a man. Maybe. All right. Well, I guess we can end there. And Meg, it's Pride Month now. It's two weeks until the Dodgers Pride Night, I believe, to the day. So let's just issue a challenge to major leaguers not to comment Pride Night for the next two weeks. So, issue that challenge, at least commenting in a certain way, because it's just this news cycle. It never ends, and I shudder to think of how it will continue over the next two weeks. I'd like to issue a, can I suggest a modification to your challenge, Ben? Yeah.

I have a two-pronged modification. The first is that I think that it would mean a great deal to a great many people, Dodger fan or no, if even one Dodger came out and said, actually, like, I support pride. I support pride as it is being celebrated at Dodger Stadium. I support the good work that the sisters are doing. That would be very nice. And to those who find themselves feeling discomfort at a group that I'm sure they had really developed opinions on even a month ago. Right. I just think that, like, I don't want to, I don't know the heart of Clayton Kershaw,

for instance. I think we know a lot about what Blink Trinnon thinks, so we can set him aside for now. But like, I don't know the heart of the man, right? But I think that the stakes of this moment are very clear. that it is important for us to weigh properly, like whatever discomfort you might feel at the way that the sisters present themselves, conduct themselves against like the very real threat that this community broadly is under. So let's just keep an accurate tally of the stakes. Right.

Keep an accurate tally of the stakes. Right. And I think that before you, assuming that you are a baseball player who maybe doesn't know these debates super well, doesn't harbor homophobia or bigotry, but maybe has a little, you know, you feel a little squishy about the particular presentation of this group. Just like remember the stakes because they're very dramatic and clear and real right now. And what the LGBTQ plus community needs is support and kindness and a mustering of action, not like graping about Pride Night. So, just like, let's all be clear on the stakes here and try to conduct ourselves in a way that advances dignity and equality for our neighbors. That's what I'd say. That's my challenge.

Yes, because, right, this group that did not have a big national footprint, right? I mean, people did not know about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence before the initial Dodgers invitation and then the invitation being retracted and then the reinvitation and this becoming a national story. This was a group that had done a lot of good work over decades, but was not like a household name nationally. And now it is to the point that Mike Pence is commenting on this situation. the point that Mike Pence is commenting on this situation. It's like, even if certain aspects of the way that they've operated rub you slightly the wrong way, it's like, how much harm or damage could it have been doing to you if you were entirely unaware, I would guess, in almost all

cases of this group's existence a month ago? And so, does that really rise to the level of needing Right. kind of the same, you know, has been like proportionate exactly. And it's not like you really need to feel threatened by their actions in the way that they and others like them have needed to feel threatened, right, by organized religion and actions of some members of those religion at times. So, yeah, I mean, you have your Trinans and you have your Anthony Basses and you have your Trevor Williamses and Kershaw, who, you know, it may have been coming from a different place when he issued his statement than, say, the place that Blake Trinans was, but still has an effect that is not great. And, you know, you still have your Mark Canna's and you have your Julio's and you have your Liam Hendricks's and you have your Taiwan Walker's, you know, like you have your Sean Doolittle's. I mean, there are players in the majors who have certainly spoken up and been supportive and have been advocates for that community in the other direction, too. in the other direction too. So it's not like it's a unified stance,

but also you see that sort of thing instead of the message that those players are promoting or it's just like we're still in a place where there hasn't been an out active major league player. I wonder why. Right. Could that be possibly connected

to these attitudes that players are sharing or the Rays players not wanting to wear pride stuff or whatever? That has to have an effect on people. these attitudes that players are sharing or the Rays players not wanting to wear pride stuff or whatever, like that has to have an effect on people. So yeah, it's two weeks to go. Like, hopefully we will not just see regurgitations and rehashes of that same sentiment over and over until then. Yeah. I think, you know, if you're curious about the work that the sisters

have done, like the piece that Steve Buckley wrote for The Athletic this week, I thought was very good. But yeah, I think that it is a moment where, like, if he says that he doesn't bear gay people any ill will, then okay, fine, we can take Kershaw at his word, I guess. But, you know, I think that having a sense of the power of your platform here is really important. This guy is one of the most important pitchers in baseball. He's a future Hall of Famer. And whether he means to or not by saying, well, in response to the invitation to this group, I'm going to have a faith and family night, you're setting that community in opposition to people of faith in a way that I don't think is reflective of all people of faith, to be clear. Like, I don't think that that is, you know, for some people is not an oppositional relationship or they would like it to not be. But you need to, like, look up and

around you at what's going on in this country right now and this is not the moment for this kind of hair splitting i'm sorry it's just not like what's happening right now is too grave a threat to the people who would want to celebrate pride night and the people who consider themselves allies of those people and we need to have an appreciation of those stakes and like i don't think that we as a culture do a great job of being able to assess in the moment, like, where does my personal discomfort fit within the broader power dynamic of institutions? But this is a time when it would be useful for us to do that. And I think that you can be someone who doesn't bear gay people ill will and maybe you feel a little uncomfortable about

the sisters you know donning a habit but i also think that like they are not coming from a place of power and they are using that dress as a critique of an institution of power and you know i think that there's like a conversation that you could have if you're a catholic about like how appropriate you find that or whatever. It can make you uncomfortable and you can still support Pride Night. But I think for the athletes involved, like really take a second to think about what it is that you're wading into. It's like, are you just expressing discomfort at religious iconography being used in a particular way? Or are you a mark? Because it's not a mistake, in my opinion, that a group that doesn't occupy sort of a

sanitized, corporatized view of pride is the one that's being put forth here. It allows these athletes who do bear ill will toward that community to safely express their disdain and homophobia and dress it up as religious discomfort. And again, I'm not saying that every religious person agrees with that. And I'm not saying that everyone who feels discomfort at this is trying to undermine pride. Because I think, you know, as you have mentioned, and I have read from the outro, like there is nuance to that, but like the stakes are important to bear in mind here. So let's do that. Yeah, and I always wonder about the dynamics

inside a clubhouse when in this world of Major League Baseball, you have, like on the Mets, you have Mark Canna, who's been one of the more outspoken players in support of pride. And then you also have Brooks Raley in that same clubhouse, who was one of the

players on the Rays who would not wear the pride patches. Like there's just political divides and all sorts of other divides inside baseball clubhouses. And I think largely players probably avoid talking about that stuff just because they know they have to spend every day with each other over the course of a really long season. But it's one of the places where, you know, these days, like, things are increasingly separated so that, I mean, it's polarized and you kind of, you know, you're in your online silo. And you don't always kind of, you know, rub shoulders with people who are directly opposed to a viewpoint that you might have. And in a Major League Baseball clubhouse, there's nowhere to hide, really. There's only so much space and people are from all over the place. And maybe they skew conservative, at least among American players in a baseball clubhouse, but there are big differences there. And you're still

co-workers and traveling together and getting dressed and undressed together and being on a team together. It's just a weird dynamic. It's an unusual dynamic. And I don't know if they kind of tend not to talk about these things with each other because they just don't want to be at each other's throats because what purpose would it serve or whether those things do come to a head at times. But, you know, same team, same clubhouse, same uniform, often dramatically different beliefs. And often those beliefs are publicized because the players publicize them or people ask them about it. So it's sort of a strange thing that you don't get in a lot of workplaces or just walks of life these days.

Yeah. All right. Just been here now with a few closing updates for you. First, I remembered that when the Dodgers signed Syndergaard, he said that everything they touch turns to gold, which reminds me even more of Rumpelstiltskin. He wanted the Dodgers to spin his straw to gold. Now he's willing to give up his firstborn. Has Noah Syndergaard been reading too much Brothers Grimm? Quite curious.

But many fairy tales are sort of disturbing in their original forms, their non-sanitized versions, and so is Syndergaard's season. Also, just to clarify, the Christian faith day that the Dodgers are doing, they've done that in seasons past. It was supposedly going to be held at some point this season. They just moved up the timing and the announcement at Kershaw's urging in response to the invitation to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The abbess of the Los Angeles Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, for what it's worth, said his decision not to boycott the game was very Christian. Neighbors are neighbors. She said he has his beliefs.

It's OK. I'm not mad about anything. It's all good. Also, Anthony Bass did apologize and said he spoke to teammates about his post and promised to educate himself. I was amused by an NBC News report that cites the responses by Clayton Kershaw and Trevor Williams and says that the Dodgers invitation, rejection, and re-engagement with the sisters apparently has sparked anger in the two high-profile players. When I read that, I wondered, okay, Clayton Kershaw, who's the other high-profile player?

Oh, Trevor Williams? Yeah, not quite as high-prof OK, Clayton Kershaw, who's the other high profile player? Oh, Trevor Williams? Yeah, not quite as high profile as Clayton Kershaw. Last time we talked about Jose Abreu's fast home run trot. I noted that a story had said it was the second fastest trot on the season, but the story did not say what the fastest one was. Well, I was informed by listener Rick that it was Bobby Witt Jr.'s, which was 17.34 seconds to Abreu's 17.58 seconds. There was also one faster inside the parker if you count that 16.43 for Yuli Gurriel on April 25th. But Witt's homer on May 26th, fastest trot. Obviously, Witt is just much faster in general than Jose Abreu. He is actually first in the majors in sprint speed this season, so no surprise that he would have a fast trot. Abreu is 370th. Also, we speculated about the possibility that he would have a fast shot. Abreu is 370th.

Also, we speculated about the possibility that there would be some unwritten rules backlash to Jose Abreu sprinting around the bases after his homer and then sliding into the dugout because he was so happy that he had finally hit one. We read some quotes from Dusty Baker and Mark Kotze kind of downplaying it. Little did I realize that there was a possible reprisal. In that game, Garrett Acton, who was the subject of a recent Meet a Major Leaguer segment, he did plunk Jose Abreu. Possible retaliation for Jose Abreu's run around the bases. Both benches were warned. Of course, Garrett Acton has been quite wild this season, but the timing was suspicious. Also, we talked about the hot mic

moment when umpire Jeff Nelson was heard saying they got their heads up their ass after the Marlins had requested a replay review. We assumed that they were speaking about the Marlins, but we got a couple emails that suggested that he was actually speaking about the in-stadium audio PA people at Angel Stadium. He wanted them to turn down the music they were playing in the stadium so that he could announce the challenge. So still a funny hot mic moment, but the comment probably wasn't directed at the Marlins, which is for the best because that would be a bit unbecoming of an umpire. And lastly, we were talking about the differences between sliding into home and sliding into second and why the former may be more dangerous. One obvious difference I don't think

we mentioned was pointed out by listener Jordan, who said going into second or third, the runner needs to maintain contact with the bag after reaching it, as opposed to home, where they simply need to reach the plate. Of course, that is correct. So they can really run full speed without needing to worry about oversliding when they're going into home. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay almost ad-free and get themselves access to some perks. Emmett Laurie, Wyatt Curtis, Megan Deegan, James Boland, and Megan Schenk. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, as well as access to monthly bonus episodes,

playoff live streams, discounts on ad-free Fangraphs memberships and merch and much more. Check out Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. You can also email us at podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can join our Facebook group. Take part in the Trout versus Griffey war debate at Facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod,

and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We were a little delayed in our recording this week, so we will have a weekend episode coming your way soon. Talk to you then. Where do you go in a world of bad takes Talk to you then. Music

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