Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2024: The Old College Try

Episode Date: June 24, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley are joined by FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and Michael Baumann to banter about the Phillies’ outlier legal name, Dave Martinez and the dying art of the theatrical managerial ejection, the benching of Wander Franco, whether the Diamondbacks’, Reds’, and Orioles’ surprising seasons are attributable to MLB’s new rules, and whether bad […]

Where do you go in a world of bad takes? For the good takes on baseball and life With a balance of analytics and humor Philosophical music Effectively Wild. Effectively Wild. Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2024 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined once again, rejoined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Welcome back, Meg.

Hello. Thank you. Good to be back. The other co-host is here. Order is restored and our podcast cup runneth over because we are also joined by two guests, two great guests whose jerseys are already hanging in the effectively wild rafters, Eric Langenhagen and Michael Bauman, Fangraph's own. Hello, guys. Welcome. Howdy. Thanks for having me again.

Thanks for having me too and letting Eric tag along this time. Yeah, it was kind of a package deal. I guess it was just two Philly guys or no Philly guys. So we took them both. I actually had something to bring up about that. I don't know if you saw this. Probably Eric didn't because it was on Twitter. But Jay Kuda, the very prolific fun fact finder slash infographic guy slash shit poster, who's kind of a high volume shooter on Twitter.

So not every one of his tweets lands for me. But sometimes there's a good one that makes me wonder how he ever. You used the basketball idiom there. I know. Like you made it into the podcast. Multi-sport expert here. But sometimes he thinks of things that I never would have thought to check. And he posted the legal names of all 30 MLB organizations.

Yeah, I did see this. Yeah. And so all of them except one has some kind of corporate appendix or something, right? They're all LLCs or they're limited partnerships, right? So, you know, the Mets are Sterling Mets Limited and the Rockies are Colorado Rockies Baseball Club Limited and Detroit Tigers are Detroit Tigers Inc., which is very funny to me for some reason. Or it's, you know, Kansas City Royals Baseball Club, LLC, right? All except one, the Phillies, whose legal name is just the Phillies.

The Phillies. Just the Phillies. It's just, it feels fitting. It feels so perfect. Like they're not putting on airs, you know? It's very drop the the, just Facebook. It's neater. Yeah.

It just, it feels appropriate for that team and that city and that group of guys. It's just like, I'm surprised the corporate name of the entity isn't Da Fightin's. Anyway, the Phillies, I enjoyed it. It just, it rings true. So we have a lot to talk about today. Ostensibly, we're going to talk about some amateur baseball. I actually do have some questions about college baseball. This was, well, it was my idea, but you were like, yeah, we should do that. I went along with it. I was a willing participant in this exercise. We're bringing them along. We're bringing them along. Yeah, the MLB draft

combine has been happening and sort of still is happening, and Eric and Michael have been attending that, and then the college baseball World Series is happening as of Saturday. And there's a lot to talk about there. But I do have some MLB stuff to touch on here. The first thing I wanted to bring up, I don't know whether you guys saw Dave Martinez's

ejection on Thursday. He had a real throwback. It was a real old school ejection. He was complaining about pitch calls. And I think he had a case.back. It was a real old school ejection. He was complaining about pitch calls. And I think he had a case. There were some suspect ones. But he went out there and he put on a show. He did the cleaning of the plate, right? He used some of his like statistical papers or lineup papers or whatever it was to wipe off the plate, which is a great go-to move. line up papers or whatever it was to wipe off the plate, which is a great go-to move.

But then he actually got down on the ground and kind of conveyed where he thought the pitch was or where it was received, like way down in the dirt, basically. He just, he stretched out full length. This was after he got run. So he was walking back to the dugout and then he got the heave-ho and then he went back and got his money's worth at that point. And I was just thinking that I haven't really seen that so much. And I don't know whether my perception of that is accurate or whether you think I'm inventing things here. It's not that managers don't get ejected anymore. They certainly do. theatricality of the manager ejection has really gone downhill. Like you see spittle flying and you see arguing and you see invective, but you don't really see people acting things out anymore or like running away with bases or throwing faux grenades or, you know, all the stuff that like would really go viral or make SportsCenter or whatever. It's just now it's like a guy gets mad or pantomimes being mad and then goes back to the dugout. And we don't really see this inventiveness and creativity anymore.

Am I off base here or am I picking off on something that is actually happening? I think you're right. Yeah, I think that there's something about 21st century media, really when Philip Wellman became, the fact that I know that Philip Wellman's name is on the tip of my tongue is an indication that, you know, at some point our culture held onto these moments and made a big deal, much bigger deal of these moments than they had been in the Lou Piniella Cubs days, right? Yeah. And some of that stuff still lives on, but I think the way it permeates through the culture

and the way we all kind of go, look at this guy losing his mind at his job has probably impacted the way grown men in that moment think about how to behave. They have that awareness that, oh, I'm going to be on social media, which is a thing that they didn't have to think about until 10 or so years ago. And so, yeah, I do think that that causes people to be like, ah, do I really want this on my death reel? When it's over for me are the things that people are going to think about me losing my mind. The first slide of your op-ed is that you threw a resin bag as a grenade. But that was so funny. Yeah.

That's not a bad way to remember. We really have lost an element of artistry, I think. Yeah. People thought, I think, that ejections were going to go the way of the dodo just because once you had replay, why even bother arguing with the umpires on the field if they weren't responsible for the call, right? Or ball and strike calls have gotten better, obviously, as umpires have gotten graded on these things. So people thought there would be fewer things to argue about or less reason to argue. And I don't know that that's really happened.

I think ejections are down slightly relative to some earlier errors, but guys still get ejected all the time. Aaron Boone gets ejected every other game, right? But I guess he had some memorable ones, like when he had the savages in the box game. But that was more about something he said than something he did or acted out. So, again, it's not like the choreography of the manager argument and ejection, I think, has headed downhill. Well, I think in the age of, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, but John Boy's lip-reading videos, like, I think there is a place for – and I definitely appreciate Aaron Boone is a craftsman in that specific genre of manager ejections. But I wonder if there's also the kind of personality that you put in the dugout. It seemed like up until the turn of the century, the guy you hire to be the manager is a guy who is good at getting ejected. And now that the qualifications for managing in

the big leagues are other than, are you a former middle infielder with substance abuse problems, then you get guys, I think, who are a little more even keeled. And I love that this was Dave Martinez because I think he's probably the best in the game right now. Yeah, I think so too. At getting ejected. He had that recent incident too where he— The World Series incident is just— Oh, yeah.

But he also—what was it? Like last week he brought a printout. Visual aids. Yeah, right. Also, what was it like last week? He brought a printout. Visual aids. Yeah, right. He brought like a presentation of that umpire miscall or so he claimed on the batter running

inside the baseline, the batter runner. And he brought a still image to demonstrate that he was in the right. So you don't see that kind of prop use these days. So he's really kind of carrying on that tradition. It is interesting to me that people thought that ejections would decline and that people would sort of take at face value the calls they saw on the field. Because I think, you know, accuracy is certainly part of what goes into managers feeling frustrated or not in a given situation. But like, there's so much else that goes into that. I don't know.

Once you've, once you've seen a player flip the bird to, to an automatic ball and strike call in the fall league, you're like, this is only, only a little bit about accuracy and much more about feelings. But then that makes it surprising that we haven't seen more big demonstrative, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to prove a point for my guys kind of moments. I don't know. It's interesting. Yeah.

Along the lines of what you were just saying, Bowen, there's an article in the Times from 2019 that was headlined, The Dying Art of the Manager Meltdown. And there was a paragraph in there. And even when arguments do occur in today's game, Dale Scott said, Dale Scott, the former umpire and effectively wild guest, the younger, newer managers don't measure up to their predecessors, quote, especially the ones who are all about numbers and sabermetrics. They come out to argue, Scott added, and they have no clue what to actually say. So I guess that supports your hypothesis that the new numbers-based, don't

say anything that's going to get you in trouble, be the middleman between the front office of the field. Maybe they're just not working with a full clip when it comes to being prepared for these arguments. We got to send them to like improv class or something. I don't think it takes that much. Just I do think it would be useful to have that tool in their toolkit. Yeah. You really want to make theater kids out of maybe music? And it's funny because at the same time this is happening, we have choreographed home run celebrations everywhere you look. So it's not like theater kids are out of place here. We even answered a listener email not long ago from an actual theater kid who was like, can I get a job as a consultant for team home run celebrations to really blow these things out?

So players are doing it at the same time that managers are sort of restraining themselves. with the emphasis on pace of play, right? Because if you're running around the bases and you're making off with the bases and you're throwing things and you're wiping things off and generally just refusing to leave the field, you're delaying the game. And I don't know if like

there would be pitch clock issues there. I mean, right? Like there's a between batter clock. I mean, that could be a problem. I don't know if they would suspend it for a heated manager argument or whether you could actually hurt your team or whether it just goes against the culture of the sport now, which is like, let's keep things down. But it is quite entertaining when they slow things down in a certain way. So I wouldn't want to lose that entirely, especially if it's a relatively nondescript team like the Nationals. A Dave Martinez blow up might be the best thing that happens in any given game. We still have some big dramatic flares. So maybe the answer is that we're concentrating that energy into a few choice ejections rather than spreading it out over a broader number. Because sometimes you get like the thing that happened in the Rangers game last week where you ended up with Marcus Simeon and then the manager and I think the pitching coach somehow all ejected within a 30-second span.

Speaking of blowups, I guess, Meg, your number one overall pick in the 26 under 25 draft has been benched for a couple games. Wander Franco, will you be issuing discipline as well? I guess you will indirectly because you will not be receiving any wins above replacement toward your total while he is not in the lineup. So almost by default, he is benched for your team as well. I'm going to say the following, Ben. First of all, it's a long draft. It's a 10-year window. I think he'll be fine. And second of all, with the exception of watching some amateur players run a 30-yard dash yesterday

and then college baseball, a 30-yard dash yesterday, and then college baseball. My engagement with the sport over the last couple of days has been seeing the University of Oregon's baseball stadium. So I don't know. Ben, I'm here to tell you I don't even have any idea what you're talking about. What did he do? Did he do something naughty? He's a bad teammate now.

He's a bad teammate. So Kevin Cash made sure to clarify he's a good kid. But apparently, you know, he's also still kind of a kid age-wise. And I guess the Rays have not been happy with how he has handled some recent failures. He's been slumping a little lately by Wander Franco standards. And apparently there have been some verbal spats with teammates and some instances of slamming equipment in the dugout after making out in close proximity to other players, perhaps. So they've decided to send him a message here. Cash said he's a really good kid, a really good person, but he is learning and dealing with the

challenges of being a major league player and some of the frustrations that come with it. So obviously news because he's probably the best player on probably the best team. Yeah. But the way that they're handling it, it seems to be a little different from, say, Ali Marmal and Tyler O'Neill or those various incidents, right? But it is, you know, you always, it's a weird job in so many ways. I mean, we were just talking about manager ejections. In what other job can you make a public spectacle of yourself and behave in a way that typically would not be welcomed in the workplace, be told to leave, and then come back the next day.

And, you know, unless you spat on someone or accidentally bumped someone, it's fine. Everything resets and everyone gets along well, and it's just part of the business. You know, if we stormed out of our workplaces in a similar way and just came back the next day and acted as if nothing happens, that probably would not fly. I mean, we all work remotely, so I guess we can act however we want. Yeah, I was like, I'm going to storm into my own yard. I was going to say, it's very much like podcasting. Yeah. But when you actually have to work in proximity to other people, generally frowned upon.

And yet we're like, no, they should make a bigger spectacle of themselves. Anyway, sort of similar, I guess, when it comes to baseball players being benched or disciplined in that we all know about it. And I guess that's part of the point. The reason to do it is, you know, sort of to send a message that is public and acts as a disincentive. Hey, don't do that anymore because everyone knows that you've been misbehaving or that we think you've been misbehaving. I guess you could say, like, if you take that step with your franchise cornerstone whom you have tied your future to by extending him for a zillion years, then you better be right that that's the way you want to go about it. I guess you could also say that because your future is tied to him for a zillion years, then you better be right that that's the way you want to go about it.

I guess you could also say that because your future is tied to him for a zillion years, then you think long-term with that player, just like Meg is thinking long-term with her draft. And so if you're thinking that benching him for a couple of games now when you have a division lead that I guess could be more comfortable

because the Orioles are quite good, it turns out, but that might pay dividends down the road because the Orioles are quite good, it turns out. But that might pay dividends down the road if the player learns a lesson from that and is not bitter about it, right? And there aren't hard feelings from this that fester. Yeah, I think it just goes to show that my idea of there needing to be like a feelings booth for these guys is the right one. Because you got to vent the spleen, you know? As we political theorists would say,

you must vent the spleen. And where else to do it but a padded feelings booth. And then you just have your little feelings and you can move on having decompressed. In the golf house? Yeah. Just go up and down the stairs and walk back there and then do your thing as long as you're not Kevin Browning yourself.

Yeah. Do not punch walls. I continue to advocate for padded walls everywhere and anywhere close to the field. People cannot control themselves, so you got to pad the walls. Yeah, it's a little padded booth. It would be ideal for podcasting or getting stuff off your chest, one or the other. I guess those are not mutually exclusive activities. But you go down there and you feel your frustration and you get it out and it's contained.

It's not directed at anyone else. You know, I do think that everyone has days where they are snippy with coworkers in a way that they end up regretting later because we're all possessed of human feeling and we fail. So it's going to happen. But I think it is a good thing to intervene on at a certain point and be like, hey, we all got to get on together. So let's have some standards for how we comport ourselves toward our fellows, our fellow rays. That does explain a few things. Like, for instance, it explains why yesterday I found Meg sneaking up behind me with a scalpel in her hand, muttering

vent the spleen, vent the spleen under her breath. Vent the spleen! You gotta vent the spleen. Not other people's spleens, just your own. No, one's own spleen. And, you know, it's... Usually, I guess, with these benchings, it's a direct response, sometimes even a mid-game

response to a particular play that everyone sees. And in this case, I guess there may have been some apparent lollygagging, but it seems to have been behind the scenes stuff or things that maybe the cameras weren't capturing. So it's not quite the case of, you know, someone jogs after a ball and you immediately pull him and everyone can see why that happened. And maybe that's even extra embarrassing, right? But I guess it's all about the way that you explain it. And Kevin Cash seemed to do a somewhat better job of that than, say, Ali Marmal. Like, you got the impression that Kevin Cash had probably talked to Wander Franco before he aired all of this, and maybe they were on the same page, perhaps. I don't know whether it's fair or not, but the Rays seem to get good reviews when it

comes to kind of fostering chemistry and getting people to buy into what they're doing, which is maybe extra important for them because they're often doing something strange and something that you would think might make people not really want to be raised like, you know, unorthodox picture usage or whatever it is. But it seems like year in and year out, people are largely into that. Not in every case, but they're like, yeah, this is the raise ethos. We're raised. We're going to all pull together. And you always hear about the Rays that they're good at kind of getting every level of the organization on the same page and having consistent messages, which I can't testify to from experience. But maybe you've heard that, Eric, as well.

I guess in Franco's case, there have been things for a little while. But he's just such a young guy. He loves cars, and I think that he's got multiple very elaborate vehicles, and one of them has a safe in it for all his jewelry and stuff. So I don't know. It just is immense wet on our brains until we're in our mid-20s. And if you gave me tens of millions of dollars at that age, like I shudder to think of what I'd be doing. So I was just like, we'll let it air out. But anything that has long-term social weirdness and patterns of behavior that some of these young athletes exhibit that like leads to long-term, you know, transgressions. And they're a varying severity and type,

whether it's Kyrie Irving or Ja Morant or whoever it is. It starts with a thing. At one point, it is just a thing they do and not yet a pattern of behavior. So I don't know. It's not really a big deal, I don't think. You sit the guy down for a couple of days. I've lived through versions of this

with the baseball teams I've cared about. Like Mike remembers, I'm sure like Jimmy Rollins getting benched for not running out this and that ground ball and, you know, him whining about wanting to hit lead off. And it's like, all right, like I understand where everyone's coming from. Charlie Manuel is going to do things his way. And so, you know, ultimately it wasn't a big deal. I don't think that those two are like, you know, not on speaking terms or anything like that after all that. No. And the thing about Jimmy Ronalds is like, he'd come back like two weeks later as like one of the senior leadership figures of that group, maybe like, you know, the de facto captain of that team. And so like, I think there's

a lot of value in just saying, Hey, like sit down, cool off, come back, you know, get your head right. And I think everybody needs that every so often. So absent like a bigger red flag, I don't, I think the Razor are smart to handle this this way. As long as it's not a case, like, do you remember last year, the Ronald Acuna comments about Freddie Freeman and the back and forth about that? And Acuna was implying that there was kind of clubhouse policing of rookie behavior. And don't like the way this guy plays and it's less about like actually being a bad teammate and more about just playing with a certain style. Right. But I would imagine that's one and he is justified in that belief. Like he's, he has been a big leaguer and big league quality since he became a big leaguer. But like, he always, I mean, you know, he kind of looked like a veteran almost just in terms of like, does he think he should be here? Like, does he believe he's good enough to be here? Because he had plenty of evidence to that effect. And in sports generally, there are just times when the clubhouse environment is like the

foundation that's in place already is or is not stable enough to handle someone who's more volatile entering the mix, right? Like the Patriots teams where it's like, sure, Randy Moss was a malcontent in Oakland, but adding him to this group will be okay. And Corey Dillon, same thing. And with this Rays group, just kind of looking up and down the lineup, there isn't – Randy or Roserain is kind of a buckwild dude, and so is Jose Siri. Jose Siri is really volatile as a person, and I don't know that there's –

there's not a lot happening here in this clubhouse where it's like, oh yeah, here the stabilizing force is this contingent of dudes. So maybe it is more of something to watch as things trudge on here the rest of the season, given that this team is not really meeting any resistance. There hasn't really been any Rays-related adversity other than them weathering all these injuries to their pitchers, which they seem to have to do every year. But yeah, it's not as if I'm looking at this team and just like, oh, it's okay.

But I suppose when you have someone like a Freddie Freeman or like a Brian McCann or some of these people who are imposing their will upon the clubhouse, unless they are absolutely the best guy and there's like, you know, some way of them backing it up, you know, in an unassailable way, there could be backlash to that that can be destabilizing. So like, I don't necessarily think that it's, you know, it's just, you gotta have the right mix and it's just sort of a weird, I do think there is a weird alchemy to it that certain teams seem to have. And sometimes it can ebb and flow throughout the course of a season and you just want things to, you know,

hit right at the end when it's go time in October. And so I just think, you know, across baseball with this Rays team and elsewhere, it's probably still pretty magmatic. But yeah, like this Rays team, it is like, ah, yeah. Who is the person who's like, hey, get it together, everyone. Everyone needs to relax. You're third in baseball. You're in MVP conversation. You can have a couple of days and everything is fine, dude. Please chill out. out. Yeah, as long as you're not, like, tamping down on someone's personality or, like, the way they play the game in a positive way, the way they express themselves,

if it's more just kind of curbing the times that that is expressed in a way that makes other people uncomfortable or leads to, like, taking a play off every now and then, that kind of thing, then it's probably a useful corrective. And as long as it's communicated in the right way, then it's probably not something that's going to become a bigger issue down

the road. Yeah. And that's, it goes to what Eric was saying is there's a difference when that guy is like Albert Pujols versus when that guy's Bud Norris, you know? Right. And we all need to be told to not like not be ourselves, but to like, it's okay. You can let it, you know? Right. And we all need to be told to not, like, not

be ourselves, but to, like, it's okay. You can let it, you know, not, do not mean to suggest that I am the editorial equivalent of Wander Franco, but, like, you know, I need to be told every now and then, like, no, it's fine. Like, you can You can leave some of those hyphens. It's

okay. I do. I leave some of them Ben, but you know what? There are too many of them. So I can't leave them all because some of them are unnecessary. Gotta get them out of there. I'm with you. The whole Joey Votto, you don't get to decide whether or not I get angry thing is like, yeah, that makes sense to me too. Right. But if I'm in the car, both Meg and Mike have experienced this to and from the combine.

The place I am most apt to get angry and yell at someone is from the safety of my car when they have done something dumb on the highway or whatever. And it's like, yeah, you don't get to decide if I get angry or not, but if my demeanor is impacting your safety or like... Full-on road rage and you're swerving at someone in traffic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That reminds me of the safe you mentioned in his car. Right. He had he had a safe in his rolls with like several thousand dollars worth of jewelry in there that got stolen, which I guess is why we knew that he had a safe in his car because it was not safe as it turned out. This was –

I don't understand that. Unless you're like trying to do like the last half of the Italian job all in 30 seconds. Yeah. No, I would think – I mean not that I'm a car owner or driver, but when I've been in cars, like I tried not to like leave anything visible that could be an incentive to break in there. I mean, when I was a little in an earlier era in New York and we had this old beat up used car from the seventies that we parked on the street and it would get sideswiped like every week and it was fine because it was full of dents and dings and it was worthless and like the foam from the ceiling was falling off.

But that did get broken into like the windows were shattered and everything. That kind of thing used to happen fairly often. So it was always like, don't leave anything out on the seat that someone might see. If you have a safe in there, on the one hand, a safe is supposed to be safe. You're not supposed to be able to break into it, but if you can see that there's a safe, it's like, oh, there must be something pretty valuable in there that you would need

a safe for, so maybe we should get that safe. Does he not set the combination or something, or is it just like the same as Mel Brooks' Yeah, it's like Mel Brooks' Well, if you can steal the safe itself, then then they have, the thief has as much time as he needs to get into it. Right.

Yeah. Then you get someone who specializes in that sort of thing. Anyway, I have two things to run by you here to see whether you all agree with these theses. The first is something written by another Philly guy, Jason Stark. So he wrote something for The Athletic. And the headline is, How the Orioles, Diamondbacks, and Reds Capitalized on MLB's New Rules and Surprised the Sport. Now, Meg, we've talked about all of these teams quite a bit, more than we expected to this season.

That's right. I talked about the Reds even more with Russell while you were away. This is just, it's gone from never Reds to regularly Reds. But Jason's thesis here is that maybe these surprise teams are surprising us in part or in large part because they are built for or have capitalized on the new rules. And the evidence for that, it's largely based on base running. They're young and fast and athletic, and they've stolen a lot of bases and stolen bases efficiently. And there's kind of a hodgepodge of other things thrown in there. You know, teams maybe also controlling the running game well, some of them, or the Orioles having a lot

of lefty hitters who have a high average on ground balls pulled or, you know, pitch clock violations, not a lot of pitch clock violations. The Orioles have one pitch clock violation on their hitters all season. So it's mostly base running base, but also some other little bits of evidence that are thrown in there to sort of sweeten the package, make the evidence more compelling. And Jason's not saying it's entirely a product of the new rules. He acknowledges like they just have good players, like a lot of new good players showed up who would have been good with any rules, right? But he's making a case that this is a big part of it. And this is not something I had considered in our conversations about these

teams being good and exceeding expectations. I had not thought to myself, maybe it's because they are taking advantage of the new rules. So having read the evidence laid out here, do you find this compelling? Should we think that they are more believable because they are built to take advantage of the way that baseball is played in 2023? Should we have seen this coming because of the way that they're constructed? I mean, I wrote about this with the Diamondbacks and the Orioles, at least. I didn't think the Reds were going to be any good, but you could see, and Jason's article, I think, makes the distinction between sort of backing into the rules favor in the roster they've already constructed

versus trying to go after these things. But you could just see with the amount of speed that the Orioles and the Diamondbacks in particular had on the rosters from last year. I think that it was clear that the opportunity there was there to take a leap. And I think the Orioles were my, my hobby horse for years and years now is that teams are way too conservative on the basis and that the pitch clock and the throw over limits and the slightly bigger bases, all that just makes it more profitable to go. And so if you have a team full of young and fast guys, then obviously you're

going to take care of, you know, you're going to get some kind of advantage from that. You know, that said, base running is sort of a marginal thing, even for a team as aggressive as the Orioles or the Diamondbacks. So it doesn't explain everything. I think that those teams are good now because they were pretty good last year and they've added Gunnar Henderson and Corbin Carroll and so on. But yeah, I think this was pretty easy to see coming, you know, not to take anything away from the article, but the signs were there. I think that these, you know, these were teams that could and did run a lot. And if that's, you know, the thesis that you're going under, I think that's been proved

out. Especially in the Diamondbacks case that it is most correct in that case, I think, because the degree to which they have leaned into and have due to like can really run, you know, is pretty extreme. But I think if like we look at, you'd almost have to, you can't like do it for all 30 teams, but like it's not thorough enough. Like it's not really a study,

as Ben mentioned, it is like a thesis. If we were looking at some of the other surprising teams across baseball, though, there are some, like there's more supporting evidence here. Like the Marlins are 10 games over 500. And they shifted from, hey, let's add, we need power. Let's add Jorge Soler. Let's add Ivy Sayo Garcia and these guys too.

Let's trade for Joey Wendell and Luis Arise and sign Gene Segura and like these contact-oriented dudes as the rules change and you know balls in play because infielders aren't positioned as precisely balls in play could be more valuable and like they are performing pretty well right so like there's some other stuff happening here it's not like the Phillies have tanked right they are the opposite of this. They are a bunch of slow DH dudes who mash and like they are performing about the same as they were at this time last year, where they're sort of hovering around 500 and, you know, have a chance to sneak in. So like we could go team by team and say, hey, you know, this is how

these things are trending. Like the Rangers are not a team constructed this way. They are conveniently absent from this list. I was going to say, yeah, the Rangers don't really steal many bases at all. They're toward the bottom of that leaderboard or the base runs leaderboard. Not that I guess it has to apply to every single quote-unquote surprise team in order to make some sense. But yeah, there's a little bit of like selective or, you know, even some teams that are disappointing this season have been running or have good base running numbers, too. Like, I mean, looking at the Fangraphs, base running runs leaderboard.

The Dodgers are on top. The Padres are fourth. The Mets are sixth. I mean, these teams aren't all— I'm surprised by that. Yeah. These teams aren't all stealing as many bases as, let's say, you know, the Reds are second in steals. The Diamondbacks are fourth.

The Orioles are 11th, right? But if you looked at just, like, base running runs and did a correlation between, like surprise and in a good way and surprise in a bad way. I'm not sure how clear it would be. I mean, Vogelback was in that commercial. Yeah, he still has that still at a base. I predicted that he would. Come on. Well, you got half a season left, Ben.

And I think you're right that it's like a mix of things. a mix of things. And when you have really good athletes who can then actualize other skills, you're going to take a step forward as a team. And I think Jason acknowledges this, like it helps that the D backs have potentially the NL MVP just like on their roster now, but they steal a lot of bases. Like they also don't strike out very much as a team. Like I think they're third from the bottom and strike out rate on the team level. So they're just, I think you have a bunch of guys who can do a bunch of different things. And yes, the, the base running is exciting because it correlates to a new rule change and it's fun to watch. And it certainly puts your team in a position to take advantage of good hitting when you're taking the extra base with regularity but i also think that like these are just good squads and you know you look at arizona

is also bolstered by good pitching at least good starting pitching right so there's there's a lot that goes into the the soup then there's so many variables change too. I think the schedule format changing is such a huge deal. And so there are just so many variables that it's hard to nail down what the impacts are of any individual one. This isn't even the same Reds team that we had at the beginning of the season, right? Like how many dudes are on their roster now who got called up over the course of the last couple of months and are really changing the complexion and trajectory of that team as it starts to coalesce around their young guys. The rookies in general, like

Jake Fraley getting a chance to play somewhere and doing pretty well while like Steer is good and McLean is good, made changes and is good and Ellie is his, you know, a singular thing. Yeah. I think even these teams, they

vary in how good they are. And as you said, like the composition of the rosters has changed kind of dramatically in some of these cases, but Arizona and Baltimore are 7th and 8th in run differential. The Reds are 18th. They've been outscored on the season.

Even during their winning streak, they've had some one-run wins, a bunch of one-run wins in there. I guess you could say that if you're not, you know, walloping your opponents, if you're having to eke out wins, then things like taking longer leads and going first to third or scoring from first on a single, which Corbin Carroll just somehow did the other day. Those things can make more of a difference maybe potentially if you're in that bucket. But I guess it just kind of comes down to like if you believe in the base running stats that we have, as Mike was saying, like it seems somewhat marginal. I mean, just like the scale, the difference between teams is not great. It's not enough to account for a team having a surprising season. Like,

you know, the Diamondbacks are, for one thing, they were already really good at this before, right? Like they led the majors in base running runs last year by quite a bit, and they weren't the surprise team of 2022 far above average when it comes to Arizona or Cincinnati and Baltimore less than that. And if you look at Baseball Prospectus, Arizona is at the top, but 11 runs and then the Reds third at like five or six runs. And then the Orioles, they actually have negative somehow. five or six runs. And then the Orioles, they actually have negative somehow. So I also got some stats from Robert Au at Baseball Perspectives that's basically base running runs allowed by a team, which ranges from the Nationals allowing 6.6 more runs than average to Atlanta preventing 12.4 more runs than average. Arizona, Cincinnati, and Baltimore are all within one run of average. I don't know. I don't know that that can explain that much of it. or other theory I'd advance to sort of go off something Eric said a couple minutes ago, is that all these rule changes and the schedule changes too, coming in at once,

sort of reminds me of Formula One where the teams, they get a new rule set and all the cars look different as everybody is trying to build the best car for the new regulations. And then over the course of a couple of years, they figure out what the best way is and everybody converges strategically. And so then they change the rules again to sort of shake up the order. And baseball doesn't do that. This is the first time that MLB has really made a big in-game, you know, last time that MLB made a big rule change in terms of gameplay like this was the DH. And so I wonder if this is just opening up different competitive avenues as everybody tries to figure out the best stylistic way to play for these rule sets. Yeah, I hope so.

That would be fun and entertaining. And yeah, to their credit, Stark talked to all the executives who constructed these rosters, and they all acknowledged, yeah, we didn't necessarily build our team to capitalize on rules changes that we didn't know were going to be made. It's just we were built that way already, and maybe we leaned into it and capitalized on the situation. But again, you could come up with counterexamples like when you've thought that, oh, the Guardians are built for baseball in 2023. That's something people were saying this spring. I remember that coming up on our team preview podcast for the Guardians. It's like, hey, they're young and they're speedy and they're fast and they put the ball in play and they've been disappointing. Right. So I just I don't know that it holds.

I mean, I think more important than whether this explains why they're good and why they've exceeded expectations. It's definitely fun. Like it it makes them much more interesting. Yeah. The buzz in the, you know, at great American ballpark, when you put that team on TV is like,

wow, this is a fun place to watch baseball right now. Everyone is super stoked. And yeah, like it's amazing. I can't believe TJ Friedel is leading this team in war. And also it's been a shockingly long time since the TJ Friedel undrafted free agent story

was a thing to care about. Do you guys remember this? It was 2016. I definitely do. So Friedel was draft eligible sophomore in 2016. And some subset of the industry just did not know that. He went undrafted at a time when it was much harder to be undrafted. His draft was just much longer in 2016.

Then Friedel is part of Collegiate Team USA after the draft. Again, he was totally passed over and looks incredible. And all of a sudden, there's a bidding war with teams that had leftover draft pool bonus money, which at that you know, at that time was a sign like that you weren't doing it right. Like to have $700,000 worth of unspent bonus pool money after the draft is like a dereliction of your duty. And yet the Reds like, you know, outbid everyone for Friedel that he gave him 700K as an undrafted free agent, like late in the signing period, as a college outfielder from Nevada. And it's taken over a half decade for that guy

to get his footing in the big leagues. And now he's the team's war leader as we're sitting here right now. Yeah, there's definitely something strange going on this season because the standings are surprising on the whole and things are topsy-turvy. And people have written about this.

Neil Payne just wrote about this. Like there's basically zero correlation between payroll and success so far this season. A lot of the teams that are disappointing are big spenders. And then, you know, you could make like the Mets payroll is probably like the size of, I don't know, several teams that have way outperformed the Mets combined at this point. And maybe that's just like a fluky half season thing. I think the Mets payroll is basically equal to like the Rays and the Orioles and the Reds and the Diamondbacks put together. So like there's definitely something sort of unusual happening here. And you might be tempted to say, well, it's unusual results. What else is unusual?

The rules are different. So there's probably a connection there. And there might be. But I guess I'm unconvinced that that explains a lot of it. And Neil also, he had a metric that he made before the season started. He called it like a Manfred score or something, which tried to predict which teams were better positioned to capitalize on the new rules based on how fast they were and how often they shifted and that sort of thing. And he found that there's like an extremely weak correlation between that and how teams have actually done this season. So that would speak to the idea that maybe it wasn't all that foreseeable, but I guess, you know, you could come up with any number of ways to

try to quantify how well-constructed teams are for baseball in 2023. I'm just saying, I think it's maybe a slight reach. I'm like, I'm marveling at how fun and fast and speedy and aggressive these suddenly good and exciting and entertaining teams are. But I don't know that I'm drawing a direct line there. It's like, LA De La Cruz is awesome, but you know, Gunnar Henderson is awesome. Like all these guys are awesome. Corbin Carroll's awesome. Like that's why they're good. You can also point to like the D-backs and say Perdomo, Geraldo Pridomo is performing above his actual ability. And like Zach Gallen has been healthy and they upgraded the right-handed

part of their platoon situation with Longoria and Gurriel during the off season. And they made the back of their bullpen. It's not like awesome, but like Chafin and those guys like Miguel Castro, they are better than what they had at the back of their bullpen last year. It doesn't have anything to do with the rule changes. There are other reasons that they are much better.

Well, and baseball, both recently and over the course of its history, is littered with guys who are plus athletes who run really well and don't do anything with that, even in environments and eras where base stealing was more common than it is now. So it isn't, you know, it's a necessary condition to take advantage of these rule changes, but I don't think it's sufficient to bolster the fortunes of a team on its own

because, you know, you got to be able to hit and like work again and pitch and, you know, pitching. You got to do that too, if that piece of it kind of important. So, yeah. Yeah, that is that too if that piece of it kind of important. So, yeah. Yeah, that is important. And that's an excellent segue to the next and last thing that I wanted to bring up in the banter portion here

because Patrick Dubuque, a friend of ours, we admire his work at Baseball Prospectus, wrote a piece called Bad Bullpens Are Good Business. And this also touches on the unpredictability of baseball this season and just in general. And basically he made the case that take the Dodgers, for instance, who have had an underperforming bullpen, like a really bad bullpen by Dodger standards, although they didn't have a lot of trouble with the Angels this week. But he kind of made the case that this can be bad for the fans of that team, but it's good for baseball in general for a couple of reasons. One, because it's kind of unpredictable from a season-long standpoint that bullpens are variable, that we can't really predict bullpen results all that well, but they are important. And so when you look at the teams

that were projected to have the best bullpens, and then you look at the teams that have actually had the best bullpens, often there's a big disconnect there. And sometimes that can be the driving force behind a surprise season. Case in point, the Orioles and Reds are one and two in Fangraph's bullpen war. And then also argued that that applies on a game level as well because when you have a bad bullpen the outcome of the game is more uncertain and he brought up the 2015 royals and their kind of clockwork late inning bullpen where they had just you know set seventh eighth inning ninth inning guys and they were kind of automatic, as automatic as a bullpen can be. And Patrick made the case that that was actually boring, that it just reduced

uncertainty about who was going to pitch and when they were going to pitch and were they going to cough up a lead. Like, obviously, we like some suspense and we like surprising outcomes and we like comebacks. So therefore, it would be boring. Maybe it would follow that having a really stable bridge at the back of your bullpen and just shut down arms back there who were constantly locking down leads would be boring and bad for baseball. So do you buy that bad bullpens are good for baseball? I understand that people's preferred baseball aesthetics are their own thing and think that

any individual is welcome to their own preferred baseball aesthetic. I don't think guys coming in and like breathing fire is boring, but I can see, like, I understand that the, the notion that a game never really being out of reach or being less likely to be out of reach because of the volatility of bullpens makes the outcomes of the game potentially more interesting. Like that just seems like a logical conclusion to draw that when the outcome of a game is in doubt,

the game therefore is more interesting to watch. As someone, like my personal, the way I engage with baseball is, wow, look how talented these guys are. And so when Aroldis Chapman comes in, I don't go, this is boring, but that's me. Definitely not now. Yeah. Well, it wasn't boring when he was oo me. Definitely not now. Yeah.

Well, it wasn't boring when he was oozing pus out of his tattoo wound. That's interesting in its own way. And, you know, not throwing strikes is, you know, like, oh, here it goes. This guy's, you know, melting down. I feel bad for the Homer Simpson character who's responsible for said bullpen meltdowns.

But it is, I guess, interesting in a macabre way at the very least. So is it good for baseball as a whole, like the business of baseball? I don't know. That's a pretty weighty statement to make. Yeah, it would be really good if we weren't good at developing pitchers. Wouldn't that make us much more interesting to watch if our pitchers were worse? That doesn't really track for me. But the statement, hey, when the game's outcome is in doubt, therefore it is more interesting to watch the rest of that game, yeah, that makes sense to me. I think that tracks.

I want to say it tracks entirely for me. I think Patrick's exactly right. I mean, this has been my thing for years, is that pitchers are too good. And we're too good at developing pitchers. And as much as I'm, you know, in source sold by the guys who throw a one Oh three with a, you know, a killer slider, the kind of person who'd show up once every 15 years for most of baseball history. And it's now

there's two of them in every bullpen. That's very impressive to watch, but if the game's out of reach in a three run game and, you know, in the sixth inning, then what are we even doing here? Particularly in the playoffs. I know this might sound like sour grapes to coming from someone whose team was just bombed out of the World Series by one of the best playoff bullpens ever assembled. But the Phillies bullpen was surprisingly successful in the postseason, too. That was part of the reason they made that deep run. And now, you know, Jose Alvarado's reliable and Sir Anthony Dominguez isn't.

So, you know, unpredictability, I think, is the way I would like to go. I'm also one of those weirdos who I think that a sport can get so solved that it takes some of the chaos out of it. And this is eventually, I was told we were going to talk about college baseball at some point. I'm just going to string you along until it's time to end the episode. Oh, we meant to talk about it. As we enter our team of fandom. Yeah, I feel like, I mean,

looking back to those 2014, 2015 Royals teams, they were entertaining for any number of reasons. But the Holland-Davis-Herrera trifecta, that was pretty fun. Well, it was novel. I think that's why it was fun. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe it was that it was unusual or new or extraordinary.

And I think it kind of helped them compensate for maybe some shortcomings in other areas of the roster. I remember Sam wrote something in 2014 about how the Royals played like a different team depending on whether they were ahead or behind in the game. Relative to the rest of the league, they performed better once they had a lead than they did when they were trailing because they could deploy that shutdown bullpen. And I guess in 2014, it was maybe more shutdown or those particular three guys were more shutdown

than they were the following year. But there was kind of like a clockwork satisfaction to that where you could sort of see the rest of the game laid out before you. It's like if we could get a lead here, then we know what's going to happen next, which I guess is an argument against it being entertaining because, as you're saying, unpredictability and suspense are good. Ask Jordan Alvarez if Jose Alvarado's stuff was too good. You know what I mean? And Mike wasn't at the combine high school game two days ago as like guys were coming out of the bullpen and not throwing strikes. I couldn't feel how giddy you were next to me, Mike, watching that unfold. You weren't like, yeah, this is super interesting now that these guys are walking every other guy. Yeah, no, because I was sitting through a 12-inning game that didn't matter. No one wants to see that. I guess, like, I agree with the macro

statement that we don't want the game to be too solved. like i do feel like there's enough surprise year to year i'm trying not to for instance have the fact that we just talked about how good the reds diamond backs and orioles are sort of color my perception of that and like you know sometimes you have a really good bullpen your team still sucks or is middling. I guess that is probably a better descriptor for Seattle right now. So I don't know. I think if anyone's cracked the bullpen code, it seems to be Seattle. They just like remade their bullpen and it's still good again.

Right. Yeah. It's like Trevor got sure. Let's go. I'm going to take the, the opposite side of, of Bauman here from, for no other reason than like,

I got to also experience a team i care about engage with playoff baseball for the first time in a while and i was like this is terrifying and sucks and um i prefer to not do it again quite like this and you know being able to get jordan alvarez out would have been nice like a couple of times in certain opportune moments so as an as an anxious bear I'm like you know shut down guys for days let's go yeah the thing is there's nothing more annoying in any given game for that team's fans than a bad bullpen a bad bullpen is that can make a team unwatchable or extremely frustrating like there's nothing like I mean as a fan of a

team you always want that team to win so if it's predictable that it's going to win you're probably unwatchable or extremely frustrating. Like there's nothing like, I mean, as a fan of a team, you always want that team to win. So if it's predictable that it's going to win, you're probably fine with that. But blowing leads, never feeling confident in a lead, scoring, and then immediately giving back those runs. I'm not saying that there's necessarily like a psychological blow, as you often hear announcers say to not having a shutdown inning or whatever. But as a fan, it can be pretty deflating when it's like well we have a lead but we don't have anyone we can trust not to cough up that lead and i guess as great as a come from behind win is and it's even greater when it comes against a shutdown bullpen a fall from a head loss is equally dispiriting, if not maybe more dispiriting. And half the people watching any given game are people who are watching the team

with the bad bullpen in that scenario. So that can really make it a lot less fun to watch for at least one party involved. And I don't know if it equalizes on the other side. least one party involved, and I don't know if it equalizes on the other side. I also think that these bullpens are inflating expectations. That, like, if you have it, like, we just don't, a lot of fans, particularly fans of good teams, like the Dodgers, who, you know, Patrick wrote about, they expect to just be able to conjure five closer quality relievers. And if you don't have that, you don't feel safe. Like, what are we talking about here?

Like, no team's supposed to have five closer quality relievers that they can throw at every single game. So, like, experience a little peril for once in your life. Jesus. Everyone wants to be coddled with unhittable bullpen guys. It is sort of the Dodgers' hubris that has brought them to this place and some of it is deserved right because they did just pull Blake try like Blake Trinan got non-tendered and they just have because of the Dodgers they have 10 15 million dollars in the couch cushions to say hey

like come on down Corey Knable we know that your like arm is barely attached to you but let's we know your breaking ball quality is really good. And let's try to give you this new grip on your slider, which is like what they've done with Evan Phillips. And it's what they did with Trident. And it's like what they have done reliably with a lot of these guys. But when all of a sudden you look up

and the back of your bullpen is Phillips, Brewstar Gratterall, whose fastball doesn't really play, Yancy Almonte, who was, you know, a scrappy pickup from the Rockies, who they definitely made better, but it's not like you want to hand that guy the ball in the eighth inning and you're stoked about it, right? Like, it's, I think that, yeah, like,

the Dodgers do crank these guys out like nothing because they have some of the best player dev in the business. The Dodgers have taken the approach all year with their whole roster. Like, let's let these kids play and see how it goes. And with some of them, it's like, wow, James Atman's great. And then everyone adjusted to him. And oh, Miguel Vargas turns out like he's only okay probably. And, you know, he can't really play defense anywhere. And that's kind of true of Max Muncy too. And, you know, like they are a flawed team overall. And now they have the resources because they're the Dodgers to like

add to that team. And it's just about when they do it and how they decide to do it. But like, they could put Emmett Sheehan or Bobby Miller in the bullpen and they're going to be awesome. And some of this is the, the playoff format, because if you're the Dodgers and you eke in and your playoff rotation is your best four guys, and then the other, you know, like the Astros last year, like go ahead, Luis Garcia and Jose Urquidy, even though you'd be the third best starter on like most teams in baseball, you're in our bullpen now. Like the Dodgers do get to make those moves come post-season time and say, all right, Emmitt Sheehan, throw your fastball 70% of the time. While, you know, if the Mariners get in,

Bryce Miller, who has to operate that way of the time. Wow, you know, if the Mariners get in, Bryce Miller, who has to operate that way because that's the only thing he has, that's like an above-average pitch. Brian Wu, same thing. Like, good luck getting through the Rangers lineup four times. It's a different question in the regular season and then in the playoffs. Like, it's just a fundamentally different problem you're trying to solve with your pitching staff in both scenarios. And so I think that,

you know, the, what your opinion about how relief pitchers are, aren't too good. Like it's going to vary depending on whether you're talking about the regular season or, or the post season. Yeah.

And, and I guess a bad bullpen is maybe more palatable in the era of the pitch clock in the three batter minimum, because in the past, the late innings would really bog down when bullpen guys weren't getting outs because they would slow down, right? Especially with runners on base. And then you'd have mixing and matching and constant pitching changes. And that was really bad from a spectator standpoint, whereas now it moves along even if guys aren't getting outs. So the downside is removed

or at least reduced. All right. We've talked about pros plenty here. I promised we would talk about amateurs. So let's talk about some amateurs. The College World Series starts on Saturday and there was a big game to decide the matchup of the College World Series on Thursday. It had to be a big game because I was aware that it was being played. I'm sure you're leading this off by not knowing what the College World Series is. I mean, I know it describes the whole thing, right? But the end of it, the climax. The College World Series finals.

Yeah, okay. I mean, I'm used to the World Series describing the final already. It sounds redundant to me to have to say the Cosworth Series final. That's not my fault. That's their fault. I have talked to him about this before now, and him not retaining it does not indicate that I haven't said anything. I just want that on the record. In NPB, when the non-final rounds are called the Climax Series, it's like, it's not the Climax. This is the prelude to the Climax Series, and it's like, it's not the Climax. This is the prelude to

the Climax. This is foreplay here. And this is... At least two of the teams that made the College World Series wouldn't have shown up for something that was called the Climax Series. You can't even show that stuff in Japan. So, Thursday, there

was this big matchup. I saw a headline at Baseball America that said, and I hope I'm pronouncing these names right. I never know. Oh, my God. Even when I'm talking about the top prospects of the country is Paul Skeens versus Rhett Lauder. Woo! Nailed it. The best pitching matchup in College World Series history.

That was by J.J. Cooper. And then the next day or after the game, there's an MLB.com piece that said, was this the best pitching duel in College World Series history? So it did deliver. Now, I can't answer that question, obviously, in a quantitative way.

And Betteridge's law of headlines would suggest that the answer is no, but it sounded like it had a pretty good case from what I know. So, I mean, there are so many times when the pitcher's duel doesn't deliver, but in this case, it did, and it went to extra innings and was super exciting. And then I called Tommy Tank's walk-off. Oh, nice. Did you call it on the hamburger phone? No, I just called it in the room to

Eric and Bauman because they were standing there. Yeah, I was making pasta at the Southwest Desert Compound. We started watching that game at the combine still because we were waiting for Will Sanders, who stood Mike up for his... Wow, I did not mean to blow... I did not intend to

blow him up, but apparently you've got no compunctions about tanking his draft stock. What am I going to do? The kid had to go to his MRI and was worried that he was going to this is the explanation we received. Was worried he was going to be late for it, and it's totally fine. He's a good prospect. It's totally fine. He was the one

South Carolina player I had on my dance card for all the interviews I did this week, and I'm going to shit talk him at all the alumni functions. That's his punishment for blowing off the interview. If this week. And I'm going to shit talk him at all the alumni functions. That's his punishment for blowing off the interview. So if this poor kid listens to the pod, he's going to be so stressed. It's okay. Anyway, the two, two first round pitching talents here going head to head to decide

who gets to, to be in the college world series finals. And, uh, the stakes are, are high. So, and they both pitched really well. One of them threw like 120 pitches and the other threw, what, 88 pitches or something, but they were both excellent and the game was close and fun. So, I guess if you can still ask the question after the game about whether it was the best pitching tool in College World Series history, then it had to be pretty entertaining. the best pitching tool in college world series history, then it had to be pretty entertaining.

There had to be some Garrett Cole, you know, versus somebody else that was, Garrett Cole got torched in his college world series final appearance against South Carolina, who started Blake Cooper, who didn't really have a pro career. It's not just that these are like, you get two first rounders up against each other in a, you know, in a series this, or in a game that's important basically every year. It's that Skeens has this much hype, and Ladder is probably the second best college pitcher in this draft class. He's fourth, but okay. This entire College World Series has had just a huge amount.

They've been saying best ever since day one because day one included two teams winning games that they trailed, I think, in the eighth inning or later. And just the amount of star power between LSU and Wake Forest and Florida and Virginia's got a bunch of really talented players as well. And just the drama that everything is lived up to expectations. And there was a really cool stylistic contrast between Skeens and La, and the fact that their teams around them were just completely loaded.

Like, these are, you know, LSU is the most talented team in college baseball. Wake Forest has been the best team in college baseball. These are the only two teams that have been ranked number one all season. And so, like, you look at this and, like, obviously, this is going to be one of the most hyped games in college baseball history. And it lived up to the hype, and hype. And then some, and you know, Skeens and ladder both pitch really well. The winning run was scored by Dylan Cruz driven in by Tommy white.

And these like Skeens and Cruz and white are probably the big three biggest stars in college baseball this year. And LSU goes on to face Florida. Who's got Wyatt Langford. Who's going to be probably a top three pick, Jack Caglione, who's going to be in the conversation for 1-1. Just the amount of talent that's been on display and has shown up in a big way in the College World Series has been almost unprecedented, I think. It will be the best pitching matchup in College World Series history until and unless Skeens faces any of the Florida starters in a decisive game, right? Like, I don't know. I think that it's, we have Florida and LSU now starting

this weekend. And I think between the two teams, we have Skeens, we have Cruz. I don't know if Tommy White is necessarily going to be a first rounder, but there's a shot. Like there will be something like a half dozen between like six and eight first round talents over the course of the next couple of drafts on the field at any given time, which was also true of the LSU, you know, wake matchup. So yeah, I think it's a mixed bag because the way the NIL and transfer portal stuff has impacted college baseball has made it so things like this can be possible where we do have King Kong versus Godzilla at the end here over and over again. It might wreck parody across college baseball.

It's super weird that like – There's no parody in college baseball. Everything's been flowing – like everything's been flowing southeast for 10 years. But it's at a different extreme now though like it has been since i've you know since i've been a full-time baseball writer it is rare for any of the west coast college teams to host a regional period unless it's stanford and maybe ucla like that's sort of it it's super rare u of a has had it like one time uh over last, you know,

six years, seven years or so since I've been doing this full time. Right. But so you're right. You're right in that sense. But when the freshman second baseman at Utah Valley is really talented and interesting, he is not going to necessarily move the needle for that entire team during the course of his career at Utah Valley. But now he's not going to have a career that spans multiple years at Utah Valley. Like he's likely to go into the transfer portal and end up at one of these schools. So like, you know, what it means for the ecosystem of college baseball, I don't really know. I think that this dynamic will have like a weird impact where like the gap between the haves and have-nots will grow even more than, you know, it already is large.

But yeah, like at this time of year, it is a lot of fun. There were at, you know, at Chase Field yesterday. Thank you to the people who have been like taking care of us up in the suites, by the way. Yeah. Like the snacks and water and stuff. snacks and water and stuff. But like one of the women who was in charge of that was running around around, you know, game time with a remote to change all the TVs from the draft combine like screensaver to the College World Series game that like all the executives and scouts in the suites

wanted to have on. And so it's, you know, I think it's a lot of fun. I obviously don't have like a great sense of what the, the online fervor is like, because I've like removed myself from that, but I bet it's, it sounds like people are more interested in it now than ever before. Some of that is because all the other sports are kind of done. But yeah,

like these two teams are slamming the, that are left Florida and LSU. Like if I, I really think Ben, like you should give it a it the old college try, literally. Like, you'd be surprised watching some of these dudes do their thing. Like, I can't believe you don't, you know,

know who Jack Caglio is. Yes, I do, and I was going to ask you about it, that Bowman just mentioned on Florida, because, of course, the Otani comps are thrown around. The Jack Tani, I'm sure that is completely fair to set those expectations for him. But I mean, he's getting the passing profile treatment, right, about his potential to be a two-way player. I think every time we've had you on to talk about the draft, Eric, I always ask about two-way guys and potential two-way guys. So how excited should I actually be about about two-way guys and potential two-way guys. So how excited should I

actually be about his two-way potential? You should temper your expectations somewhat because the chase component for Caglione at the dish is extremely concerning. But in terms of guys who have this much power and who have this good of stuff on the mound. Brendan McKay is the last college player where the combo has been... I don't think McKay had this much power, but McKay was a much better pitcher, I think. He was a much better pitcher in terms of the craft of pitching, but didn't have the same arm strength. And I would say the power...

Caglione's power potential is definitely above what McKay's was, but McKay had plus raw. Like it was, it was real. Being at that ACC tournament with him and Drew Ellis, you know, they did some ridiculous things. I was surprised. I think I left, you know, I went to that ACC tournament thinking that McKay was a pitching only prospect and left wondering if it was actually plausible to let him at the very least while he was still going to be on an innings cap and pro ball do a little bit of both so that you could decide and know which of the two was the right avenue to choose like have a longer runway to make that decision but with Caglione you know the play discipline component is scary but yeah it's like plus or better raw power on a college freshman.

And, you know, mid to upper 90s arm strength that he holds and, you know, nasty breaking ball. Like, it is pretty crazy. And you can count on one hand the number of guys, period, regardless of the arena, that I've seen, like, do stuff like this. regardless of the arena that I've seen do stuff like this. And Hurston Waldrop, too. Hurston Waldrop, for me, will be a – he's a slam dunk top 100 prospect. As soon as he puts pen to paper on his pro contract, he's in that mix. And so both those guys are part of Florida's rotation.

It is pretty ridiculous. Yeah. So I say this – Transfer from Southern Miss, by the way. I say this about Caglione, like, I think he's closer to A.J. Reid than Shohei Otani, but you can be closer to A.J. Reid than Shohei Otani and still be a good big

leader. Like, that's how good Otani is and how unfair it is to compare anybody to him. Plus, we can call him the Jackwagon. You just like him because he's Italian. It's one of the reasons I like him. It's not the only reason but it is among the reasons. And you look at him and you're like, yeah, that guy's

Italian. I do not know if the Squeeze Play people got a letter from the FCC about how often they said Jack Wagon on the broadcast. Jack Wagon. It's cable. I mean, is that even cable? That might just be streaming. Yeah, maybe it isn't cable.

But, you know, like, Roons, I love Mike Rooney and Chris Budden, and I think that the rally cap and squeeze play people, like, I think that's some of the best sports television there is. Chris Burke is excellent as well. All the ESPN college baseball folks are really great.

But yeah, like, I just, even I, who tend to push the envelope with stuff like that, would not just be like, yeah, Jaguayan, Jaguayan, Jaguayan. Jaguayan. While we have you guys here, we talked about this not long ago, but the pitch count question keeps coming up, right? There's a Wall Street

Journal Jared Diamond piece out on Friday. Pitch counts are only suggestions at the College World Series in an era where MLB teams treat their pitchers like porcelain dolls. College pitchers are bucking the trend. And it talks about how Skeens has thrown at least 120 pitches in a game this month three times, and no major league pitcher has done it in a game once this season. And we obviously talked about the distinctions between the senior who's never going to pitch again

and this is his last time out there and he's leaving it all out on the field and prospects who actually have promising futures ahead of them and are potentially being mishandled. But do you see this as a pervasive problem still? And is it fair to point

to particular pitchers and pitch counts and single out those coaches or those programs as offenders? I think you want to be careful about giving people too much leeway because you don't want them to essentially abuse the physical health of amateur athletes for their own gain. I think in Skeen's case, things are okay. Like I've never been offended by the amount of pitches he has thrown. Yesterday, I think, pushed it. I think he went an inning too long, and I think you could see it. You could see him gassing.

Yeah, the quality of contact in that last inning yesterday was meaningfully different than before. But because it's college baseball and there's more rest built into their schedule, and in Skeen's case specifically, he is such a physical monster, and he's still reaching back and holding 100 miles per hour late in some of these starts. His last pitch, like 120-whatever it was, was 100 miles per hour late in some of these starts. His last pitch, like 120 whatever it was,

was 100 miles an hour even yesterday. And yesterday was the first time that he had thrown on short rest in this tournament run, right? I don't remember if he'd done it earlier in the season. Yeah, I don't remember earlier. But like seven days or six days rest is different than four days. And I think like I didn't love him going to 120, but Eric,

I'll let you finish. I'll come back to, I would, I guess I would say I would stop short of calling what seems to be people's issue with some of this stuff, concern trolling, but it is approaching. It is approaching it.

It is like more likely to be that than it is like an actual pervasive issue. I think that once Paul Skeens is done with his college career here, that he's probably done for this calendar year. Like I would be surprised if whoever ends up drafting him is like, yeah, go to Fredericksburg or whatever. Like, I don't think that's going to happen. I think that like, he's going to empty the tank and be done. And for a thing like this in this environment with the amount of space that is typically between starts for college pitchers,

that it is mostly okay. But yeah, for sure there have been instances in individual cases. I think it was Anthony Kay at UConn where he threw a complete game in the conference tournament on a Friday and then on Sunday came out of the bullpen and threw like another 70 pitches. He threw like over 200 pitches over the span of like three or four days.

Like you can't do stuff like that. Obviously, the NIL stuff probably changes the conversation to a degree because now we're not just talking about purely amateur athletes in the same sense that we were before. And like, that's nuance that I'm sure gets lost in some of the discussion that's happening in the forums that it, you know, is taking place in. But yeah, like, obviously, like, you don't just want to be like, ah, it's fine. And let, you know, these college coaches who tend to be selfish dictate the well-being of the athletes. But in the high-profile case that we're talking about now, I think things had mostly been okay. Yeah. I think LSU's handling of schemes in particular has gone up to the line. And so what

Eric was saying about West Coast teams not hosting regions anymore, this is why. Not like money or NIL. It's because there's a philosophical difference mostly based on geography. I think it's reductive to call it the Augie Garrido coaching tree. But West Coast teams, particularly some of the mid-major teams that have been dominant out there, like Cal State Fullerton, have absolutely shredded their pitchers. Teams from back east, particularly in the SEC, have recruited them back to the Stone Age. Even guys who come out of that school, like Kirk Sarlous, who was a Fullerton pitcher, was a Fullerton pitching coach, he spent his entire draft year closing on Fridays and starting on Sundays. As recently as 2015,

Fullerton had Tom Eshelman, who was a second-round pick. They threw him long enough in, I think it was the Super Regional against Louisville, that he threw 100 strikes. And they're, you know, bringing guys out of the bullpen on short rest. Like, you know, Skeens, and even Jay Johnson, who's the coach at LSU, was, he's a West Coast guy, and the last time he was in the College World Series with Arizona in 2016 was one of the, either 16 or 17, the year they played Coastal. That was one of the last, like, great, like, over-the-line pitching abuse college post seasons out there. I think this is a problem that's mostly taking care of itself, but, you know, we can debate about schemes. We can debate about guys throwing 120 on seven days rest, like that's versus 100 on four or five days rest. Like, I think that's, you could talk about it and you could talk about whether these are important games and whether that justifies a little bit

extra risk. But there's no excuse to ever throw a pitcher 156 pitches like Quinn Madden did in the super. And like, this is not like, this is a senior, this is like a grinder, but he's a prospect. Even if he wants to, you have to, as like the adult in the room, you have to keep him from himself in that moment. And so, you know, and you look at what this does, like you look at Kent Emanuel back in 2013, you know, how much he got thrown at North Carolina. And, you know, if I were recruiting against Stanford, like, this is what I'd lead with. And so it's not surprising that

players are fleeing, you know, programs that do that. And I've, you know, I've been disappointed a couple times this postseason in how cavalier some of these schools have been in terms of taking care of pitchers, because I thought this was something we were putting behind us. But I think it's definitely less common than it was. Like it was the norm. You just throw until your arm falls off as recently as eight to ten years ago. And I think it's getting squeezed out of the game. And I think I agree with Eric that the backlash against LSU's treatment of Skeens,

it borders on concern trolling. But there's no excuse for 156. You just can't, you just can't tolerate that. It's almost like it's, it's like a healthy, just as the same as LSU has sort of towed the line, so too has the conversation. Yeah. Towed the line of realism, basically. But yeah, and it's so specific to Skeens. The way I feel about it is specific to his physicality. It is so different than all of, even if we're talking about the guys who have been the most talented pitching prospects

of the last 15 or 20 years. I think on the broadcast yesterday, they were just like, it's this guy, Strasburg, and Mark Pryor and Garrett Cole, right? Garrett Cole, I think, was at a different, like totally different level than any of these other guys. But yeah, like Skeen's in the next tier. He's in that group in terms of like what his stuff is like for a college pitcher. And physically, he's in a different class.

He's built like a centaur. Yes. Like you think of not Strasburg or Pryor. That level, yeah. Strasburg and Pryor were sort of wiry. Guys like Cole and Carlos Rodon are thick. And Skeens is a different level of big even beyond that. Well, and I think that this is always, I have sympathy for the sort of baseline level of

discomfort with approaching that line. Because I think, like Eric, I think you're right that the NIL stuff changes things, but even the most lucrative NIL deals aren't going to approach like the signing bonus that Skeens will get, right? Like aren't going to approach like the signing bonus that schemes will get, right? Like they're going to be many zip codes apart from one another. But whenever we're dealing with these guys, it's like, yeah, you have the general sort of pitch smart guidelines and we don't know what pitch number is going to be the one that blows out a guy's elbow. And so even as you're trying to negotiate, I think, what is good general guidance, like you're still dealing with an N of one with any of these particular dudes.

And so I think that if it's not, you know, egregious and you're not going up to, you know, you don't have to be at 156 pitches for it to be something that I think would be alarming, right? And I think you can have some sympathy for them trying to find where the point is in between those things. And this is like meaningful baseball to these players and these fans. And I have sympathy for the idea of college baseball fans being like, we aren't just a feeder program for professional baseball. Like this has intrinsic value. And so negotiating between all of those different interests

leaves me thinking that, like, in Skeens' case, it seems fine. I would be concerned if he has another really long short rest start. Like, I think we're getting into the territory where how he is deployed going forward is going to be, you know, subject to fair scrutiny, right? Just because of it's been a lot of pitches now he's officially gone on short rest.

And this is a dude who is two and a half weeks away from a really big bonus. Like let's make sure that he's going to stay in good shape and then you can rest in the rest of the year. I don't want to see him again for the rest of the College World Series. And I suspect that we will. And then we're going to have to have another conversation about

it because I doubt his time in Omaha is done. If there's an if necessary game Monday and he comes out of the bullpen, how many pitches before you go tsk, tsk, tsk? I would say like 25. Yeah. And I think that's essentially what you throw on your bullpen day on, you know,

that part of the cycle anyway. And so I would be okay if, if on Monday on three days rest, right? Friday, Saturday, Saturday. Yeah. He throws 25 pitches out of the bullpen like you know randy johnson and oh one like i'm cool with that but anything beyond that is probably now we're like yeah but that's not how college relief aces get used like if he's coming out of 10 he's probably throwing 40 plus yeah so you guys have been at the combine for the past couple days you've seen players put through their paces. Eric, I imagine we will talk to you next month after the draft and we'll get into a lot of those individual talents. And you just did your draft rankings update for the site, and I'm sure you'll be mock drafting.

But I would be curious about any thoughts you have just about the evolution of the Combine over the years. So since it's not exactly an institution, it's a fairly recent addition to baseball and just the way it's changed. And I guess the part that it's playing in scouting and draft prep and determining draft position these days. This is the third combine. They are still polishing up like basically every aspect of it including where it is

and there are just things that you don't know until you start to the machinery of the event begins and you have to tweak things as you go I think the big hurdle for the Combine has been because of how baseball works the agents slash advisors who represent the players has been because of how baseball works, the agents slash advisors who represent the players are just a much bigger part of the process

than they are in basically any other sport. So, you know, the NFL and the NBA both have draft combines and it's common for the very best dudes in each of those sports to kind of bow out of that space because they don't have anything to gain. They are going to go in the top, you know, a couple of picks anyway, whether or not they do the combine.

And so, and they also have like pro day type alternatives and that's true of baseball too. But in basketball and football where you get picked dictates what your bonus is. There's not wiggle room for negotiating like there is in baseball. And so the agents just play a bigger piece of whatever negotiating process takes place in baseball. And so their incentives for their clients and what might happen at the combine are a little bit different. Like things are just murkier and they're more varied player to player. The fact that you have

college and high school prospects is also a dynamic that is unique to baseball and changes how you look at things, especially when some of the physical testing that's going on at the combine, you know, is going to create, you know, there's going to be disparity between the grip strength of the high school prospects on average and the college prospects on average. And, you know, pick whatever physical measurement you want. And things are so new. And there's for sure there are some teams who have a foundation of research already conducted in this space and have a better idea of what all of this data being collected means than I do,

than anyone in the public space does. Because all of that data collection, force plates and grip strength and all of this other stuff is largely proprietary. And it's going to take time, even if we had the data, which MLB really won't give us. And I've asked and been no, gently many times,

which is fine for now. But like, we don't really know. And we wouldn't know for a couple of years yet, like probably another five years or so, how any of this stuff correlates to your performance in professional baseball. Because it's the third combine. And so like all of that stuff is still sort of shaking out.

And then some of the that stuff is still sort of shaking out. And then some of the procedural stuff is still, you know, in development as well. Like having things at Chase Field this year were different than Petco last year because like it's an indoor facility and the way the suites are structured is like more convenient for the players. And, you know, having it at a major league facility, which they didn't the first year of the combine was more convenient for like everyone to be in a suite and the teams all get a place to like have the players cycle through and have like a job interview type of, you know, time with the player. And so they're still learning how to structure things to like, so that everyone, teams, players, their representatives, the media, whoever, vendors,

like there are some suites set up for Rawlings and other vendors and stuff. How everyone can get the most out of this event is still sort of in the offing. But the way it went was the first day for me and for the scouts was like the hardest, longest day. It was like a 13 hour day. You're alternating batting practice sessions with like infield and outfield drills, and then pitchers, bullpens, and the grounds crew was running around moving, you know, the different equipment around the field and resurfacing it. And, you know, for each individual drill and, you know, it was a 13 hour day of like player evaluation. And I do think it is meaningful for some of the players to be seen apples to apples against their peers

in short succession with one another. I'm taking BP. I'm the catcher from Puerto Rico, taking BP. And now here's the college catcher from Missouri taking BP. Like, check us out back-to-back. It's just a unique environment to be able to do that type of thing. Same thing for the guys coming in to throw, you know, 25-pitch bullpens with the TrackMan data being, you know, live on the Jumbotron. Like, all that is super-duper cool.

And I do think there are guys who like have made and lost themselves money here this week. But there are so many components, you know, just by doing like those showcase workout type of drills. And there's just so many things that, you know, I don't know how to parse and don't really have the opportunity to because it is stuff that we don't have access to. So yesterday we all went and the workout scrimmage type stuff is all done. And they set up on the field, you know, rows of, and rows of trainers tables, and we're doing like flexibility and balance assessments of the players. And there was like the 30-yard dash setup. And so like, you know, Ben,

do you know how to like test your own shoulder mobility? I have gone through like a driveline intake sort of thing where you measure that stuff just when I was working on the book. So I guess so. I don't know if I know how to do it myself, but I have participated in it. So like they're doing that type of stuff where they have like a piece of PVC pipe that they're like holding behind their torsos, the players, where they're reaching back, you know, with one arm from like their lower body basically and then up above their shoulder with the other one, like, you know, it was kind of strange that there were like three or four MLB

personnel to each player kind of taking them through the motions. And some of it seemed to be subjectively assessed. And some of it is like more objective where if you can like balance over one leg while your other leg dips behind you and you're like pushing like a marker slider yeah yeah like a further away i took a bunch of video of it i will make sure that it goes up on youtube and that ben can like throw a link to the video and in the post so people can kind of see what's going on uh but like what teams are making of that i really don't know i think it's good for us to be more flexible in general no one's like, this kid's hips are stiff as cement. Let's draft him. You know, like I felt the lack of flexibility in my hips after sitting through that high school game on, on Tuesday. Yes. Yeah. So

it's more interesting than useful right now. That portion of the combine, just because even there's probably a great disparity between the teams as far as how they understand some of these components that are assessing one's capacity for movement. It is a thing that I am subjectively looking for as guys play baseball, like the way their bodies move is important to me, especially when we're talking about amateur baseball players. I think it's important stuff. And I really like appreciate the opportunity to go and that it's 20 minutes from my front door

rather than like in Cary, North Carolina, where it was two years ago. But I still think, yeah, like aside from there being individual dudes who stood out to me during the workout portions and some other guys who I feel happy to move on from as like having on my pre-draft list or whatever, you know, it's a nice like supplemental, it's not the bulk of the evaluation by any means, but it is like a nice, interesting way to end the calendar to an extent and like catch up with some dudes who, you know, in shorts and a

t-shirt look a little bit different compared to one another than they would, you know, throughout the course of the spring. Meg and I have an ongoing dispute about the advisability of stretching. So we should probably steer away from that. It's a contentious topic on this podcast, but. It's not contentious. I'm right and you're wrong. Are you an anti-stretcher, Ben?

Yeah. He's an anti-stretcher, Ben? Yeah. He's an anti-heat. You're like that guy on the T-Nation forum post where it's just lifting, no stretching. Yeah, I don't do static stretching at least. There's a lot of science that supports me. Meg disregards all the evidence. Wait, okay. There's science maybe that supports you from like a strength building perspective, but in terms of flexibility and being able to move when you are an old person and I come to kick your ass in the 26 under 25 draft.

I reserve the right to. You're not going to be able to get away from me, Ben. To reevaluate if I'm around a few decades down the line. I'm just saying, you know, currently. Anyway, there's one more. Let's talk about she stretches. Yeah, I'm not a good stretcher. She maybe advocates for it, but like I've seen her swing a baseball bat and she's not stretching. She's never claimed to be flexible. In fact, she has claimed not to be.

And therefore, that is why she should stretch, she says. Yes. Jared Karamas took BP, which by the way, like, come on, what are we doing? A bunch of us are here to work. And so I was happy that he embarrassed himself taking BP. Like, that's a dude who definitely doesn't stretch. And his hips did not move at all. Like, his body just rotates.

He's like an oscillating fan with 20 raw power. I have one more question on this topic. And I was wondering whether you've noticed a change in the makeup of the players, the demographics of the players, because I was reading an ESPN article, and it was about black players in baseball, right, which has been on the decline at the MLB level. And it's a record low, at least, you know, since they've been keeping these stats in the early 90s on opening day rosters, something like 6% of players were black. And there have been various efforts to try to change that kind of, you know, grassroots efforts and MLB investing in the Players Alliance and the Dream Series and RBI and other programs. Right. And this article makes the case that that is paying dividends. It says that 15% of the players who took part in the Combine were Black, according to MLB, approximately. The MLB Youth Academy, another initiative. Are you noticing that? Is that something that stands out when you attend showcases that there has been a change, that there's been an uptick in that area? Yeah, I noticed a decent amount of HBCU guys working out.

I think that's good. Like, that's definitely an underscouted section of college baseball. I'll say the two players I plan on writing about in a standalone article from the Combine who I interviewed are both black, but that's not a scientific sample. Yeah. Four of the first five players picked in the draft last year were black players, which was a first, right? And that was the same year when there were no black players in the World Series for the first time since 1950, I think, which was seen as another sign of the times. So they're making an effort to correct that. And from what I've read, perhaps it is paying off, but I don't know if it's noticeable

enough to say that it's working or it will work. It's an uphill climb because an MLB needs to continue to do some of the stuff that they've done. On MLK weekend every year, there are usually three amateur events happening here in Arizona. One put on by Perfect Game, often one by Under Armour, and then the Dream Series or the Breakthrough Series has been renamed. And the Breakthrough Series is an MLB run event where they pay the way for that group of players. They're all either black or sometimes there are like white kids who are from socioeconomically disadvantaged families. And like they pay the way for those kids to come work out in front of scouts

at the Angels spring training facility. And that is on that weekend always the best event. Like it is the best run event. It is well-rounded. The kids that like seem to get a lot out of it. They have a ton of ex-big leaguers in there to come like coach and relay their experience to these young men. And so like MLB is definitely doing some stuff, but the problem is that like the way so much of baseball scouting on the amateur side has trended. Like, it is a cottage industry for places like Prep Baseball Report, Perfect Game, where you have to almost have to have players who come from well-to-do families who can afford to fly to Fort Myers, pay for, you know, their uniforms, other travel ball team.

Like, travel ball is an expensive thing. their uniforms of the travel ball team. Travel ball is an expensive thing. Even a lot of the highly drafted black players of the last several years, they come from the families of, their parents are ex-pro athletes or something like that. Elijah Green and Kamar Rocker,

yes, they're young black men and that experience on its own in the baseball world is going to be its own thing. But they aren't necessarily all from a socioeconomically disadvantaged background, which is really the area where, you know, and certainly like the overlap of that and, and race in our country is a certain way such that like there is a lot of it, but, but yeah, like it's, it's going to be tough.

College baseball, there are only so many scholarships to go around. The entire team isn't on a full scholarship. There are only about a dozen scholarships to go around. Yeah, 11.7 for across a roster of 20, you know, 25 to 35 kids. And so you're selecting for kids playing baseball who often have money. So there are still like, you know, real, like there's a real problem here. It's not all necessarily major league baseball's fault. But yeah, like I've certainly all the things that we keep on the board.

There are many things in the database of the board that aren't public on the site that like we are keeping like college commitments and like the state where kids went to high school and all that stuff the players race isn't one of them so it's like a really hard thing to track because it's not necessarily a thing you want to do like have a database of players where like their races listed like that seems weird to me uh so some of the way college baseball and like, there are a lot of high school baseball players who are famous before they are pro baseball players because they have social media, like they have a YouTube channel or their travel ball team has a YouTube channel and they

have a following that someone of my generation can't quite comprehend because it's so different than what it was like even five years ago for like Max Clark to be famous already, for Drew Jones to be as famous as he is, like that's a different thing. And so maybe there's like a pull toward being, you know, an important baseball player that didn't used to exist that will lead like the youth of our country and Canada and like Puerto Rico to want to be drafted as a baseball player more than anything else.

But, you know, I still think that some of the system is still not built for poor kids to play baseball. Yeah. I think Major League Baseball understands that it's a problem. You know, and this is one of those situations in which Major League Baseball does not equal baseball culture in the United States and Canada. Right. And so there's a disconnect. I think there's a profit motive to maintain this disconnect.

You know, baseball's not the only sport that's going through this where it's tough to break in if you're poor. But it's not something that, you know, it's good to see, like I said, the HBCU kids get a shot at the combine. But it's going to take more than that to make meaningful change. And, you know, it's good. We should applaud that. But it's not going to solve the problem all on its own. And it's something that I imagine, even if you continue to commit resources and commit more resources, which I hope they will, because you're right, it's not entirely the fault of Major League Baseball that this is the amateur architecture we have. But they're also the ones best positioned to do something about it just because of the financial resources they have. But all of that is going to take time to bear fruit. And so, you know, it's a long-term project and one that I hope

they will remain committed to and increase their commitment to. Last thing, Eric, I don't know if you've seen this story because you've been busy scouting, but on Wednesday, there was a class action lawsuit filed against Major League Baseball and the 30 teams and Rob Manfred by a group of 17 former scouts, an age discrimination lawsuit. It's 17 scouts now. alleging that MLB, that the teams essentially used the pandemic and analytics as pretexts to get rid of older employees and replace them with younger and presumably cheaper ones. And they have a few specific allegations basically about the removal of a notification system when scouts would become available after they'd lose a job, that there would be a system that would inform other teams that they were available, that that was done away with. They also alleged that there was a blacklist to identify older

scouts who should not be hired by teams. And they also said that, yeah, the pandemic was leveraged as an opportunity to terminate an entire class of older employees. So they're alleging that what we've seen happen in scouting in recent years, you know, reductions in, say, pro scouts, at least domestically, and the shift to video scouting and less in-person scouting and advanced scouting and pro scouting in the minors, essentially, that that was not just the way things are going, but was more of a concerted effort and discrimination against these older veteran scouts. And I don't know if that's something that you've heard from other people in the game, whether this has kind of been discussed in the grapevine. You know, I've seen a lot of people reacting to this story saying, look, it's just, you know, baseball changed and the role of scouts changed and maybe not everyone could adapt to that or maybe those positions just didn't exist, et cetera. But obviously,

you can't rule out the possibility that there was something more than that going on. So I wonder what you think of that idea that there was sort of a specific targeting of older scouts potentially and cutting those jobs. This is not the first time something like this has happened. I think it was probably going on over five years ago where there was a twins scout who sued them for age discrimination. There were some specifics about that case. Like it was a scout in Australia, if I remember correctly. And so like some of the fact that it was like in Australia and like that the twins were spending an inordinate amount of resources in a place that wasn't like giving them a real return on their investment was like part of why they

ended up winning the case the twins did yeah the suit says as part of the reform process MLB endeavored to begin heavily recruiting younger scouts at the same time intentionally pushing out from the scout collective older scouts with prior knowledge, qualifications, expertise, and training based on a false stereotype that older scouts lacked the ability to use analytics and engage in video scouting with the same acumen as younger scouts. Yeah. When Future Value, the book, came out in April of 2020, and in the book, Kylie and I write a lot about how this is likely to occur and had already started to occur. And some of it is because of return on investment in the scouting space, especially in the pro-scouting space, was not very good.

scouting space was not very good. And the tools used to go about pro scouting had become so data-oriented and video-oriented. There are a fair share of older scouts who did not want to change. And then there are definitely older scouts who are tenured enough to be expensive and teams were happy to move on for, from them for those reasons. I believe that to be, to be very true. And yeah, you have, we have seen teams, including teams who are like objectively good organizations. I, I believe like the Atlanta Braves totally change how they do pro scouting over the course of basically the last five years. And I do think the pandemic accelerated a lot of that. The angels laid off a lot of their scouts or furloughed a lot of their scouts around the pandemic.

And then many of them were not brought back. And, you know, the Braves at one point, when I first moved to Arizona, the Braves had three guys who would cover the complexes during the spring. And then each of them would go to a short season affiliate. So like one would go to the Northwest League, one would go to the Pioneer League, which doesn't exist anymore, which is another part of, you know,

another variable at play here. There are just fewer affiliates to cover. And so there would be fewer reasons to have like a gigantic scouting staff. Yeah. And of course, you know, StatCast came in and Hawkeye came in, right around this period too. And that maybe gives you information that you could only have gotten from a scout before, but now you can replicate it or partly replicate it. scouting to prove age discrimination in a situation like this, I feel like is going to be very, very difficult. It's already a very difficult thing to do. But yeah, in this case, there were

just so many things that changed all at once that has made scouting, it is not a growth industry. There are still some teams who have big, robust scouting departments on the pro side, like the Rays and the Dodgers and teams who you would think are more analytically oriented. And then you have teams like the Guardians who don't send amateur scouts to college games. There's just enough to be done on video and with data that until the college postseason starts,

you're probably not going to see a Cleveland Guardians scout at a college game unless they're there to like get, collect high speed video, you know? So things have really changed industry wide and the skill set of scouts has, you know, shifted. What teams are looking for has shifted to, you know, at home remote workers who are doing like a version of the job that I, that I do where there's, you know, you have a bigger scope and

what you're doing is more about like video and data than like in-person looks, which are still super duper important in my opinion. And I do think that teams are, who are ignoring what people who have been around baseball or just people who have social skills, period, certainly better than the ones I have, you know, like what that can do for your organization, I think is meaningful. I think there has been a little bit of an overcorrection on that score. For some of these older dudes to like go and talk to a pitching coach who they've known for several decades and learn much more about the personality of the players who they have to care about as part of their job

than I could from being in the stands. Like I do think that's an important thing that we are largely ignoring. There was, I won't say like the team or the player or anything like that, but there was a draft pick who didn't sign, went pretty high in the draft within the last couple of years.

And like, this is one of those teams that kind of cut scouting. And the player who they drafted was booted off of multiple teams for like hazing incidents on team road trip, hookers and blow in the hotel. And this isn't a college player who we were talking about, okay?

And they didn't know. They didn't know any of that stuff. Most all the teams had him off of the draft board because of these things, and they used a pretty high pick on this guy and then didn't sign him because they learned about these things after the fact. And like, you're at risk of, at the very least,

blowing your whatever it was, round pick. I won't say, cause it might become obvious who it is, but, but like, you know, and, and at the, at worst, you know, being embarrassed publicly by stuff like this coming out, which I'm like being kind to the org and the player too, I think in this case, but like not saying this stuff out loud, what happened. Right. But like someone more bloodthirsty than I am would be happy to say that this happened if it meant their article getting a million clicks or whatever it is. And so like not having boots on the ground scouts who know that stuff is a failure of your process, even though you're like objectively a team that's pretty good at this overall. But I caution teams against leaning too far in this direction.

But yeah, age discrimination is going to be really, really tough to prove in a court of law. Yeah. I just, I wonder if it goes to court, if there isn't a settlement and there's some sort of discovery process, you know, would you turn up an email or a text message or something from some front office person who's talking about we need to go with someone younger? Like that, that seems like it could happen, right? But I mean, yeah. So would that be enough? I don't know. Like that, that seems like it could happen. Right. But I mean, yeah. So would that be enough? I don't know. Like there was an age discrimination lawsuit that Phil Regan, the former Mets pitching coach filed earlier this year. He was in his eighties when they made a change. And he alleged that the then GM Brody Van Wagenen had specifically said that they weren't

keeping him because of his age, which if true, like you can't do that. So if he was able to document that, that would be sort of the smoking gun. I don't know. I don't know that there's been any resolution to that case that I've seen, but like, could something like that turn up even though there are plenty of other legitimate reasons for some of those personnel changes? Yeah, maybe. So I wonder if they would want to avoid that possibility anyway. That's interesting. And the combine weirdly makes them more vulnerable to some of this type of stuff because at least Megan and I both know there's an instance where a team asked a player during a pre-draft interview, not recently, this is like a while ago.

A while ago. Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? And like, it's a job interview. Right. Yeah. Player in question was like, I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to ask me that. Yeah. During my job interview. So yeah, like, it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out, I guess.

We still don't know. Some of these lawsuits, they pop up, you hear that they're happening, and you never hear what actually happened. Like the Angels have, there's a lawsuit against the Angels. A couple of the players who now play for the Mets who were prospects in the Dominican Republic were suing them for like reneging on their verbal agreements with the Angels.

And Passon reported that, I guess, would have been a little bit over a year ago. And we have not had an update on that yet. That would be very interesting to hear how that goes. It would set precedent for like, I can think of four teams right now off the top of my head who have like, there are deals they haven't broken yet that they are going to for like next year's international class. Like they've overcommitted their pool already knowing that they're going to wait for these guys to develop physically for another eight months and then triage them.

You know, like this goes on a lot, like it's, you know, pretty gross. And so it'll be very, very interesting to see how that, you know, shakes out if, but some of this stuff we can never hear about how it's resolved. Well, we will hear more from you soon because I'm sure we'll talk to you after the draft. So good luck with your mocks and we will talk to you then. Thanks for having me on again and for creating further distance between me and Grant, which is a thing I seek to have as great a distance from him as possible based on his personality. Yeah. Extending your lead as the all-time most frequent effect without guests. And Mike, we finished our pastast series on the podcast recently.

I know you had a real corker of a Pass Blast ready to go because you had a five-minute rant that you wanted to unleash about the role of New York in the Revolutionary War just in time for the London series. Unfortunately, we're out of time. Oh, no. New York is going back to London just like they wanted all along. Yeah. My state's role in that conflict was not always something that disgraceful. Yeah. But but I'm grateful that you did not make me play college World Series player or revolutionary war general or anything like that. Until next time.

I got to climb up the Effectively Wild guest standings myself. Yes. All right. After we recorded, as I'm sure you know, the Reds extended their winning streak by stopping Atlantis. It was another one run win. Joey Votto banged a couple bombs, but Eli De La Cruz was the star. He hit for the cycle. He got the triple last, which is the most exciting way to do it. Fifth

youngest player to hit for the cycle. Did it in the third fewest games. First Cincinnati Red to cycle since Eric Davis, whom he's often compared to, whose number he wears, who has mentored him, and 43,000 fans were there to see it. Turns out winning is exciting and people will pay to be in the ballpark. Okay, it is time for the inaugural edition of the Future Blast. Our successor to the past blast, where we will read a speculative dispatch about baseball's future, an alternate future, and what will happen in the year that corresponds to the episode title. And the Future Blasts are provided by our guest on episode 2023, Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor

who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. Rick writes, accuracy and speed in 2024. In 2024, Major League Baseball followed the will of the people, it seemed, by instituting the ABS automatic ball strike system that had found success in AAA the previous two seasons. In the minors, the system had been used two ways, a full system where the robo-ump called every pitch, or the challenge system where the catcher, hitter, or pitcher could challenge a call and a replay would provide the decision. Each team got three challenges a

game. The challenge system slowed the game a bit. Each challenge took 30 seconds or so. But the players, coaches, and especially the fans in AAA liked the entertainment value of seeing the replay on the scoreboard screen, just like they do with challenges on the base pass or in the outfield. Even with the ABS system, the average time for games played stayed about the same at 2 hours and 40 minutes, similar to the 2023 season, with all its changes meant to move things along. along. And speaking of moving things along, the 2023 limits on pitcher disengagements and the timer on hitters and pitchers, along with those larger bases, encouraged a return to the golden age of stolen bases, harking back to the 1970s and 1980s. In 2023, the Pirates, Guardians, A's, and others more than doubled their stolen bases per game. In 2024, they were joined by everyone else, and the numbers were reflective of the glory days of base stealing, with Red Sox star David Hamilton and the Mets' Omar De Los Santos serving as the contemporary versions of Maury

Wills, Lou Brock, Ricky Henderson, and Vince Coleman. Hamilton was the first player since Coleman in 1987 to reach the century mark, with his late-season sprint to 106 stolen bases. And there are even more dramatic changes on the way. The success of the designated pinch runner in the Atlantic League during the 2023 season and the single disengagement rule from the pitching rubber, Pruitt-Batt, led directly to their use in the low minors in 2024, where they livened up the action in the scoring and seem certain to be in Major League Baseball by 2025 or 2026. Watch for specialists in the years to come as world-class sprinters work on their sliding skills and dramatically change the way the game is played.

I think we're already diverging from our most likely future reality, but we will diverge more dramatically as time goes on. If you're listening to this in time, check out the Padres Nationals game on Saturday. The Padres are promoting a knuckleballer, the real deal Matt Waldron, to fill in for Michael Wacca, who had some shoulder fatigue. Waldron will be the first true knuckleballer in the big leagues since former Effectively Wild guest Mickey Janus in 2021. It's been a while. I was worried it might not happen again. Here's hoping Matt Waldron does well, sticks around for a while, despite his seven ERA in AAA with a 5.34 FIP. And hey, he's 26 years old, so he might have 10 or 15 years ahead of him. Can't wait to meet this major leaguer. Also on episode 2016,

we bantered a bit about whether the pitch clock would cause players to be more or less fatigued as the season went on. It ups the pace, it gives them less recovery time between pitches, but it also means that they're on the field for less total time. And we talked about how that might help catchers in particular who'd have to crouch a lot less and maybe they'd have fewer late season swoons. Well, Leo Morgenstern didn't mention that explicitly in the piece that he published Friday, but he noted that qualified catchers are the hottest new trend of the season. There've been fewer and fewer catchers who've qualified for the batting title in recent seasons, roughly four per year. And so far this year, there are 13, which will likely decrease as the season goes on, but

it would be pretty extraordinary if it stayed anywhere close to that. So maybe we are already seeing some products of the pitch clock. Catchers have avoided injuries this year, but I guess that could be correlated to less crouching time, too. You can support Effectively Wild by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help us keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Gary Egan, Jack Colwell, Ryder Krause, Tom Wilson, and Stephen Kimmel. 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 and playoff live streams, ad-free Fangraphs memberships, discounts on merch, expedited email answers, so much more, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. Anyone and everyone can send us questions and comments via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. 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. Thanks to you for listening today and this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. Just a fan who wants Nothing less than effectively wild Oh wild, oh wild Oh wild

Nothing less than effectively wild