Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2029: Fallen Los Angeles

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether Mike Trout‘s injury makes the Angels more likely to trade birthday boy Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers’ rotation depth without Dustin May and Clayton Kershaw, bad news for Thairo Estrada and oldsters Nelson Cruz and Adam Wainwright (and the Cruz/Joe Ryan trade revisited), James Paxton‘s comeback, Mariners All-Star […]

Discussing baseball news pedantically And the colonies said erotically Staff was past class and better for free Three new episodes for us each week. Be factively wild. Be factively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2029 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer.

Ben, how are you? Doing all right. Just quietly celebrating Shohei Otani's birthday, episode 2029. And it's a happy 29 for Shohei. I hope it's a happy 29, although things aren't going so great for the Angels right now or really for either of the L.A. area teams. So perhaps the birthday could be better because the day before his birthday didn't go so great. He didn't pitch particularly well, probably partly because of a blister that caused him to leave the game. Hopefully that won't be a lingering issue.

But it was a bad day for the Angels because not only did they lose that game and have Otani's blister, but Anthony Rendon fouled a ball off of himself. May or may not go on the IL, hasn't yet as we speak, but it's Anthony Rendon, so I'm going to guess that he will. And worst of all, Mike Trout is hurt. Mike Trout has hurt his hammock. Yeah. It's a bad one, Ben. Like, it's a bad one in the immediate term. And I think that if we were ranking the injuries that one can sustain and still theoretically return same season. And do I have a ready-made list of all of those injuries?

I mean, no, I don't. You know how many weird little bird bones you got in your body, Ben? You got so many. And also all of these tendons and, you know, like veins could probably hurt one of those and nerves, you know, we know that the nerves can get messed up and all your- And it can go spraying at any moment. Right. All your fleshy bits. But if I were going to pick one that's particularly bad for a hitter, I mean, like there's the time he will miss recovering the broken hammy and that's bad enough, but it's one of those injuries that really seems to sap guys, particularly of their

power for a while after they've been able to return to game action and swing again. So it's, you know, in a season where we have seen what to us because of the lofty standards he has set is like a diminished version of Trout, he's now sustained an injury that if it doesn't torpedo the odds of the Angels making the postseason at all, you know, just on its own, when he does return, like the version of him that we're likely to get is probably not going to be a step forward from the performance we've already seen. So it's really just, it's just a shame all around. I'm bummed, bummed, Ben. Me too. So they say return to play is four to eight weeks. It's really closer to the upper end of that range. Usually there are some

guys who come back quick, but Trout is not known for healing extremely quickly. And also I think most players it's more like six to eight weeks. So hopefully he'll be back at some point in that timeframe and will not be too diminished by it. I did peruse some of the medical literature pertaining to ham eights, And there is some evidence that even after players returned, there's maybe a modest decline in performance. It really varies though. And the studies that I've seen incorporated minor leaguers and it wasn't super conclusive, but I'll link to some of those things if you're interested in looking yourself. But yes, that is at least the reputation. That's what people say when people have

hemat issues. It's such a strange little injury because it's this little part of you that you don't really need, I guess, or it doesn't really do all that much except that when it breaks, it hurts and it can just break on a foul ball on a pretty routine swing. It's just like you jab the knob of your bat in the wrong place, like at the base of your wrist or your palm, I suppose. And then that little bird bone breaks and it can be quite painful. And then you have to either wait for it to heal or have surgery. And it sucks. And it's also strange because how many thousands upon thousands of swings has Mike Trout taken? And that didn't happen before, right? So it's just either the bone was just a little bit more vulnerable than it used to be, or there was just something about the contours of that swing and the

angles and the pressures applied that caused that to be the straw that broke Mike Trout's left hand-made bone. So that is bad. And the Angels' playoff odds now are down just under 20%. And because they've been bad lately, they've lost 10 out of 14. And because Trout is now gone for maybe up to a couple months, people are starting to say, well, could this mean that Shohei Otani will get traded, right? And I'm still here to say, no, almost certainly not. Like the Angels are really banged up right now. They have 14 players on the injured list, which

as we speak is tied with the Dodgers, who we'll talk about in a second, and I think also the Red Sox, who are going through it right now too. And hey, I mean, they called up Joe Adele, AAA slugger, 23 dingers down there. So maybe he'll just be great this time. But they just have so many guys hurt and some out for the season like Gio Urshela and then short-term Zach Netto and Brennan Drury and Max Stassi and Logan Ohapi have been out forever and Ben Joyce is hurt and Matt Moore is hurt and it just goes on and on. And so you might think, well, could they cut bait? It looks like they're falling out of it. Granted, they're not that far. They're what, four games out of the wildcard race, I think, as we speak on Wednesday. But it's

trending downward, and it becomes increasingly difficult to envision the Angels actually making the playoffs this season. Not out of the realm of possibility, but they have not inspired confidence for the past several years, where you'd feel like the Angels will find a way. They'll figure it out. Yeah, they always do. You know those perpetual contenders, the Los Angeles Angels? Yeah. But he's still just not going to get traded.

Like, it's made the speculation more reasonable. In theory, there's more of a case for doing it. But he's just a singular guy where I think the normal arguments don't apply here. I mean, do you think there's any chance whatsoever that he gets traded? I mean, I think that there is any chance, you know, of all of the continuum of chances. This is a non-zero one, right? Yes. I think that there's that possibility. I think that the dominoes that have to fall for it to actually come to fruition don't strike me as likely to fall, right? Because if you're the Angels, not only their front office, but the ownership group, and you're like, okay, we're down Mike Trout, and we might be looking at yet another year in which we don't see playoff baseball or play playoff baseball. We might see it, but from home, right?

Then what is the draw in the back half of the season for fans to come to the ballpark and spend money? And it's going to be Otani, right? Yep. And so to counterbalance that value, setting aside the actual obvious value he brings to the team on the field, you would need to have, I imagine, like a pretty phenomenal offer. And, you know, we've seen big prospect packages move for rentals. Like it's not unprecedented, but I'm more than a little bit

skeptical that it would return something that would inspire Artie Moreno to say, yeah, okay, trade him, right? Because the closest comp in terms of combined value is probably what LA sent to the Nationals for Scherzer and Trey Turner, right? But even that's an imperfect comp because, you know, you had longer with Turner on the back end. And now maybe you say, wow, I was worried I was going to sound like Christopher, Christopher Walken there for a second. Wow. I'm very tired, Ben. So, you know, maybe you say Otani is so singular and if you're one of these teams that is trying to separate itself from a crowded playoff field like what better way to do that with than

with Otani but I imagine that they will not get the kinds of offers that they need to say fine we're pulling the trigger because as soon as you do it you say to your your fans, we're done. We're closing up shop for the year. Like we're not gonna, you know, we're not going to compete, which might be true anyway, but it feels worse to say it. Um,

and then, you know, if one of your stated goals is to try to retain Otani, what does trading him do to that picture and that conversation? Now we can, we can perhaps speculate as to the true degree of sincerity that the organization has when it comes to that. But I don't know, maybe you say to Otani, hey, we're going nowhere fast. We have this opportunity to restock the farm system. We really do have interest in trying to bring you back

and make you a forever angel, but why don't you go have an opportunity to try to win a ring with insert team X. And then we'll, you know, we'll talk when November rolls around. But if you do that, first of all, he might not take that kindly. I don't know what his perception of that would be. Obviously the, the total of the deal that they offer him is probably going to be the thing that ends up mattering more than anything, but there is this perception. And I don't know if we really have enough data points to say that it's a trend, but there is this perception that when you trade for these marquee guys who are going to then hit free agency that off season, that you have like this shot to like extend them and and not let them hit the market at all and um and so you lose that opportunity if you're the angels to keep the

conversation going about a potential um new deal so that's a lot of words to say i don't think they'll trade him it would be very surprising it sure would be i mean in some ways it would be nice for us because you know then you could come read about it at fairgrass.com. Sure. It might otherwise be a quiet deadline, but I doubt it. We might finally have a reason to talk about Shohei Otani on this podcast. Right, yeah. I've been looking for some reason to bring him up.

Yeah. But I think it won't happen for any number of reasons. Also, we just talked last time about how it seems like there's a dwindling return for rentals at the deadline. Now, if anyone's an exception to that, it would be Shohei Otani. You're still going to get a good prospect back for Shohei Otani, but it still might not behei Otani as I can. And so I would like him to be traded just because I would want to watch him in October and see what he could do in the playoffs. That would be fun. But if you're the Angels, you've got a lot of revenue riding on that. Of course, people come out to buy tickets to see Shohei Otani as he's going down the stretch in a presumptive MVP campaign. And you might have sponsorship complications there. I mean, there's so many Japanese sponsors that you see on Angels broadcasts and in the

ballpark. I wonder, do they have an out clause? Like if Otani is no longer on the Angels, could we just switch our affiliation over to another team? Or is there additional pressure there? You're losing potential revenue, all those eyeballs in Japan who are tuning in to watch Shohei Otani on the Angels. Plus, yeah, you want to win the World Series. You're losing potential revenue, all those eyeballs in Japan who are tuning in to watch Shohei Otani on the Angels. Plus, yeah, you want to win the World Series, you want to make the playoffs, but you are delivering real value, entertainment value to your fans when they get to watch Shohei Otani during one of the most impressive seasons ever. Side note, I wonder if Otani could win the AL MVP award if he were traded to an NL team at the end of July.

Could he be the leader in the clubhouse by enough to win after spending the final two months in the NL? Seems like almost the only way he could not win at this point. Anyway, what I'm saying is it's pretty special if this guy having this season is playing for your team. So even if you could, in theory, enhance your team's chances of winning without him in the future if you were to trade him, you would miss out on the joy of two months of Otani suiting up for your team. That's tough to quantify, but it's real. And yeah, you're losing whatever chance you have of keeping him. I don't think Artie Moreno really wants to be the guy who traded Otani. Now, he's also the guy who brought Otani there.

brought Otani there. But still, I think he probably doesn't want to be seen as someone who sent Otani away as opposed to if the Angels can make some kind of credible offer and he ends up going elsewhere, well, that's fine. It was his choice, right? But if they deal him and they lose the opportunity to spend those few months wooing him or have that kind of exclusive negotiating period with him, then fans might hold them responsible for that. However unlikely it may be that he actually decides to stay with the Angels, it does seem like their best shot is that it's the only team he's ever played for in MLB. He's put down roots there. He's comfortable there. They're the team that let him do his two-way thing despite the injuries and everything.

They let him do what he wanted to do, and it worked out spectacularly well. And maybe there's some feeling of gratitude or at least comfort or at least knowledge that they're not going to try to force me to do anything that I'm not going to do or they don't want to hold me back in any way. Now, I think the Angels were compelled to say, sure, do whatever you want, because Otani could go anywhere when he came over here. And that was why he got to do a two-way thing in Japan, too. It's like he had leverage because he wanted to go straight to MLB. He said, don't draft me. And then when Nippon him drafted him, he had all the leverage and could kind of compel them to let him try something no one else was trying. So if he's a free agent, I think he will still have that leverage this winter.

So the fact that the Angels have a track record of letting him be a two-way player, it's not like they're the only ones, right? If he's coming off an MVP campaign, he can go somewhere and he can extract whatever promises that he wants and teams will give it to him, right? And basically anywhere else he goes, he'd have a better shot of winning a World Series, which is something that I do believe he sincerely wants to do. So I don't know what their chances are of keeping him, probably not that great, but their best case for keeping him is, hey, you've only been here.

This is where you're comfortable. So stay with us. If he goes somewhere else down the stretch and comfortable. So stay with us. And if he goes somewhere else down the stretch and he gets to play with a contender and he gets to go to the playoffs, well, is he really going to want to go back to his ex at that point? Having been with a new team and been in a happier relationship with them, I kind of doubt it. So there'd just be too much fallout, too much blowback. I don't know that you can get fair value for someone who's just priceless and incomparable like that. So, yeah, I don't think he's going to go anywhere. I don't think so either. you're only going to get a draft pick if you hold on to him kind of argument. A little more persuasive, but not persuasive enough. So that takes us to the other LA team, which obviously

is in a better position playoff odds wise, but is really shorthanded now and literally shorthanded because the only arm of theirs from the opening day rotation who's been healthy all this season, surprisingly, Clayton Kershaw, he has now gone on the IL with a shoulder issue. And yeah, everyone says he has his annual trip to the IL, right? Keep him fresh. Often it's a back thing. A shoulder thing is kind of concerning. But even more concerning is the fact that Dustin May is done for the year already. Dustin, we hardly knew you, right? Like he came back, looked great after the Tommy John surgery, then got hurt with the dreaded flexor tendon issue. And now he's having surgery to have that repaired and just a revision of the Tommy John surgery, which just has to suck. So he's going to be out at least until mid-season next year. So they were really hoping he could come back this season and give them some reinforcement because

they have basically an entire rotation on the IL now. Cindergaard, all of his issues, May, Ryan Pepeo, Walker Bueller still trying to come back, Kershaw hurt now, and then other players have not been as good as they've been in previous seasons, right? Gonsolin and Urias. So they already have three rookies in the rotation, Michael Grove, Emmett Sheehan, and Bobby Miller, and that's already asking a lot, and now they're down a big arm. So major, major injury issues in the L.A. area these days. Yeah. And it's so interesting because it's like the, you know, Ben, other Ben wrote about this for us today. And, you know, I think that we all even knowing that they were going to be without Walker Bueller for the majority of the season, like our our collective concern when it came to the Dodgers this offseason was like, what's this offense going to look like, right? They didn't really do a whole lot in terms of free agency.

They made some trades. They brought in some guys that felt more like complementary pieces than primary ones. They lost Lux early. They obviously lost guys in free agency. And we were all kind of like, what's this going to look like? Are they going to hit enough to, like, be a thing? And thank goodness they have, you know, all of this rotation depth,

even if they do have some older guys at the top. And, like, the offense has been fine. It hasn't been world-beating, but it's been fine. And you're still getting really good production out of Betts and out of Freddie Freeman. And Muncy is often hurt, but sometimes will hit a home run. So it's like, you know, the offense has been fine. But now they're sitting there going like, what are you going to do with all?

Like, I think they can weather this level of injury. But if they have one more guy go down, it's going to be a real problem. I mean, I imagine they will be among the more motivated buyers at the deadline when it comes to trying to do some sort of starting pitching reinforcement, even if they're just like vault running together, you know, a couple of lower sort of profile dudes, because again, I don't know what team is dealing like big name starters. So, you know, that's, they find themselves like with a need that everyone is going to have because everyone at this point in the season has some important part of their rotation on the injured list. And, you know, they do have, I think that when we're,

we're contemplating the teams that might be able to say, if they want to throw in an extra good prospect to kind of put their offer over the line relative to others. LA is, excuse me, the Dodgers, not the Angels, are well-positioned to do that. Their system is incredibly deep and they do have some redundancy, but yeah, it's not ideal. And you know, you have to have a fully healthy rotation and a bang-up offense to take down the mighty, mighty Diamondbacks. Like, that's just understood, right? That's canon. That's not what you want. No, and 10th and 11th in overall bullpen, no, overall pitching staff war. The bullpen has been an issue for the Dodgers as well, to put things lightly. So yeah, it's not looking great over there.

And the Red Sox, I mentioned, also have a ton of guys on the IL. Although, funnily enough, one of them is not James Paxton. James Paxton is just bailing this team out these days. Big game James. We love to see it. We love it. I know. I do love to see it, and we so rarely see it. It's been so long since we've seen it. I was on a Red Sox podcast some months ago, and they asked me about James Paxton coming back, and I was like, look, we've all had our fling with James Paxton. We all had our time when we were infatuated with him, but he just always let us down. He always was fragile. And so far, this is 50 innings

exactly for him. Now, if I set the minimum at 50 innings, exactly 139 pitchers who've gotten there this season. And he is fourth in strikeout minus walk rate. It's Spencer Strider, Kevin Gossman, Matt Strom, and then James Paxton. Yep. So I love to see it. I hope we continue to see it. It's kind of a theme with him that as soon as we start seeing it, we then stop seeing it because he breaks. Right. He's like a very special particle that behaves differently when he's observed. Right.

Yeah. So we haven't brought him up on the podcast. It's like, don't talk about it. Don't talk about it. Like, don't look at it too closely. Don't look at it for too long. Just like, see it's there and then turn your head and notice something else. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll just move on before anything bad happens. I just wanted to acknowledge it while it was happening before it was too late. And you know who's fifth on the strikeout minus walk rate leaderboard? Joe Ryan of the Twins. And I was thinking of Joe Ryan because Nelson Cruz got designated for assignment by the Padres, which may or may not bring an end

to his long and accomplished career. Perhaps he'll land somewhere else, but it could be it. Could be it for him. So it's definitely it for my preseason bold prediction that the Padres DH tandem of Matt Carpenter and Nelson Cruz would lead the National League in DH worth it. I don't think that's happening. I was hoping that there'd be one last hurrah for those guys, but it turns out maybe not so much. Maybe they were kind of cooked. But Nelson Cruz, I mean, we've talked about many, many times over the years. Obviously, they've decided that whatever clubhouse value he brings and Juan Soto's fondness for him and everything, it's a crowded roster, as we have noted many times,

and we were somewhat confused about how they were fitting in these DHs in the first place. So I guess the Padres do have roster restrictions, it turns out. And it also turns out that Age is undefeated and that Cruz getting eye surgery or LASIK or whatever it was and saying that he hadn't been able to see the ball as well and that he was going to get that corrected. And I thought, maybe, really, it could impair his performance if he couldn't see the ball so well. And now if he could see the ball, maybe. I'm always disappointed, though, with the LASIK. And I've seen studies, I think, to this effect, that it doesn't really seem to have, if you just look at all players who have LASIK and you look before and after, it isn't all that obvious that it actually did anything. So that did not enable him to turn back

the clock, unfortunately. So maybe that's it. He just turned 43 a few days ago, actually, on July 1st. So I guess retroactively, not that happy a birthday either. But that just made me think because he was traded for Joe Ryan, right? That was the link there. So we talk all the time about the Rays and their miraculous trades, right? Yeah, they probably want that one back. Yeah, that is one that July 2021, just exactly two years ago, a little less, they traded for Calvin Fauché and Nelson Cruz for Drew Stotman, a minor leaguer, and Joe Ryan. And look, I mean, credit to the Rays for going for it. They needed some offensive help. They had a good team that year.

Nelson Cruz didn't give them as much offensive help as they would have liked. He hit some dingers, but overall, not that great. I did give them the fauché-pauché combo in the bullpen, and maybe that makes it worth it. Some of it was all worth it. Yeah. To me, it was. I don't care where Joe Ryan is good. He could be good at either place.

I like the fauché-pauché, but probably not worth it to the Rays. And Ryan was like pretty much major league ready at that point. I mean, he came up with the Twins later that season and had some success. And he was, I guess, kind of underrated as a – like he was not a top 100 guy that year. He had been one prior to 2020 and then he was again one prior to 2022. So that was like a little valley, a little lull in his prospect rankings. But even the year before and after, he was like barely cracking the top 100, right? Because he's like a deception guy, partly. And I love deception guys and guys whose stuff plays up. And that's who he's been.

You just love liars. You're famous for them. Yeah. And I don't know if the Rays underrated him. I mean, I think they probably knew he was pretty good. They were just, they had to give up something to get something. And it has worked out quite well for the twins. Yeah, it really has. And it's funny, you know, it's like your most pressing needs can be so temporary, right?

And it's like, what would they, even for a less good version of Joe Ryan, like, what would they give up right now, you know, when they really need like starting pitcher reinforcements? I know. Exactly. So, yeah, I think they want that one back. Yeah. And throw that into the deadline rental trades bucket, too. And throw that into the deadline rental trades bucket too. Technically, not a top 100 prospect coming back because he wasn't that year, although he should have been.

But it's been a lot of injuries. We were just celebrating recently how there hadn't been that many. I know, we jinxed it. I know, I guess we did because all those ones we've been talking about. Tyro Estrada, who is leading the Giants in war this season, he got hit by a pitch, fractured his hand too. It's all these bird bones. It's really a problem. Like, you need hands. You need wrists.

But they're just so breakable. They're stupid, you know. They are stupid little bird bones. And I hate them, you know. I um they're stupid little bird bones and i hate them you know i feel comfortable saying that like it's uh you know i won't even call it a design flaw because that's like something i don't believe but like it's um you know it it's it feels like a thing we should have been able to overcome by now you know in some ways i'm good i'm about to say such an unhinged start to a sentence, but in some ways it's really a mistake that we went to the moon because having set the precedent for that level of human accomplishment in the face of so many tiny problems that probably seemed at various moments insurmountable to the engineers that eventually were able to overcome them. You know, my expectations for what we should be able

to do are just way too high. And, you know, do I understand that sending a rocket to the moon and, you know, moving past all the tiny bird bones are like separate projects. I mean, yeah, I do understand that. I'm not a dummy. But I still sit here and I'm like, really, this we are undone by? But we went up there and came back, you know? Like they didn't just get stuck up there and we go, oh, I guess that's too bad. You know, that didn't happen. They came back a couple of times of times ben you know oh yeah so

it's just like it's uh it's they're both engineering issues and we solved one and in a sense the other you know in a in a particular kind of way i i think that that's true but yeah i just i want these guys to stay healthy i want to to see, you know, and blisters. Like, what's up with that? We can't figure out freaking blisters. Yeah. Rich Hill figured out his blister issues, seemingly. He hasn't been plagued by them in years.

Is he peeing on his hands again? No, he was not peeing on his. I believe he told us he was using some sort of laser treatment. Oh. So that's appropriately futuristic. So he's a skincare girl is where he's landed. I love that for him. But yeah, you're not wrong.

We really did set ourselves up for failure and disappointment with the whole, like, you could put a man on the moon, but we can't do X. So, yeah. And now we're figuring out the putting people on the moon issue all over again. We're figuring out the putting people on the moon issue all over again. It's still challenging even though we did it long ago with spacecraft computers that could fit in like the nub of a pencil at this point. But still, it's hard to do that. But we did it.

And now we got to tackle the bird bones next. Yeah, we got bird bones. We got all your weird tendons that somehow snap and break and are the worst. You know, bar tables that are tippy. What's up with that? We haven't figured out tippy bar tables. Really?

Really? We still got a wedge of... We have wobble wedge technology that we can carry around with us, but it's still... We got a wedge, a wad of like rolled up napkins and then say,

oh, we got too many layers of paper. Now it's tipping the other way. I'm just saying like, you know, we should aim high and figure out the low stuff too. wobbly tables. And she's always so proud of herself if she can get a wobble wedge and save the day. It's great, but it would be nice if we could solve that issue like on the supply side, you know, just on the front end, just not have the wobbles in the first place and not need sort of a consumer solution to that problem. Anyway, Tyra Estrada is hurt. He's like a top 30 player in baseball this year. So that is a blow. Rich Hill, though, he keeps on trucking. You know, bad news for Nelson Cruz this week. Bad news for Adam Wainwright all season, right?

Speaking of injuries. It hasn't been going well. No, he just went on the IL with just like a he's been bad-itis, it seems like. I mean, I don't know. I guess when you're, what, almost 42 years old and you've been pitching as long as Adam Wainwright is, like, you could probably credibly get away with the shoulder discomfort. Like, I imagine there probably is always some degree of discomfort in the shoulder. And I think Olly Marmol said a variety of limitations is why they're putting him

on the aisle. I mean, with some guys, you might have to, you know, you always have to provide some justification or documentation. But when you're talking about an oldster like Adam Wade, right, it might just be like, yeah, come on in. You can put him on the IL. Like, he's old. Like, I'm sure something hurts. So just go ahead. His ERA alone is evidence that everything probably hurts for him. So, I mean, he's got a 7.66 ERA after the latest blow up, a near six FIP. And I do wonder whether he's wishing he had retired last year. I would never say that someone should have retired. I'm fully supportive of someone playing as long as they possibly can.

But I wonder whether he feels like, you know what, it would have been kind of nice to go out last year with Yachty and Albert, right? And it could have been the three of us. And they got celebrated plenty as it was, but there was always the like, well, we don't actually know that Adam Wainwright is retiring and he didn't. So if he had been able to go out with that trio on a solid season for him and a solid season for the Cardinals who made the playoffs, as opposed to being the last man standing of that trio this year, playing terribly as the Cardinals as a whole play terribly, that's a much more depressing way to go out. Now, if he had retired after last season, he maybe could have kicked himself and said, hey, I had more in me, right? And maybe he would have

had regrets. Whereas now he might say, okay, I do not have more in me. It appears that I do not. And then he could sail off into retirement with his mind made up about that. So maybe that peace of mind, that would bug me maybe if I were a pitcher like Adam Wainwright. I'm not saying he's going to be a Hall of Famer or anything, but I would want to wring out the last drop of performance I had, I think, probably if I were as good at anything as baseball players are at baseballing. So maybe that's some consolation. But all in all, if this is the end for him, it's a much less celebratory way to leave than leaving on a high note would have been. Yeah, I think that sadly that's right. But, you know, we can still remember fondly like an earlier time in his career.

fondly like an earlier time in his career. And I'm sure that, you know, I don't, I don't imagine that it will take very long for the sort of stink is too strong, but disappointment, there's a better word that doesn't imply smell. Um, it won't take very long for us to shift into like, wow, what a career mode when it comes to him in a way that, um that I imagine will be very satisfying to him and very satisfying to Cardinals fans. So it's like, it's not too far away. I'm sure it feels that way because it's July 5th and, you know, the Cardinals are 35 and 50 and it's like, wow, he's on the IL and they have to just keep playing. So, you know, that's a thing that's true.

Yep. So, you know, that's a thing that's true. Yep. But Rich Hill, he just keeps on trucking. And he is 40th in innings pitched this season, which is pretty impressive at his advanced age, I say, with great fondness. And maybe he'll be a trade deadline pickup for someone. You know, he's got to go. He's got to check another team off his bingo card, right?

So I am excited. The Rich Hill sweepstakes. Where will he land next? Where will he land next? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe he will land with one of the—or re-land, depending, with one of the teams in Los Angeles. You know? Yeah, could be. Maybe it's time for a Dodgers reunion with one Rich Hill.

Yeah, I want him to have another team though. So I don't want him to go to either the Dodgers or the Angels. I want a new team to experience the joy of Rich Hill. I mean, that's kind of picky then. Check another box. That's kind of picky. I know, it definitely limits the destinations. Yeah.

Ben, I feel like I need to offer a correction on a previous post of mine regarding the it will change before the all-star game. Like, whatever the complaint is. We were like, Wander Franco's got to be an all-star, right? Well, yeah. Wander Franco, he's an all-star now. So, it's okay. The thing about it is that he is. But in addition to it being premature on my part, you know, I – look, in a fit of frustration, I might have been overly harsh to specific members

of my Seattle Mariners. And I might have said that if they wanted to have more hometown representation, that they could simply play better. I did, I did say that. You did, yeah. And I think that there are, to be clear, wide swaths of the roster that that really does apply to. You know, that is like a true fact and, you know, a bit of feedback that I don't think is out of place. But, Ben. Yeah. I wasn't specific enough. And I'm here to tell you two things about your Seattle Mariners, because now we're going to make it your problem too.

The first is that, so previously their only all-star selection as we covered was Juan Luis Castillo, who is having a nice little season. One of their additional selections made over the weekend was George Kirby. George Kirby, by our version of war, having a better season than Luis Castillo. Yeah. As is Loken Gilbert, who's not yet an all-star, right? Right. Right. And so, you know, in that respect, I want to apologize to George and his family, really, because George has been pitching great. He's, you know, eighth in starting pitcher war among American League starters, qualified American League starters, right? And to your point, Logan Gilbert sitting there at 10th, not yet an all-star, but who knows,

Logan Gilbert sitting there at 10th, not yet an all-star, but who knows? You know, maybe we do some stuff. So, would like to say that. I also would like to note that while his season has been down relative to last year, that when you look at qualified American League outfielders, again, by our version of war, you know who's sitting there at five? It's one Julio Rodriguez. And he is now.

He is now an all-star. You know, playing center field, it helps. And hitting home runs also helps. He's been playing better of late. I mean, he's been hitting better of late. He's been playing good center field all season. So, you know, I think that, and so he was named an all-star replacement over the weekend because as we have famously noted, Mike Trout no longer able to play in that game or any others for a while. And so when you look at the American League roster, both Trout and Aaron Judge, who were two of the three starting outfielders, obviously unavailable for the game due to injury.

Franco replaced Judge, I think. I think you're right. And then over the weekend, you know, we had some additions. Kyle Tucker, also named to the roster. Obviously, Jordan Alvarez, unable to play. And so, you know, now the reserves for the American League in the outfield are, you know, Luis Roberto Jr., Austin Haynes, Adoles Garcia, Kyle Tucker, and Julio Rodriguez.

And so, really, the only person who might be like, hey, now, what about me is Leotie Tavares, who's having a very nice season, Ben. Very nice season at the plate. And, like, where, you know, we put in all of these Rangers. I mean, where's the love for Lioti, right? This is what I ask. But I just, if you were a Mariners fan and you were like, gosh, make sure it's sour about them right now. You're not wrong. And I just want to, you know, issue a correction on a previous post.

All right. I'm sure that's appreciated by, I don't know, George Kirby's family. Yeah, because I'm sure they listen to the podcast. Yeah. They were like, what does the man have to do to be good enough for you, Meg? Huh? What does he have to do? We talked about some of the oldest players in baseball. I did want to mention, we talked about the oldest Cardinal, the youngest Cardinal, Jordan Walker. Now, he's putting together an interesting statistical season. Weird. Weird little year.

Very, because he is sub-replacement level, according to Fangraphs and Baseball Reference, but he has a 120 WRC+. And I was wondering about that combination of things, a sub-replacement level player who is 20% or more above average offensively. That is hard to do. And in fact, it has been done only twice by an AL or NL player with at least 300 plate appearances. Jordan Walker is at 180 now. And it happened both times in 2008. So Brad Hopp did it in 2008 for the Rockies. He had a 122 WRC plus and he ended up at negative 0.7 war. And, you know, it's a defense. It was bad defense and not great base running.

Not bad. And then famously, infamously, Ryan Domet for the Pirates. So we will never see his likes again as a framer, I'm afraid. But he was at 123 WRC plus and negative 3.4 war because you basically, according to the framing metrics, cost his team half a run a game or so. It's like your run score total started at negative 0.5 every day that Ryan Domet was catching for you. Just amazing. I miss the days of comparing Ryan Domet and Jose Molina, the extremes at either end of the framing scale. reference, different war model. Then it's very rare there as well, but different names. Brad Hopp does qualify in 2008. Baseball reference doesn't include framing and catcher war, so no Ryan Domet. However, Adam Dunn qualifies in 2009 when he had a 144 OPS plus, sorry, for the Nationals and hit 38 home runs and had a 398 on base. And he was still negative 0.4 war just because the defense was that bad.

It was not quite as bad, I guess, at FanGraph. So he was a little bit above replacement level. But it's done. It's Gary Sheffield in 1993 with the Padres and Marlins. He had a 120 OPS plus and was below replacement just a bit, negative 0.1, as was Jerry Lynch in 1964, also negative 0.1 with a 130 OPS plus. Jordan Walker has a 115 WRC plus now, so he would not qualify there, but we'll see whether this persists and whether he's able to have this very strange season. I drafted him on my 26 under

25 team. So obviously I want him to amass war, some positive war here to help my team. And the Cardinals would like that as well, but it's a very strange season for him. Like encouraging in a lot of respects, a lot of long hitting streaks, but also lots of hitting the ball on the ground and also not looking like an outfielder because he wasn't one until fairly recently. So, yeah, it's odd. I do wonder if the fact that Nolan Gorman is proving to be like reasonable in the field is just going to let him DH soon. And if we won't see everything just get better. I mean, I know that DHing brings for some guys its own problems, right? And that is itself an adjustment. So I don't want to say that like, oh, well, magically, you know, I'm doing a little snappy thing into the microphone, just in case you can't hear me go in snap magic but you

know it does seem like he would benefit from not having to do the thing that he routinely feels at and in like it's not that it's a little bit bad it's like sometimes you watch it and you're like oh like that's quite alarmingly bad you know um it doesn't always jump out at you that way but um i think that when it comes to his outfield defense, it sort of does. So it seems like it would be good to let him just hit and focus on that and continue adjusting to big league pitching when that's all he has to focus on doing. And then if in the offseason, the determination is we really need to be able to have this guy in the field some of the time to justify keeping him on the active roster, then okay, you have a longer sort of runway to get him situated there. But yeah,

it seems. Or they could feign an injury and send him to the Fall League again, let him play outfield in Arizona for a couple weeks. Yeah, might help. And lastly, another young guy has arrived. The Orioles have promoted yet another top prospect. Not their tippy top prospect, but a top one. Colton Couser has arrived now. And I'm trying to remember a team that promoted as many top prospects in the span of basically a year now, right? It's been a little more than a year since Adley Rutschman came up.

And then you have Gunnar Henderson, Grayson Rodriguez, Jordan Westberg, now Colton Couser. And that's just like the really highly rated rookies and prospects. There's Joey Ortiz, right, who was a top 100 guy. I'm probably leaving out others. And they still have a whole bunch coming, right? Jackson Holiday was one of the best of the bunch. And Kobe Mayo and Heston Kerstad, which I said correctly this time. And more.

I'm just trying to remember other systems that may have promoted this many highly rated prospects in this short a time frame. I mean, there have been some other legendarily great systems in the past decade or two. Yeah, it feels like the Padres have to be in that conversation at some point. Right, the Padres, yeah, the Rays maybe. Like, there have been some really great systems. I'm sure there have been a couple of good – This is probably fodder for a stat blast or something. But if anyone can think of examples of this many, like quality and quantity because it's like not just a lot but a lot who are actually like toward the top of prospect lists and more on the way.

So, I mean, that tank is paying dividends these days. I hate to say it that way, but man, it's a really rich system. And it's got to be so fun for Orioles fans right now. We're like every other week, it's like, oh, meet our new amazing prospect. And there's another one waiting in the wings right behind him. That's, don't know if it's worth it, but I know that this part of the process has to be a ton of fun. Yeah, I mean, I think that like when you're,

when it pays off on the back end, it's still from a process perspective isn't going to be my favorite, but like at least you get the start of the payoff, right? In a way that makes it feel like it wasn't simply a cost-saving thing it was that and this right it was both things in concert which is better than taking the one without the other but yeah i mean yeah like there's probably a padre system and the year in there there's probably

a dodgers year in there depending on how you define the time frame like maybe some of this debax group maybe but maybe yeah or going back even further you could probably you know like the the dynasty yankees like the core coming up excluding bernie williams unjustly as he always is from that core but he came up a little earlier so yeah there have been some great cores that have come along together, but tough to beat this. This is a pretty impressive display of a prospect parade. Yes. Agreed. Agreed. All right. I've got some emails here and maybe this will be a natural progression from what we were just talking about. This is a question from Griffin, Patreon supporter, who says,

I'm a big Red Sox fan and I've been following Tristan Casas. From what I've seen, I think he's progressed well. He's got a great walk rate, especially. However, I've met several Red Sox fans who haven't seen the same thing and think he's stalled out as a prospect. And I believe Eric Langenhagen used Dahlbeck and Casas in the same sentence in his top 46 overview. Is there a general process or are there stats to follow that can give me a better idea of how a player is developing? So how do you monitor player development from afar? Let's say, especially if you're not Eric Langenhagen, if you're not a scouty person, if you're not going to games, if you don't have access to some of the stuff that Eric gets access to, minor league stat cast style stuff, some of that you can find. Some things have to be sourced, right? But how would you follow a player and monitor their development?

and monitor their development. It's tricky because I guess there are an infinite number of developmental pathways that a player could take, and you'd probably be looking at different benchmarks and milestones for each player, depending on what they need to work on and what kind of player they are. I mean, I think that, and I don't say this just to tout our coverage, but I think that increasingly when you look at like public side prospect

analysis that most of, if not all of the work that's being done at sort of the big sites that you would know the names of are folks who are looking at more granular stack-ass data to help them get a better sense of what is real and meaningful performance relative to the minor league stats. Because it's not that that doesn't matter, right? But there's a ton of context within that that can kind of cloud the picture of how meaningful it's going to be, how likely it is that those skills are going to translate to either the next rung of the minor league ladder or

eventually the big leagues. And so I think engaging with public side analysis is helpful because you are going to get even sort of vicariously access to data like that that helps to inform how public side analysts look at these guys, right? So, you know, rather than simply looking at slugging, they're looking at hard hit rate, they're looking at max exit VLOs, they're going to have more granular swing data, right? So they're going to be able to, on the hitter side, be able to say more than just like, here's what his walk-in strikeout rate was, right? It's like, here's, you know, you can look at all kinds of like chase data, all sorts of stuff like that, right? So

there's like that piece of it, which I think people should read and, you know, not just at our site, but across the internet, because I think that there are, there tends to be consensus, even if the order isn't precisely the same at the top, when you're looking at different sites, top 100s, they tend to look kind of similar in terms of who are the consensus best guys. But there's going to be difference between the whatever tool grade and grade metric you use. But just to keep it simple, we'll use future value. There's going to be disagreements across sites in terms of the future value that a prospect might have. They might have disagreements over how robust different tool grades are. And the ordinal

rankings don't actually tell you that much. I think it's more important to focus on stuff like future value. So there's that piece of it. I think that it's important for you to familiarize yourself with like, what are the differences in the various offensive environments that these guys are playing in? Right. Because I think that's something that can happen and it wouldn't be anybody's fault, but like you might look at a hitter who's playing in a league where like all of the ballparks are super home run friendly or the park factors are off the charts. And you might be like, wow, that guy's amazing. And then he goes to an environment where that's not true. And you're like, oh, well, some of that was where he's playing.

Like Joe Adele and his 23 dingers, which is still somewhat impressive, but you definitely, there's some inflation going on. Right. So you need that context, right? I think that, and this isn't perfect. And there are some teams that I think are more sort of straightforward about what it means than others. But like teams tell you a lot about what they think of their guys based on how they are promoting them. they think of their guys based on how they are promoting them. So like the speed with which a guy is being promoted, what is his age relative to the level, right? So like, is this a really young guy who's, you know, a double A and maybe he's not hitting great, but when you take in the

context of his age, it's like, wow, that's really impressive for a insert, you know, teenage shortstop. I can't believe he's hitting like that. So having a sense of how a guy is being promoted and where he fits within sort of the context of his level, I think is good. And then like, go watch guys. Like, you know, you're not going to necessarily have like a scout's eye for stuff, but, and it definitely takes an adjustment if you are going from watching mostly big league ball to then watching like whatever your local minor league team is, you're going to be like, wow, there is a noticeable gap between the talent levels of these guys, but like go watch some, go watch some minor league ball if it's close to you, like to get a sense, even if you're not seeing prospects who you like super care about, like maybe the closest

affiliate to you isn't, you know, an affiliate of your favorite team, but like it does help you to sort of calibrate, you know, what's up with what's up with that, you know? So I think that those are good things to do. And, you know, what else, Ben? Well, with Casas specifically, I kind of like him because you look at all the different things he does well. He has good plate discipline, right? So of the 151 qualified hitters this year, he is 32nd in the ratio of zone swings to outside the zone swings. So he swings at some strikes and doesn't chase a lot of likely balls. And then it's not like he's just trying to work walks, although he does work walks and has some long plate appearances, but he can also put a charge into the ball, right? He has

his max exit velocity this year is 113 point something. So he's like, uh, he's 34th in hard hit rate among those qualified hitters. He is, uh, I think in max exit VLO he's 41st. So he can be selective and he can also hit the ball hard. And if you look at his expected weighted on base compared to his actual, he's hit the ball better than his results would show. So these are all things that you can look at, maybe more easily when a player is at the major league level to monitor their progress than at the minor league level. But I think he has been better and is more promising than his roughly league average line this season would suggest. Obviously, first baseman, he's got a hit and the first base defensive metrics have been bad.

I haven't really watched enough of him day in and day out to know how horrible he is there. But there's a lot to like about that profile, I think. So, yeah, it varies by the player, obviously. And you just got to look at age relative to league. And is he doing it at a level where he's young for that level, and he's been promoted aggressively, as you said. And there are some places you can look for things like swing decisions. There's the minor league substack down on the farm that I look at sometimes, and it will have interesting stats that aren't easily accessible everywhere about minor league performance. And you can look at minor league leaderboards at Fangraphs and various other places, right? And you just debuted a new tool, actually, I think I saw that would be helpful for this.

that would be helpful for this. Jason Martinez and his great roster resource has become an even better resource because there's now a minor league baseball power rankings leaderboard that you can access at FanCrafts. We'll link to it, but it kind of shows you who's having the best seasons in the minors and ranks them by various statistical factors.

So there are a lot of resources out there you can check. But also, yeah, defer to the experts to some extent, the people who are going to those games and have scouting experience and people like Eric who are talking to people in the industry all the time and synthesizing the insights that they get from that. You're never going to know as much probably as those people, not that they're always right or that you'll always be wrong, but you're not taking in quite as much information. So it's helpful to be able to use their information as a resource, which I do just as much as anyone else who doesn't do that

full-time does. I agree. I don't want to suggest that there's infallibility there, but I also think that it's useful in addition to just the pure information that you're getting. what proves to be relevant to them and what do they sort of discard as like ephemera that isn't really going to tell them much about what a guy might project to be as he's advancing through the minor. So it's just a useful sort of level setting exercise. And I think that even if they're not right on every prospect, because none of them are, and there are a lot of people doing really good work in this space, but your hit rate is not going to be 100% by any means. But it does help to kind of arm you with a good sense of what matters and what doesn't and how they think about the translation from the minors to the majors. And if you're wanting to look at it from a purely statistical perspective, like I think that paying attention to the work that, say, Dan does, where he will use Zips to, you know, generate ranks for prospects. And Zips is taking their all of the, not every single thing, but taking a bunch of the statistical information that they are generating at the minor league level and using, you know,

beep, boop, bop, bop math to translate it to something at the major league level. Like, that's another avenue to try to get a sense of what these guys might do as they march their way to the big league roster. So that can be another useful input. All right. Here is a question from Joshua who says, I'm a season ticket holder for the Fayetteville Woodpeckers, the low A Astros affiliate. And I believe I may have just witnessed the dumbest ending to a baseball game I've ever seen, at least since the walk off balk I saw at the same stadium last summer. In the top of the ninth, this was this weekend, a guest Woodpeckers pitcher struggled to throw strikes and ended up giving up a walk and a home run that brought the game to within one run. After plunking the next batter, the winning run came to the plate with only one out. Again, the pitcher struggled to throw strikes, but as ball three crashed into the dirt, the opposing batter mistakenly bat flipped and trotted to first, believing that he had been walked. The runner on first was thrown out trying to quote unquote steal second. And

then the poor batter had to slink back to the plate for another pitch. He hit a fly out that barely left the infield for the final out. Woodpeckers win eight to seven. So the batter thought he had walked, but it was actually ball three. So he bat flips and starts trotting down to first. The runner who had been on first saw the guy celebrating the walk and thought, oh, okay, he walked. I can just stroll down to second. But no, it was not a walk. And so he got thrown out, quote unquote, stealing.

And Joshua says, what's the dumbest ending to a baseball game you've ever seen? What are some other plays that have similarly hilarious discrepancies between the official game log and the action on the field? Yeah, because the official game log here does not say this, that he was thrown out like an income coup basically because he thought that there was a walk. So I don't know. That's tough to beat, that one. That is definitely one of the dumbest endings. I can recall. That is super dumb. I remember there was one viral play. Did you see earlier this season?

It was like in May. It was from a high school baseball game. And it was like, I'm looking, Hornell High School. This was, I think, in New York. And it was a seasonal championship game. Hornell High School was up 5-4 in the bottom of the seventh against Palmyra Macedon, which had a runner on second with two outs. With two strikes, the batter was called out after taking a called third strike. But right after originally calling the batter out, the umpire realized the catcher had dropped the ball and then made a safe sign, meaning the catcher had to throw the ball down to first to complete the strikeout and officially end the game. But Hornell's players didn't see the safe sign and they started celebrating.

Meanwhile, the runner on second and the batter who was trying to reach first safely after the strikeout started running around the bases. And then all the Cornell players were celebrating and like one guy realizes what's going on and is pointing to a home plate to throw the ball, but it was too late. And so that it was a 6-5 win. And then the other team ran onto the field and started celebrating. So it was like back-to-back, yes, we just won celebration. And then the Hornell players are pleading with the umpires, but they ultimately upheld the call. And Paul Myra Macedon moved on to a state tournament qualifier and Hornell's season was over. So that was wonderful and terrible at the same time. It's tough to beat that because, yeah, we've seen walk-off box and that sort of thing, but that doesn't quite compare to that. That's, you know, that's bad. It's really bad. And it just reinforces for me, I want to be clear before I remind people that I have this take. a big leaguer and I were bat flipping.

I would just assume that I had misjudged it, that it wasn't a walk, that I hadn't hit the ball as hard as I thought, that it didn't go over the fence. It has settled into the outfielder's glove or worse hasn't, but now I really got to hustle to second so that I am not just like taking a very slow single here. I would be terrified that I would just be embarrassed all the time. This might be true of other aspects of me potentially being a big leaguer. So who could say, but like, I just marvel at the confidence and I know that it is the result of, you know, in most cases, a true understanding of their skill and reps upon reps upon reps upon reps so that they know what it sounds like when they've actually hit a home run, et cetera.

But I would still not have the confidence, even on a walk, which is arguably like, how do you goof that up? Like you should, you know, like you should, you should know. Yeah. If you can beat that, it's tough to beat the game ending fart slam, right? Fielder allows runner to score like a moron. So, I mean, I'll link to, there's a

FedGraphs Heartball Times article from some years ago, the 15 worst endings ever to regular season games. There's some lists out there like that, but if you can top those two endings we just mentioned there, then please let us know because it's a high bar to

clear or a low bar to limbo under, depending on your perspective. Question from Christian, Patreon supporter. It has come to my attention that Fall Out Boy has unironically covered We Didn't Start the Fire, referencing events from 1989 to 2023. I am devastated. After coming down from the initial shock, I examined the lyrics for baseball references, for this is a song for which lyrics demand to be heard and understood. The Cubs Go All The Way Again gets the first sports reference and the only baseball reference unless we count Michael Jordan for his minor league stint. By comparison, Billy Joel's original lyrics contain at least six baseball references. Those are Joe DiMaggio, The Catcher in the Rye. I don't think we can call The Catcher in the Rye a baseball reference, right? That's

not related to an actual catcher, I don't believe. It's a different kind of catcher. I mean, The Catcher in the Rye is a baseball book. There's the symbolic mitt and everything, but it's not in the song because of baseball. Roy Campanella, though, the Dodgers, Brooklyn's got a winning team, Mickey Mantle and the Giants and Dodgers, again, California baseball. So is this discrepancy between the baseball representation of the two versions of We Didn't Start the Fire, is this discrepancy a sign of baseball's decline in the zeitgeist?

What baseball events, figures, or literature that occurred from 1989 to now are deserving of references in this pop cultural amalgamation song we only asked for tongue-in-cheek? So I heard Mike Peska break down this cover on The Gist the other day, and he pointed out, look,

as maligned as the original Billy Joel song is, it does get stuck in your head, but people are usually unhappy to have it there, right? And I think Billy Joel has owned up to that himself. But the quality of the lyrics, at least Billy Joel does go almost exactly and precisely in chronological order with his references, whereas Fallout Boys is just skipping all around the timeline. And also the rhymes, the rhymes are very questionable relative to the original, not only because some of them just don't really rhyme, but also because like he rhymes George Floyd with Metroid and it's like, really? Like, are we doing that? But also, I think there's just not a ton of sports representation here, period. So it might reflect the affinities of the singers and lyricists here. Billy Joel is of a certain age

and also likes baseball, although you can kind of catch him with Yankees hats and Mets hats. He's a New York guy, right? But I think the sports references in this song, so I think there are two baseball references for sure because, yeah, there's the Cubs going all the way, and then there's Michael Jordan 23 in one line and Michael Jordan 45 in another line, 23 obviously being his basketball number, 45 being his baseball number. So that's a baseball reference pretty explicitly, I think. So that's two baseball references. And then LeBron gets mentioned, Tiger Woods, Venus and Serena, Michael Jordan 23, as I said. So that gives you two basketball references. And then Kaepernick, obviously Colin Kaepernick's not there primarily for his football play, right? He's, you know, a cultural figure. So I don't think there's any sport that's more represented really than baseball. Baseball has two references here. Basketball has two.

which is like the dominant cultural force sports-wise of this period, has Kaepernick, which is kind of a qualified, I mean, there's no Tom Brady or anything in here, right? So I think baseball actually does fairly well here, but it's a little less represented. And I guess you could chalk that up to the time and the age of the singer, right? And it's not the quote-unquote golden age of baseball that's being referenced here, although I would quibble with that designation. But that does reflect a certain prominence that baseball had in the zeitgeist at that time, right? So I think that has receded somewhat. So that is reflected in the song.

But the question about what should be in there, baseball references, 1989 to 2023, like, I still think baseball is, if anything, overrepresented in pop culture relative to its popularity. Like, you haven't seen The Bear, right? I have not, but I've heard from friend of the show, Zach Buchanan, that it's a baseball show. It is. It is a baseball show, maybe in multiple ways. But in, I think, the penultimate episode of the second season, there's an extended riff about Bartman and Alex Gonzalez and that whole saga. So another Cubs reference in there. And then there's a new Bad Bunny song. We were alerted by a listener. There's a Tiny and Bad Bunny song that just came out a few days ago called Mojave Ghost.

And it has a reference to Otani. So I think there's still a lot of baseball in pop culture. And if we were going to stick some more baseball references into We Didn't Start the Fire, re-record, I mean, I guess Otani would probably be in there at this point. Maybe, I don't know, like the 1989 earthquake. That was a pretty big deal. Might have some steroid. Yeah, definitely. Right. Steroid era. earthquake that was a pretty big deal might have some steroid yeah definitely right steroid era that's got to be represented you know mcguire and sosa and bonds and all that at the home run chase that's got to be there the strike maybe strike was was a pretty big cal ripken possibly

breaking luke eric's records i don't know. Ken Griffey Jr. just being, being junior. Yeah. I mean, like as both a baseball player and a cultural force, that seems like it would fit.

Yeah. So yeah, that's, that's at least a handful that would be out of place in a song like this. He wouldn't

raise an eyebrow and then say, really, that, that made the list. So. You might raise an eyebrow to fall out. You might. an eyebrow to Fall Out Boy.

Yeah, the existence of the song maybe, but yes, I think there could legitimately be more baseball representation there. But a lot of those examples we just cited also are from the earlier part of that time period. So, Otani

at this point, he's one of the only things that moves the needle from a cultural, national, international perspective. Although I guess the banging scheme, could you put the banging scheme in the song? Maybe. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly apart from steroids, the biggest scandal that the sport has seen since the last song came out. All right. Jeremy, Patreon supporter, says, I was recently at a game at Dodger Stadium and an interesting dilemma came up.

The Dodgers have a promotion with Jack in the Box where patrons can get a free jumbo jack with the purchase of a drink if the Dodgers get 10 or more strikeouts in a game. With the Dodgers leading in the top of the ninth, the Pirates, who are the Dodgers kryptonite apparently, had a runner on first and nobody out. The Dodgers pitching staff stood at eight strikeouts for the game. There was a ground ball, which the Dodgers turned for a double play. Good, right? But now

they could not get that 10th strikeout unless they gave up the lead and the game went into extras. Should the infield have gone only for the lead runner and preserved the possibility of jumbo jacks for hungry Angelinos, where is the line between sending them home happy and sending them home hungry? Well, I'd say that when one can secure a win, which is a thing that you are likely to remember about your attendance, you should do that because you're going to forget the free burger, you know, particularly if you have to, like, it would be different if when you were walking out of the ballpark, they're like, here's a free burger. You know, we prepared all these burgers on the off chance we could give them away. But, you know, you got to go to Jack in the Box and you got to buy a thing to get the free thing, right? Like, it's not just you got a free thing. You have to, you got to be like, hey, I'm buying this other thing.

And then I guess I get this free thing. So I think I have the very hot take that you should just win the game with fewer strikeouts and as a result, fewer free qualified free burgers, because it's not totally free, qualified free. And they're going to be mostly content with that is my guess. Yeah. I can't testify to the quality of the Jack in the Box burger. I don't know that I have had the pleasure, if it's a pleasure. I assume it's a pleasure that seems to be baked into the premise of the question or grilled in to the premise. But I think given the difficulties that the Dodgers have had pitching-wise, which we covered earlier in this episode. They just want to win. Yeah, I think you got to go for the double play there and not the double jack-in-the-box play, unfortunately.

I think that that's right. And, you know, would my answer change with a different restaurant associated with the free thing? I mean, maybe, maybe Ben, but, um, you know, the other big, uh, common promotion is getting free tacos, like with the diamondbacks. If I think if they score a certain number of runs, you get free tacos, but they're from taco bell and it's like look i'm not here to judge anyone's crunch wrap uh proclivities we have all been drunk at two in the morning look it happens i mean maybe not you because you're not a you're not a big drinker but like we've all been there right i have it's been a while but i have need a need a taco. Like, I get it. But it is, I'm going to go so far as to say kind of galling living here to be like, you know, you get Taco Bell.

Really? Of all the places to go. We're always thrilled when there's the stolen base in the playoffs and you get to claim your free Taco Bell, right? Yeah. It's a national event. Do you think they'll do that promotion this year, or is it too likely to succeed?

Right, because of the new rules. I don't know. Yeah, that promotion, that could go in the Fall Out Boys song, I think. The whole country can get into that, right? Free Taco Bell. Alright, question from Dan, Patreon supporter. The Louisa Rice hit-slash- error conspiracy theory.

Oh, man. The theory that maybe MLB said, hey, be a little more lenient when it comes to Luis Arise going for 400. Give him a hit instead of an error. Maybe they're doing that league-wide. Had me wondering if MLB wanted to juice Arise's 400 chase a la the alleged judge home run chase ball juicing. What kind of ball should they ship to Miami? What characterizes a base hit Goldilocks ball? So it's one thing if you just want to hit the ball as far as possible and hit a home run,

then you can juice the ball in the accepted ways. But what if you just want to juice batting average for a riser or the league as a whole? want to juice batting average for a riser or the league as a whole, I could imagine a more juiced ball possibly hurting him because he hits the ball, they call it the donut hole, right? He hits it in that spot where it goes over the infield, but it falls in front of the outfielders, even though they play shallow against him. So if you had a more juiced ball that would carry a little farther, then maybe it would get to those outfielders who are already playing in, and that would actually be bad. But if you deadened it further, maybe it's already the sweet spot ball for a rise.

I don't know. But if you deadened it further, if you deadened the ball league-wide, then in the long run, that might lead to more singles because hitters would not swing for the fences as much in theory. They wouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And so they would try to put the ball in play and be slappier. And that might lead to more balls in play and more balls on the ground and more singles. So I guess that's one thing you could do, just kind of generically deaden the ball. But unless you were going to change something else about,

I don't know, not how hard it's hit or not how far it carries, but something else about the aerodynamics where it would like fall faster or something, like, I don't know, something like the flaps on the wings of a plane that are just like angled in a different way depending on whether you're going up or down, but it would be like that, but on the baseball so that it would like go up in the air and it would more steeply descend, something like that. Just a little flaps on the baseball for Luisa Rice. Maybe that would help. I don't know what else.

Doesn't the fact that this seems to be a shift in sort of league-wide scoring policy suggest that it is not being done for the benefit specifically of him? Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's being done for him. I don't know if it's being done at all. I mean, we can talk about the hits errors thing. I think maybe I'll do a stat blast on that sometime soon. But as for Arise himself, like you could see why MLB would want to boost batting averages, especially after they made some rules changes and the positioning change.

And hey, we want to have something to show for this to show that it worked. change and hey we want to have something to show for this to show that it worked but i don't know what you could do other than like introduce something to make the ball behave in an unpredictable erratic way like i don't know what that would be but the error ball yeah yeah but but not right no it's just no no not, but it would induce mistakes, inability to field the ball, but it would be scored as a single, so we could get them to 400. But yeah, some sort of like – I don't know, like those balls that have like gyroscopes inside them or something, so they move in weird ways, like something like that where you just get a bad hop every time, right? Just unpredictable bounces, something like that, or it would just fly erratically through the air. Again, you'd have to have some sort of like un-aerodynamic thing

like jutting off it or whatever. I don't know if the theory – I assume that they want this to remain undetected, this tampering. This is the problem. So yeah, maybe some sort of gyroscopic core that would cause like slightly unpredictable bounces. Right. But it would be undetectable from outside. Yeah. I, I guess, I mean, I guess that that's what you'd want. Although it's like, is that what you want? If he is really such a bat and barrel control savant that he's able to just poke it where he

wants it like do you want right that as a as a headwind to his existing skill yeah maybe you want to be predictable because he's so good at at angling it already yeah like oh what what do you do then you know here's another arise inspired question from adrian inspired by skip schumacher's recent revelation that Luis Arise apparently predicts the outcome of every plate appearance, both good and bad. I got to wondering this important question. If a baseball player came to possess a genie that was able to give the player any hitting outcome they wanted so long as they asked for it before the at-bat and the dugout, what kind of career line or per-season line would that player aim for to get away with it? Presumably, you want to do very well since you have the incredible ability to choose to hit as many homers or other hits as possible, but you also don't want to arouse suspicion that you are cheating in this profound way, especially since you have to ask out loud for the hitting outcome.

Just because these details seem integral, let's say the genie is invisible when the player makes the vocal request and there's no physical lamp binding the genie that you have to hold. How would you balance the ability to do as well as humanly possible or better than humanly possible, I suppose, with the need to not have too much superhuman performance? And I feel like we've answered this genre of question, right? Like you're a wizard, you're a witch, you have some supernatural power on your side, but you do not want to be burned at the stake and you do not want to be drummed out of the sport. So you want to kind of keep that ability on the down low, right?

You want to like fly under the radar here. So you have to temper your outcomes somewhat. So you're not maxing out fully because that would arouse suspicion i would be the 34th best player in baseball okay all right that's in a way that suggests i've like thought a lot about it that's actually like i think more or less exactly where louisa rise is according to to FanCraftsWars. So, maybe this is already happening. Maybe this is what he's doing. Well, and I guess, you know, part of it would probably depend on, like, how big a leap is that from prior seasons I've put up, right? Because

if you've been really bad, you know, if you've been, like, hanging on to a roster spot with, like, you know, your fingernails, and then all of a sudden you're, like, incredible. People are going to be like, what's going on with that? You know, and they're going to, they're going to poke around and see what's what. So maybe if you are given this power, like in an off season, you're on the beach, congratulations. You're, uh, you come upon, um, a magic object that gives you this power. You have to, you have to pace it, you know? So you have to go from being like, um, a roster fringe guy to like a, a nice complimentary piece. And then the next year you, you go to being like a fringe all-star. And then after that, you're like the 34th best player in baseball. 34th best player in baseball. And then people can attribute your ascent to like a progression over the course of your career. Now, if you find this when you're like 36, then I think you just burn bright and hope for the best. But like, if you're a young, like a really young guy in, in the majors, I think you can kind of, you know, chunk it out in a way that would allow you to reach a high level of

performance that you then sustain over time. And people would just be like, you know, sometimes they're late bloomers, man. And you'd be thought of as a late bloomer who really made good. And it would be so exciting. And we would talk about you like that. And we wouldn't at all think you were a witch. Yeah. Maybe doing what Arise is doing where he's like flirting with 400 but probably won't actually get there, then he could avoid arousing too much suspicion because it's just so against the odds to bat 400. So if you flirt with it for half a season and then you end up hitting 370 or something, it's like, wow, what a season that was.

But no one's questioning it really, except for effectively wild listeners writing in with conspiracy theories and hypotheticals. Although, I guess the counter-argument to that is that if what you're doing is chasing a heretofore quite difficult-to-reach benchmark, maybe it is better to like do it in one go because we understand those seasons to be whatever the high baseline true talent level of the player. We understand those seasons to be aided by the vagaries of luck and you just hitting like your 99th percentile projection. And so maybe it's better to just do one and done. And then the next season, you know, be good, but not that good. And you'll be like, man, I don't know. It all just came together for me weird in that year. And then you move on. And I think that maybe you would escape notice that way,

even if it was like really out of character. I mean, Arias has been a good hitter his whole career. So, you know, if you were going to take, you know, if we had taken odds at the beginning of the season, which we wouldn't do because we don't care about that, but if we were to do it, we would be like, ah, like of all the guys, he'd probably be on your list, right? He'd be one of the dudes you'd name as a potential. I don't know why he'd make a weird noise about it, but. No, he would have been. Yeah, I'm sure he was the projected highest batting average guy entering the season. So, yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know. Maybe I'm,

if you're going for a record, if you're going for a, you know, really hard to reach benchmark, maybe you do want to just burn bright and be like, I don't know, man. It really.

Yeah, it's just one of those magical seasons, right? Yeah. Except in this case, it was actually magical. Actually magical. I wonder what, we've asked this question before. I imagine when we've gotten these kinds of questions, like, what would it take for me to be like, there's supernatural force involved here.

Like, there's no way. I don't know what it would take, but it would take a lot. Because at no point this season have I thought, is Horizon Warlock, like, does he have a magic little person, like, living in his hat, you know, like Ratatouille, but for baseball and with magic? Yeah. No, Shohei Otani just had maybe the most valuable month ever by a baseball player. And we're not questioning if he's human and real. Now, you often do hear people say, he's otherworldly, he's from another planet,

he's not human, he's a unicorn, et cetera, et cetera, right? But no one actually thinks that he is not a human man, right? So even Shohei Ohtani does not trip our alarms and say, this is on the level. We're skeptical. We might still get questions about him actually being secret twins, but that's not a mainstream belief.

Those are fringe theories. Right. Discredited. Right. And, you know, we enjoy them. We don't ascribe to them. We don't subscribe to them. We don't ascribe truth to them.

There you go. Right. But we, I found it, but we do enjoy the question. Yep. Because it's fun to think. Just asking questions. Yeah, that's what our listeners are doing. You know, we already had the moon riff and now this, people are going to be like, what's going on with us? Don't worry, we're fine. It's okay. There's no turn being taken here. No. Just got a MLB press release about Ken Griffey Jr. and Felix Hernandez and Edgar joining Julio as 2023 All-Star Ambassadors. Did you get it twice like I did?

No, actually only once, but that's nice. I wouldn't mind getting that twice. It's sweet. I haven't heard whether Bad Bunny will be back reprising his performance in the celebrity All-Star softball game, which I believe he was part of last year, but big baseball fan, Pat bunny. Yeah. Um, yes.

And like, boy, Dodger stadium was a light in, in excitement for his performance in the celebrity all-star game is pretty cool. But, um, I don't know if he will be there.

I haven't seen Macklemore's name on the celebrity all-star roster. And I feel like there's no way that we're actually going to successfully get out of that. But I like that they're letting me pretend because I was like, he's going to be a captain and it's going to be a bunch of him at all. You know, other sports cities like embracing his musical catalog. I was like, you had a pass and yet you made this choice. Interesting. Yeah. Ben Gibbard has not been announced as a participant.

What the heck? You know? Come on, Ben. Let's go. Let's go. I guess he's touring, which might be an issue. Wow. But still.

All right. Keep touring. That's better. Yeah. A couple more here. Here's a question from, gosh, okay, this one, this is weird even for us probably, but this is a question from Ryan, Patreon supporter. The Yankees and Cardinals were playing a day-night doubleheader today. This was July 1st. Because of two rain delays during the

first game, the first game was still going by the original start time of the second game. This makes me wonder what if both ends of a double header were being played simultaneously, even just for a few innings. I can't stop thinking about this hypothetical scenario. I guess for this to work, top and bottom innings must coincide between the two games. That is, the same team must be hitting simultaneously in both games. Maybe we need two sets of batter boxes, batter's boxes and mounds as well. What are other obstacles? I can't stop thinking about two games sharing the same field at the same time. The closest I can think like a real life comp, sometimes you have fields that are kind of

facing each other, like back to back sort of. So their outfields blend into each other like they were conjoined twins, right? Like one outfield is basically an extension of the other outfield, and you just have outfielders there kind of back-to-back, and sometimes a ball might get away from one game and go into the other game, right? So that happens sometimes in community parks and fields, but that's not quite the same. That is not quite as disruptive as this scenario where we're playing two games at once somehow on the same field. things up you could have like one counterclockwise game and one clockwise game on the base pass or gosh you could you'd have to have probably two mounds or at least two pitching rubbers there's just not enough real estate and it feels like you couldn't have like would you need to require

that it always be like a lefty and a righty if you're using one mound right so it could at least be like on opposite sides of the rubber or something yeah or yeah or you need you need two umpires to call balls and strikes behind home plate or home plates uh depends right yeah you'd need right i guess you could either have two batters boxes or yes you would have to have like a righty lineup and a lefty lineup. It could be like a split squad game in spring training, except those are in two different places. This is in one place. So you'd have enough manpower to do it. Like you could split your team into two and each part of your team, each 13-man roster could play its own game.

So that would not be the limitation. It would be the real estate, really. It'd be crowded. You'd have it be a safety issue and it'd be a scorekeeping issue. Yeah. Just think how many guys would accidentally, even if you were really careful, probably get hit with the ball? Yes. And could you stagger it with the pitch clock somehow so that you always get like one team is like delivering while the other is just delivered or something? But it would get out of whack and out of sync eventually. So I don't know that that would help that much. eventually so I don't know that that would help that much maybe you would need to if you had it occupied the same field but like built it in such a way that you had like two diamonds facing each

other instead of one diamond like just two two diamonds and their tips are kind of balanced and then there's like no real outfields. Gosh, this is, this is a problem. This is a big problem. It would be so confusing. It would be hard to follow. Even, even putting, you know, the different parts of your squad in like home and away jerseys to distinguish when from each other when they're in the field. But like, then you'd get confused on the other side. Why would anyone like? Yeah. Why?

Why? Why would we do this? Why would we do it? Is there a shortage of baseball fields? Like, can we not work out a way, even if you're constrained time-wise, could we not have them play on different fields? I was, if it's just like, yeah, I could imagine the Savannah Bananas doing this for fun or something, right?

And they probably have. Yeah, right. That might be amusing to watch once. I don't imagine a major league team doing it, but, but yeah, for fun, you could do it. It would just be, you'd probably have people running into each other or running into the baseball game, and you'd have to decide, I guess, the ball's dead at that point. You'd have to have special ground rules probably for what happens if you cross the streams and one game just interferes with the other game. I would watch one time trying to see how this would work. It wouldn't, I think, is the answer very well, but it would be a spectacle for sure.

What if you had two balls hit to the outfield and then the outfielders are trying to track them down and then they yell, I got it, I got it. And then the one peels off the ball that he's supposed to be getting because he thinks that the I got it, I got it isn't a reference to his ball, but it's actually a reference to the other ball. Or they don't yell, I got it, I got it, and then they collide. You know? What about that? Yeah, that'd be a problem. That'd be bad. Okay. Well, last one, maybe. This is an Otani question, although we just got an Otani email from Patreon supporter Josh, who said, thought the two of you, mostly Ben, should know that after Xander Bogarts and Jake Cronenworth hit back-to-back home runs off of Shohei Otani yesterday, I think the first back-to-back homers he'd allowed in MLB or NPB for that matter, the MLB app gifted us Padres fans with an all-timer of a notification, B2B back-to-back jacks off Otani.

Back-to-back jacks off Otani. Good day to whoever B2B is. Thank you for that notification of a notification, Josh. And here is the Otani question from Mason. I was recently fortunate to attend a Shohei Otani start at Angel Stadium. Not only did he hit two home runs while striking out 10 and picking up a W and picking up a W, as you mentioned on a recent episode, it was Japanese Heritage, and the giveaway was an Otani jigsaw puzzle. With 100 pieces, measuring a total of 18 by 18 inches, assuming the poster insert is identical in dimension, the puzzle features a profile view of Otani batting with a very serious and deliberate expression, his name in bold letters atop Angel Stadium at dusk, and three fun facts as follows. The only player in MLB history with 10-plus pitching wins

and 30-plus homers in the same season. The only player in the World Series area to complete 10 plus wins and 10 stolen bases in the same season. And only American League starting pitcher to throw 40 plus pitches at 100 miles per hour plus in the 2022 season. These stats reveal that Otani is historically unusual, a power pitcher with a power bat who possesses some speed, but it struck me that there's a lot of caveats here and surely there were more striking fun facts available. The first stat is probably the most impressive, though it seems like a miss on the whole to omit a direct comparison to Babe Ruth, who even non-fans know as a greatest of all time. Otherwise, we're looking at World Series era instead of something completely unprecedented, as well as some underwhelming totals, 10 wins and 10 stolen bases. Plus one of those stats is a repeat of the first

one. Then there's a stat limited to a single season and only applied to starting pitchers. Oh, and it completely fails to refer to Otani's two-way stat as his most remarkable feature. After watching the game, which as you pointed out, might've been among the single greatest war accumulations in history in a game, it was hard not to feel underwhelmed and even puzzled by the printed stats. Were these pulled from a listicle? How did the designer and marketing team decide on these three fun facts for inclusion? The puzzle includes additional fun facts in the container, some of which are at least as impressive, if not more so, than the ones chosen for inclusion.

Only player in MLB history to qualify for the league leaders as both a hitter and pitcher in one season. I like that one. Two-time All-Star as both a hitter and pitcher. Otani has done so many remarkable and truly one-of-a-kind things. I'm wondering what fun fact each of you would insist be included on the puzzle. For me, the list is missing big numbers like Otani hitting 46 homers in 2021 while allowing only 46 earned runs, or striking out 219 batters in 2022 while reaching base 237 times, or as combined totals for batters faced and plate appearances, which may be my favorite, and I mentioned that recently. I do kind of like the genre that's like, he did this many things as a hitter, and hitters against him did only that many things.

But I kind of think that Otani is just post fun fact at this point. Like, I never really get wowed by a stat about him anymore because it's just like, look at him. I mean, just look what he's doing. Like, I don't even need a stat. I don't need to dig up some sort of tortured statistical thing or even a non-tortured statistical thing. Just like look at the basic back of the baseball card stats even with him. You just basically have to say he's a two-way player. He hits and he pitches and he's among the best in baseball at each of those things. Like that's it. That like subsumes all the fun facts.

All the fun facts are basically saying that, right? It's just like all the comps to Babe Ruth at this point are pretty passe, like he's surpassed Babe Ruth's two-way credentials, like he's done it longer and at a higher level than Babe Ruth did the two things simultaneously. So, you know, you could dig up some Bullet Rogan fun facts. It's just like, it's extraneous. It's unnecessary at this point to come up with some sort of fun fact for Otani. He's just, he's a walking fun fact. He's a human fun fact. Like, he has surpassed the need to be- He's evolved past fun facts. Yeah, right. We no longer need to summarize him in fun fact form. Like, it just,

it speaks for itself at this point, I think. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that he is, I mean, on the one hand, I will admit that my tolerance for Otani fun facts is much higher. Like, I am willing to accept a worse fun fact when it involves Otani than probably anyone else. But also, but also, I don't, it's like, like, you gotta, he's not a snippets kind of guy. You know, he's not a little morsels dude. You gotta, little morsels dude sounds bad. I regret it. I have immediate regret.

I don't know what it means, but I feel like it's bad, you know? Yeah, I don't know if I'm coming back from that. You want to wrap your arms around. Oh, no. The totality of, anyway, he's just very impressive. He's a really good player. Yeah. I cite his war a lot, but even war doesn't quite capture it because he's not like breaking the scale war-wise. He has a very high one and he has been on pace or close to on pace for like one of the highest ones we've seen in a very long time.

But even so, it's not unprecedented the way that just what he's doing is. So yeah, I just, I don't need any particular individual facts to sort of sum up Otani anymore. Like it's just, we've all seen it. We're watching it. We know what's happening here. All right. And then the last one to sort of segue into our future blast here, we got a question from Kellen who said possibly a good fit for the future blast. When do you think we will first see a hitter, major leaguer, wear a full cage softball-style masks and some infielders wear them and pitchers, obviously. And I think what we keep coming back to is that basically someone has to

get hurt horribly for it to happen. I mean, it is often the case that when someone suffers one of these really scary injuries, then they come back and they say, I'm going to have another flap on my helmet now or something, right? And they just object to any deviation from their routine, any giant helmet, any heavier helmet or cap or insert, you know, some of them have that. But the really protective measures, people are reluctant to do it. They worry it will look weird or it will unbalance them or it'll be uncomfortable. It'll get them off their game in some way. But if someone got beaned or hit by a comebacker in like a really life-threatening way, that has happened, obviously. Yeah. But you took someone who was like at death's door maybe and they managed to make it back somehow.

And then they just say, I'm not taking any chances anymore. Just give me the cage. Give me the full helmet protection, whatever it looks like, however it feels. I don't want that to happen to me again. I just don't think we're going to see someone voluntarily say, yeah, I'm going to take the proactive step of wearing this protective gear so that that won't happen to be in the first place. Humans don't work like that most of the time. We have to touch the stove and then say, ow, and then pull away from the stove. We have to learn that lesson at some point. So I kind of think it would take that. And maybe if someone were to

get killed or something, some truly terrible tragedy, then you might get the league stepping in and saying, we're going to mandate something like this. But even for an individual, I think it would be coming back from the brink. Or, I don't know, maybe someone with a softball background who's played that growing up and has experienced it and knows it's not so bad and you can play through it, maybe then they'd be more amenable to it. So it takes some kind of unique combination of like learning your lesson or having that background and thus not being afraid of wearing that. Yeah, I think that that's right. I mean, it is, maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but it is somewhat surprising to me that we haven't seen it happen already because to your point, like there have been some very scary comebacker moments. I wonder if the fact that some of the worst ones I can think about happened at the minor league level has something to do with the fact that we haven't seen greater major league adoption. Although we've seen scary

comebackers, we've seen scary hit by pitches. We've seen guys get bonked in a way that is quite scary where there's like blood, you know? So I'm a little surprised at the persistence of the stubbornness. I mean, not totally surprised because, and I say this with mostly affection and a good deal of jest. But, like, I've met men, so that part shouldn't surprise me as much as a movie does. But I also just, like, maybe we need to recast it. Because when I look at, like, the softball, I think they look, like, cool. Like, it doesn't read as corny or dorky to me, you know?

I'm not like, oh, look at this nerd with her rolly backpack. Just to pick a debate reference that's top of mind for me, a person who did that. So I think that maybe what we need to do is a stealth campaign to get the players of baseball, the pro players, to be like, I look kind of badass. I look intimidating. Like think about the way that they got to the point that the NFL actually ended up regulating this. But like, think about how intimidating defensive players or running backs look when they've

got like the, you know, the dark visor and the scary, whatever that thing is called in front of your face on Football Hummock, you know that thing? Yep, that thing. I don't think it would take much for us to be able to successfully recast that as like metal, you know? But it would require the league not having anything to do with it, I think. Because if it's being done in the name of player safety, I think there will be persistent resistance.

Even, unfortunately, when something even more serious than what we've already seen happens. But if it's about it being hardcore, then. And you know how I am a convincing messenger for hardcore. Sure. When people think Meg, they think hardcore and vice versa. They've heard how I say blueski and they're like, yeah, hardcore. All right. Well, we will end with the future blast.

All right. The future blast comes to us from 2029. And as always, from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. 2029, pitching in the influencer. Nats pitcher Paul Skeens was already having the best year of his career in 2029. And then came perfection. A top draft pick by the Nationals in 2023, Skeens rose up through the system to join the big club late in 2029, and then came perfection. A top draft pick by the Nationals in 2023, Skeens rose up through the system to join the big club late in 2027 and then stuck on the roster in

2028, where he enjoyed modest success at 12 and 10 with an ERA of 4.01 and some occasional control problems to go along with that 100 mile per hour fastball. Then in 2029, he had a season we'll all remember, winning 25 games, improving his strikeout to walk ratio to a stunning 7-1, and throwing an excellent 73% strike average over the season. He topped that off with a perfect game on September 12th, where he struck out the side in the first four innings and calmly worked his way through the Cubs lineup for the next four, teasing them into ground balls or routine flies before he struck out the side in the ninth to punctuate the day. It was the first perfect game since Spencer Strider's perfecto in 2025. We didn't cover that in that future blast. Skeen's memorable season led the Nats to the World Series, where Skeen's won both his starts in impressive fashion, even as the Nats lost the series to the Angels, who's prospered at last, despite still missing the long-departed Shohei Otani,

who'd gone on to glory with the Dodgers, though he lost an ironic heartbreaker in the postseason to the A's. To no one's surprise, Skeens signed a seven-figure deal to be fitted with Apple's Be There system for the 2030 season. Remember, we introduced that last time. This is your haptic feedback, your VR, you feel like you're on the field. This was tested in the Atlantic League in 2029. Skeens began wearing the system for his off-season workouts, testing its interest among his social media followers. By the time spring training came along, Skeens had more than 115,000 fans who'd bought

home receiving units and his endorsement deals ballooned. All those followers wanted to immerse themselves on the mound in a spring training game, facing some of the best hitters in baseball and more often than not, sending them back to the dugout. A towering homer by the Braves' Ronald Acuna Jr., though, lit up the Be There chat rooms with calls for Acuna Jr. and other great hitters to be rigged up with Be There units, too. By midseason, that had happened to the profit of the players, the stay-at-home fans, and the ball clubs, the age of Be There had arrived. All right. We're only seven years away from being there on the field or feeling like we're on the field.

I think the more amazing thing is that we're only seven years away from the A's making it back to the postseason. I know. I continue to think that this Be There thing is going to prompt so many hypothetical emails that we will answer at some point. Just a whole lot of privacy concerns come up here. A whole lot of other issues about the system that are kind of conjured in my mind. But as I always say with these technological innovations, brave new baseball world. All right.

By the way, we started out this episode talking about injured teams. Well, the Dodgers are at the top on the baseball prospectus injury list ledger in terms of days missed and games missed injury, but they are not at the top in terms of wins above replacement player missed. That would be the Yankees who are far and away first at about eight wins above replacement player lost to injury. That would be Judge and Carlos Rodon, of course, who's missed the entire season, but is coming back Friday. That should help. I'll link to that ledger if you want to peruse the casualty list.

Should have included Zach Granke in my rundown of old guys getting hurt earlier. He went on the IL with shoulder tendinitis. Doesn't sound super serious, but definitely puts a crimp in my hope that he would get to go to the All-Star game in that extra legend spot. Speaking of the All-Star festivities, Julio Rodriguez also will be in the Home Run Derby. They announced the field after we recorded. Luis Robert Jr. vs. Pete Alonso. Atlee Rutschman vs. Julio.

Adelice Garcia vs. Mookie Betts. And Randy Rosarena vs. Vlad Guerrero Jr. Also, last time we talked about players who have siblings with the same name. Wilmer Flores, Carlos Perez, Wander Franco. Listeners pointed out others we missed, such as Rugned Odor, who has a brother also named Rugned, and an uncle named Ruglas. I believe the name Rugned is a combination of his grandfather's name, Douglas, and his grandmother's name, Nydia, but they had a family custom of giving boys names that begin with the letter R, and so Rugned Odor's father became the first Rugned. By changing the D in Douglas to an R, you get the combination of Douglas and Nydia, Rugned. All right. There's also Victor Victor Mesa and Victor Mesa Jr., and then some similar ones that some of our Patreon supporters suggested,

Edgardo and Edgar Alfonso, Endy and Ender Chavez, Gregor Blanco and Gregory Blanco and Gregsmen Blanco. As long as there's some distinction, some difference in the name, though, even if it's extremely similar. That's a whole different ball of wax from identical names. But even identical names, maybe not so identical in practice. Got a good email about this from listener Othon, who said, And you had a conversation about the Wilmers, Wanders, and Carloses. As someone from Latin America, specifically Mexico, I know that it is quite common for some families to have several siblings with the same first names, but not the same middle names. For example, many siblings

might be named Jose, Maria, Carlos, Antonio, Juan, etc. My dad's brothers are all Jose's, and all his sisters are Maria's. However, not one of them goes by Jose or Maria, except for my dad, who is called this at work because it is his first name, but his real name is Othon, just like me. Incidentally, my birth name is Jose Othon, but I also go by Othon. This is why we, Mexicans and other Latin Americans, are stereotypically said to have so many Jose's and Maria's. Many families use and repeat the name for religious reasons, mainly Catholicism, and because it is used as a prefix to the name the child is intended to go by. For example, my uncles are Trinidad and Martin, and my aunts are Concepcion, Consuelo, Carmen, and Luz, all Marias. Their parents, my grandparents, were also Jose and

Maria, but went by their middle names. It may be that this practice is more common in certain regions of the country or countries. I would want to know if the Wilmers, Wanders, and Carloses all also have middle names, and if in their families they go by their middle names. One goes by their first name, such as the firstborn, and the other by the middle names, or all use nicknames since birth. It is possible that, for example, one went by Carlos and the other went by their middle name, but once in the USA, they are both called by Carlos because it is their first name. Meanwhile, their family members likely know who is who and which exact name each of them uses. Yes, I'm sure they do, because it would be quite confusing otherwise. And yes, the elder Carlos Perez is Carlos Eduardo

Perez. The younger Carlos Perez is Carlos Jesus Perez. And as for the Wanders, they're Wander Samuel, Wander Javier, and Wander Alexander. And then the Wilmers are Wilmer Alejandro Flores and Wilmer de Jesus Flores. Thank you for the email, Othon. Finally, there was a little bit of controversy in a Brewers-Cubs game this week. David Ross, Cubs manager, was upset about the umpiring, but also about the Brewers closing the roof at American Family Field to get rid of the shadows late, he said. They closed the retractable roof late in the game. He has a legitimate gripe there, possibly.

The home team can decide whether it wants to start the game with the roof opener closed. And if there's inclement weather, then it can close the roof mid-game, but there didn't seem to be in Milwaukee. And so the conspiracy, if your team's trailing, trying to make a comeback, then you get those mid-game, late-game shadows that are creeping across the field. Maybe it makes it harder to come back. There was a baseball prospectus study by Gerald Schiffman that did indeed show, he was on the podcast to talk about this, that there is some evidence that it is harder to hit when those shadows are between the mound and home plate. There was a time when the Cardinals' Tony La Russa complained that the Brewers cheated with their lights at home, that the LED ribbon board that wrapped around the

ballpark above the lodge level shined brighter while the Brewers batted, and it was darker when the Cardinals batted, so it was harder for them to see. That just made me remember what we talked about last week, the conspiracy about the Twins tinkering with the Metrodome air conditioning to blow balls in or out as we were answering an email about giant fans on the field. That was in 2003 that the former stadium operations person copped to doing that. What I neglected to mention that time was that in 2004, there was suspicions that it was still going on. It wasn't just a late 80s, early 90s thing. Alan Trammell, who was

managing the Tigers at the time, said, we almost made a comeback, and then had the issue of whether or not those blowers were on. It seemed like those air conditioners were blowing straight in our face in the top of the ninth. There was definitely a difference in the air conditioner in the ninth inning. There was no question that there was some air blowing in the ninth inning. Twins vice president of operations said it borders on the ridiculous and the absurd. He said the vents behind home plate don't blow out. They take cold air off the field and circulate it through a series of smaller vents located around the upper and lower decks. Plus, in the ninth inning, when the Metrodome staff opened the doors to let fans out, more air pressure had to be pumped into the

building to keep the roof inflated. And according to that twins executive, the commissioner's office and a team of physicists from the University of Minnesota have studied the Metrodome's air distribution system and found its impact on the game negligible. I'm just amused by this idea of using the ballpark conditions to influence the game one way or another. I'm sure there has been something to it at times, but I would also guess that the effect is probably overblown. Sometimes it's imaginary.

Sometimes it's looking at a team that happened to have a better home record and wondering why is there something nefarious going on? Anyway, glad to see that the tradition is still seemingly alive and well. Effectively Wild is also alive and well, and that's because of our Patreon supporters. You can become one of them by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get yourself access to some perks. The following five listeners have already done so. Beth Goldberg, Hillary Kirby, Eleanor, Richard Ford, and Dan Dauman. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, plus monthly bonus episodes and playoff live streams and discounts on ad-free

fancrafts memberships and merch and expedited email answers and so much more. Patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. Anyone can contact us via email at podcast at fan crafts.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. We will have one more episode for you before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. Go in for a walk One strap on my head But then listen to people talk I wanna hear about baseball With nuance and puppy and stats Yeah, yeah Don't wanna hear about pitcher wins

Or about gambling odds Only want to hear about My child having vitals And the texture of the hair On the arm going out of one's head Gross, gross Outro Music