Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2037: Ashes to Ashes, Draft to Draft

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a J.P. France postgame quote and ballplayer clichés, the death of first overall pick Mike Ivie, and how Masataka Yoshida’s debut season stacks up to the MLB rookie years of other ex-NPB stars, answer emails (36:57) about Mike Trout’s and Shohei Ohtani’s futures, a Trout/Hunter Renfroe trade deadline […]

🎵 You might hear something you never heard before Hello and welcome to episode 2037 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? Okay, I was just reflecting on a quote by Astros rookie pitcher, JP France, who pitched in a game that the Astros won the other day, did well. And after the game, he said, you've got to go out there and just take every game as it is. It's not the same as the one that's coming up. It's not the same as the one that just happened. Yeah. JP France. I mean, true. Yeah. That's how I think about this podcast, really.

You got to go out there and take every episode as it is. It's not the same as the one that's coming up. It's not the same as the one that just happened, especially if the one that just happened was a Shohei Otani trading game episode. Right, yeah. This is a variation of the take it one day at a time. It's a little more elaborate. And I always wonder when someone is uttering words like this, and J.P. France is a rookie, so you might say, oh, wow, he sounds like a veteran, right? He's been well-schooled. He's watched his Bull Durham. He's got his cliche game down. He's 28 years old, though, so he's been around. He's had

time to polish his cliches. But I wonder when they say these things, are they fully aware that they are spouting the cliche of all cliches, right? And there's something to what he's saying. There's a lot of truth to cliches in many cases. So when he's saying, I mean, he's had an up and down career and now it's up and you just got to go out there and take every game as it is. It's not the same as the one that's coming up. It's not the same as the one that just happened. Probably a healthy attitude to have as a major league pitcher or maybe just a person in the world in general. But you have to be kind of conscious that you are saying something that a legion of baseball players, countless baseball players have uttered and will utter again. In fact, it is the same as the one

that's coming up and it is the same as the one that just happened just about when it comes to post-game quotes. And I wonder whether they think that as they're giving the interview, like, okay, I'm just going to use that cliche here. It's in every ballplayer's toolbox. This will get me out of this interview. That'll be an answer to this question. Or whether it is formulated as an original thought in the moment because that just is an attitude that you have to have about baseball in order to function at that level where you have to play a game every day and there's pressure. It makes me think because I try to avoid cliches and baseball players,

many of them at least, do not try to avoid them. They try to embrace them in many cases. I think that there are two things that can be operating simultaneously when it comes to this stuff. I mean, I think the first, and how do I want to put this? We tend to overestimate our own profundity. Yeah. Who, if not me, guilty of such a thing, right? And so I would imagine that for a lot of them, they think they're really saying something, you know, that they're really giving you like a pearl of wisdom

to turn over as you're heading home, you know, and to better understand the game. And then I think you're right that a lot of them are just like, what is the minimum number of words I can say to make this person with a tape recorder standing in front of me go away? Yes. And so often it's, I was just looking for a good pitch to hit. I was just going up there, trying to put a good swing on it. I was trying to stay within myself, et cetera, et cetera. And it's basically content free because you've heard that a zillion times

and you will hear it a zillion more times. But in many cases, you probably default to that because that is what you're doing. Like that is probably what you're doing. You're going up there looking for a good pitch to hit. Now, some guys, maybe they would say I was studying the scouting report, and I knew that he throws this pitch a certain percentage of the time on this count. And so I was looking for that, but I was also thinking in the back of my mind, maybe he'd throw this. Very rarely does someone go into that kind of depth and detail. And I don't know if it's because they don't want to give you that window into what's going on in their head.

They don't want to give away a scouting report. They don't want to give away a competitive advantage. Or maybe they are just hitters who go up there and try to get a good pitch to hit and put a good swing on it. I mean, there's only so many different things you can say. You take so many swings and so many plate appearances that you must eventually fall back on that. I always think that if I were a baseball player, I would pride myself on trying to give good quotes, right? Because I've been on the other end of that. And it's so great when a player gives you a great quote and it sounds like they're actually considering what you're saying and thinking about it and knew,

even if they've gotten that exact question a million times before, and they want to help you with your story. They want to be courteous and maybe they actually take the time to think about it instead of how do I make this person go away which is understandable because they have a lot of people who want to stick a microphone or a tape recorder in their face so right you would want those people to go away probably even I would having been one of those people but I always think no I'd be the great quote. I'd be the go-to guy in the clubhouse that all the writers want to go talk to because I will seriously consider their question and give a thoughtful answer.

But I wonder how long I would actually last before I just gave in and say, I've taken it one game at a time. Well, and I think that it's just such a volume, you know. Imagine if you were like an nfl player right you're getting asked questions as soon as training camp opens through to the end of the postseason but like i don't know that you are having to talk every day and you have so many fewer games you know your post-game availability is really limited. Whereas a baseball player, he's got to talk. Now, if you're a starter, presumably less often, right, than a position player does.

Or even probably than a reliever would have to, just because of how many games you're able to play in. But I think it's just a lot of having to come up with a new way to say a slightly different but really the same thing. And I don't envy them that. I mean, I think that there are probably some who take the idea of like, oh, I should really like give them something to work with here greater than others. But I think there are probably plenty who were like, I would prefer to not talk to you at all. Yes. You know, and it really runs the gamut. So, you know, I don't know. Maybe if your last name is France, you feel like you have to grasp

for sort of philosophical profundity, even if it's kind of a throwaway quote. But we don't have to make J.P. France feel bad about himself. That's perfectly fine answer. It's true. It's not untrue just because it's not, you know, novel.

We get plenty of opportunities for the novel in baseball. Not like the novel, but like sometimes novels. Yeah, a lot of baseball novels too. Yeah, they should write more books really or tell us about the books they're reading. That would be a way to offer a different answer. That'd be nice. Yeah. I mean, a book is not the same as the one that's coming up. It's not the same as the one that just happened. They're all different. You take every book as it is, ideally. But I would like to think if I were a 28-year-old rookie, you might tell yourself, gosh, if I were a 28-year-old

rookie, I'd be so happy to be up in the big leagues. Now, he was drafted in 2018, so he hasn't had the longest road to the majors. He was a college draftee, but still, 28-year-old rookie and the season's going well for him. You'd think he'd be on cloud nine. I'll talk to anyone about anything. But if you've been that player, then you have had to answer that question at every rung of the ladder, right? Like you've had to answer that question maybe not as often because there are as many media members. The lower you go, the further away you are from the majors but sure you've still had to answer that question many

times and probably with even lower stakes and the knowledge that even fewer people would care what you said or heard what you said and so once you get to the big leagues maybe it would be all fresh and new and exciting well I'm a big leaguer now and I'm taking every game as it is. But now these are big league games. That's very different. But it often sounds like players, the day they get to the big leagues, they are just like in veteran form.

They have the patter down, right? And part of it is that they're schooled in that either explicitly or informally by teammates and veterans and coaches and player development people. And they want to be careful, I think, probably if they're rookies. informally by teammates and veterans and coaches and player development people. And they want to be careful, I think, probably if they're rookies. They don't want to say something that will bring unwanted attention on them. And some players are under the impression that writers, media members are out to get them, which I think is largely untrue. Maybe the case is about a bad Apple media member here or there, but for the

most part, I don't think people are looking to entrap you or make you say something that you'll regret. But they may be a little bit paranoid about that because they may have heard someone or seen someone say something that either got taken out of context or they just wish they wouldn't have said it and then it gets publicized. and then they think, look, if I just say something boring, then no one will talk about what I said except Effectively Wild for 10 minutes at the start of an episode because this episode is not the same as the one that's coming up and it's not the same as the one that just happened. We got to go out there and take every pot as it is and this is the one where we started

by talking about J.P. France's postgame quote. Right. Right. So here's a morbid bit of news. Mike Ivey died. Now, Mike Ivey, he was 70 years old. He was a little bit of a journeyman.

He played in the majors in the 70s and 80s. And his claim to fame as a baseball player, he had some nice seasons, some productive seasons, but was typically not really a full-time player. And he bounced around, but he was a number one overall pick. And so every obituary led with that, right? Number one pick. And on the one hand, that's a very impressive accomplishment to be a number one overall draft pick, right? That means that you were the most promising prospect as an amateur in that draft class, or at least one team thought you were, right? They could have taken anyone. And, of course, there were probably great players in that draft class.

There were probably Hall of Famers and All-Stars. You were the number one pick. But if you get described as the former number one overall pick when you die, then that probably means that that was in some sense the highlight of your athletic career. You didn't necessarily transcend that. I mean, when Ken Griffey Jr. dies someday, transcend that. I mean, when Ken Griffey Jr. dies someday, hopefully a very long time from now, his obituary will probably not lead with, he was the number one overall pick, right? No. It will lead with, he was a Hall of Famer, and he was an MVP, and he was a many-time All-Star, and three-time Home Run Derby champion, and 10-time Gold Glover, and on and on and on. He was

the kid, he was the legend. He was an icon. So it's kind of like maybe you want to displace the number one overall selection in your career resume, but it's still quite an impressive thing. And the thing that kind of blew my mind here is that Mike Ivey, according to a note by Jonathan in our Facebook group, this is where I saw this, one of our listeners pointed it out, Mike Ivey is the first number one overall MLB draft pick to die. Which really surprised me for a second. And that kind of puts things into perspective because the draft has only been around since 1965. So Mike Ivey was drafted in 1970. He just died at 70 years old.

So he was not an old man. And yet he was one of the first number one overall picks. And every other number one overall pick is still with us, which kind of makes you think like that is that is such a fundamental thing about baseball, the draft, for better or worse, right? I mean, you could do a pre-draft and post-draft. Baseball functions a lot differently with a draft than it did without one. And until just now, until we lost Mike Ivey, every number one overall pick was alive. I mean, you and I grew up and came of age as baseball fans. I mean, we were born well after the draft became a thing. And we've only ever known a Major League Baseball with an amateur draft, right?

But for most of Major League history, still, there was no draft, right? So that just stopped me in my tracks for a second like wow that's the first one to go we really haven't had the draft for all that long in the grand scheme of things it's so funny when we use the sort of career and then post-career landmarks of players we grew up watching as sort of a way for ourselves to mark time. And yeah, I'm still occupied with the, wow, this player's a revelation, a miracle. And you're like, he's 33 and you're just like a pillar of dust, you know. It's like Evan Longoria, how does he still play? And I'm like, man, I think he's my exact same age almost.

That is disconcerting. But I had not even contemplated what it will feel like when they start to die. So thank you for that, Ben. I'm glad to be peering into that particular abyss on this Tuesday. What better day to stare into the abyss really than Tuesday? Sure. Of natural causes, of course, because players will perish prematurely as people will in any walk of life. And that is always sad and tragic. But yes, when they start to go and it's not even like he was so young, that's when we will know that someone might say the same about us if we were to go. And that would not be great.

But we've got a ways to go until we get there, right? We're young enough that if we were to die anytime soon, then people would say, he or she was so young. Taken too soon, right? We've still got some solid decades of taken too soon potential. Hopefully, neither of us is taken too soon. But I'm just saying if we were, people might say that about us. I think they definitely would. You know, I haven't really thought very much about how people will react when I die, Ben. I hope that it's a thing I don't have to contemplate for a long, long time, although I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon, so I guess we'll see how it goes. Right. I just had a family friend, not that close to my side of the family, but kind of a friend of a part of the family who I would get to see at holidays sometimes. But I was not directly related to her. But she was 112 years old.

Wow. And I believe she was the oldest person in New York State. Wow. And, yeah, she just died a couple of days ago and I was sorry to hear it. She was very sharp and pretty independent right up to the end.

And so it was always really inspiring to see her and reassuring to see her because it was like, well, she's like 110, 111. Like I got time, you know, not that we get there. It's when you get there, then it's newsworthy when you have a birthday, right? But if you know someone who is that age, you can measure yourself

against them and be like, I got all the time in the world here. I know a 112-year-old. So I was sort of rooting for her to be immortal for multiple reasons. That was just one of the selfish reasons. But I was sorry to hear of her passing, but it was nice to know of someone who was that old because I had a conversation with her once where I was talking about the Great Depression and I was like, gosh, well, she was alive and around during the Great Depression. But I was thinking, you know, I hadn't done the math, I guess. And I was thinking like, well, that was a very long time ago. So maybe she remembers it. No, she was a grown ass adult in the Great Depression. She was grown up. She like had a family at that point. She remembered it not with a child's memory, but like, oh, yeah, I was born in 1910, I think she was. And so she was

around. She remembered it with the perspective of someone with like bills to pay during it. Yes, exactly. A whole family and a job and responsibilities and everything. But I like being around older people. I like talking to older people on the podcast. Famously. Yeah. I never had that thing. A lot of people say when they're young, it's like, I can't even imagine being that old. Or people will say when I was a kid, I thought 30 was ancient or whatever. I never had that, really. I always just kind of appreciated older people. Maybe it's because I had older than average parents. Maybe that's why. But I never thought like I can't contemplate being that old.

Like it's unimaginable to me. It's like a different species to be that age. I never really had that sort of separation feeling. But I highly recommend spending some time with a 112-year-old if you ever get the opportunity. It's not a whole lot of them to go around, unfortunately. I never worried about it. I mean, and I had younger than average parents. And so, you know, I felt like I was just often surrounded by sprightly folk, but I felt like I had an old personality. Yeah, me too. And so it's been great as people have entered their 30s because I'm like, oh, finally, everybody's matching mine. Like they've caught up. I don't have to speed up. They've slowed down. This is great. in Astro too, but his best offensive season, he hit 27 homers and he played 133 games that year,

152 OPS plus in 455 plate appearances. And then he injured himself with a hunting knife. I don't know exactly how it happened, but he cut his hand in an accident after the season. And then he went from 27 homers to four and was never quite as good a hitter for a sustained period again. But what I did not know is that after his career, he opened a pro shop for hunting and fishing in Snellville, Georgia. So he did not hold it against the hunting knife that hurt him, that sliced part of his fifth finger from his hand. I guess that's his pinky. Yeah. What is your fifth? I don't know. Wikipedia says fifth finger. Is it like defensive positions where there's an understood number associated with them? You don't number them. They have names. They have names that we all understand.

You don't number them. They have names. They have names that we all understand. Yeah, we should suggest an edit to this page, unless this is an Antonio Alfonsoca situation or something where maybe he has an extra one. But I don't think it was. Oh, maybe he has. Does he have an extra one?

We should get that going. Yeah, I don't think so. But had an off-season accident with a hunting knife and then said, hey, I'm going to open a pro shop for hunting and fishing after I'm done. It's kind of nice, you know, just get right back on the horse, I guess, pick up that knife again. Hopefully you won't slice off part of your pinky or another story says he cut a tendon in his hand. I don't know. It sounds unpleasant, whatever it was. It sounds like it has to be your pinky because if it was your thumb, they'd say your thumb,

wouldn't they? You would think, right? I mean, I guess it depends which way you count. Either one could be your fifth, right? But you're right. They each have an established name so that we don't have to say fifth finger and have confusion. Exactly. Right.

We did that on purpose because the directional ambiguity is, although I think that we should renumber the infield positions to be like a straight read across, but that's a different. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good note. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, like, I've let it go, Ben, at this point, you know.

But yeah, it's like they have names, you know. We're going to run through them. You got your ring finger, you got your middle finger, you got your pointer finger, and you got your thumb, you know? Although I assert that you can point with or underutilizing, especially your thumb as a pointer finger to like, oh, yeah, this guy, you know? It's more assertive with your thumb. How did we get onto this topic? I guess your pointer finger. This is your fault somehow, I'm sure.

This is all my fault. Typically, you point with your second or I guess it would be fourth depending on which way you start counting. But yeah, you didn't say index, right? No. You said something else instead of index. You don't like index? Is your index your middle finger? I think it's the fourth one.

I don't know why. The fourth one? Yeah. Oh, because only one of them is your ring finger? Wait. Is the index? No, I think clearly we need some remedial finger anatomy here. No, I think actually the index finger is the pointer because index means pointing finger. If you go back to the Latin source. Okay.

Don't you just understand that to be your pointer finger, though? Yeah, I do. Clearly, I was confused. Man, but here we are, assuming that we are getting all of this great clarity. Yeah. Last thing about Mike Ivey.

So I just found this story. So now this is a little bit sad, I guess. I mean, we started with the fact that he passed away, so maybe it was sad when we started. But this is a story from 1980, June 25th in the AP. Mike Ivey, the San Francisco Giants first baseman, announced his retirement today, saying his decision 10 years ago to play professional baseball was a mistake. Oh, no. Inciting travel and separation from family as reasons for leaving the game. The 27-year-old Ivy, who recently came off the 15-day, as they called it, disabled list

back then after suffering mental exhaustion, told Giant manager Dave Bristol, I feel like you got to say Giants manager, not Giant manager. This is why I'm a believer in having the full team name and not. Yes. I think it's a flaw in the style guide. Like twin manager? What does that mean, Ben? You know?

What would that even mean? Yeah. Giant manager. He's just, he's going fee-fi-fo-fum. Yeah. So he told Giant manager, Dave Bristol. It's one of the pheffers. Right. It's one of the pfeffers. Right.

It's a smaller one. That he had made a final decision that nobody is going to talk me out of this year. And actually they did, I believe, end up talking him out of it. I don't know if it was that year, but he did come back and play a few more seasons. So he did return. Maybe he was going through a rough patch there. But I'm always interested when I read about that sort of thing from maybe a less enlightened era when it comes to mental health, let's say. Not that the current era is always fully enlightened, but

relative to today, especially in the sports world where often those things were swept under the rug or not acknowledged. It's sort of a new trend now that players will just go on the IL with anxiety and they won't couch it in any other kinds of terms or anything. And so here he was going on the injured list with mental exhaustion and saying that he made a mistake playing baseball 10 years ago. I mean, that's a bleak thought if you're thinking I should have done something completely different with my life and career. So the fact that he came back, I hope that he decided that he wanted to keep playing and that he did not regret the course he had pursued. But it's got to be tough when you're a number one overall pick, and then you play in such a way, your career develops in such a way

that you know your baseball obituary, at least, is probably going to lead with number one overall pick, right? And then get to the hunting knife and the unspecified finger, right? So I don't know if that was weighing on him at that time, but I hope he got past that. I was just read about those things and sometimes it's like a euphemism or it's not really specified and you can kind of read between the lines and say, oh, if this were today, maybe that player would get more help and more treatment and they could take some time off and they could go on DIL with that issue or there would be psychological counseling that they could

take advantage of and not in 1980 most likely or certainly not in earlier eras even. And so it was tough when you were going through something like that back then and still today, but hopefully a little less so in many cases. You want to strike this balance between, you know, not resting on your laurels because there's still work to do in that regard. But, you know, I think it is good to acknowledge like the distance we have come because it is a considerable one. You know, even if there are still, you know, little gremlins in the comments whenever you see a tweet about that stuff, really, oh, he's weak. And it's like, you too could benefit from therapy. Maybe you most especially, young gremlin. But in general, I think that people have a more sort of enlightened sensibility about it and are appreciative of it because it helps arm them with vocabulary to talk about it when it affects them in their own lives.

We are none of us above being vulnerable in that way. So good. Yeah. And if the first number one overall pick to perish just perished, and that puts into perspective how recent an innovation the draft is. I mean, free agency came about after the draft, right? I mean, all these touchstones, all these fundamental things about the sport that we kind of take for granted sometimes if we grew up with them. Nope, they were not just permanent parts of the sport. And in many cases with free agency, certainly they had to be fought for for decades and decades and players had to make sacrifices for these things. And now it's just

you kind of take it for granted you know you get drafted and then eventually you become a free agent and there are certainly issues with that system but you could kind of fall into the trap of thinking that's how it's always been and right that's how it will always be right but you got to remember as jp france would say it's not the same as the one that's coming up it's not the same as the one that just happened you've got to go out there and take every game as it is. Yeah. I mean, you can go your entire career without interacting with the Supreme Court, even one time, you know? So here's one note that I hope will not be morbid or will force us into philosophical reflections. Not that that's always a bad thing, but I was prompted to think about

this by David Laurel, who is always excellent in edifying Sunday Notes column at FanCrafts. He mentioned Masataka Yoshida and the season that he's having. We haven't talked a whole lot about Yoshida this season, and maybe we should have at some point because he's having a heck of a season. We talked about him when he signed because I think it was sort of a surprising contract. And he had a great season in Japan. He had great seasons in Japan. I had no reason to think that he would not continue

to be productive here. But I think kind of the industry consensus was, oh, that was more than we were expecting someone to spend on Asataki Yoshida, right? And there were at least some questions about how his game would translate. And I'm not going to say it's translated perfectly one-to-one, but here he is through 87 games, 375 plate appearances, batting 315, 376, 494 for the Red Sox. That is a 137 WRC+. He has a low strikeout rate, as you would imagine,

having seen his career in Japan. I mean, he's pretty much made good on what you would have hoped that he would hit like in the majors, right? And what David pointed out is that he is very much in the running for the best offensive rookie season by any former NPB player. It's basically coming down to three now. offensively on a per plate appearance basis, but because he got hurt, I think Yoshida has already matched or exceeded the number of plate appearances that Shohei had in his rookie season. So if Yoshida stays healthy, then yeah, he's already gone by how many plate appearances Shohei had in 2018. So if he plays the rest of the season, stays healthy, then I think you've got to give it to Yoshida just bulk over Ohtani right and then it's really well is it Yoshida or Ichiro and we're talking about just offense here right and Ichiro was a sensation of course because Japanese players had more to prove at that point.

Yeah. People doubted Ichiro because there weren't position player precedents that showed that, yes, you could be a superstar in the big leagues as a Japanese hitter. And now because of Ichiro and others, there was a little less doubt about Yoshida. But there's still, I think, too much doubt. There was too much doubt about Shohei Otani. There was maybe too much doubt about Masataka Yoshida. And there have been some players whose games haven't translated perfectly, plenty of them, of course. But I think the track record is pretty solid now, and certain skills seem to translate pretty reliably. And Ichiro was a star in a way that Yoshida's not

as a rookie, right? I mean, he won a batting title and he won the MVP and he won the Rookie of the Year award and he won a Silver Slugger and he won a Gold Glove. I mean, he was Ichiro. He was a superstar. He hit like Ty Cobb. I mean, he was a sensation, right? He stole 56 bases. Not saying Yoshida is making that kind of impact. But if you run a stat head search and you just look for the most batting runs produced by a Japanese rookie in the majors, then you have Yoshida at 18 batting runs right now. He's already third on the list, creeping up behind Shohei, who's at 21, and then Ichiro at the top of the list in 2001 with 30 batting runs. So Yoshida is on pace for 29.2 at this point. So he's like on pace to finish

neck and neck with Ichiro in batting runs. And yeah, that discounts everything else Ichiro did defensively and on the bases and just as a personality and as a riveting player. But just trying to put into perspective how impressive the rookie season Yoshida has had is. Yeah, I think that because he came in with this perception that he was a good player player but you're right that there had been maybe an overpay i think the fact that there were some defensive limitations there was a knock against him and then you know it's like the red socks are well they're not last in the east how funny is that given where we thought they were potentially going to be, but they're not, you know, a standout team in that division. They are actually tied for last now.

Sorry. Sorry, Red Sox fans. Sorry to get your hopes up. I had missed it. You know, I had been so fixated on the Yankees being in last place that I had missed the slippage there. I had missed the slippage there. But, you know, I think because that team has maybe not underformed relative to expectation, because I don't think either of us had like super high hopes for them coming into the year.

But, you know, they're not the Rays or the Blue Jays, and they're certainly not the Orioles. You know, it can kind of fly under the radar. It's a team that's been defined by injury. And so that has sort of sucked up some of the oxygen around it. But he's been good. He's performed better than certainly we had him projected as, you know, he's more of a rookie than a prospect, I think is the way that Eric has taken to talking about these guys just to distinguish the international pros. But yeah, like Eric, you know, when he did the Red Sox system,

he was like, I got to eat this one. I got this one wrong. So yeah, baseball America had him as the number 87 prospect on the top 100, which again, I don't know that I was out here shouting from the rooftops. This guy's going to be amazing. So this is in hindsight, but you look at a guy who had a thousand OPS in NPP, which again is the second highest caliber of play in any league in the world. And that wasn't a fluke. Like he'd been a very good hitter there for a while and he's 30. He's not old, right? And yeah, there have been disappointments and guys who've underperformed and say a Suzuki,

for instance, who's fourth on that batting runs list. He hasn't broken out the way that I think a lot of people were expecting Suzuki to. But Yoshida, and this is probably after prospect rankings came out, but watching in the WBC, I don't want to read too much into a small sample of games, but watching him in those games, and I hadn't watched him regularly as a hitter in Japan. I'd seen the numbers, but watching him in the WBC, I hadn't watched him regularly as a hitter in Japan. I'd seen the numbers, but watching him in the WBC, I was pretty impressed. And you never know, like, am I just seeing him when he's on a hot streak and he's having a few good games? But he seemed to have just a really refined approach at the plate, which was not a shock because he was walking twice as often as he was striking out in Japan, right? But he was just

going up there and trying to get a good pitch to hit and put a good swing on it, right? And not trying to do too much and just taking every plate appearance as it came. It wasn't the same as the last one, wasn't the same as the next one. And I was pretty impressed with how he hit there and that assuaged whatever doubts I had, I think, just seeing him. And then he started a little slow, like he had a little cold slump to start the season, I think, but quickly came out of it and he's been pretty impressive. So what was that contract? It was $100 million, right? Yeah, five years, 90, and then they had to pay the posting fee. So from his perspective, under 100, but from the Red Sox perspective, over 100 in terms of what they are going to pay over the course of the bases, et cetera. I mean, he's stolen eight bases. He hasn't been caught yet, but he's a two-war player-ish to this point. So a good productive player.

And I'm sure they're pleased that they signed him to that contract, right? So all the doubters, again, there've been some players who have, I guess, caused other players to be doubted. But I feel like I just I tend to give NPB superstars the benefit of the doubt. Right. Yeah. They did it there. Why couldn't they do it here? You know, it should translate, I think. I think if I'm Boston, I feel really good about it. if I'm Boston, I feel really good about it. And, you know, it's like with Suzuki, I feel like in his time stateside, like he's had some significant injury stuff. So I hope that we get like a full healthy campaign from him because I don't think that we have a complete answer to what he can

even be because he has had stretches when he's been healthy for them that have been for Chicago that have been really good. And so it would be nice if he could have like a full healthy campaign for us to be like, this is what the U.S. version of him is, because I don't think we have a full answer to that just yet. So. Yep. All right. Well, I've got a bunch of stat blasts here. I'll maybe do a couple of quick emails. We got a couple follow ups here, some of which I said, how dare you even put this out into the universe? Reggie, Patreon supporter, valued former guest of ours, said, just listening to the now second to latest episode, and you talked about the sudden and long declines of Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera, this prompted a question that I don't want to ask. And yet he did. Yeah, he did.

But feel compelled to, as an honest and genuine baseball fan. Does Mike Trout run the risk of having a long decline phase similar to Albert and Miggy? And if he does, does he end up more like Pujols or more like Cabrera?

I fear he runs the risk of a Cabrera-like ending because he doesn't seem to have the natural base of Homer power Pujols did. Given the number of 40-plus Homer seasons Trout doesn't have in comparison, without looking at the numbers for WRC+, I'd be very interested to see how the three of them have lined up, given that they all came into the game as young 20 to 21-year-old players. So, yes, first, how dare you even summon this thought, put this thought in my head of a decline like that for Mike Trout. We're already worried that he's going in a Griffey-esque direction here. So I don't want to be thinking about a Pujols Cabrera-esque ending to his career, but is it conceivable? Yeah. Reggie conceived it. Now we've all been forced to conceive it by Reggie. Contemplating death and the decline of Mike Trout.

Yeah. So yeah, it could happen. I think the precondition really for a pujos or cabrera like late phase of your career which is historically anomalous not that many great players have a long tail like that right where they're that diminished and they stick around for that long and a big part of that was that they signed very long-term contracts right and also they had been some of the best hitters of all time. And so they earn a little leeway there and they have some standing in the game and they're big names. And so you keep them around for other reasons. Whereas if you had a player with identical stats who had none of the history that that player had, they probably would last a fraction of the time, right?

But you're hoping they'll bounce back or you're embarrassed to release them because you signed them to that deal or they just have some stature in the game. They command respect. It would be potentially a problem in the clubhouse and maybe they offer real value in the clubhouse as hitting savants who could impart some of those lessons. So Mike Trout has the makings of that in the sense that he also is an all-time great player as a hitter, maybe, and as a player just in general, the best of the three, at least up to a certain point, and also signed a very long-term contract, right? And is Mr. Angel at this point. He's a lifelong angel, you know? What would have to happen for the angels to decide, no, we don't want Mike Trout anymore.

We're still paying him, but we're just not going to keep Mike Trout around. Now, he is signed through his age 38 season, which is 2030, and he'll be making $37 plus million up until the end of that contract, which may seem like less by then than it does now, but it's still a significant amount. And if he's healthy, when he's healthy, he's still well worth it. But is there some scenario where he continues to be plagued by various injuries and they continue to sap his performance the career. It's possible. Yeah, I didn do think that there are some things that differentiate trout from cabrera certainly and even from pools like mike trout is a center fielder so like there will come a time and it might be now and there have been stretches over the last couple of seasons where we have maybe suggested that the time has even passed that he's going to have to move to a corner but like the foundation of athleticism i think is very different for trout than it is for miggy or even for pool so there's that piece of it that gives him some amount of floor and like you know sure is it maybe notable that he has only had a couple of 40 home runs he's not being sure but like it's not like he's light hitting you know like you look at the slugs and you're like hey look at those and then

you look at the isos and you're like hey look at this and then you look at the home runs and you're like it's not just 2019 where he had over 40 right so there's that piece of it too and we'll get a better sense i guess when he comes back but i think that it will probably be, I hope it will be, I expect it to be more gradual. Yes. Than that, but you never know what those weird little bird bones are going to do. And it does seem like there is, as we said, there's something like pretty often now. And that's a real bummer. Yeah.

And he's right around the age when Pujols stopped being peak Pujols. Right. And he's not quite to the age when Miggy stopped being peak Miggy. But as we discussed, once Miggy tailed off from peak Miggy, it was pretty precipitous. Right. Once Miggie tailed off from peak Miggie, it was pretty precipitous, right? So through age 30 seasons, let's say, Miguel Cabrera had a 152 WRC plus, Albert Pujols had a 169, and Mike Trout had a 172. So he was the best hitter of the bunch and was also a center fielder. So that's how good Mike Trout has been. But yeah, I think more similar to Pujols in terms of overall production.

Now, he through age 30 had 350 homers. Pujols had 408. And Miggy had 365. So I guess closer to Miggy than Pujols when it comes to the homers. But that's not that great a separation, really. It's just that Pujols, even when he was no longer that productive a player or hitter overall, he could still crank some dingers, right? Yeah, he'd run to Pujols stylistically. I don't know. I guess I would probably say still. Like Miggy, just if we give you the slash line, 321, 399, 568. Pujols, 331, 426, 624.

What a monster. And then Trout, 303, 415, 587. Obviously, slightly different eras and baseballs and ballparks and everything here that skews this somewhat. But yeah, I don't know. I guess I see what Reggie means about maybe the shape of the offense being a little more Miggie-like, but the overall production is more Pujolsian. I think he'll be okay. I hope he'll be okay. It's one of the saddest things about baseball, which is that you just don't get to count on a gentle downward slope, even from the very best guys, sometimes it is abrupt. And I imagine for them, incredibly disorienting. And I would think that particularly for a guy like Trout, who,

when presented with some deficiency in the course of his career has largely been able to adjust and then excel in whatever the thing is he couldn't do before. He'd be like, no, I'll figure that out. And then he mostly has, you know. But you can only push back against the force of aging and decline for so long. And once the injuries start to creep in, it can snowball on you. So I don't know. I don't know what it will look like. I imagine that it will be probably more than any.

Hmm. Do I believe what I'm about to say? I think probably more than any player other than Felix, it will be a decline that I find painful and hard to watch. Yeah. Right. Maybe more than any other player apart from Felix. And there, the decline was so fast.

And then he was done and out of baseball. And who knows what that would have looked like if we hadn't had the pandemic here. Would he have been able to kind of cobble something together in other stops as he was trying to? I don't know. But that one was really painful to watch where you're just like, I don't want to watch those games because what if it's bad? And then what if it's good? And I'm like, oh, it'll get better. And then it doesn't for very long.

So, you know. Yeah. One of the weird things about Pujols' decline was that he quite suddenly became a lot less patient. He stopped walking. And that's still something of a mystery to me, whether it was something with his visual acuity or I think it was probably lower body related. You know, he had so many foot issues and lower body issues that I would guess maybe it was something to do with just there were certain pitches that he felt like he couldn't handle anymore. And so he was more inclined to swing at things. And that really changed the shape of his production yeah

but trout strikes out a lot more than either of them did even during their decline phase and part of that is just that it's a super high strikeout era but also mike trout strikes out a lot and he strikes out a lot struck out more over time and i don't know whether that bodes ill or not. At least Miggy and Pujols, they could put the ball in play. Now, it wasn't rewarding when they would put the ball in play because they were extremely slow and sometimes hobbled by injuries, right? Right. But still, they could make contact. Still, they could make contact.

Maybe that kept the bottom from falling out offensively a little just because at least they could poke a single every now and then. You know, I don't know. But Trout, I mean, I guess. You sound so stressed, Ben. I am. The worst case scenario, it's like, you know, the strikeouts pile up even more and he reaches a tipping point strikeout-wise. I don't even want to put this into the universe. I'm not someone who believes in the secret or thinking things and they will come true, good or bad. But this is just – it's painful for me to contemplate this.

So we'll move on. It would have been so wild if you've been like, Meg, have you heard about a really important publication? It's called The Secret. The Secret is wild, Ben. That episode oprah and it is crazy town yeah i mean like look have i had the thought watching trout in the last like year and a half sometimes he's not seeing that well have i had that thought been a half you know and and here i am like i've had that thought and then last year you know granted only in 119 games, which has, of course, been the problem. But he was worth like six wins. And he had like a 176.

He had a 176 WRC plus. So shut up, Meg. What are you talking about? But I will say, sometimes you watch him, Ben, and you're like, he's not as well. I don't know. What's going on. What's in the air? What's in the water?

Is it like the pre-deadline lull? It's like we sense the storm coming and it's like the barometer is changing or something. Maybe. And we feel it in our bones. I don't even know if the storm is – Does that mean I'm going to get a migraine? Yeah. I don't know if the storm is going to come or whether this trade deadline will end up being a dud.

We will know soon enough. But right now it's like we're all waiting. Who's a seller? Who's a buyer? They don't even know. How are we supposed to know? No major trades are happening. We're just waiting to see whether they will or whether the deadline will just quietly fizzle out and the clock will tick past and, oh, I guess it's over.

No one made any moves because everyone was kind of in contention. That won't happen. We will have moves to talk about and we will have transactions to assign posts about. But thus far, it's been slow, not unexpectedly. And I guess that is why we are whiling away the hours by contemplating mortality like this. And someone else sent us an email in this vein about Shohei Otani. What? How dare you? This is Alex, Patreon supporter, who says, in your second to last episode now,

you discuss which of the following three options you think is most likely for Otani. He stays a two-way player until he retires. He only pitches. He only hits. How would you feel or how likely do you think it is that he does an option 1A in the mold of someone like Masahiro Tanaka and upon the realization that he can no longer effectively pitch and hit at the major league level, elects to return to Japan for a swan song while being able to pitch and hit? I think this sort of actually happened in our most recent future blast, I believe. He went back to Japan. That's right.

And Alex says, I think that would be sentimentally very nice, but I'll admit selfishly I'd be sad that it would be harder to watch him. I'd be okay with that if he couldn't do the two-way thing in the majors anymore and he thought he could still do it then and it would be a homecoming. If he wanted to do the Tanaka or like Shinsu Chu has done in Korea, just go back where you started and play in front of your home country's fans. That's fine. I certainly wouldn't begrudge him that. But then Alex continues, how about this more depressing option? Why? Why? Why do we need the more

depressing option? I don't know, Ben. Why do I listen to Boy Genius? I listen to boy genius? It's good music, good songs. I mean, look, no one forced me to read this particular email, but the email continues. What if he is so absolutely attached to doing both, being both a hitter and a pitcher, that as his skills diminish, he continues on a series of short-term deals in a succession of less skilled but still professional leagues. So he goes from NPB to KBO and on and on and on until he is doing a Rafael Palmeiro in IndieBall.

I do not want this option, to be clear. And yet, Alex, you put it in our heads. So I would be fine with him abandoning the two-way player thing if it meant that he could continue to play at a high level as a one-way player. That would be fine. I would not necessarily want him to just continue to go to lower and lower level leagues in order to indulge his preference for being a two-way player. There might be something semi-sad about that if it became a sideshow, you know, Jose Canseco in his 50s going and participating in home run derbies. He's a home run hitter. He still wants to hit home runs. If Shohei is just so tied to being a two-way player that he'll end up playing in the local beer league softball because that's where he can handle being a two-way

player now i wouldn't want to see him diminish himself in that way although i i will say that rafael palmeiro's season for the cleburne railroaders in the american association in 2018 At 53, 31 games, 125 plate appearances. He hit.301,.424,.495. What? Did he really? It's a.19 OPS. Yeah, we were talking about old-timer home run derbies. I mean, he hit six homers in 31 games. That's like a serious independent league.

He's 53 years old. That's pretty impressive, you know? Really Hall of Fame caliber players. They're quite good to the point that years and years after they retire, sort of in disgrace, they could still play at a high level in a professional league. Anyway, that's beside the point. I don't think I would want this for Otani. I think I would want him to accept his limitations when someday he has limitations, which might be difficult for him because he is less used to having limitations

than most of us. But he's known what it's like not to be able to pitch or hit at certain times because of injuries. And he's had his struggles. So I hope that he would take it in stride and realize I'm not that guy anymore. I don't know the man, you know, Ben. And so sometimes you're surprised by how people refuse self-awareness. I mean, we did start this episode by saying that people tend to overestimate their own profundity when they're talking, you know, so I don't know. Maybe it'll be a thing he proves to be stubborn about. But I think that my sense of him based on sort of how he has performed to date and sort of what he has signaled about his upcoming free agency is that like, I think he really very much wants to win. compelling force to pride and if it gets to a point where he's able to contribute meaningfully more on one side of the ball than the other i think he will sort of submit to that reality in order to help his team win and win like at the highest level of competition right like he wanted

to come to mlb because it was to him like the next thing to really play his hand at and show that he could do and do very well. I imagine that that motivation will sort of be the one that guides the rest of his career, just like it guides where he ends up signing this offseason. But men have been stubborn before and in surprising ways. So I was like, I can't believe that the secret was on Oprah. Wouldn't it have been more shocking if it hadn't been really given the track record there? Maybe what will happen is that Otani, well, Oprah doesn't have a show anymore.

I was about to like draw a map where he ends up being a U.S. senator, although probably one with better politics. Since I gave you a sort of sad, depressing Mike Trout question and hypothetical, here's a more silly, uplifting, comedic one from Peter, Patreon supporter. And this is a variation of a hypothetical we've contemplated before, so this will probably be quick. But I have a proposed trade deadline hypothetical. A number of teams need an outfielder with a hard-hitting bat. On the other hand, many people hope to see Mike Trout in the playoffs. What if a team made a secret deal with the Angels? They would officially announce a trade for Hunter Renfro, but Mike Trout would instead play for the other team while the Angels let Renfro play in Trout's uniform for the rest of the season.

Would Trout agree? Would Renfro agree? Could they get away with such shenanigans? The answer to the last question is no, obviously not. Right. Definitely not. Although, even though, Ben, even though Mike Trout is currently on the injured list, even though I know the tiny little bird bones have betrayed him, I will turn on Angels games and be like, oh, Trout's looking. Oh, gosh, dang it. I do it at least once a week because they do look like each other in the face. They really do.

There's differences, you know? Yes. Turns out one meaningfully better player than the other. But, but. Yes, and hopefully that will continue to be true for a while. Not that I wish I'd yell on Hunter Renfro, but I would hope that Trout will preserve his advantage for some time to come. Renfro, but I would hope that Trout will preserve his advantage for some time to come. But we want to see Trout and want to know we're seeing Trout in the postseason. And from Mike Trout's perspective, let's say he gets traded to Ben. Which team do you think is the most likely

to win the World Series this year? Just pick one. Oh, Atlanta, I suppose. Okay. So let's say that Atlanta and LA, they get together on this deal and they, gosh, that would be really fun to have him in that outfield, you know, like, but then where do you, do you make him play left? I guess you put him in left, right? I saw a rumor that they were interested in trading for Adam Duvall, which, hey, that's worked out really well for them at the time before. Yeah.

But what if they could get Mike Trout, either the real one or in disguise? Yeah. That would probably be an upgrade. Yeah. And then you put him in left. Wow. How the mighty have moved to Atlanta. So they do this, right?

And they put him in left field and they say, but it's on a run through. And then you go on as the Braves and you'll win the World Series and Trout is thrilled. His family can't be there when it happens, right? Because we know what his wife looks like and his kid. And so, and his parents, you know, they can't be there. And Hunter Renfro's family has to go and pretend to be Mike Trout's family. So that would be weird

because they'd be like, we're not his family. And then like, he has this ring. He's never able to wear, right? Yeah. When he goes into the Hall of Fame, he goes in as a guy who never won a World Series. And I'm making some assumptions about what the Angels will be in the latter stages of his career, granted. So this might end up being a problem that solves itself. But he won't be known as a World Series winner.

He can never wear the ring. He can't go to the parade. He would be like, why do I have to pretend this? You know, why do I have to do this pretending? And so I think that it would be kind of awful to do to him, honestly. And Hunter Renfro would have to be in on it for the rest of his life. Granted, I imagine I'm not doubting the sort of moral core of Hunter Renfro would have to be in on it for the rest of his life. Granted, I imagine I'm not doubting the sort of moral core of Hunter Renfro, but like it's a lot easier to say, oh, yeah, I won a World Series

than it is to say, no, I never won one. Not even one time did I win a World Series with my fake family. And then like people would be like, wow, like Hunter Renfro and his wife are kind of cold to one another. Like this is like such a great moment she'd have to like you know they get those jackets yeah in my instagram investigations of the wives and girlfriends of players in the postseason you know they tend to match they get like a bunch of matching stuff you know they'll be like here's our jean jacket day

and it's like bedazzled with stuff and it's like you know mrs trout or mrs renfro and then she'd be like but i don't even know him and she's got to take i don't know if if hunter renfro and his wife i don't even know if hunter renfro is married but like assuming that he is i don't know if he and his hypothetical wife have any children but like he's got to drag her kids around the postseason or find a sitter although I guess she could just leave them at home with actual Hunter Renfro. Sure. But then he has to stay at home for like a month. You know, Hunter Renfro can't go anywhere.

Or he has to go hang out with Mike Trout's wife and his kids. I think that this should happen when we have a hopefully good resolution to both the writers and actors strike. This is our next great sports comedy ben you know this is the one where you know you have the parallel scenes of mike trout and hunter renfro's wife doing hijinks i mean not like with each other presumably but like you know having to travel and then you'd have like the swap comedy at home with like mike trout's wife and hunter renfro and she's like I think his wife's name is Jessica Jessica's like Hunter kind of sucks or doesn't like maybe they become really

good friends Ben I think we have a winner here you know because in Hollywood it doesn't have to be real and you could do it as a zippy fun comedy rather than Mike Trout having to hide the one achievement that has eluded him. It's like Ahab catches and survives catching the white whale and then can't tell anyone. And he'd want to tell everybody about it. But if you make it as like a zippy fun comedy with some stars of today, but also of yesteryear.

And, you know, Logan Webb should be involved somehow. And then we can have Jesse Plemons play him. That sounds great. And then at the end, Plemons play him. That sounds great. And then at the end, and then at the end, Ben, because it's comedy and we don't have to be sad, they can find out and then the commissioner can grant a special dispensation, which would also not happen. It would be a huge scandal and everyone would be really angry about it. But in Hollywood, you could be happy. And Manfred would love it because at the end of this movie, he gets to be this great hero that helps Mike Trout actually get to wear his ring. And then Hunter Renfro and Mike Trout's wife can emerge from the tunnel and be like, we were here all along.

And everyone will laugh and clap. And they'll give Hunter Renfro a ring for being a good sport. I think it's – Ben, I really think I'm on to something here. You're really rolling there. I didn't even want to interject. I didn't want to derail that train of thought because. I think we got something. Like, you know, sometimes I will see friends, people you know, who are like writers and then, you know, they'll announce they have a development deal.

And I don't know what that means, but their kitchens get nicer, you know. And I think to myself, am I missing out on something? Am I, should i be trying to write a screenplay i don't know how to do that you know it's a skill this is why the studio should pay the writers you know those those last few minutes of the podcast might get options just right now but not right now because well yeah solidarity yeah but but when the strike resolves then somebody call me you know. I think it could be really fun. I think it would do well.

And baseball would be thrilled because we would like, you know, we'd have a fun sports comedy, you know? We're missing those. I long for them. Yeah. Gosh, I have nothing to add to your creative vision there. Wow, I feel winded. You're spent.

Yeah. I want Rick Moranis to be in it. Oh, wow. I know that he couldn't play. That would be, you know, then we couldn't suspend our disbelief. Like, if we made Rick Moranis a baseball player, we'd be like, Rick Moranis is too old to be a baseball player. But he could play Manfred. And then, oh, man, Rob, what a gift I just gave you.

America's favorite, Rick Moranis as Rob Manfred. Yeah. That might be too. He should maybe be an assistant to the commissioner, and he can be the one who comes up with the plan to just let Mike Trout have a World Series ring. It's tough to get Rick Moranis, but for this, I think. For this, I think he'd do it.

I think he'd be like, it is time for me to be known for a new thing. And so maybe he would come out of retirement if he was moved by the script. I think this material would speak to him. I was trying to figure out what football team Hunter Renfro is a fan of because that might come into play if Mike Trout had to pretend not to be an Eagles fan. It's spelled differently, though. Yeah, no, it's tough to find out the baseball Hunter Renfro's football fandom because you end up with the football Hunter Renfro with a W at the end instead of an E. And they are apparently friends because they get mistaken for each other name-wise all the time. Are they really friends? Poor Hunter Renfro.

Like, in baseball, he's mistaken for Mike Trout, or at least we all just constantly talk about how he looks like Mike Trout. And then his name is like a sound alike for a NFL player. So wherever he goes, he's getting confused for people or overshadowed by people. I hope he gets to seize the spotlight at some point. You know, he's not just Mike Trout's lookalike or the other Hunter Renfro's soundalike. He is Hunter Renfro with an E at the end. Yeah. And he's his own man.

And he's married to a gal named Courtney. All right. Great. Courtney Beach. I wonder if they got married on the beach. No, they got married in their hometown of Crystal Springs. Thanks, Wikipedia. Cleared that up.

We're learning a lot. All right. Here's a question from David who says, I just saw an Instagram video of Jerry Seinfeld complaining to Rich Eisen about the elimination of the four-pitch intentional walk. It reminded me of your discussion of the success of the pitch clock and how we all overthought what caused the game to slow down and how to speed it up.

I admit I don't really miss the four pitches so much, but all else being equal, I'd rather have kept them, and I sympathize with Jerry since it obviously didn't fix the problem. I feel like there's no way the four pitches so much, but all else being equal, I'd rather have kept them. And I sympathize with Jerry since it obviously didn't fix the problem. I feel like there's no way the four pitches come back, but I wonder if you disagree. There are probably other things that fall into this category of other time savers that didn't help much, like limiting mound visits. But I think the only one I would take back is the four pitch intentional walk. I don't think I would take any of them back. I don't think I miss any of them enough to restore them. All those little dinky, we'll slice 30 seconds here or there and no one noticed any difference. I still don't think I miss any of them enough. a first or like the throwing the intentional pitches or the limiting mound visits or even the three batter minimum, which I guess philosophically I was a little more opposed to,

but I really didn't mind it. And I don't care. And I don't really miss so much having many more mid inning pitching changes. Again, it's not a huge time suck. These things don't make that much of a difference. But now that they're gone, I am not going to be signing a petition to bring them back, really. Eliminating them didn't really do what it was intended to do. And so now that the pitch clock took care of all that, we could revisit all the little time savers that barely saved any time and say, OK, that was not really worth it. We could bring that back if we want to for tradition's sake. But I don't think I care enough to do that with any of them off the top of my head. I have two thoughts.

The first is this. In the year of our Lord, 2023, he was complaining about this? Yes, I guess so. Man, that's commitment to the bit. That is really missing a nothing burger of a thing. That's like really, wow. I'm like. I don't know for sure. I have not seen the clip. It's possible that this was some years ago. I don't want to impugn Jerry. Maybe he's over before pitch and touch will walk. the forward pitch and touchable walk. I'm complimenting him, I think. I mean, like I'm shocked that it is a thing that he cares about,

but I am also, I'm impressed that he is so committed. So there's that. That was my first thought. My second thought is that I understand the instinct, but I think that we all need to keep our eyes on the prize, Ben, which is that if we are going to make the argument that the time savings of the pitch clock affords us the opportunity to reevaluate other recent rule changes, you had. Yes. Keep your eyes on the prize. I didn't think of that because initially it was sort of a health and safety protocol more so than a time-saving measure. But it was largely a time-saving measure. It was largely a time-saving measure. And I think that when the commissioner talks about it and granted when players talk about it and players, Ben, they don't hate the zombie runner the way that we do.

They want to give the zombie runner the way that we do you know they they want to give the zombie runner a big old hug but when they talk about it they talk about it as an opportunity to go home now they're not talking about it as a pandemic measure anymore so but we can make the case you know i think the case can be made now in a way that surely even such a zombie lover as the manfred man himself would find yeah he hasn't so far but you know we we can get a petition going we can keep trying and maybe we can persuade such a luminary as jerry seinfeld to join our cause i found the clip and it was just a couple weeks ago that he was talking about. That's incredible. Wow. That's really something. Because what year was that? It was recently enough that Miguel Cabrera is the one example everyone remembers of,

oh, you can't do away with that because Miguel Cabrera got the hit that one time. That one time. But Jerry Seinf seinfeld isn't he a mets fan like famously a mets fan and granted i imagine i don't know for sure i imagine that he also was like let me tell you about the mets except he doesn't sound like that but i can't do it i don't have a good jerry sure you know so i'm not gonna try but i bet like he led with the mets but it would be very funny if the thing he's like no no, no, no, forget the Mets. I got to go to the intentional walks. My top priority. Rich, my man, let me tell you.

No, he's, I think it was kind of a commissioner of the day. What would you do? What would you change about baseball kind of deal? What do you think of just the intentional walk? Like just you go to first now. No, don't like that either. It's fine. How much time are you saving?

About 10 seconds. I mean, it's 10 seconds we can all save. It's like when someone much time are you saving? About 10 seconds. I mean, it's 10 seconds we can all say. It's like when someone texts you the letter K instead of OK. What are you doing with that time? Or you're going to add that up and so you can watch an 11 minute YouTube video of a skateboarder bouncing his nuts off a railing. That was 2017 was the year when they got it was when we did that yeah all right last question this comes from adam totally out there hypothetical inspired by a reddit thread about jt realmuto catching a dead ball with his bare hand during an at-bat did you see this i did not. was in the middle of his delivery and he took a little off it wasn't a full speed pitch like he saw that time was called early enough right he was able to that's great yeah but then really you

know just you know catcher's hands he just he catches it i love the reaction oh gosh whoever directed this really knew where to look because they then pan to the dugout and they're looking at Wheeler and Nola being, oh, what a great thing. Yeah, it's pretty great. So the question is here, imagining a new rule where if a batter catches a pitch on the fly barehanded, the pitcher is out and must be replaced by a new pitcher. This might fundamentally break the game, since I imagine this would not be that hard to do. But I'm wondering about the strategic implications. Would batters be constantly attempting a catch during the last few innings of a no-hitter? Should there be a penalty for attempting a catch and dropping it?

Curious what you think? Yeah, there'd have to be unwritten rules about that, right? A guy's going for a perfect game. You can't catch him out of the game. But if it has to be barehanded, this was fairly impressive to me that he did this because it was certainly an off-speed pitch. It was a slow pitch, but it was still like it had some pace. You would think it would probably sting a bit. He had a batting glove on, but even so, that might smart a little. I mean, I don't know, a catcher who's been, even with a catcher's

glove, gloving major league pitches, who knows if he still has like nerves left in his hand. I don't know. Right. It's like how it doesn't hurt when I pluck my eyebrows anymore. His hand is probably a mitt-like consistency at this point, right? Just imagining him taking gloves off and it looking exactly the same. It's like in a cartoon. So I don't know whether he felt this at all. A normal person would feel this, right? And might even endanger some bird bones if you were to.

Now, if this were a rule that you could get the pitcher pulled from the game if you caught the pitch there'd be a lot of incentive to do that that would be immensely valuable obviously if it's a good pitcher you get him out of the game right that's huge and then the team's bullpen is shot for the rest of that series, right? Right. I mean, this is bad in any number of ways because the batter's going to get hurt constantly because the pitcher's going to have to throw as hard as he can because he doesn't want to be removed from the game. And so he has to throw as hard as he can knowing that he might break this guy's hand. And so I don't know what the break-even point for attempting the catch – what that would be for attempting the catch because like what would your success rate have to be in order to justify making the attempt knowing that, A, you're going to mess up sometimes.

It would be tough to catch a full-speed pitch especially or a pitch that's moving. And then you also might break a bone in the process. So it could be that it's just so dangerous and so difficult to do if the pitcher knows that you might be attempting to do it, that ultimately that you don't and it actually doesn't have an effect. You'd have to have a specialist, right? Like it would be so valuable if your leadoff guy could be like the bare-handed catching specialist he doesn't even have to be a good hitter it could be just like I have a hand that does not feel pain but I'm able to catch

with it somehow if you could do that it would be worth having a total non-hitter in that lineup spot if you could reliably get that pitcher out of the game. I mean, even if you couldn't do it every time, it would probably still be worth carrying the designated barehand catcher just to get that guy out of the game. And if that person knew the risks and went into it knowing, hey, I have a roster spot because of this. hey, I have a roster spot because of this. And if the worst you can do is break your fifth finger or your pointer slash index finger, one of those fingers that is numbered and named, then it's not going to be necessarily life endangering.

It might be career threatening if your entire career is making barehanded catches to get the pitcher out of the game. I don't know that this makes baseball any better in any way, except that it would be very cool if the batter were able to do it, right? It kind of looks badass too. It's like, you know, I could catch it. It's very much like, hey, you don't even throw hard enough that I need to worry about sticking my hand out there. Like, I could grab that, you know? So it sort of sends like a psychological message as well. Oh, yeah.

He just looks so casual while he's doing it, right? Like, it's just like he's catching it in a way that is so casual that it feels like, you know, the person that, you know, Williams is really playing catch with is him and not his actual catcher. The look on Wheeler and Nola's face is really what makes the whole thing. But you wouldn't want to incentivize guys to do this because I think that a lot of guys would get pretty hurt trying, and it would be bad.

We know that most of the time what a pitcher should do with a really hard- hit comebacker up the middle is just let it go. That like it is better to just let it go and let your defense behind you field it. And there are exceptions to that, obviously. And sometimes you got to get a glove up. But, you know, like often you're like, let it go.

And if you're not going to let it go, don't try to grab it with your bare hand. But they do it anyway. It's just instinct, right? And we know it's bad. And so why introduce rules that additionally incentivize guys to put their little bird bones up there,

you know, their delicate thingies? Because I think that a batting glove provides some amount of protection, but like it's still gonna be uncomfortable. And like you said, depending on the kind of pitch and its velocity, potentially quite damaging. Yeah, right. And then would there have to be uncomfortable. And like you said, depending on the kind of pitch and its velocity, potentially quite damaging. Yeah, right. And then would there have to be rules about the batting glove? Would

people try to gradually turn the batting glove into a catcher's mitt, essentially? Right. So you'd have to legislate what a batter's glove can be. Maybe it already is, but you'd have to be vigilant about that because they would basically like innovate the glove all over again, as they did in the formative days of baseball for this designated barehand catching position. But yeah, Real Muto, I don't even know whether this was instinctive, like, hey, ball coming at me. I'm a catcher. I catch baseball. So that's what I do. Or whether he had time to evaluate, okay, this is not a full-speed pitch. I can reach out and grab this safely.

I don't know whether he had time to make that calculation or whether it's just see the ball, catch the ball. But apparently it went well, and it was pretty impressive. I mean it is delightful, but it is not a thing that we should encourage. Right. Adam asked if there should be a penalty for attempting a catch and dropping it. I feel like the penalty would be that you break your finger. Maybe there should be an additional penalty too. I don't know. It could be an error and you're out or something

like that. We'd have to figure out the game balance here. I don't know. It's hard for me to gauge how difficult this would be if the pitcher knows that you have a chance to do this. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what the right balance is there, but you're right. There would need to be one. You need to think about it in terms of that. But I think you don't want to incentivize people to do this.

Okay. All right. Well, I had initially planned to do a people to do this. Okay. All right. Well, I had initially planned to do a bunch of stat blasts. I'll save some for next time. And then I pitched you a whole movie. We talked about death and fingers. And Rick Moranis. And then, yes, you pitched me a movie.

And look, it's like J.P. France said. You take every episode as it is, every segment as it is. It's not the same as the one that's coming up. It's not the same as the one that's coming up. It's not the same as the one that just happened. But I'll give you a couple stat plus here before they get out of date. OBS Plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's Today's Step Last. All right. So first one I'll give you is about the robot umps situation, the ABS situation in AAA. So I've been kind of curious about how this is going because they have this experiment here that they've been doing in AAA, where basically the Pacific Coast League

has been using ABS since opening day, I believe. The International League started using it on April 25th. And the full ABS, just the automated ball strike system, the robot umps, that is being used for the first three games of each series. So weekdays, because Mondays are off days. And then the final three games of each series, the weekend games are the challenge system, your preferred system. And I think you've convinced me of that. So basically, start of the season, at least some places, International League was just regular human ump Colin Balsam strikes. And then since late April, it's been half and half, essentially alternating weekdays. We get the full ABS system and then weekends we get the challenge system. So I am kind of curious about what the split is. Is there any real

difference here in terms of just the offensive environment and what games have been like with these different systems? So I got some help from a couple of BP people, baseball perspectives people, baseball perspectives, people, Robert Au and Lucas Apostolaris, and got some data on the ABS system. And basically, here's what Robert sent me. So at the beginning of the season, there was a part of the season when there was no robot umps going on. Right? And so during that time, and this was, I think, 201 games, according to Robert's calculations, there were 5.2 runs scored per game. Okay. Now, since then, the full ABS, RobotOmp calls all the balls and strikes, 5.8 runs per game. So up from 5.2 to 5.8. And then with the challenge system, 5.9. So part of this, I guess, could be the time of year. So maybe the start of the year, cold weather, lower scoring. And that was the part of the season before they implemented the

ABS all the time. But there seems to be a pretty big difference offensively between none, between humans and either of the robot ump flavors, but there does not seem to be a big difference between each of the robot ump flavors. So according to the numbers I have here, According to the numbers I have here, strikeouts actually went down. So strikeouts without either system, 23.6%. With the full system, 22.1%. With challenge, 21.9%. However, walks have gone up somewhat. So it was 11.3% with none, 11.5% with full, and then 12.5% with the challenge system.

The strike percentage has gone down. The time of game has gone up significantly, but that's probably related to the scoring. But because the runs per game figures were up, you could probably intuit that the slash line's also up so without either the slash line was 255 348 428 with the full 270 362 451 with the challenge 266 365 449 also part of this might be just International League is a lower scoring environment than the Pacific Coast League and the Pacific Coast League was using ABS since opening day. International League began using it late April. So I think the main thing here is that

there does not seem to be a notable difference between offense in games when the challenge system is being used and offense in games when the full robot ump, no recourse, no challenge system is being used. And it's got to be weird when it's alternating, like half the games, half the week is one and half the week is another. Yeah. So I don't know how that messes with players' minds. And they've changed, you know, like where the strike zone is and how big it is and at what point at the plate it is.

the strike zone is and how big it is and at what point at the plate it is. And there have been some threads and complaints by players and people have been upset about it. And that's been kind of a running theme since they've tested any automated system that people aren't really happy with just certain pitches that get called strikes now or don't get called strikes now that wouldn't have with human umpires. And they've tried to correct that by changing the dimensions and what part of the plate counts as a strike and where the ball actually has to pass through etc but i think the takeaway is that from what we can tell there does not seem to be any glaring difference between what scoring looks like with challenge or with full ABS. So I guess you can factor that into your already made up mind about which you prefer.

And I think clearly what Rob Manfred seems to be leaning towards, you know, he's made it pretty clear that seems like the growing preference is for the challenge system. It's just a little less obtrusive and it takes away less of framing and it retains more of the traditional strike zone. And it also adds some strategy about when to challenge and who should challenge and all of that. But it looks like the game has not played dramatically differently using the challenge system

versus using the full ABS. So that's something nice to know. But on the whole, definitely walks have increased. And if you look at, say, last year's AAA leagues to this year's AAA leagues, there is a bump in scoring and there's also a bump in walk rate. Like 2022 Pacific Coast League was 5.79 runs per game. This year, it's 6.17. And the walk rate has gone up from 4.2 per per game to 5.57 runs per game, which is pretty significant. And the walk rate, again, also has gone up. So definitely seems like if we implement ABS, it's going to boost scoring and probably boost walks, which is, I guess, not great.

That probably makes games longer, not necessarily slower, but longer, right? So if they don't straighten out those kinks and they still miss pitches every now and then, like once every six point something games, there's a pitch that just doesn't get registered and i think if you have the challenge system the ump's still going to be wired in right like the ump's still going to be getting prepared to make every call whereas if you have the full abs and occasionally there's no pitch registered it's going to be tough for the ump to keep their head in the game and be ready to make that call if the vast majority of the time they don't have to be prepared to make that call really or they're not tested so those

are the takeaways i guess does seem to juice offense does seem to juice walk rate relative to just human umps as is sure but doesn't seem to be any notable difference between challenge and full abs from what we can tell in AAA this season. One of the arguments that I will make about the challenge system being superior to the robo zone is that I really do think people are underestimating. And by people, I mean like you're like average fan who is frustrated by what they perceive to be more umpiring. Right. is frustrated by what they perceive to be more umpiring, right? That they are really underestimating the degree to which the zone will feel unintuitive to them, at least for a while under ABS. And so if there isn't a huge difference between them, then I think having the challenge system is

superior because it will be less disruptive to fans understanding and sort of feel for the game while allowing us to intervene on you know really bad calls in high leverage moments so i come away from this feeling that i am right or continuing to feel that I am right. Yeah. All right. And then the other bit of data Robert gave me here, we had a conversation recently, I think it was maybe inspired by the Orioles and Reds, where we were musing about the most top 100 prospects to be called up and make their major league debut for a franchise in the span of a single season or multiple seasons because i was thinking like gosh these teams have called up a whole lot of prospects a whole mess of prospects especially like the orioles over the past two seasons you

know if you go back to adley rutschman and gunner henderson last year and then all the guys they've called up this year is that the most and we were talking a little bit about other teams that had highly rated farm systems and what might the contenders have been. And I got an answer here courtesy of Lucas and Robert, and this is using Baseball America preseason rankings, which go all the way back to 1990. So if we want to know a single season, the most top 100 prospects to debut in a single season, it's a three-way tie at five between or among the 2019 Padres. I don't know if we mentioned the Padres last time, but the Padres had a heck of a system, right?

And it was stacked for a while there. So 2019, the Padres called up Josh Naylor, Logan Allen, Chris Paddock, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Adrian Morejon. So that was an impressive quintet to make their debuts. And then that is tied with the 2005 Atlanta Braves, also five, Jeff Francor, the legend, Andy Marte, Kyle Davies, Anthony LaRue, and Brian McCann. And then the third team with five top 100 guys to make their Major League debuts in the same season,

the 2006 Dodgers, who had Russell Martin, Joel Guzman, Andre Ethier, Chad Billingsley, and Matt Kemp. That's a pretty impressive crop too. So we looked at it that way, number of top 100 guys. And then we also looked at it in a way that takes into account where in the top 100 they were. So if you were, say, the 100-ranked guy, we basically did, like, I think 101 minus your rank. So if you're the 100th-ranked guy, then it's 101 minus 100, and you just get one point. You barely count it all. Whereas if you're the number one prospect, then it's 101 minus one. You get 100 points and it counts a lot. Right. So the higher ranked prospects count more toward the total.

And if we do it that way, then the leaders are actually teams that called up only four guys in the season. And at the top of the single season list, the 2015 Cubs, who had a score of 343 with four prospects, Chris Bryant, Carl Edwards Jr., Addison Russell, and Kyle Schwarber. And as I recall, things worked out well for that team and the team the next year as well. It's often a good sign if you're calling up a whole bunch of prospects. It augurs well for your near future. And then the 2012 Rangers right behind them with Hugh Darvish, Martin Perez, Mike Holt, and Jerickson Profar. And a little bit behind them, the 1995 Mets with another legend, Edgardo Alfonso, Jason Isringhausen, Alex Ochoa, and Bill Pulsifer, some members of Generation K there. I'll put that full spreadsheet online.

But I also wanted to look at the two-year group, okay? Because sometimes your prospects, they don't all arrive at exactly the same time. But if you have an impressive group that is called up in a couple of waves, maybe over a span of two seasons, that can be pretty impressive too. So if we look at it over two seasons, there is a five-way tie at seven, seven top 100 guys called up in the span of two seasons. You have the 2004 to 2005 Braves encompassing some of the names I just mentioned. So Adam LaRoche, Dan Meyer, and then Francois Marte, Kyle Davies, Anthony LaRue, and Brian McCann. The 2014 to 2015 Red Sox, also seven, with Edwin Escobar, Garen Ciccini, Mookie Betts, Eduardo Rodriguez, Henry Owens, Blake Swihart, and Brian Johnson.

You have the 2014 to 2015 Cubs again. Okay, so it's the same guys as before, but also Ars Mendi Alcantara, Javier Baez, and Jorge Soler. And then the 2019 to 2020 Padres. Again, Josh Naylor, Logan Allen, Chris Paddock, Fernando Tatis Jr., Adrian Morjon, Luis Camposano, and Luis Patino. And joining them now, we have the 2022 to 2023 Baltimore Orioles. They have pulled into that five-way tie at the top of the list for most prospects promoted over the course of two seasons. They are at seven now also with Adley Rutschman, D.L. Hall, Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westberg, Grayson Rodriguez, Colton Couser, and Joey Ortiz.

So yeah, that was notable. We correctly picked up on the fact that the Orioles sure have promoted a whole lot of prospects, highly rated prospects. The Orioles sure have promoted a whole lot of prospects, highly rated prospects. So I was wondering, do they have a chance to stand alone at the top of the list? Can they get one more top 100 guy before the end of this season, right, and have eight then over the course of two seasons, which would be quite impressive. And I think it's still in play. Potentially, it could happen. Now, I was a little disappointed just for the purposes of this stop blast to see that Heston Kerstad was not ranked in the top 100 by Baseball America this spring. He was prior to the 2021 season. MLB.com had him in the top 100 this spring,

but Baseball America did not have him in the preseason top 100 this year. So Kirstad would not do it. So we have two more chances, I think, two contenders, because the Orioles had a whole lot of prospects on the top 100 this spring. There's still a chance that Connor Norby could make his debut, right? He was 93rd on the Baseball America top 100 this year. I'm using Baseball America just because it goes back the furthest. We can go all the way back to 1990 and have a consistent ranking. He was 93rd, and he's got a shot, right? Really crowded infield in Baltimore, but he's gotten 800 OPS in AAA in Norfolk. So maybe, maybe he gets the call at some point before the end of the season. Cup of coffee? I don't know. Don't know that there's a need for him, but he's playing his way up there. I guess he could also get traded potentially.

Unfortunately, Kobe Mayo, who also has a chance to get called up, he tore up double A. He's in triple A now. He wasn't on the B.A. list either. He appeared on some top 100s, but not that one. And then longer shot, Jackson Holiday, who is just he's tearing up every level he's been at. I mean, he started the season in A ball, right? And then he moved up to high A and now he's in double A and he's torn it up. I mean, I guess he has lost a little with each promotion. He had like almost a 1200 OPS in A ball and then a 940 in high A.

And now he's got a 914 OPS in his first nine games in double A. Again, he's 19 years old. He's like five years younger than the average double A player, and he does not seem to be suffering any growing pains whatsoever. So obviously, whether he's ready or not, we're probably not going to see Jackson Holiday this season, right? Probably not. No. He would be shocked. He might merit a call-up if not for service time considerations and the fact that the Orioles have like two infields worth of top prospects now. But Connor Norby, I think, is our hope now if we want to have the Orioles surpass all these other teams. And if we go by score again, instead of just the raw number of prospects, then the leaders are the 2014 to 2015 Cubs.

Their seven guys total 500 would be their score. And then you have the 95 to 96 Mets at 472 and the 2010 to 2011 royals right i don't know if we mentioned the royals last time but they had one of the most stacked systems certainly of of our time as baseball professionals right so yeah they get on the list here too and then the mid 90s dodgers when they had rookies of the year every year right darren dryfordifurt and Chan Ho Park and Todd Hollinsworth and others there on there. 2011 to 2012 Rangers, 2008 to 2009 Orioles. Anyway, I'll link to the list, but the 2022 to 2023 Orioles, they show up ninth if you go by score. So the Reds, at least as of now, are not particularly close on either of these lists.

But, you know, Eli De La Cruz should count for more points and more prospects maybe because he's made that kind of impact. But, yeah, the Orioles are within range of doing something sort of historic here. So pull in for you, Connor, for you to get the call at some point. And then I will leave everyone with this one, I guess. Now, we are not immaculate grid people. We're not. And not like in a pointed way, just in a we're not kind of way. Yeah, I get it.

I see the appeal. Like, I'm not a trivia person in general. I get it. I see the appeal. Like I'm not a trivia person in general. And I guess this is it's kind of a mix between trivia and more of like a word game. Look, I just haven't gotten into any of the wordle inspired daily. Like, here's my game that I play. Like, I just I don't do trivia very much. I don't do word games. I don't know why. It's weird. I play video games all the time. I am a writer and a reader. I like words, but I just I don't do the word games and I don't do trivia so much, I guess, because I find trivia frustrating because it's like either I know it or not. Right. And like if I don't know it, I can't suddenly know it. And if I don't know it, then I feel bad about not knowing it. I feel ignorant that I didn't know it, but I can't do anything about it at that point. It's not like I can learn it as I play the game. that like that knowledge might be buried somewhere in your head. Like you remember guys, but you have to sort of sift through all the guys you remember to remember where they played and did they play for those two teams and did that guy win an award, right? I mean, look, this has taken the baseball internet world by storm. And of course, it's been acquired by baseball reference and everyone's playing it constantly. And I feel a little left out. I like remembering guys in some circumstances. But look,

I just haven't gotten hooked and I understand the appeal. And maybe it's a self-protective thing. It's like I'm worried about getting hooked on too many daily games because then it'll just turn into a chore and I will be playing a dozen daily games every day. But some people take Immaculate Grid seriously, obviously. And if you do, you may or may not want to know what I'm about to say because you might not want spoilers. I mean, I guess part of the fun is figuring it out, right? But I'm going to read something that Chris Hannell sent me. So Chris Hannell, he started our Patreon Discord group. He's a Patreon supporter. He's been on the show and keeps a lot of data about the show. And he been how bad I am at it. I'm a quiz bowl nerd, and so I started doing what comes naturally, cramming on some of the most valuable names to know when looking for players on a large number of teams like Edwin Jackson, Matt Stairs, and Rich

Hill. But then this quickly morphed into a mathematical quandary. What is the shortest list of players you could have where every two-team combination would be accounted for, what is otherwise known as a cover set. I set up a Google Sheet and went to work, manually adding different players to the set, and eventually landed on a list of 22 players. Now, if you don't want to know the valuable names of players who played on a lot of teams and would be useful for this sort of thing for Immaculate Critic. I guess you could skip ahead 30 seconds. I'm just going to read this list of names that Chris came up with. Okay. Edwin Jackson, Octavio Dottel. These are not surprising, right?

These are famously well-traveled players for the most part. Mike Morgan, Matt Stairs, Rich Hill, Podcast Legend, Ron Vallone, Royce Clayton, LaTroy Hawkins, Kenny Lofton, Miguel Batista, Paul Bacco, Rick White, Tyler Clippard, Bartolo Colon, Jose Guillen, Fernando Rodney, Carl Everett, Jeff Francor, there's that name again, Terry Mulholland, Dan Schatzeter, Russell Brannion, and Asdrubal Cabrera. Now, he says, most of this was just looking at the players who played on the most teams, adding them to the list, and then trying to find players who best covered whatever big gaps were left.

I am in the process of setting up a proper player database and algorithm to try to optimize the solution. But this is in that category of mathematical questions similar to the traveling salesman problem, where it could be near impossible to know what the actual best answer is, even leaving a computer running an infinite amount of time. It's like running, you know, deep thought in Hitchhiker's Guide, and it gives you the answer to the meaning of life and the universe, but everyone's dead and the heat death of the universe has happened, but you finally have your optimal group of players in Immaculate Grid. It's just no one's around to play anymore. So Chris says, I'm sharing this problem to the Effectively Wild community, who will likely

have some strong ideas on how to tackle the problem and improve on this set. I can say that already fellow Effectively Wild listener and former podcast guest Michael Mountain has found a solution of 19, 19 players. However, both of us agree that a smaller cover set exists. He says there's also a more complex bonus question. What's the smallest number of players where you could have a three by three grid of only teams, no stats, awards, et cetera, and you would be guaranteed to cover all nine squares, accounting for the fact that each player can only be used once in the solution. This is a much harder question to tackle, but hey, if there's any group of nerds out

there capable of conquering it, it's this one. And I would agree with that. Chris says the call to action has been given. Calculators out to everyone. And Chris mentions that Michael Mountain's 19-player list, this is the number to beat, some repeat names here, Edwin Jackson, Rich Hill, Mike Morgan, Matt Stairs, Paul Bacco, Latroy Hawkins, Julian Tavares, Rick White, Ken Brett, Tyler Clippard, Jose Guillen, Kevin Jarvis, Cameron Maben, Jamie Wright, Levon Hernandez,

Dave Martinez, Darren Oliver, Dan Schatzeter, and Tim Worrell. And I will link to the Google sheet for anyone who's interested in there and Michael and Chris are in the patreon discord group there's a stat blast channel if you want to get nerdy about immaculate grid and try to find the ultimate optimal solution and solve the traveling salesman problem here then there will be some kindred spirits there waiting for you but I don't know whether people want immaculate Grig to be solved like that, right? Because maybe that just spoils the fun.

If you know which players to try all the time and you don't really have to rack your brain, you don't have to test yourself, then what's the point? You don't want it to be solved, right? You want it to be a fun challenge every time. I would imagine. Again, I say as a non-immaculate gridsman. I would think that you struggle to feel accomplishment if it's easier, right? Like the whole idea is that you, and this is going to sound like I'm being more judgmental

of the instinct than I am because it's one I share even though I'm not really a big trivia person either. Sometimes it feels really good to be right and then it feels even better to tell other people about it. You have to pick and choose your spots though because if you know look I'm not here to make anyone feel bad but some people are like really into their Immaculate Grid results and they post them a lot and I'm like we get it you you play Immaculate Grit. I mean, that's a whole separate, you know, the etiquette of sharing your results, right? I mean, I am kind of in the camp of, I don't necessarily need to see that, but you know, other people who play probably do enjoy seeing it. So I get it. Yes. All right. We're just, we're not in this particular club. Ben, you know what I realized I forgot to tell you? What? When I first showed up to the media area at the draft,

you know, who was hanging out and sitting very close to me, and I was busy. And so then when I looked up and had thought about going over and introducing myself, he had already moved on. You know who it was? Morgan! Oh, really? Morgan Sword.

And then I was like, I feel very confident, not certain, but confident, that he doesn't listen to Effectively Wild. But then I was like, what if he does? What if he does? And he's heard me yelling his name in a chiding sort of way. And then I was a little relieved that he had had to go do something else. Yes.

For those who are not in the know, there is an MLB executive, a prominent one, named Morgan Sward. What a name. It's a fun name. He's one of the people spearheading the rules changes. Yeah. All right. We will end with the future blast, which comes to us from 2037 and from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. 2037, the top story, Rick says, was the start of 17-year-old DeMarcus Olivier, his spectacular, if short-lived, Major League career.

So I believe he was introduced last time. One of the youngest players ever to play in the Major Leagues, Olivier had been invited to the big club spring training in Scottsdale, where his foot-lift batting stance and the odd quirk of hitting from the left but throwing as a right-hander immediately brought to mind another giant who'd made the Major Leagues as a 17-year-old, Mel Ott. At Scottsdale, Olivier was so impressive defensively at third base and elsewhere in the infield that he made the roster as a utility player and designated hitter,

starting the season with a remarkable April run of 12 homers and a.395 batting average. By the time of the All-Star game, he was hitting.387 with 38 home runs, and that, together with his social media popularity, had him starting at third base, where he showed off his arm on several tough plays and, more impressively, had three home runs on the day to lead the National League to an 8-4 win over the American League. The Giants' deep postseason run threatened to interrupt Olivier's classwork at Stanford, where he was three full semesters ahead of schedule, but online classes kept him on track and he did his lab work in neurobiology

and neuroscience when the Giants were in town. Tragedy awaited down the line for the brilliant Olivier, of course. Oh, no. But that doesn't dim the brilliant starburst of that first magnificent season, where he helped the Giants make it to the National League Championship Series before they were humbled by the Dodgers, led by Ronald Acuna Jr.'s hitting, and the Dodgers' splendid bullpen, led by closer Roberto Usuna, who'd lost almost two years to a second Tommy John surgery before signing with the Dodgers, and at age 37, led the big leagues

with a 97% save rate and an ERA of.95. He struck out young Olivier to end the Giants' season. What a downer of an ending to this future blast. So many different ways. So many ways. Yeah. It sounds like it's going to get worse for young Mr. Olivier. I'm afraid to record episode 2038 and find out what happens next. But I guess that is an appropriate place to end because we began with death and we end there as well. It's the circle of life, or maybe it's

the circle of death. Take care of all your fingers. All right, a couple of follow-ups. First, speaking of NPB stars, we talked about Roki Sasaki the other day and the incredible season that he's having. Unfortunately, it looks like that season may be over. He's torn and oblique. He's going to be out at least a couple months. So if that's it, the final 2023 stat line for him in MPB, 85 innings pitched, 1.48 ERA, 0.72 FIP, 0.71 WIP, 130 strikeouts against only 15 walks, 5.1 WAR, just a ridiculous season. Another player no one should have any concerns about performing in MLB. In other international injury news, Lee Jung-hoo, the reigning KBO MVP, who is probably coming to MLB next season, he also got hurt ankle injury,

which could affect his free agency. So that's a bummer. Another bummer, Drew Maggi, the inspirational subject of a story earlier this season when he made his major league debut at age 33 after 13 seasons in the minors. He's 34 now, and unfortunately, the Pirates have reportedly released him. Not a shocker. It wasn't as if anyone thought he was going to stay for a really long time, but that's why it was important that he get the call and get his shot to get into a game and get a hit because his time was limited.

So he had his moment in the sun, if that is it for him. Also made an offhand comment in the last episode joking about how we would have gotten voice actors for our Otani Trade Proposals podcast if not for the strike. And then we said something about podcasters not being unionized. Heard from a listener, Henry, who said, I'm smiling as I write this because it's silly, but some podcasts are indeed produced and recorded under the auspices of SAG-AFTRA contracts and many podcast hosts are union members. However, we're not striking against the podcast contract. So even if you did do a SAG-AFTRA podcast, you wouldn't be crossing picket lines,

though we appreciate the solidarity. We even heard from another longtime listener, Adam, who works at SAG-AFTRA and his team covers podcasts. Good luck to you all. Finally, we talked about attendance being up and whether it was because of the pitch clock. A listener asked if TV ratings are up. And yes, seemingly, according to a Sportico piece from late June, according to Nielsen data compiled from opening day through June 27th, MLB's national broadcast and cable windows across Fox, ESPN, Fox Sports One, and TBS are averaging 923,689 viewers per game for a net gain of nearly 200,000 fans per outing. Good to know. Ian, Patreon supporter, said, regarding the bump in attendance,

especially the weekday bump, I just wanted to add the single biggest difference maker for me and a lot of the folks that I attend games with, going to a ball game on a work night is a lot less daunting of a proposition when work is one door down from my pillow. I know not everyone works from home and not all the time if they do,

but I think it's a not insignificant factor to add to your discussion. Good point. And lastly, Eric wrote in to say, I'm surprised that the new balance schedule hasn't come up in your discussions of the uptick in attendance. I almost always buy tickets based on who the opposition is. It would make sense to me that, for example, replacing the relentless parade of Royals visits to Target Field, A's visits to T-Mobile, and Rock's visits to Chase with novel opposition would bring more people out to ballparks.

Similarly, the novelty of seeing the Yankees in Colorado and Otani in Detroit ought to be a greater draw than seeing either as opposition so many times in the same divisional cities. Though I know Ben would happily take Otani as local opposition every day of the week. Or even better, not opposition. Or even better, not opposition. Park once every six years under the old schedule. That series will now be played in D.C. every other year. If this were the only series of interest to me, I would be buying three times more tickets under the new schedule. Possible ways to quantify this? Compare change in teams' draws as visiting team, 2023 versus average of the unbalanced schedule years. Compare draw for all divisional games, unbalanced years versus interleague games in 2023. Compare prior years, last place teams draws as visiting team unbalanced years versus 2023. I doubt this attendance variable can be untangled from the

rule changes and the return of a more normal post-COVID, post-work stoppage season, but seems like it would be a big factor. And hopefully folks who come out for the new opposition like the pace of play and come out for more games in the future. Thank you, Eric in Los Angeles. That is an excellent point. And we will make a note to investigate it at some point, possibly when the 2023 RetroShade data comes out and it's easier for frequent StatBlast consultant, Ryan Nelson, to crunch these numbers on visiting attendants for this season.

I like the more balanced schedule and I like greater variety in opponents. I also like it when people support Effectively Wild on Patreon. By going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. And if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. Everyone else can contact us via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. Send us your questions and comments. You can 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. I am not going to call it X at EWPod. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Shane McKeon is on vacation, so filling in for him and handling the editing and producing duties today. Zachary Goldberg making his Effectively Wild debut. Probably a weird one to start with. But that will do it. We will be back with another episode a little later this week.

Talk to you then. La place, le beef boy, c'est chouette Les avis pétantes Et super, une fête Je pense que c'est Effectivement cool Je pense que c'est Effectivement wild Effectivement sauvage Effectivement sauvage