Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2038: The Angels Are Sho-ing for It. What Will They Have to Sho for It?

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about watching Shohei Ohtani play while they podcast, the Angels’ decision not to trade Ohtani and subsequent trade for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López, whether the Cubs should buy or sell, the Guardians’ and Dodgers’ perplexing Amed Rosario-for-Noah Syndergaard swap, the Brewers acquiring Carlos Santana, and Rob Manfred’s extension. […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2038 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. This episode will be a rare test of my multitasking capacity because we're recording on Thursday afternoon while Shohei Otani is on the mound. So can I record a podcast while watching Shohei Otani? That is the question.

At least you know that you don't have to be on hug watch while he's starting because we have had a resolution, Ben. We've peered into the void and Perry Manassian has been like, no, no, come back. I'm going to pull you back from the void. Is that an accurate way of describing it? Sure. Either Manassian, Moreno, who knows? Someone. But there might still be hugs of some sort, but not a parting of the ways style hug.

Because, yes, Shohei Otani will be continuing to pitch and hit for the Angels, at least for the rest of this season. So this will help with my multitasking here because we got to talk about Shohei Otani anyway. So my brain will be occupied by him as it often is, but even more than it would be, I guess. So I was also worried. He's faced the minimum through six innings as we speak. He has allowed a couple of base runners, but has had them both doubled off. I was worried if there was a perfect game going or a no-hitter going.

I was wondering whether talking about that on a podcast would anger people who are still superstitious about that sort of thing, talking about in-progress perfect games and no-hitters, which is obviously silly, but I wonder whether even they would object to that on superstitious grounds if we were to talk about it on a podcast that won't be heard until the game is over. Does that count as jinxing it?

I don't know. Just saying it aloud with no one except you hearing that. Would that count? I mean, it's hard for me to opine on these things because it's so fundamentally silly. I mean, like people get to think silly stuff. And this is like low stakes, silly stuff of all the superstitions one could hold as a person. Who cares about this one? But I would just say, like, go back, you superstitious person, you and rewatch like Felix's perfect game.

Dave Sims starts talking about it being perfecto in like the third inning. And it's just like, perfect game. No base runners, no base runners at all. And then you know what he did? He still threw a perfect game. So I think we could just, it's fine. We could, or you could say, yeah, sure.

He did it that day, but look how rare perfect games are. Imagine if no one ever jinxed them, how many there would be. There'd be so many more. Anyway, he's not perfect today. I mean, he's perfect in my mind, but in terms of pitching a perfect game, he's not doing that. However, I can see why the Angels wanted to hang on to this guy. He's pretty good at baseball. So it was reported on Wednesday afternoon by Tom Perducarducci of sports illustrated that the angels had made a decision and that their decision was that they were not going to be trading shohio tani which was not in itself a surprise i think we all understood that to be the most likely outcome

it was maybe a semi surprise to me that they came to that decision as early as they did before the last minute because all the previous reporting was up they're going to wait till the last second to make this call and they made the call several days before they had to and not only that but once they made that decision they acted quite quickly oh yeah make a second decision so verducci wrote in his article general manager perry manassian will focus on adding a starting pitcher and a reliever before the deadline. Well, he did it before the end of the day because the Angels said, not only are we not sellers, we are buyers. We are all in.

We are going to go get Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez from the White Sox. So the magnificent Angels, they're just going for it. I mean, we can talk about whether this makes sense, but it's certainly tremendous content, I think, that everyone's talking about. Will they trade Otani? They say, nope, we are doubling down. We are in it. We are going for it.

And I get it. I also understand if you think that this is the wrong decision, but I totally understand the reasoning here. Yeah. I mean, like, look, am I glad that they did it prior to us running a 5,000 word trade hypothetical? I mean, look, Ben, that's for other people to decide. Yep. You ran it anyway. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, we'll do it live. Why not? I did go. No, no. And then cooler heads prevailed. And I was like, I'm just running out anyway. Yeah. Because you know what we're in favor of in these parts? Fun. We like fun, Ben. You know, you know, it's not fun. Wasting work. You know, it is fun. Treat hypotheticals. They're fun. Yeah. Right. Are they silly? Yeah. I i mean in some ways it makes you contemplate like how silly are they just on their face because

were any of those likely to be real offers i mean clearly not because i think some of those offers were pretty good and i think that if the angels had gotten say you know the offer that jay jaffe put forth on behalf of the dodgers or that eric long and i'm gonna put forth on behalf of the Dodgers or that Eric Longhanging had put forth on behalf of the Rangers, that Perry would have gone to Artie and said, look, we got to do this. This is a move we got to do. And I don't know what Artie would have said. Who knows? It could have ended like our Shohei Otani Trade Hypotheticals podcast.

Not to spoil the ending. I'm glad we did that. And we had fun and our listeners seemed to have fun. And the ending was not out of line with what ended up happening. Right. So we can talk about why you think the Angels made this decision. We should also say what the return for the White Sox was. They got the Angels' top prospect, or at least top prospect in the minors, Edgar Caro, who is a 20-year-old switch hitting catcher in double A, more of

an offense first guy than a glove guy, but he's holding his own in double A despite being young for the league, was in the Futures game. He's maybe a mid top 100 guy. And the Angels also gave up their 2021 second round draft pick, Probably the best pitcher they got in that draft. Kai Busch, who's also in AA and has been injured and ineffective this season. He's not a great prospect. It seems like the consensus is maybe back of the rotation type. But that is a fair amount to give up, obviously, for two players who are impending free agents julito and lopez under

team control only for the rest of this season so i wonder whether and it's probably a combination of these things but is it just that well it was always going to be tough to pry otani away from the angels because he's shohei otani and he's a star and he makes the Angels relevant and he earns them a lot of extra money and ticket sales and sponsorships. And if you are the GM or the owner who trades Shohei Otani, then you're kind of putting your neck on the line a little bit there. And it's just, I think, a service to your fans to continue to provide them with Shohei Otani in the uniform of the team that they watch and root for. Right. I mean, we talk so much about the playoffs and yes, it is embarrassing and disappointing

and sort of disgraceful that the Angels have not made the playoffs with Otani and Trout. And yet, as people who listen to this podcast know, I have probably watched more Angels baseball over the past few years than I have watched any other one team, even much better teams that made the playoffs because I've gotten so much enjoyment out of Sho you have this once in a century type player. I mean, the goal is to provide entertainment, right? And also to distract you from the slog to rigor mortis. And whether you do that by having a singular player who is the best in the sport and does it in a unique way, or you do it by actually putting a good team out there. Ideally, you would do both and you'd think it wouldn't be impossible to do both. But I'm just saying you can provide entertainment and distraction in more than one way. You know, if the Angels had not had Otani all this time, but they had a playoff team or two in

there where they, let's say they've made it to the ALDS or something and then they lost. I mean, I guess that would look more respectable for them, but would it have provided more memories, more entertainment, more excitement? I don't know. I would dispute that. So maybe that's why they hung on to him for all those reasons that it always made sense to hang on to them. Maybe it's because they've been playing pretty good baseball lately. They have done well coming out of the break and they have improved their position. And as we speak, they're winning five nothing in the first game of a doubleheader and it's looking like they will tack on another W here. And it could also be because they didn't get great offers, right? Maybe they didn't get offers that would be enough to justify trading it. Maybe they didn't get the kind of offers that fake Perry Mazzini and got in our hypothetical print and podcast pieces right so it could be that because we've talked about how teams are reluctant to give up blue chippers for rentals these days now caros about as good a prospect as you're gonna get at

the deadline now for a rental but it was yeah for two rentals really which is why it happened that way probably so maybe they, hey, you need to blow us out of the water. This needs to be an incredible return if we're going to justify trading Otani. And perhaps the offers were not there. So I don't know what it was. It was maybe a combination of all of those things. But the most likely outcome has occurred. I liked the way that Perry talked about it with the media. And here he's referring to the decision not to trade Otani. But he said, this is a special player having a unique season with a team that has a chance to win. To me, that's grounds for trying to improve the club. Whether it works out or it doesn't, I can go to bed at night and say, you know what, we did this for the right reasons. We're giving ourselves a chance and I'm excited to see how we play.

We did this for the right reasons. We're giving ourselves a chance, and I'm excited to see how we play. And it's like, yeah. Is Cuero for those two guys as a rental rich? I mean, Ben, you could say that. You could say it. Is the prospect return that they could have gotten for Otani, would it have been richer than whatever they will be able to do with a compensatory pick, assuming that he assigns elsewhere?

Wouldn't it be so funny if he accepted a qualifying offer then just as an aside like obviously it's not gonna happen like we would have to be like are you okay have you has a family member been taken hostage and something weird happening right we'd have to worry about him but wouldn't it be so funny if he's like yeah i just kind of want to see what the offers so i don't i don't you know i like it here now i'm just gonna that would be so funny anyway that's not going to happen. But would they have been able to do a little better than what they'll be able to do with a comp pick? I mean, probably.

But I'm with you. I think it's okay to look at the different rewards of baseball and say that sometimes, even if the line between where you are and the postseason isn't totally direct and it might not end up working, I think it's fine to say we're going to prioritize the chase of that and we're going to try to deliver to this fan base a playoff experience. And even if they don't, they're going to get, as you kind of said, like so much better baseball between now and the end of the season having made this decision. And when you look at what the Angels had to offer,

like, okay, Logan Ohapi is hurt still. He might come back before the end of the season. I think that he's tracking that way. But like of all the positions for them to kind of trade from, not a terrible one, right? They have Ohapi, and he's great when he's healthy. And so assuming he comes back and is in the form he was, maybe they're like, this is fine.

So I think I like it. I get why from a pure beep-boop-bop, dollars and more perspective, maybe it wasn't completely the right call, especially when you couple it with a GLU trade, but I think it's good. Yeah, I mean, you have to give the Angels credit for trying. Now you can then subtract credit for failing mostly, but they've been trying.

They've recognized, okay, this is potentially our last year with Trout and Otani together, or at least it's our last chance to persuade Otani to stay. And so we're going to go for it. And they were aggressive over the offseason, and we largely liked the moves that they made. And some have worked out. Some have not worked out as well.

But they tried to plug those holes. They tried to correct the depth problems that have plagued them for years. holes they tried to correct the depth problems that have plagued them for years and here they are with the third most games and days lost to injury this season after the yankees and the dodgers so again they have not succeeded in keeping their players healthy but they're at least a little bit better positioned to weather those injuries. They have 17 players on the injured list right now. That's so many. That is the most in the majors, unsurprisingly. But they haven't said, oh, well, we have a whole lot of injuries. There's nothing we can do. They have, again, tried not to live with the replacement level or sub-replacement level performance that you often

get stuck with when you do have a bunch of guys go down like that. I mean, they've tried. They've been aggressive. They've promoted prospects. They brought up Zach Netto pretty early and he's held his own and they have promoted pitchers they drafted last year. Got Mike Moustakas. Yeah, got Moustakas. Eduardo Escobar. They're trying. It very well may not work, but they are at least trying. And now they've gotten and gotten one of the best starting pitchers available on the market, Lucas Giolito, who is not what he was a couple of years ago, but is still a solid mid-rotation guy, let's say. Let's say and a durable pitcher is exactly the type of durable pitcher the Angels could have used a lot over the last several seasons. But, hey, they have him now. They were kind of hoping maybe Tyler Anderson would be that guy for them. But he has not repeated his Dodgers performance this season. And their bullpen has been bad.

Their bullpen has been one of the worst in baseball. And so they go get Lopez, who's probably one of the better relievers available at the deadline as well. Maybe better stuff than results so far this season, but he's been good lately. He's been good in previous seasons. He's immediately one of the few best relievers the Angels have.

So yeah, they're trying. And will the fact that they're trying sway Otani? Probably not. The most likely outcome here is that the Angels still miss the playoffs and Otani still leaves, right? I think that is more likely than them making the playoffs and Otani leaving, than not making the playoffs and Otani staying, than making the playoffs and Otani decides to stay. and Otani staying, them making the playoffs, and Otani decides to stay.

But whatever remote chance they have to keep him, you never know, right? We don't really know exactly why he picked the Angels in the first place. We don't exactly know what his priorities are and where he wants to go. We know he wants to win. That seems to be a top priority for him. And look, even if the Angels snuck into the playoffs and pulled a 2022 Phillies here and had a deep run, I mean, even if the Angels miraculously won the World Series this season, if Otani were kind of coldly evaluating,

where will I win the most over the next decade or however long he signs for, it probably still wouldn't be the Angels because even if they won the World Series this season, they wouldn't go into next season as a favorite in all likelihood. So they're never going to be the best place for him if all he wants to do is win. But who knows? I mean, he's used to it. He's comfortable there. Maybe he's grateful to them for giving him the long leash that he's had and giving him every opportunity to excel as a two-way player. And maybe it will curry a little bit

of favor with him that they are really going for it and pulling out all the stops this season. Again, probably not. But if there's any chance, then maybe they have to take it because they're sort of screwed regardless if he leaves. You know, it's like, yeah, I guess it'd be nice to keep Caro around and there's no problem with having two good young catchers. A lot of teams, I mean, you know, they'll platoon catchers. They'll give guys days off. It's good to have multiple good catchers just for redundancy's sake and because they could complement each other, especially if one's a switch hitter.

But if they kept Caro and Bush and then they traded Otani and got a haul for him, I guess putting those things together, they'd be in a significantly better position long term than they will be without Caro and Bush and without any prospects except a comp pick if Otani leaves. But they were ranked 29th, their farm system, before this trade by FanCrafts. Now they're 30th. But the difference between 29 and 30, they're bad either way. And they're sort of screwed long term either way if Otani is not there because they haven't been able to win with Trout and Otani. The farm system still stinks.

They're on a run. Yeah. And if Otani is gone and Trout and everyone else is getting older, they're not going to be in a better position than they've been lately. So you could say either way, it's going to be bleak for who knows how long to come. And thus might as well seize the opportunity that they have now, however slim it is, because it's only going to get worse from here, even if you hang on to a

couple prospects or even acquire a couple prospects. That just might not be enough to make the difference between contending and non-contending. And so they might not contend again for years to come. They haven't contended for years with Otani. So, yeah, from that perspective, it's sort of a desperate way to look at it. But they are in sort of a desperate situation. Angel fans are like, we started being really excited because we were keeping Otani. And now we're at this place. How did we get here?

The pot has taken a turn. But I think you're right. Like organizationally, this is arguably the last hurrah that they're going to have for a while. Which is sad because it's the first hurrah that they've had in a while, too. If this is even a hurrah, it's like hurrah. sound like such an eeyore but i think it's true i mean like the rebuild that they're going to have to embark on after this little run is going to be a long-term one in all likelihood and there are so many ways in which they have work to do right like there's the part of it that is just the players that they have and are likely to have on the big league roster going forward. There's like a very scant, thin farm system that they have to contend with. And then there's like all of the infrastructure around that that seems like it needs improvement, right? Like, it doesn't seem like they are necessarily keeping pace with the rest of the league when it comes to

player development, when it comes to scouting, when it comes to their, you know, sort of broader ops group. So I think that there's a lot that needs to be done here. You know, in some ways, like if you're an Angels fan, this is the most perhaps obvious statement I could make, but like you really do wish that Moreno had sold, right? Because then you'd have a new group coming in. that Moreno had sold, right? Because then you'd have a new group coming in. You presumably would have some cleaning of house and you might end up on the better end of it organizationally as a result of that. That didn't happen. So now you get to sit through a long rebuild. And if you in the front office know that that's the reality, like, I don't know, the least you can do is try to give your fans like one more go and then kind of see where you end up.

But I just don't think that there's a lot here for them to move and get better in the immediate term. So I hope they make the postseason because it's going to take a while, I think, after that. Yeah. And I think the worst outcome would have been as someone who just basically roots for Otani and roots to see more Otani. It's not so much that I root for the Angels. It's that I root for Otani and to some extent Trout. And so I want to see them as much as possible. If they were to change teams, then I would root for them on those other teams and I would have next to no attachment to the Angels anymore. But for me, I would have either liked to see Otani go somewhere where he would have been with a winner or for the Angels to do what they're doing here, keep him and go for it as much as they can. I think if they had kept him and not done anything else, then that maybe would have been the worst outcome because it would have been the worst outcome

because it would have been the lowest percentage chance that he would actually be playing beyond October 1st. I mean, as it is, they are four games out of the third wildcard spot, four games behind the Blue Jays, about to be three and a half because it looks like they're going to win the first game of this doubleheader. They are a game behind the Yankees, who are not good, right? No. They're about to get Aaron Judge back, but that won't cure all their ills.

Yeah. And then there are a couple games behind the Red Sox, who have been playing very well, but they're not a great team either, right? I mean, they have to leapfrog three teams, which is tough. And the Angels are not a great team either. Now, Trout should hopefully would be back in mid-August or so is the latest. I saw a headline that he picked up a bat. Mike Trout picked up a bat.

I saw that, too. Just, you know, which hand did he use? Maybe he used the injured hand to pick up the bat. It sounds like a modest bit of progress, but I guess that was a milestone. Anyway. It would be funny if he was like, I've picked up a lot of stuff. You know, like I was cleaning the house today. I had to pick up some stuff.

Yeah, sure. So their playoff odds are still sub 20%, even with Giolito and Lopez in the fold. And will they make subsequent moves they were linked to jamer candelario the nationals there might be even more that the angels could do it's just like do we have any prospects left you know everything must go like fire pushing all our chips such as they are in to try to win over the next couple months and if not then we're gonna be bust anyway so what the hell so i don't know it probably won't work but at least there's the potential for some excitement down the stretch here i think that you should prepare yourself if you're an

angels fan for a letdown but you don't have to do it right now. And that's nice because there was the possibility that you were going to have to do that in the next couple of days. So at least here we are. Yeah. So pivoting a bit from the angels, I was thinking a lot of people have considered the Cubs a likely seller and will they deal Bellinger and Stroman and whoever else. seller? And will they deal Bellinger and Stroman and whoever else? But now that the Angels have made this decision, now the Cubs are not in an identical position. They don't have Shohei Otani on an expiring contract, but the Cubs are in no worse position than the Angels are in terms of contending the season. And in fact, they might be better off. Their playoff odds are just a tiny bit higher than the Angels. And in terms of like games out of the race and everything, it's pretty similar. Like the Cubs are four and a half out of the wildcard race. And also the Central, they're not much further. I mean, they're less far out than the Angels are in the West. The Cubs in the Central are six out, and they seem to be kind of underlying a better team than the teams ahead of

them. And we've talked about that before this season, but the Cubs have outscored their opponents by 48 runs this season. The Brewers and the Reds have both been outscored by their opponents. So even though the Cubs are 50 and 51, as we speak, they do kind of have the bones of a better team. They're kind of like middle of the pack pitching, middle of the pack offense, and quite a good defense rebuilt with Bellinger and Swanson. So that model has kind of worked. And so not that they necessarily have to make their buy-sell decision based on what the Angels did, because emulating the Angels is not necessarily the way that you want to go just in general. But there are reasons for them to stay in this thing too, right?

I mean, they have a losing record in one-run games. They just haven't capitalized on all their opportunities. But they might be a better team than the teams ahead of them, at least. I guess you could say, well, the Reds have gotten better as the season has gone on. That is true. But still, just in terms of the deserved, expected performance. So it could be that the Cubs hang on to or even decide to make more of an Angels move. Who knows?

on to or even decide to make more of an Angels move. Who knows? What odds would you have given that Cody Bellinger like coveted trade target would be a thing we'd be talking about when the season started? Yeah. How interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the argument for them to hold on to their good players and try to make a run at it isn't anything the Angels do. It's fact that they're in the central. So I think you got to look at that division as winnable until the day that it's actually lost. And are they as well positioned as some other teams to go out and get the guys that they need? I mean, maybe not, but I don't know.

You just put your fan base through a tear down and rebuild. And we talked about how it reads differently when you term limit it, when you say this is a step back. This is a, what are the other things that people say? This is a, you know. That was the depoto, right? The step back. It's the mini rebuild. It's, I'm not getting bangs. It's just a haircut, you know, less dramatic than bangs, certainly. But I think that, you know, if you're in a winnable division, if you have a team that you look at and the metrics suggest like

is better than its record has been, you don't need to maybe go whole hog. But I think if you have an opportunity to add strategically, it's better than tearing down just to do it. Even if it's not Bangs, you know, because I don't think that the Brewers are particularly good. Sal Frey looks delightful debut aside.

And you're right that the Reds are better than they were. And they are in a position to get meaningfully better after the deadline if they want to, because they do have, you know, the prospect capital to make some moves here. But, you know, Andrew Abbott is just so good, Ben. Yeah. Have you been watching Andrew Abbott? Yeah. We weren't totally sure what we were going to get from Andrew Abbott because he was a tacky ball guy.

That sounds terrible. Came from a league with pre-tacked balls, you know? Yeah. But then he did well upon promotion. He's done great in the big leagues. So it's good for him, Andrew Abbott. But, you know, since he's in a position to get better if they want to, and that might kind of dictate the direction the Cubs go more than anything else

if they see the Reds like really adding. But it's so winnable. It's so winnable. It's not the Hale Central, but it's still imminently winnable. Hale Central is so bad, Ben. I know. Yeah. Although I mentioned all the teams that are ahead of the Angels. There are also a couple teams nipping at their heels.

So they have to worry about that as well. Right. I mean, the Guardians are close behind them. The Mariners are directly behind them as well. So, yeah. But look, I mean, these two teams are in somewhat similar positions where people thought maybe sellers, but maybe buyers or at least holders. And to this point, we haven't really seen any other impact trades. And some people speculated maybe the possibility

of an Otani trade was holding up the market, that everyone was hoarding their prospects on the off chance that they could use them to bring back Otani. In which case, I guess you could say the Angels, by being the first to know that they would not be trading Shohei Otani, maybe then they were able to move quickly to pick up Gilito and Lopez. But I think the only really interesting trade and somewhat perplexing trade that happened earlier on Wednesday was the Guardians-Dodgers swap. So talked about one L.A. team. Now let's talk about the other actually L.A. team.

So the Dodgers traded Noah Syndergaard to the Dodgers and they got back Ahmed Rosario and they also traded a little bit of cash a couple million to the Guardians too so this trade like a lot of the other trades we've seen so far has been of players that neither team wanted I mean they didn't want their own guy because each having a disappointing to disastrous slash catastrophic season. But you can understand why the Dodgers would have wanted Rosario or at least would have wanted him more than they wanted Sindergaard, who was not pitching for them anymore and seemed like he might not pitch again. But they've been struggling to find a shortstop all season.

Of course, once Gavin Lux got hurt, they have been patching and mixing and matching, and they tried multiple Miguel's, and neither one worked out all that well for them. Mookie Betts has been their best shortstop. Mookie Betts is their war leader at shortstop, I believe. I got to check to make sure that that's true. But he's played 14 games at shortstop, I believe. I got to check to make sure that that's true. But he's played 14 games at shortstop. And yes, he is the leader at shortstop in war for the Dodgers, doubling Chris Taylor's total. And then Miguel Rojas has been sub-replacement,

Luke Williams sub-replacement. So the only sad thing for me is that this might mean no more shortstop Mookie or not much more shortstop Mookie. And we should just celebrate the fact that he just stepped in at shortstop and was perfectly competent there. He was fine. Like, depending on the metric you look at, he was either average or a bit below. 98 innings at short. It's a tiny sample, but zero DRS in that time, average. He was negative 0.6 UZR, negative two outs above average. He was fine. He was a competent shortstop. Totally fine.

He hit so well at shortstop that if you extrapolate his 14 games there and his what like 52 plate appearances or something over a 600 plate appearance season he'd be a seven win shortstop and I don't doubt that he would be so that's awesome but he will probably return to the outfield mostly now and yeah they've been kind of lopsided righty lefty lineup wise. And so this and also reacquiring KK Hernandez, who has been bad this year as well. But everyone likes KK. Been a little bit better than bad in the outfield. Yeah.

But Rosario has been bad offensively below his usual standards and also has graded out very badly defensively. Yep. So he's been a little bit better of late, and I guess that they're hoping that that will continue and that he will just regress to the player he's been before and getting a couple right-handed bats, not big bats, but Rosario has hit lefties at least. So it gives them a little more depth. It probably makes them better. I guess the other question is really why did the Guardians want or accept Noah Sindergaard?

Now, they need pitching because they have a whole lot of injured starters right now. But will Noah Sindergaard help that situation? Maybe they wanted to take Rosario away from Terry Francona. Like we have better options. We will not let you play this guy because we will trade him away. It's not just that he's starting. He's been batting second every day. I know that's not a great lineup, but you can't put your 86 WRC plus guy in the second spot every day in 2023.

He has the third most played appearances on the team. And obviously they have lots of infield depth in the majors and also in the second spot every day in 2023. He has the third most played appearances on the team. And obviously they have lots of infield depth in the majors and also in the minors. So it's not like he wasn't expendable, but unless they think, well, we are a great pitching development organization, so are the Dodgers, but maybe we know how to fix those under guard. I don't know. I don't know why exactly they want him or think that he could help them. But who knows? Maybe. It would make more sense if he had been with a team that was really bad at helping pitchers. Right. Then you're like, OK, well, maybe there's still developmental meat on the bone, which feels weird to say about a guy in his 30s. But like maybe there's one neat trick that he hasn't tried,

and then he'll try it, and it'll be great. But I'm skeptical that that's true because, well, I don't know exactly how I would rank the Dodgers relative to the Guardians in terms of their pitching acumen, but they occupy an elite tier. Not by themselves. There are a couple other teams you'd throw in there, but that's the thing that they're really known to be good at. And so what is Cleveland going to say that Los Angeles hasn't already tried to say?

Who knows? Yeah, I don't know. Weird. It was a weird one. It was weird. When it got reported, I texted someone and I was like, wait, is that really all the return? And they were like, yes. And then we made questions out back and forth for a little bit over text.

So it was sort of implied. But here we are. That's the trade. Maybe what Los Angeles will try to do is put all their short stops on each other's shoulders stacked and then a trench coat. And then they'll be like, well, it's a mega short stop. You know, maybe that's the plan. It's like how many, if we put Hernandez and Rosario, if we put all these guys one on top of the other, will they be as tall as L.A. De La Cruz, for instance?

And we put him in short, you know, and see how it goes. I don't think that's the plan. That seems like you'd be less dexterous, you know. You'd be clumsy if you were on top of someone's shoulders. So bad plan, Meg. Not a good one. Well, the Dodgers have ranked 24th in shortstop war, so they will just be hoping to improve upon that, which should not be a tall order. Do you think that if they had their offseason to do over again, that they would do it differently? Because the whole point, we were told in the beginning,

you know, the scuttlebutt was that they wanted to reset their CBT thresholds so that they could, you know, not pay a repeater tax. And then they ended up blowing through the threshold anyway. And blowing through is probably strong, but they spent over the first threshold.

And so they didn't get to reset their tax, but they also didn't maybe get any of the players that they would have otherwise wanted. And I know that there was some ambiguity with like what of the power money they were going to be on the hook for. But, you know, one of the things that I have often thought and I think I've said on this podcast is that like they do a really good job of managing their payroll. They know when to dip down so that they can then spend big. And that seems to be the motivation for getting under the threshold. And so it was a surprising bit of mismanagement. And then knowing that they were going to go through the threshold, it's like, well, then

go get some guys, you know, that were better than Rojas. Yeah, they couldn't have known that they would lose Gavin Lux for the entire season, of course. And Turner has not given them a reason to regret not keeping him. But still, yes, possibly, if they had known that they were going to go over the threshold anyway. The Angels, by the way, I think went over the threshold with this trade. So they did that too. There was a trade since we've been speaking.

The Brewers, having heard our conversation just now are still unpublished conversation about the Cubs they have gone and gotten themselves a first baseman Carl Santana from the Pirates I know it's not super exciting but he's he's average ish and maybe that is exciting if you're the Brewers because they are dead last in war from first baseman this year. They are at negative 1.7 war from their first baseman collectively. And they've gone through a bunch of them and none of them has really worked out. So relative to that group, Carlos Santana, that seems like a major upgrade. They've tried eight first baseman over there. Some have gotten hurt. Some just have not performed. So yeah, you don't want to be in a situation where Carlos Santana is a huge upgrade, but I guess he kind of is for them. Maybe more

moves will be made now that some of these initial dominoes have fallen. And I guess the only other move of note, extremely unsurprising, but Rob Manfred, four more years, four more years, Rob Manfred, four more years, four more years, four more years. Rob Manfred extended his term as commissioner through 2028. So speaking of getting taller, could it get much more Manfred to no one's shock? I mean, look, he's riding high right now. Right. Just in terms of public perception of him, thanks to the success of the rules changes and some other changes. perception of him thanks to the success of the rules changes and some other changes. But obviously the owners will keep him because he's continued to make sure that they keep making money, which is his primary job. And so he will keep making a good deal of money from them.

It's unsurprising. I'm trying to decide if this is like too cute of a position. I maybe have come to the point where I really do view him as like a useful foil because he is so often not charismatic so you know is there a version of the commissioner's seat even with the mandate unchanged right because the mandate is to make the owner's money is there a different guy gal is there a different person that you could put there who would be more palatable? I mean, maybe, but I think in terms of the policy goals of the commissioner's office,

if we want to think about it in those terms, they'd probably be largely unchanged no matter who was in that seat. And as I've, I think, said before, like him being himself as opposed to like a commissioner and i don't know if the bloom is off the roast with silver or not because i don't really follow the nba closely enough to know like kind of what the the person on the streets like impression of of adam silver is but like there was a time where people were like this spindly

dude is amazing and we love him and he's so great. And then I think there have been a number of things where we have learned that like, you know, maybe he's not so great because he's still a commissioner and his purpose is to make the owner's money. So in that respect, I think that someone who does a bad job of hiding what their job is, is useful because it keeps people honest. You know, we fell so hard for like the puzzle box of like analytics in the front office. And even though I think our understanding of that stuff has evolved and changed in ways that is useful, like there's still a lot of like couch GMs out there.

Right. And we don't need to add couch commissioners to the mix like that's a nightmare. Yeah. Well, we're all couch commissioners to some extent, but as much as I- I am the commissioner of my own league. Yeah. It involves three cats. As much as I hate some of the stuff he's done, there are things I approve of.

Sure. I am on board with many aspects of his initiatives to modernize the game and change certain rules. Obviously, there are certain rules he has changed that I loathe, but I think I approve of most of them at least, and some of them were necessary, and he has pushed them forward over some objections and seems to be about as on top as he could be coping with the continued dissolution of the cable bundle windfall and trying to figure out what comes after that and hopefully do away with blackouts. I don't know how that will all shake out, but he said that that is one of his goals,

that we're in the middle of a difficult time when it comes to the media and he wants to get to the other side of it. And he also said, when I think about our goals, I'd like to work through the media crisis and I'd like the sport at the end to look more national than it looks right now. I think it's the key to our success. I think it's a big piece of promoting competitive balance. And honestly, it's the key to marketing your players. And I am in line with him there. I share that desire. You know, how long have we been talking now about, well, baseball is a regional sport and it's still popular if you look at it that way. And that is true. But I think it would be nice if it could be more prominent on a national level, if baseball

players were better known, if people who were fans of one team were more likely to pay attention to other teams. I think those would be good things. And whether that is helping to do away with blackouts or whether there are other things that he could do to achieve that goal, I think it is a worthy one. And whether that's because he just wants the best for baseball or he just wants to make owners the most money and thinks that's the way to do it. Sure. Either way, we could be aligned in both wanting

that thing. So if you said, hey, I'm fine if baseball is nationally a niche sport, as long as they keep playing, I already like it. So that's fine for me. But I would like baseball to thrive and prosper and endure. So I would like people to get into it even more than they have been. And so I think that's one of the things that get into it even more than they have been. And so I think that's one of the things that he's been criticized for and owners have been criticized for is not being mindful of that and trying to kind of milk the sport for all it's worth without an eye toward that long term feasibility. Right. And just like how can we extract the most money in the short term out of this without thinking about what that will do to our following long term. It sounds like he's at least paying lip service to being conscious of

that. And I approve of that goal. So if he's serious about that, then I support that. I agree. I mean, there are going to be times where we are aligned and the broadcast stuff seems like an obvious one, because even though even though I do worry about them using the RSN disillusion thing as an excuse to say, well, you can't possibly pay players. Right. They need there to be a sustainable, lucrative alternative because that is such a major source of revenue for the owners. And so I wonder how much they're even going to be able to really be tricky about it. Right. Because at the end of the day, like they want to be able to make their money. So I think there are going to be times where it's OK that we are aligned, even if we are like keeping a one eye open and looking at Rob being like, hey, we know you're tricky.

Yep. I'm pleased to report that Shohei Otani has just completed a game. He has just pitched his first complete game and his first shutout in MLB. So how about that? I guess clearly his spirits were buoyed by the addition of Giolito and Lopez. The certainty of knowing that he will not be traded

and the spirit reinforcements of knowing that the Angels are going for it. Obviously, that inspired him to pitch his first career shutout and complete game in MLB. I think clearly not just correlation, but causation. Who knows? Could be. Could be a coincidence. Either way, it reminds you why it's handy to have a guy like Shohei Otani around. Whether they make the playoffs or not, you get to watch him pitch games like that for your team. That's a nice perk. Because there's still baseball between now and then, you know?

Yes. That baseball matters too. It does. Those games are just as long, can provide a lot of entertainment for you. Not quite as high stakes, but those games count. They matter. They matter. Just a couple of follow-up emails here

to things we've discussed recently. Diego says, in a recent episode, you were discussing Jared Kelnick's injury and how dugout surfaces ought to be padded, which led me to the following Eureka moment. What if dugout punching bag, just a punching bag, a normal one hanging there at the end of the dugout, The players would love it. For the viewers, we'd get GIFs of players angrily punching away after being struck out. For the teams, their bag design would be new merch to sell. Now, would it help address the toxic, hyper-masculine culture among players? Absolutely not.

It would probably make things worse on that front. But hey, it could save us some broken bones. Is this anything? What say you about the dugout punching bag solution? I think that it is a good intermediate step. Yeah. Teams are employing like sports psychologists and all of this. And I know that unpacking masculinity is like maybe more than an employer muster or manage but i do think that like there needs to be some more direct intervention on this stuff you can bundle that and describe

it however you want to like maybe masculinity isn't what it resonates with you as but i do think that's a big part of it for a lot of these guys. But like helping to equip these dudes with better tools, you know, to manage that stuff. Because we all get angry, Ben. You know, we're all frustrated sometimes. I sat there yesterday and I yelled, no, out loud. I just yelled, no. As I confronted the possibility that all of this work we had just done would just like go to waste. I was like, I said another word besides no, but I don't want Shane to have to bleep it. So I'm just

going to focus on the no words because I said that, you know, and you're like, no, but I didn't punch anything. Right. I wasn't like punching things. And so I think being able to vent your frustration in a way that is still giving space to an acknowledgement to those feelings is important because if you don't have them, they just come out sideways. It's not like you can bottle them forever, you know, and we don't want anyone to get an ulcer, you know, or write like a tragic novel. So we should help give them tools to better cope with this stuff and not be so punchy and i wonder like how much of it is genuine expression of feeling in the moment and how much of it is like thinking that this is something you have to do like that this is

performance that is necessary to show i'm taking this seriously. I'm so angry. I got to kick this cooler. Yeah. What? You know? So I don't know if that is a completely coherent argument, but I think a punching bag would be good. Like that would be helpful, maybe, or therapy, you know? And why not both, I guess, is the other thing. It would be a way to wean players off of punching less forgiving surfaces. Right. Like, let's work on the not punching anything.

But in the meantime, we can kind of transition from punching hard surfaces to punching a softer surface, which is why we said, you know, pad the walls or have a punching pillow there. I mean, this is a punching bag. Yeah. And so. Have a feelings booth, you know. Yeah. This will support the feelings booth. Yeah.

Can't hurt. At least can't hurt as much as punching or kicking a cooler or a wall. Right. So maybe it would be like a lightning rod. You know, it's inevitable that punches are going to be thrown seemingly. So you might as well just channel those punches in a less dangerous direction. Right. might as well just channel those punches in a less dangerous direction right but if you encourage players to write if you sanction if you condone the punching by putting a punching bag there and saying hey here you go you can keep punching

just make sure you punch this thing then they might double down on the punching because right then you're saying punching is acceptable behavior in a dugout so there might not always be a punching bag nearby. And if you get players in the habit even more of punching things, then what if the punching bag is missing? Then they're even more likely to hurt something. Plus, I guess maybe for family-friendly entertainment, I suppose the spectacle of players going in there and just letting loose all their rage,

it's better that they take that out on a punching bag than a person or a dugout phone or something, I guess. But still, you're going to be someone, you know, being raging bowl of baseball in there, which is perhaps not the best message to send. Won't anyone think of the children anyway? Yeah, there are probably better solutions than this. But seriously, won't anyone think of the children? Because I don't want to imbue ballplayers with more power or cultural authority than they have, but they are observed, right? And they are the way that they play and the way that they conduct themselves is something

that you see replicated by young people. They don't ask for that, right? And so I want to be conscious of how fair it is for us to kind of freight these moments with all this stuff. But it's something that I have remarked upon, that when you see these guys having moments of big celebration, often, like, the way that that manifests isn't always like big smiles sometimes it's like they're yelling and like that can be cool and compelling and i don't need to like regulate how other people feel

but it does then you see kids in the stands and like they are so stoked and rather than being like smile they're like you know and so i just think that having models of honest expression that isn't punchy is valuable. I think it's a useful thing. And I think it's useful for young men in particular to see like, what if they just let themselves cry, Ben? Like, what if they just were like, effing sucked and I'm sad and frustrated and I'm just going to go, maybe they should just yell. Maybe they should go, no. Yeah, they definitely do some of that. But yeah, I don't know. It's a tricky thing. Feelings are hard and, you know, what works well for one person isn't necessarily going to give the release that other people need.

And I think that having a soft surface, maybe not in the dugout, but in the clubhouse as an intermediate step of therapy. Look, my parents got divorced. I broke a therapist dollhouse, so I get it. Like sometimes you have a destructive instinct, but it wasn't where the therapy ended. You know, like then she was like, OK, so that happened. It suggests to me you have a lot of feelings. Let's talk about those. So symbolic, a broken home, a broken doll home, at least.

Yeah. Yeah. That one could have gone back to the writer's room. Yeah. It's a little on the nose. Yeah. But then we did some work and I got new tools in my toolbox so that I didn't have to use real tools on a dollhouse. a team might see some benefit from their sports psychologists like sitting with guys and helping them kind of come up with less finger damaging ways of expressing themselves. So, you know.

Yeah. Maybe some stress balls. I don't know. Oh, yeah. Stress ball. The Robotumps trial is going in AAA, the full ABS system and the challenge system. Adam in New York City says, listening to the StatBlast comparing AAA stats with the challenge system versus full ABS, it has me wondering if umpires' ability to call the strike zone is improving or will improve by watching the ABS system in action. I imagine they still have to pay attention with ABS just in case it fails. So umpires spend the week watching ABS call balls and strikes before taking their turn over the weekend. Not sure if this is even something we can track in the minor leagues because there may not be an umpire scorecard type of system. But it would be very interesting to see.

I've long wondered whether umpires train themselves by using ABS technology, but being forced to watch the pitch be called a ball or strike might help them in the long run. Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing the challenge system. So yeah, this might be a little tough to study with minor league data. Certainly we could see it if and when this comes to the majors, which it sounds like probably won't be next season, but probably won't be too far away. I would think it would help, right, because umpires are already getting feedback from this system. The MLB zone evaluation system is what is used and has been used for some time to give umpires grades and readouts. And after they ump a game behind the plate, they can see how many pitches they missed or where they missed and they can get that quick feedback. But watching ABS in real time, you'd think that might help, right? Now, obviously the zone dimensions have changed and shifted and we

haven't really ended up with the final form of the strike zone that we will probably see when this is implemented ultimately. But you would think that, yeah, if there were a challenge system in place so that you still had to call balls and strikes, but you got an immediate correction, immediate feedback when you got one right or got one wrong, or yes, if you had full ABS part of the week and you were watching that and then you had to spring back into action over the weekend with that knowledge, you'd think that probably would help, right? Where you're getting that feedback instantly instead of having to wait until the game is over. Yeah. I'm curious, like when calls do get challenged, they show the zone, right?

They show the robo zone, you know, and maybe in the moment you're embarrassed. And so then you can't let in the lesson. But I wonder if that sort of feedback is useful. I imagine that a real time bit of help or even just like between innings, like to say, hey, here are some calls that you missed. Maybe that would be useful because like you're going to in the early going when you're presumably going to call balls and strikes for that same pitcher again then it gives you kind of a sense of what the guy's repertoire is and like maybe there are particular pitches that you're struggling with with a given pitcher and then you can be kind of on alert for them i don't know if that sort of vigilance is useful or counterproductive, but it would be really interesting to hear from umpires on that.

Like, you know, maybe you're the home plate ump for a guy who has like really vicious breaking stuff. And then you're like, okay, that's where that lands. And you have a better sense of it. I don't know. It would be interesting. Yeah. There was an athletic article just recently about whether the automatic strike zone is helping hitters get a better sense of the strike zone, too, because they're getting immediate feedback on that, too. This was by C. Trent Rosecrans and Andy McCullough and Cody Stavenhagen.

Headline for young MLB hitters learning strike zone, could best teacher be robo-umps? And opinions are divided in the article, but some hitters say that they think it has helped them like Christian Encarnacion-Strand of the Reds. He said, I got enough time down there with that ABS to learn the strike zone, to learn my strengths, my weaknesses. And another Red, Will Benson, he said it helped him too. He said that he was able to just focus on pitches like in the middle of the strike zone and not worry about BS on the edges, he said.

I was really able to hunt the middle of the zone just because I knew I didn't have to worry about the BS on the corners. So it just kind of helped me hone in on the middle of the plate, which is why I think this would help hitters just in general. I think just the predictability of the automated zone would benefit hitters not to be subject to the vagaries of umpire zones and framing and everything else. Just the predictability of, okay, I know that a pitch right there, that's going to be a strike.

It doesn't depend on who the pitcher is or who the umpire is or who the catcher is. That's a strike. I know that. I see those pitches over and over again. I've seen pitches in that exact location before, and I know how they were called. And so I can predict with greater accuracy how this one will be called. I think there's something to that. And again, if your sense of the strike zone is something that you struggle with, then if you are getting immediate feedback on that, like that was definitely a strike. That was definitely not a strike.

I could see how that might aid your development. Ben, I'm realizing that I maybe misheard your email because I was directing traffic on the Carlos Santana thing. Was that a question about hitters and not umpires? Oh, no. No, it was about umpires. I'm just mentioning also that I think. I was like, oh, no. No, no, it was about umpires.

I'm just mentioning also that I think. I was like, oh, no, because, you know, sometimes you watch Otani and sometimes I have to be like, we need a dope on this guy. And then I get worried that I have answered a completely different question. And sometimes you, I think, politely go, yeah, yeah. And then you move on. And I was worried that this is one of those times. And I was going to. I'm just yes ending here by saying that if umpires could be helped by this, then perhaps hitters also, maybe all players would have a more firm sense of the strike zone.

And also them. Okay. Man, I feel so much better. I was really nervous there. Yeah. I also, I meant to mention another athletic article. Tim Britton did this deep dive on 10 years of trade deadlines and looked at just historically teams in this position,

what have they done, right? And I guess the playoff format has changed over that time. But with the Angels, it's not like unreasonable that a team in their position with their record and run differential and place in the standings would decide to add instead of standing pad or subtracting. He said about the Angels, this was right before they made the trade. This is real bubble territory. Teams that look like the Angels have bought. Teams that look like the Angels have sold. Teams that look like the Angels have done absolutely nothing. And he provides some comps and teams have gone every which way. Light seller, heavy seller,

all-in buyer, light buyer, stand pat. They've done a bit of both. So whatever the Angels had done, it wouldn't have been historically unprecedented, I don't think. Man, it was a real land of contrast for them, you know?

Yeah. Okay, we have to finish with some blasting. But before we do, in the interest of transparency here, we took a little break between the last thing we said and what we are saying right now. We had some other stuff to do, some meetings, some editing, et cetera. And in that time, a couple things happened. The first thing was that the Angels played another game. And this time,

Shohei Otani hit two home runs. Yeah, he sure did. After the one hit shutout in game one, he had a multi-homer game in game two, which spurred a lot of Rick Wise comps to his no-hitter with two homers. So that's not a bad day of baseball. And he's human because after he hit the second homer, which was about 117 miles per hour, he had a little cramp in his back, his side, and he had to be removed from the game. They said he's fine. He just has to have some fluids and he'll be back the next day. But apparently, even Shohei Otani, he's mortal when he pitches nine innings and then hits two home runs on a warm day. He might suffer a cramp and have to be removed from a game just as a precaution. So that's nice to know.

Everybody needs to hydrate. It's important. Yeah. So I guess that's about as good an endorsement as the Angels could have gotten of their decision to go all in this week. Right. It's one day. It's two games. But that's a nice immediate. Oh, yeah. Good for us. We made the right call there because, A, you get two wins. You get to gain on your wildcard rivals. And B, that's exactly what I was saying about how, hey, even if they don't make the playoffs, you're going to make memories, right? I mean, Angels fans are going to remember where they were when they watched the Shohei Otani game when he pitched a shutout and then hit two home runs. We're all going to remember that.

If they had traded him yesterday, then he would not have been making that start for the Angels. He would not have played those games. And whatever else he would have done would not have been for the Angels. So that's the kind of memory that you can make if you're Shohei Otani and not your typical player that I think justifies their decision regardless of how the rest of the season goes. But they're also playing pretty darn good baseball right now. I will say I found it funny when people were like, see, this is why they shouldn't have traded him. And I was like, the quality of the player in question was never what people were going

back and forth on. It wasn't like the Angels were like, I don't know, this guy Shohei, is he any good? Like, do we need to keep him around? So you're right. I think that it underscores that there are many things about baseball to enjoy. And we can enjoy the here and now for both what it might do in the future for their playoff ambitions, but also for what it is in this very moment. Right. We can just treasure these little moments. But people are like, yeah, see, I'm like, well, yeah, he's the the best player in baseball no one was confused about that part of it like yeah i was just thinking as i said that he hit that ball 117 miles per hour it was 116.9 and it seems like we don't necessarily round up with exit speeds the way we do with pitch speeds have you noticed that interesting let me think about that like you wouldn't say that someone threw 94.9

or something. You would just say they threw 95, right? But people don't typically round up, it seems like, with exit speeds. They always have the point whatever there. Do you think that it is

because it serves as like an exclamation on the exit velocity? Like are people sitting there going, he hit the ball 116.9 miles. Like, is it just, you know, putting emphasis on the final syllable as it were? Right. Yeah. It could be that or I don't know,

the range of batted ball exit speeds is a little larger typically than the pitch speed range. Although I don't know whether that would make you more or less likely to round. It might also just be that the convention of pitch speeds, because we've had radar guns for so long and radar guns just round. Yeah, that could be it. I think that's right. And I think that for better or worse, StatCast has lent this impression of extreme supreme precision, right?

Right. Like there's an array and you got to calibrate it. Like there's a whole army of people whose jobs are just to like calibrate the stuff. Like they're calibration people. That's our whole job. They have 401k and everything. I mean, I hope so. So like I think that it has this air of like precision and legitimacy.

And I'm not saying it's imprecise it's just like it is a funny contrast to what we imagine is like a guy sitting there with his gun and then you say to you know the guy next to you you have your gun with you and then you realize how weird that is to say in a public place and yeah your radar device That also sounds sketchy. Yeah. The other notable thing that happened is that my daughter said baseball for the first time ever to my knowledge,

which was incredibly cute. We were watching that game and then it was her bedtime shortly after and she was saying goodnight. She was saying night-night to me and then she said night night baseball oh my god it was incredibly cute yeah look that's cute enough on its own i don't have to like zhuzh it up but i am curious is she a kid that has very clear diction or was she like good night baseball like does she have a little am i making your daughter

into a cartoon character yeah she doesn't have like a lisp exactly or anything i she has you know it sounds like a little kid saying things but sometimes she pronounces things more clearly than others but yeah but that was great and also she called shohei otani mommy's friend when she saw him on the screen. Because we went to see my wife's friend and former co-worker play softball in the park the other day. And my wife would say, oh, that's mommy's friend. And she was like, hi, mommy's friend. Bye, mommy's friend. And then when Shohei was on the screen, she called him mommy's friend, which my wife would

like that. I'm sure it's kind of a one way friendship. She has called him Shohei because she has a Shohei pillow that has been around. And we've said, oh, yeah, that's Shohei. And when we watch the Angels, we say that's Shohei. So initially she would say like, hey, hey. Yeah. But yeah, now mommy's friend.

I will say I don't want to imply anything about your marriage, but that does sound like Jesse's having an affair with a daddy. Yeah, a little bit. It's mommy's friend. Right, yeah. Would it upset that it's mommy's friend and not daddy's friend? Yeah, I was going to say, like, what a weird way to find out your kid doesn't listen to your podcast, you know? Really? Well, now that she's talking about baseball, she can host her own podcast or be a guest on this one.

She could come on to effectively what you know what you should wait though until she's like old enough to be like yeah i want to do that or no i don't all right so a few blasts here And the 3-R-A-9-S-O-O-B-S-Plus And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit Discuss it at length and analyze it for us In amazing ways Here's to Daystablast Last time I started stat blasting, didn't finish stat blasting, had a few more stat blasts to give you here.

And these are all or almost all from Ryan Nelson, frequent stat blast consultant, who's on Twitter at RSNelson23. The first one, though, comes from Chris. And this was a little more than a week ago. Chris wrote in to say with the Orioles win today, they have not been swept since May 15th, 2022. For a team that was so bad for years, this run seems improbable. What's the longest sweep list streak in MLB history? tweeted out the answer to this one and it is notable so the Orioles when she tweeted it after they won three out of four against the Rays they had a 71 series streak of not being swept and since then they lost two out of three in their following series but they didn't get. So they're now up to 72 series without being swept. And this is two plus game series without being swept, Sarah said.

So 72, and they are tied now with three other teams, the 1921 to 23 Browns, the 97 to 99 Padres, and the 2003 to five Braves. They all had 72. Then the 1904 to 1906 A's had 74. The 1922 to 24 Yankees had 83. The 1903 to 05 Giants, 106. And then the all-time record, 1942 to 1944 Cardinals, 125 consecutive two-plus game

series without being swept during the war years. So they got a ways to go until they're at the records, but they are tied for the post-war record or post-integration record. So that's pretty impressive. That is impressive. Yeah. All right. Next stat blast.

This comes from Ian, who says, weird question. Is there any way to figure out what's the most amount of hits recorded by the least amount of batters for their team when that amount of hits is the entirety of their team's hits? For example, I was looking at box scores tonight. This was July 21st and noticed that all but three Arizona batters had offers in their game against Cincinnati. Yet the Diamondbacks compiled seven hits. While this doesn't seem like it would be the most ever by three batters without hits from their teammates, I'm curious what is. Also would be interested in the most hits compiled by two batters with no teammates recording hits. And I suppose the most hits recorded by a single batter without his teammates contributing a hit.

post the most hits recorded by a single batter without his teammates contributing a hit. Okay, so Ryan says there have been three instances where a team had four hits all via one player, three instances with seven hits via two players. The record for three players is 11, which has happened once, and the record for four players is 13, which has happened twice. And I can put the spreadsheet with all the results on there. But that is your succinct answer to that question. Meant to mention, by the way, Lucas Giolito has been wearing Mike Trout's number. So now he has to switch from 27 to 24. I'm sure he was happy to accommodate Trout with that change there. I know.

What if he was like, no. I won't show up. I won't report to play with Otani and Trout unless Trout changes his number. I won't show up. I won't show up. Yeah. Anyway. Not good.

We didn't talk about the White Sox side of that trade really, other than just to say that they got good value. But I guess they wanted to trade rentals so that they could try to compete next year. And I guess they could, in theory, do that. But I don't have a whole lot of confidence in the White Sox contending at this point. So I might be overstating things because I think there's a really strong possibility they're just like objectively pretty bad next year. But I do wonder if they are in like the prime like danger zone for me to having at times overestimated their likelihood of like being good that I will like really trash them next year. And then they'll be like, OK, And I'll be quite surprised by that. I mean, we don't have to do, and by we, I mean,

I don't make people predict like the division top to bottom when we do our staff predictions, because I don't know that way lies madness, I suppose. But I do think that they might be in a spot where I'll be like, they're going to win 50 games and then they'll win like 75 and I'll be like, wow, those White Sox, you got to hand it to them. And it's like, do I though? They're still themselves. They're going to be a mix

of guys who are fun to watch and guys who are always hurt and then an owner I don't like very much. They're up to 17th ranked farm system according to Fangraphs now that they got a couple Angels prospects. It's progress for them. We'll see if they can develop some of those prospects now.

Also, just to specify, the game where three players had hits, but the team had 11 hits, that record, that was Atlanta against Texas on June 8, 2002. And those two games with four players with hits, but 13 total for the team. That was 1971, June 7th, Atlanta against St. Louis and August 5th, 1929, Chicago against Brooklyn. So now you know that. All right. Question from Trevor, who says in Saturdays, this is July 22nd, Braves versus Brewers game, there were dual debuts for Alan Winans of the Braves, if I'm saying that right, and Sal Freilich for the Brewers. In the bottom of the second, Freilich slapped a soft infield hit for the first of his career, and it was the first hit giving up in Winans' career. How often does this happen where the

first hit allowed in a career is a guy's first career hit? Feels rare, but there have been way too many baseball games for me to think it's super rare. So Ryan found that it has happened at least 27 times that we are 100% sure about. He estimates it's probably happened 50 times or so in total. The rate has been increasing with it happening once in the 70s, twice in the 80s, five times in the 90s, five times in the 2000s, eight times in the 2010s, and we're on pace for 20 times this decade. He says his favorite is Jerry Blevins getting his first and only hit ever against Scott Kingery in his only ever pitching appearance.

So we had a pitcher hitting and getting his first career hit and his only career hit against a position player pitcher in his only pitching appearance. And as far as Ryan could determine, that was the only time that has happened. OK, we're moving through these quickly. This is exciting. All right. Andrew says this was sent July 21st. Anthony Rizzo is in a two-month homer list streak since his last homer. This is the third longest

in the league, but all the others on the list have one homer combined. Rizzo has 11. It's normal for someone who doesn't hit homers normally to go on an extended homer list streak, but not for a guy who hits 25 to 35 a year. What's the longest homer list streak for someone who has double digit home runs in that season? So Rizzo subsequently did finally end this streak and he hit a home run on July 23rd. He went 45 games between homers. So he went May 20th was a homer and then more than two months, July 23rd. And in those 45 games, 186 plate appearances, no homers. He hit 182, 274, 218. That's a 492 OPS. Not so hot.

However, it's not a record homer list streak for someone with double digit homers. So if we look at this in a single season, then if we set the minimum for the season to five home runs, so someone had to have hit at least five home runs in the season. So what's the longest streak of games that they went without hitting homers? That was Steve Sachs in 1988. He hit five homers, one in April, four in May, and then no more for the rest of that season. Now, if we set the minimum at 10 homers in the season, then the longest homerless streak is 90 games. Jose Lopez in 2006, he hit four homers in April, four in May, one in June, and then hit no homers between June 2nd and September 24th. If we go to 15 homers, and Rizzo has, I think, 12 now maybe?

So he could get to 15 unless he has another extremely long homer list streak at some point this season. So I guess this is the mark that he's aiming for, not that he was aiming to have a super long homer list streak. But Reggie Smith in 1968, he had a 76-game homer list streak. So he hit one homer in game number nine, which was the only homer he hit in the first half, and then he hit 14 more after the All-Star break. So that was a weird split. There might be some injuries involved here,

but these are games played. I think it's not team games. I think it's player games. And then if we set the minimum at 20 homers, a 20 homer season, how long can you go without hitting a homer and still get to 20 in that season? Ivan Rodriguez, 1998, he hit 21 homers. He hit 10 in April and May, 0 in June and July, and then 11 in August, September, October. That's a very strange distribution of dingers. If we raise the minimum to 25, then we're at a 52-game homer list streak, which is still longer than Anthony Rizzo had here. So even if he went on an absolute tear and he somehow got to 25 homers by the end of the season, it's still his 45 games would not be the longest streak. Because Richard Hidalgo in 2004 went 52 games without a homer, even though he hit 25.

So he hit four in his first eight games, then no homers for his next 52 games, then eight in his next 14 games. That is extremely streaky. For 30 homers, the longest streak is 38 games. So that's Dwight Evans, 1982. He hit 32 that year, but he hit zero in his first 38 games. We raised the minimum to 35. Jeff Bagwell, 2003. He hit 39 in total, 10 in April, then a 35-game

cold streak, and then 25 after the All-Star break. And then if we raise the minimum to 40, the longest home rule streak is 30 games. Chuck Klein, 1930, 45. It's 24 games. Carlos Beltran in 2004 and 50. Mark McGuire had a 19 game home rule streak in 1997 when he hit 58. And I think that's the same for 55 as the minimum. And if we set the minimum to 60, you got a very small sample. But Barry Bonds in 2001, when he hit 73, he had a 14 game homer list streak.

Ryan also did like minimum streaks, the shortest streaks for each measure. And he also did like a season rollover version where you count the games prior to that season starting, like in previous seasons without a homer. So I'll link to his spreadsheet if you want all of the details there. And finally, last one here. This comes from Daniel, Patreon supporter, who wrote last night. This was July 18th. Twelve teams scored double digit runs. I'm sure you saw this, right?

This was a wild night of scoring. The internet says that that's a lot. So I don't need a stat blast categorizing the fun facts. There were many facts about how unusual it was for so many teams to have double digit runs. But it did get me wondering, do teams often give up a lot of runs in their fifth game after the All-Star break? Because this was the fifth game after the all-star break plus whatever bit of rotation was left leading into the break so you have perhaps a subpar

cohort of pitchers who have also been off for a while plus it's summer right and it's warmer out plus maybe injuries have occurred since like the fifth game of the season. You know, the fifth game of the season, you'd also have a lot of fifth starters going, but it would be colder weather and temperatures and maybe not as many injuries. Or I don't know, I guess guys are hurt then who would be healthy later. But there's been some attrition. So maybe now the fifth starter could be your seventh starter or something. could be your seventh starter or something. So he had this hypothesis that maybe it wasn't a complete coincidence that that game, the fifth game coming out of the All-Star break, was the one with this wild amount of scoring.

And Ryan looked into this, and he found that there definitely does seem to be something here. I was sort of skeptical, but Daniel's onto something here. So he looked since 2000, excluding 2020, because 2020 was weird. And since 2000, to make sure that pitcher usage is somewhat modern. And he found that the fifth game after the All-Star break has a higher average runs allowed than any other individual day in the season. What? Yeah.

No. Daniel nailed this. And this is not even including 2023 because 2023 had this huge run scoring day, so that might have skewed things. This is just looking 2020 through 2022, excluding 2020. And Ryan said, I did a very basic simulation using these numbers and found that there is about a 0.005% chance of having 10 teams out of a 15-game, 30-team day score 10-plus runs, as compared to a 0.057% chance on the fifth game after the All-Star break. so he found that it was more than 10 times more likely for it to happen on

that day than just any old day and he found if we search for the likelihood of having 12 teams do it on any given day it's a 0.0001 percent chance versus a 0.0024 percent chance on the fifth game after the all-star break so it's 24 times more likely to happen on the fifth game after the All-Star break. So it's 24 times more likely to happen on the fifth game after the All-Star break. And Ryan says, really a great find by Daniel. So it was still quite unlikely that that would happen. But apparently much more likely that it would happen in that game. That's wild. Would never have occurred to me.

Would not have guessed. But I will link to the fun little graphs that Ryan made here that show that to be true. So, yeah, great thinking by Daniel there. And 1894 was the previous day where scoring like that had happened. A lot of people pointed out, oh, this is the first time since 1894, which probably surprised some people because I think some people might think, I think I probably at one point thought that really everything before Babe Ruth, before the live ball was dead ball, right? Because if you say like live ball era, then it would be safe to assume that before the live ball era was the dead ball era, which was true immediately before the live ball era was the dead ball era. But before the dead ball era, there were some high scoring seasons too, like going back to the 19th century. So that 1894 season was actually the highest scoring season. It was 7.39 runs on average per team per game,

which is pretty ridiculous. And it was because now 1893 was a high scoring season because that was the year that the mounds, I guess there wasn't a mound necessarily, but the pitching distance moved to the modern distance of 60 feet, six inches. So they moved the pitchers back and there was a huge uptick in scoring. I think the biggest ever uptick in scoring related to a rule change. And then you might think, well, if 1893 was the year when they moved the pitchers back and there was a 1.46 bump in runs per game, then in 1894, why was it even higher? Because you'd think, maybe pitchers would have adjusted at that point. But as Craig Wright wrote recently, the second year after that pitching distance move exacerbated the problem for pitchers. There was another increase of 0.82 runs per game because all the pitchers were exhausted from getting knocked around at that farther distance. So he wrote, to make sense of this, you have to think about the long-term ramifications of pitcher fatigue resulting from working in a much more favorable environment for hitters. Whenever there's a major change in the balance between

the pitcher and hitter, the workload of the regular pitchers does not initially change significantly. Both the managers and the pitchers themselves have a vision of how hard they can be worked, how many innings they should throw, how many games they should complete and so on. They naturally try to adhere to those expectations. And so as far as their workload goes, they have to ease into the ramifications of a new era. So you had sort of an established here's how many games you can start. Here's how deep you go into those games. Then you move the pitchers back and they're getting knocked around. And so they're having're throwing more pitches.

And you're still trying to adhere to that old model of how many innings you should pitch. And so then there's a secondary effect fatigue that comes from that before everyone adjusts and figures out, oh, OK, we have to ease off a bit because pitchers can't handle this anymore. So there was kind of a knock on effect. But that's why 1894 was such a high-scoring season. We have the live ball and we have the dead ball. Yeah. But what is the in-between ball called, Ben? The limbo ball. I don't know. The life support ball. That's dark. Yeah. I don't know. Well, it's not a zombie ball, right? Because-

I guess not. But sometimes it might be. Like it could be if you have a period of liveliness after a dead ball era. Oh, and it's alive again. That's true. Like a zombie. Yeah. Not to be confused with our earlier hypothetical about what if the ball itself were alive and

sentient and- Suffering. Protested the fact that it's getting hit all the time so I would yeah that 1894 example that is part of what makes me think that if we move the mound back now that it would favor the hitters just because it was so striking back then that there was a huge increase in scoring and I know yeah there are all these arguments about yeah but there'd be more movement. And so it would hurt the hitters too. But every time a mound has been moved back, like in MLB or in softball or wherever, it does always seem to help the hitters.

Except for when they tested it in the Atlantic League for a little while and there wasn't a really clear effect. except for when they tested it in the Atlantic League for a little while and there wasn't a really clear effect. But all the previous precedents still make me think that that would be the net effect, that it would benefit offense and all the other nice effects that could come from decreasing speed at the plate and all the other things. We've talked about that. So we will finish up with the future blast, which comes to us from the year 2038 and also from Rick Wilber, who is an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. 2038 was a breakthrough year for international baseball and a homecoming for

perhaps the greatest player ever to play the game as the Hokkaido Nippon Ham fighters, led by the indestructible 43-year-old Shohei Otani, swept through the Asian division, then overwhelmed the Havana Industriales, winners of the Caribbean division, in five games to earn a wildcard spot in the new 14-team playoff format that officially brought the international divisions into postseason play. The Nippon Ham fighters went on to win 13 of their next 17 games and be crowned the first international team to win what was now a truly World Series. Otani hit.345 with nine homers and 28 RBI during that stretch,

winning all five of his starts with a stunning 2.15 ERA. The display certainly clinched his unofficial title as baseball's greatest of all time. The season is also remembered for the tragic death of the Giants' DeMarcus Olivier. There were some hints that this was coming in previous future blasts. Following his outstanding sophomore season, when he led the league in batting average and runs batted in, though the Giants didn't get past the wildcard series, Olivier went back to his final semester at Stanford, where he was to graduate in December of 2038 and begin work on his Ph.D. On his way to the lab, he was killed in a fatal car crash in a heavy San Francisco fog on November 21st.

His death came on the 80th anniversary of Mel Ott's death in a similar fog-bound car crash in Louisiana on the same date in 1958. This prompted a frenzy of conspiracy theories, and many of Olivier's 5.8 million social media followers claimed he was still alive and living in Palo Alto. Lordy. It's not funny, Meg. Marcus Olivier died tragically young here. That part isn't funny. The persistence of conspiratorial thinking is, well, funny, really. I don't know how many people would make the Mel Ott connection in the year 2038, but I'm glad they are so historically literate here.

But I said Marcus, DeMarcus, DeMarcus Olivier. I want to get his name right because an incredible legacy seemingly on and off the field. All right. I've got a stat blast addendum for you here. I got an email from Jeff H. in Washington, D.C., who wrote in, Wednesday's White Sox-Angels trade represents the second time Lucas Gilito and Reynaldo Lopez were traded together in their careers. In December 2016, the Nationals packaged Gio and Lopez along with Dane Dunning in exchange for Adam Eaton. Back in 2016, Gialito and Lopez were part of the prospect capital for a team selling slash rebuilding, whereas now in 2023, they are the big leaguers being acquired for the team buying for a playoff run. It's the circle of contention.

So my question is, Jeff says, what's the highest number of times two baseball players have been traded together in a package like Lopez and Giolito? Ryan was able to look this up and the answer kind of anticlimactically is two. But there have been at least 30 pairs of players who have been traded together twice. And that's not counting some transactions where a couple of players were traded and then returned to their original team shortly after, which used to happen. So it's rare, but it's certainly not unprecedented. And I will link to the list of those players on the show page. I also asked Ryan to check whether any pair of players has been involved in more than two trades, including times when they were traded for each other. And the answer, again, kind of anticlimactically is no. No pair of players has ever been traded together three times

whether with each other or for each other or any combination of the two so giolito and lopez are tied at the top of a pretty crowded group after we finished recording the mets traded david robertson to the marlins when this season start whoever would have imagined the mets stealing a veteran pitcher to the marlins we'll probably discuss next time what that means for the Mets outlook over the next week. I wanted to leave you with a couple emails. Sean wrote in to say, I enjoyed your discussion of the AAA ABS experiment this season. I am in the press box for an international league team for most home games. And one of the fun aspects of having half the games full ABS and half the games challenge

is that the players have absolutely no idea from game to game what the rules are. We enjoy watching the players signal to request a challenge in games when a challenge is not available. After discussing it with on-field personnel, we've established that it's not that they forget in the heat of the moment. The consensus is that the players just don't know, so they give it a try just in case. Sure, nothing to lose. It's got to mess with their heads and their performance somewhat, not to know exactly what the strike zone is on any given day. Also, in response to our discussion about the names and numbers of fingers,

Kyle, Patreon supporter, wrote in to say I was hoping to shed some light on the finger question. As a doctor myself, I can safely say that we are nothing if not condescending and wish to make nomenclature as difficult as possible. The thumb is the first finger, though would probably be described as the first metacarpal and so on, as doctors wouldn't be caught dead saying pinky. In all seriousness, it provides more consistency across cultures and languages as the colloquial names for the digits would make things confusing for medical communication. I know that the numbering systems do differ based on where you are and what you're doing. Anyway, if you put in the time and effort and money to get your medical degree, then I guess you're entitled to use a more sophisticated term

than pinky. And I see what Kyle means about the consistency, though I guess you still have to remember which is one and which is five, but I guess that's what you go to medical school for, to learn how to label fingers and also some other stuff. And now that the angels have precluded the possibility of an Otani trade, I've closed the book on the fan and listener voting on our Otani trading game episode. Only 5% of respondents said that none of the trade proposals would be a fair return for Otani. However, 29% of respondents said that they didn't think the Angels would accept any of them if offered. The leading proposal that the listeners deemed the most fair and the most likely to be accepted was the Diamondbacks, which Ben Clemens

playing Perry Manassian did accept before being overruled by Artie Moreno. 20.8% of respondents said that that was the single strongest trade proposal. I don't know whether they were influenced by Ben's decision, if they voted after hearing that, but the next strongest proposals that they selected were the Yankees and the Giants, which were not among Ben's finalists, followed by the Phillies, who were. In the question about selecting trade proposals that you think the Angels would actually accept, the Diamondbacks was the only one that got more support than the option for none of them. So maybe Ohtani's not getting traded because the Diamondbacks in real life didn't actually offer Drew Jones, Brendan Fott, and Yumin Lin, plus a sweetener after the counteroffer.

But thanks to everyone for listening and voting. And thanks to those of you who have supported or do support Effectively Wild on Patreon, which you can do 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 themselves access to some perks. Shane Updike, Lena Gordon, Sam Minter, John Klein, and Michelle Barone. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to some perks. Shane Updike, Lena Gordon, Sam Mentor, John Klein, and Michelle Barone. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, which as you might imagine is buzzing around trade deadline time. You also get access to

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