Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2042: Pure Happenstance

Episode Date: August 5, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Robin Ventura truthers defending Ventura on the 30th anniversary of his brawl with Nolan Ryan, Shohei Ohtani‘s 2023 WAR matching his full-season 2021 WAR and whether this Ohtani season would’ve won him an MVP award in 2022, the Yankees’ handling of Anthony Rizzo’s belatedly diagnosed post-concussion syndrome, whether […]

A baseball podcast, analytics and stats, with Ben and Meg, from Fangraphs, Effectively Wild. Effectively Wild. Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2042 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. of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Are you a Robin Ventura truther when it comes to the Nolan Ryan-Robin Ventura brawl, which is celebrating, or at least one of the parties perhaps is celebrating, the 30th anniversary

of that legendary confrontation today as we record on Friday? What does it mean to be a truther in this instance? Like that it didn't happen? No, I don't know anyone who goes quite that far. Okay, I was like, what are we even talking about? NASA staged the Ventura-Ryan brawl. This never happened. No, to be a Robin Ventura truther means that you maintain that Robin Ventura either won the brawl, the confrontation with Nolan Ryan, or was not as soundly defeated as history has taught us.

And I mention this because it's the 30th anniversary and because our friend Evan Drellick of The Athletic, who is a talented reporter, right? Does not traffic in untruths. No. He unmasked himself as a Ventura truther. On anniversary day, he tweeted, I never understood why the second half of the Ventura-Ryan brawl is just like tossed aside. I mean, I do understand it because it's funnier, but Ryan impressively delivers the punches, Ventura takes them, and then Ventura gets his arm around Ryan and drags him to the ground. And he tweeted a screenshot of the most unflattering moment you could possibly find from this confrontation, where it looks like Ventura has his arm around

Ryan's neck and Ryan is like gagging and being choked out and is being dragged down to the mound. And this brought the other Ventura truthers out of the woodwork because when they see one of their own, they say, oh, he's one of us, right? We have some support. So Derek Gould, who has long been a Ventura truther, maybe the ringleader of the Ventura truthers, he replied, welcome to the cause, Evan, right? And some other people disparaged them and said fake news. And other people said, yes, I've been saying this all along. Do you have any sympathy for the Ventura truther stance? I just wonder if we wouldn't all be better served by having less good memories, you know?

Well, what Evan is saying is that we don't have good memories, that we are misremembering this confrontation where we're only selectively remembering it and that we should not have stopped the fight. We should review the full tape and see that Ventura perhaps gained the upper hand or at least recovered his dignity somewhat. I'm watching it now. I'm watching the fight in full. This is a Pruder film here.

He does. There is a moment where he like, it's so fleeting, though. It is. And then you get to a point where it's just such a massive man in humanity that who could even say what's happening at the bottom of that pile? It's like an offensive line in football. Yeah, it's impossible to say beyond a certain point. How Pudge seems to have a bandage on the side of his face already. I mean, I will say that when Ventura extricates himself from the scrum, there does not appear to be a mark on him.

Right. He looks quite intact. Yeah, he looks fresh-faced. I mean, I know it's been said that maybe he was bloodied, that there was a bloody lip involved. I mean, he looks fresh as a daisy in my eyes here. Yeah, he doesn't look super bloody. Yeah, he does not look any the worse for wear. Yeah, it does not look any the worse for wear. Now, one thing I had forgotten about this is that Ventura was ejected, which I think at that point that was past the point in the 80s when they made charging the mound an automatic ejection.

Right, but Ryan was not. No, he stayed in and pitched a good game. Like he went seven innings or something. I mean, maybe that makes it a victory for him, right? He was still standing and had a good game, whereas Ventura had to leave the field of battle. But that feels like it wouldn't happen today, that he would not get to stay in that game. I mean, he didn't initiate. Then they start going again. Yeah.

Oh, boy. Then they start going again. Men are falling to the ground. The YouTube video on the MLB account, which we'll link to, is like six and a half minutes long. Yeah, I just Googled Ventura-Ryan fight, and this is an embed in an MLB.com story from today, or from yesterday, rather. Well, there are definitely some people in this fight who are bloodied, but at least in the early going, Ventura doesn't seem to be one of them. But maybe by fight's end, he is. Why are you all like this?

I mean, not you all, but like you all who were on the field that day. I mean, it can't have felt good. But also, it wasn't like he got him in the head. No. Also, man, I say this with affection for a great pitcher, you know, a pillar of our game. But once you take Ryan's hat off, you sure you sure know how old he is, don't you? Yes. There's a little bit of that late career Mariano Rivera going on where it's like, oh, you were you're a man in your 40s. Yeah. Still still at the top of your game. But yeah. And like my my grades are starting to come in. So, you know, I'm not here to disparage anybody, but it is. Rodriguez seemed to have a thing on.

Look, it is kind of amazing that more of them didn't get hurt. They just keep going. Yes, yeah. Now, it does surprise me that Ryan stayed in that game because even though he didn't initiate the fight, that Ryan stayed in that game because even though he didn't initiate the fight, he certainly got his punches in in a way that I feel like today probably wouldn't fly, even though he was not the instigator. But Ryan said after the game, I mean, you know, he stayed in the whole time and he said subsequently, like, he can't believe that this has the stature that it does,

that people still talk about this all the time. He said it was just self-preservation in the moment. I didn't expect that to happen. I was just trying to pitch him inside. You don't have time to think, you just react. I'm not a big believer in fights, but we'll do what it takes to win. Ventura said at the time,

if you don't think he did it on purpose, you don't know the game. I'm all right. He gave me a couple of noogies, but that was about it. That is not how people remember it. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the Ventura truthers here. I don't know if I'm a full card-carrying member, but I think that if you had kept the fight going longer, now the stamina of Ventura as a younger man, I think, might have won out in the end.

Or maybe Ryan had that old man strength, right? It's impressive because Ventura was the one who was charging, although really he wasn't charging, right? It was like a jog, you know? It was almost sort of a lackadaisical charge. Yeah. But he had the momentum, at least. He was the one moving, whereas Ryan was just standing there. And yet Ryan was fully prepared. I mean, he just puts him in the headlock and he's just he's just throwing haymakers right away. Right. So I think that and just like the legend of Nolan Ryan and the old guy still got it. And he's the tough Texan gunslinger. Right. Like, it's just it's part of his image. I think it already was and would have been anyway, but this obviously enhances that.

And so we remember this as part of his legend, but I think it is true that Ventura kind of turned the tables. You know, he was not down for the count here. And yeah, maybe it's some selective screenshotting to find the one instant where it looks like Ventura has the upper hand here. But Ventura did kind of take him down.

And then it becomes tough to declare a victor or grade the fight because everyone else shows up and just swamps everything. Right. But I'm somewhat sympathetic. Man, there are some really there are some names in this box score, too, man. Yeah. You're like watching it. You're like, oh,son what the hell oh yeah wouldn't want to be in a fight with him that that absolutely not that happened as was told in jeff perlman's book but but yeah just i and we should remember i think robin ventura for other things too i i hope he is not just remembered as the guy who got beat by Nolan Ryan.

Even if he had gotten beat by Nolan Ryan, as thoroughly as people say, great player, great career. Right? I mean, almost a 60 War guy. I mean, multi-time all-star, you know, underrated in his day, probably, because he was

a good on-base guy and a good glove guy, good all-around player, you know? Exactly. Not leading the league. Not appreciated in his time. Yeah. But like, you know, very good, close to Hall of Fame type player. So we should remember him for that.

I fear that he's now just the guy who got punched a bunch of times by Nolan Ryan. So that's why I almost want to rehabilitate his image in this fight, because if people are only going to remember the fight, then you've got to remind them that perhaps he was not outclassed by quite as much as people recall. It's too bad that the stakes of the banging scheme were what they were, because like they kind of mean that we can't enjoy it. Right. We can't lean into how hilarious it is that like that was the thing that a team decided to do in order to try to cheat right and i think that when you're you got guys fighting and like really fighting like some this isn't just you know posturing and standing around and kind of like these guys are throwing punches right so we can't can't enjoy it quite the way we would but it's too bad because there are parts of it that are very funny where you just

see like a you know an old man come up with blood on the side of his face not funny but just this look like i am at work you know like i am at my place of business and now there's blood on my face yeah and again i don't i really don't see anyone trying to mess with bow which is you know seems like good self-preservation not because like i i have this impression of him as like a particularly violent guy but just because like so strong so strong and really it does look like pudge has like a bandage on his face already what is that from ben Ben? Why did he? Do further research on that. Have there been other fights? See, now I'm going to spend a lot of the rest of the day watching this, like, frame by frame. Yeah.

Anyway. I know. That's what you got to do. That's what you got to do. And in this MLB.com story, it quotes Paul Conurco, who was there recalling. Yeah. How about that? That the whole place was chanting Nolan for what seemed like an hour long. It was an electric type atmosphere after that happened. So I guess the people in the park felt that Nolan had gotten

the best of it. But of course, it was in Texas. And that was Nolan Ryan's 27th year as a major leaguer. So they were obviously in his favor, in his corner already. So just letting everyone know that there is an alternate interpretation of these events out there and that some reputable, credible members of the baseball media subscribe to it. And I think they have something of a point. I'm just glad that they actually think it happened, you know, that we don't have like a weird moon landing situation where we're going to have to do a documentary of all the wild theories surrounding it. Wow, they really do get in there. And there's a moment where like some of these guys, they're just like on the bottom of the pile. And I bet that doesn't feel good. I bet they're getting kicked.

Yeah, wait, no, I found it. I found this spot where he has like a giant bandage on the side of his face i know this isn't the part of this that you care about but you you brought me here and now and now you're gonna care about it too because i'm gonna take a screenshot and you're gonna be like what was wrong with his face i'm gonna go back through the transaction logs and be like yeah did he anyway what else are we talking you're like i want to talk about this conspiracy And I'm like, I want to talk about this giant bandage on the side of Pudge's face. guest. Not a surprise to you or to me or to anyone who reads the episode description, but there are probably people who are driving or jogging with their phone strapped to their arm and they can't easily look at the episode description. So to them, it will be a surprise.

That'll be a tease as it's known in the business. Sometimes a tease is actually telling people what they can expect so that they can look forward to it. This will be a tease of a surprise guest. I think it's a fun conversation. Just a bit of non-Ventura truther related banter before we get to that. Woke up this morning, checked Shohei Otani's war as one does because he had a good game on Thursday. Not quite good enough for the Angels. He has to pitch a complete game shutout in order for the Angels to win. And he only pitched four innings of shutout ball before he was forced to leave with cramping in his fingers. He's had various cramps recently and also blister and nail issues. Hope that all gets straightened out.

But he also reached base four times and manufactured a run and stole a base and hit a home run. Not quite enough because he gave them the lead. And then Carlos Estevez coughed it up with a grand slam in the ninth. But it was still quite a game for Otani, who Sarah Langs, of course, was on top of this. First player with a home run and a stolen base in a game he started on the mound since Mudcat Grant in 1964. game he started on the mound since Mudcat Grant in 1964, and the third player since 1900 with a home run, stolen base, and scoreless pitching outing in the same game, joining, of course, Christy Mathewson and Pablo Sandoval. So that happened once also.

Yeah. Legendary, legendary moundsman Shohei Otani, Christy Matheson and Pablo Sandoval. So he helped his war with that game. And he is now at 8.0, according to Fangraphs. And that is notable. Well, for a few reasons. It's pretty high at any point in the season, let alone this point in the season. But it is so high, in fact, that it equals his fan graphs war from his 2021 MVP season. So that season that blew our minds, unanimous MVP, never seen anything like this before. No, and then we got to see a better thing. He has now equaled that however many games into the season we are now. He's still got quite a ways to go, right? A hundred nine games through the Angels season, which means that he is now on pace for 11.9 war, it looks like. And the nice thing is that he has 8.0 war at both baseball reference and fan graphs right now.

It's always a conflict for me because— He's in the land. Yeah, sometimes the baseball reference war will be higher for him. And naturally, I'm inclined to prefer the number that says that Joey Otani is more valuable. And yet philosophically, I'm more aligned with Fangraff's war, especially when it comes to pitching. So it's always a bit of a struggle for me morally with which war I'm going to cite the one that I truly believe or the one that makes Shohei Otani look better. Not that he needs any help in that category. But because of that, because he is now on that pace, it reminded me of when I talked to Jeff Fletcher, who covers the Angels and wrote a book about Otani. This was back on episode 1876, July of last year. And Jeff's book was called Showtime, the inside story of Shohei Otani and the greatest baseball season ever played.

And I said to Jeff, is it a problem if that turns out not to have been the greatest season ever played? Because he tops it himself because he was then in the midst of, I mean, his 2022 war was higher than his 2021 war. And now you could say that that 2021 season, potentially the third greatest season that Shohei Otani has ever played in MLB. I guess greatest does not necessarily equate to most valuable, right? So maybe the first time he did it and showed that it could be done and was the unanimous MVP and fulfilled all our dreams and hopes and aspirations, then maybe that was greater and more memorable, even if this one turns out to be better and more valuable. I guess we can salvage that subtitle. That's one way to interpret it. But I wonder also if he had had this season last season,

would that have been enough to top Aaron Judge? Because I've got no problem with Judge winning that award. He had an incredible season. I think on field valuewise, he was more valuable. And certainly storyline-wise, it was pretty special too. But I wonder whether if Otani had had this sort of season and continues to play at this pace so that he would at least slightly eclipse Judge's war from last year, whether that would have been enough or whether 62

still would have trumped everything. I want to think that if Otani had had this season and we had put them up against one another, that we would have been like enthralled and delighted. We would have, I think, really enjoyed the conversation about it, perhaps, you know, we would have been like, oh. Yeah. And my take at the time was they're both great. So no one else, no one has to decide who was better or more valuable, except the people who are voting on that particular award. The rest of us can each say, well, we're enjoying both of these wonderful, incredible historic seasons. I wonder if, so in this scenario, he gets 11, he's worth 11 war and judges worth his 11.5 that he was actually worth. Is that what we're entertaining?

Otani is on pace for like 12 roughly right now. Okay. So Otani is slightly more. Yeah, slightly more. But like within a half, but within like a half win. Yeah. Actually, now that I refresh, baseball reference just was slow to update, I think, today. So it had 109 Angels games. Now it has 110. And Otani's up to 8.7 war.

So evidently, his most recent great game was worth 0.7 war, which would put him on pace for 12.8 baseball reference war, which I think only Babe Ruth has done better than. So the downside is that the two wars do not perfectly agree on Otani. The good news is that one has him even higher. I take back everything I said about baseball reference war versus Van Graaff's war. Only baseball reference war can perceive the true value of Otani. My bold preseason prediction of a 12 war season for Otani averaging the two wars together still very much alive. Anyway, even on a bad team, maybe that would have vaulted him ahead of Judge. Otani's offensive season this year is not that far from what Judge was doing last year, right? I mean, people have been tracking Otani's home run pace against Judge's from last year. So, that was the thing. Last year, there were people who said, yeah, judge

incredible offensive season, but you still have Shohei who's having this incredible pitching season. And as I noted at the time, if you just averaged the war and warps the baseball prospectus wins above replacement player, you could have made a case that Otani was the most valuable pitcher in the majors last season. And if you did, then even having a pretty good offensive year in addition to being— Maybe should have pushed him over the edge. But what clinched it was Judge is just having such an otherworldly offensive season. He's so much better.

It was incredible even beyond the home runs. Like, I don't want us to—you know, it's all sort of silly because, like, I think Judge was the worthy MVP last year. I think it, you know, it's all sort of silly because like, I think Judge was the worthy MVP last year. I think it, you know, like, it's fine. But, you know, I don't want us to revise it back to it just being the home runs. Like that season was incredible at the plate in so many ways. And the home runs definitely like, you know, leading the charge there. So many ways. And the home runs definitely like, he would not have the 62, presumably, right?

Unless he finishes super strong. But he'd be maybe close enough to judge offensively that that plus the pitching, and it hasn't been his best pitching year, of course. But I wonder whether that would do it. It would be, that'd be a tough one. I mean, again, no wrong answer. whether that would do it. It would be, that'd be a tough one.

I mean, again, no wrong answer, but there's an outside chance that Otani could win the Triple Crown this season, which again, you know, it doesn't mean that much to me. I understand the historic significance of it, but it's just kind of a strange collection of stats as we've talked about, but it would carry some weight with some people,

I think, if you have a two-way player who's winning the Triple Crown. And also, he's outstripping everyone else, right? He's like two and a half, 2.2 war ahead of Ronald Acuna Jr., depending on which war you're looking at. But Marcus Simeon, Van Graaff's war, 4.2. He's number two in the American League. So Otani has almost doubled the second most valuable player in the entire american league in fact forget about the pitching he's been way more valuable just as a dh than anyone else in the american league he's been as valuable as a kunya just as a dh yeah um i don't know that anyone would have been able to to get past the the

yankees and and record setting of it all i think we probably would have spent less time with various members of the mayor's family so aren't we all winners you know like don't we come out winners i don't know i think that you're right like we get to just enjoy it i didn't have a i did have a very oh i had a tricky vote last year but i didn't have this tricky vote and i think it wouldn't have a I did have a very I had a tricky vote last year, but I didn't have this tricky vote. And I think it wouldn't have been tricky for me if I actually had votes. But it is a tricky it's a you know, it's tricky. It's tricky business. And I don't I don't quite I don't rightly know the answer.

I do have an answer for you about something else, though, about Pudge's face bandage. Oh, do you really? Yeah. Oh, Ben. He underwent facial surgery for a fractured cheekbone 40 hours earlier. Why in God's name was he, one, playing in that game at all, two, not just peeling out of that pile? Oh, man. That is ridiculous. That's ridiculous. You got to have some. He's the one guy in the brawl with a helmet but but even so yeah but like but the the bandage extends below the helmet line yeah

yeah wild wild west out here although i mean i guess we should speaking of yankees and unfortunate like injury related stuff we should probably talk about the Rizzo situation at some point here. Yeah, we should, right? So we did a stat blast recently about Anthony Rizzo and his homerless streak, which was not historic but was certainly odd and anomalous. And he was not only homerless during that long stretch, but he was the worst hitter in baseball among qualified batters by any number of categories. And it turns out there was a reason for that, right? He was not just slumping, not just having a tough stretch of baseball, but he was dealing with a concussion or post-concussion syndrome that was lingering for months. concussion or post-concussion syndrome that was lingering for months. Now, I was not aware when we talked about that, that this was even a possibility. I didn't even recall that he had this

collision in late May with Fernando Tatis Jr., where there was a pickoff attempt at first base and Tatis getting back to the bag, kind of hit him in the head with his hip and his head snapped to the side. And he left that game and missed a few games with what at the time was termed a neck injury, maybe sort of like a whiplash sort of situation. And he went through the MLB mandated concussion testing and protocols and passed those. be mandated concussion testing and protocols and pass those. And then for months after that, he didn't hit. And now it has been discovered that he was dealing with the after effects of that all along. And there has been a lot of uproar and outrage and questioning of the Yankees medical staff and their handling of this whole situation. It's not as if he was known to be playing through symptoms the entire time or that he was even aware that this was happening until recently, right? From everything he's

said about it, he was perplexed about how poorly he was hitting, right? And that it was even sort of strange, like he would swing at a pitch that he thought was in one place and then it was nowhere near that place. And so it wasn't just like a lack of results, but it was kind of an uncharacteristic lack of contact and just being befuddled by the way that he was failing. But to hear him tell it for most of that time, he was not conscious of the fact that something was up feeling hungover without having any reason to feel that way.

And then he brought it to the attention of the Yankees, I guess, about a week ago. And this is one thing that they've come in for some criticism about, right? Because after he mentioned feeling the fogginess, he did continue to play a couple games and was striking out a ton. And then he eventually had a day off and they sent him for additional testing and then this turned up. So the question is, should he have been playing it?

It's not as if he was saying, I don't want to play and they were telling him, no, you got to play or pressuring him to play. It doesn't sound like that. It's just, you know, he's being a competitor and he didn't know that this was wrong with him. But I guess the question is, more immediately, should they have taken him out of the lineup as soon as he brought this up recently? get him out of the lineup as soon as he brought this up recently. And then also, should they have thought to send him for further testing and say, hey, something seems to be wrong here. The timing is suspicious. This is happening right after that collision. And suddenly, a guy who is off to a good start and has been a good hitter historically can't hit at all seems to raise some red flags,

potentially, if you're watching that happen every day. been a good hitter historically, can't hit at all, seems to raise some red flags potentially if you're watching that happen every day. I think a couple of things. This is very obvious, but I will remind everyone that I am not a doctor. I think that there are like two, at the very least, there seem to be two, like potentially three discrete process failures here to me. And I think one, maybe two of them are on the Yankees. And one of them is, I think, on perhaps the concussion protocol itself. And maybe we can start with that one. I'm given to understand that like, you know,

concussions can be really tricky and neurological stuff can be hard to diagnose and it can manifest in predictable ways, just rubbed dirt in it stuff that we used to see like in a not a long ago era, but in an earlier era of the game, it might behoove baseball to think about required follow-up examinations specifically for concussion or like head and neck related concerns because like sometimes people you know they get concussed in a game and like you know right away that they are concussed right we've all had that experience with like sitting there and watching a guy on tv and you're like oh like that guy seems not fully present like he's swaying you know like we we know this stuff even folks who don't like you subject themselves to football, like know what that looks like. Right.

But people can develop neurological stuff after the actual moment of impact. And so I think that would regular follow ups have caught this stuff? Would someone have, would a neurologist have said, oh, you're exhibiting cognitive impairment? I don't know. But I imagine that if Rizzo had sort of, at the point that he was able to articulate to himself some of the symptoms he was having, it certainly probably would have flagged something. And a doctor, not me, who actually is an expert in neurological conditions might have been able to ask probing questions that could have revealed oh there's an underlying issue here that we need to address so that he can fully heal when you know who knows maybe there's like

there are therapeutic options that he would have had access to that he didn't because he wasn't properly diagnosed so i think that there's that that piece of it that the league should look at. And I think that it's good for there to be consistency of treatment, especially for head and neck related stuff, because you don't want to leave it to, you know, the clubs. And certainly, you know, I think you do have to do a bit of like protecting players from themselves when it comes to this kind of stuff because they're super competitive and they want to play and they get jeered at by people when they take days off and like you know you need to be there to help protect future them from present them sometimes so i think there's that process failure and then

there's the piece of it that is like and this this, the second one, I don't know enough the plate, but walking around and like talking about his struggles and whatnot, where they should have said, you know, we need to take another look at you. That part I don't know, but it seems like they're around these guys enough that there might have been an opportunity for them to observe something. And then there's the third one that I feel very confident is a process failure, where it's like, you know that this guy had a collision where he had a neck issue and he is saying, hey, I like feel foggy. I feel hungover. I didn't drink last night. prior collision with tautis or like even if he hadn't had that if a guy comes in and is describing those kinds of symptoms to you like that seems concerning even without a prior collision right like if you're like i'm groggy i feel foggy i wake up in the morning and i feel hungover and i don't

you know like migraines and concussions are not the same but like i have had migraines and concussions are not the same, but like I have had migraines since I was six years old. And that feeling of like waking up like you have a hangover with none of the fun the night before, like that's familiar to me as like a migraine symptom. And like migraines are debilitating. They're not hopefully, you know, hopefully Rizzo's going to be fine, but like they're not the result of a trauma the way that a concussion is. But like it just seems like if somebody comes into the clubhouse and describes that set of things, you're like, that sounds like your brain. Let's get that checked out. You know, like that should have been a huge alarm bell right away. So that has been not Dr. Meg's brain thought.

Right. And he also said he was more tired, but attributed to the grind of the season. He occasionally forgot the numbers of outs. It's interesting and sort of sad because if the fact that he was tired and that he was playing through post-concussion syndrome, the fact that he could even chalk that up to, well, the season's a grind. I mean, that sucks that kind of gives you some sense of what players do typically play through right because it's it is a long season as they say and almost no one is a hundred percent once you get to this time you would hope that you could distinguish between post-concussion syndrome and just normal fatigue. But that is kind of the culture. And I don't say that in a totally disparaging way. I mean, yes, I think affect you on the field the way that it did Rizzo.

But that just gives you a sense, I think, of what it means to grind. You know, with players just going out there, they tweak something, something's barking a bit, they didn't get enough sleep, they crossed the country, they're stressed about the next game or the last game. The fact that this felt like it could be potentially normal to him. I mean, I'm not in his head and I don't know what it felt like, but just the fact that he could dismiss it as, oh, yeah, this is how you feel in August of a baseball season. Maybe that puts into perspective like what everyone's dealing with, even if they're not actually dealing with something like this. Yeah, I think you're onto something there. It is sort of illuminating that like, you know, their perspective on what constitutes normal or uncomfortable or playthroughable is

just like dramatically different than what we are. You know, it's like, I have a migraine and I'm like, okay, see you in 12 hours. Like, yeah, nobody wants me editing copy on one of those because, boy, are those typos not getting caught? You know, I didn't realize how how apt a segue the Ventura and then Pudge conversation was going to be to this. I'm now I'm now reading an account of Pudge's injury from August 1993 UPI piece. So Rodriguez underwent surgery Friday afternoon. So he had been hit by a Hubie Brooks backswing and he had a depressed fracture of the cheekbone. Oh my God. Yeah, that sounds bad. That was Thursday. Friday, he has surgery. And then Monday, he gets cleared to play and he's back out there. But here's from another story. Rodriguez returned to the lineup to start the critical home

series against the White Sox last Monday, just four days after his surgery. Dizziness and headaches caused him to leave the game in the sixth inning. Did he have a concussion? Maybe, probably. I don't know. Maybe it's something else, but they didn't have concussion protocols in MLB back then, right? So the fact that he was out there after having surgery for a fractured cheekbone and then dizziness and headaches, he has to leave the game.

Then he got one game off, and then he's back behind the plate in the brawl game. Rodriguez said he was aware of his tender cheek as he rushed after Ventura. I didn't try to go out there and fight, Rodriguez said. I went out there to try to separate them. So, yeah, I mean, and Rangers manager Kevin Kennedy said Rodriguez has demonstrated extraordinary maturity, etc., etc. And the injury to his cheek is the type of accident that makes a player learn to adjust. I mean, again, this is like you go back out there.

It's a crucial series against the White Sox. So, yes, you have dizziness and headaches and you just fractured your cheekbone and had surgery. But get back behind the plates. So that's sports where it has been. they used to be when it comes to this stuff. The perspective on it seems like it's changed. And some of that is just like, you know, I do wonder how much of it is just like the unintended positive side effect of like the cold and calculating way that teams can look at players.

Like if you view them as their hit to your payroll, you're like, well, we got to preserve this guy because we're paying him X millions of dollars next year. But I don't know. I think we are. I think we are smarter about it. I think baseball, at the very least, is keen to have a different relationship with injuries, generally and particularly head injuries,

than football does. And the sport and the way it's structured and played lends itself to that. But that doesn't mean that there aren't going to be places where the protocol can't improve. And I think this unfortunately suggests one. And I think that the Yankees have previously had a good reputation when it comes to this stuff. When I was editing Jay's piece on this, I was reminded of them being kind of ahead of the curve when it came to Posada

and being like, you have to be done now, at least catching. the curve when it came to Posada and being like you have to be done now at least catching but that doesn't mean you can't regress and that you don't need to remain vigilant in the face of that stuff because I don't want to say that players are going to lie to you but

they're not always going to be forthcoming or in the case of Rizzo like maybe not know how to articulate exactly what's going on until they do and then when they do I think you got to really listen to them and be like, okay, we're going to take you out and check you out for a little bit and see what's what. Because I don't know what the consequences of like him continuing to play while dealing with something like this are for him long term, but you don't want to mess with brains. Like you got to be careful about people's brains. Like, they need that. Yes, very much so. Yeah. And I'm sure there are ways in which you're more inclined to be

vigilant or less vigilant about these things, depending on how the player is performing and what that player means to you. Like, I don't remember all the specifics about Posada, but I do remember having worked for the Yankees shortly before that. There was a lot of discontent with Posada's performance as a catcher anyway. Right. Right. So it wasn't it didn't feel like as much of a sacrifice as it might have otherwise. Yeah. I'm not saying it was, oh, here's an excuse to get him out from behind the plate. Maybe they were legitimately concerned for him. But also it was like negative 23 framing runs. That seems not so great. And

they were aware of framing at that time, I can say from experience. So that may have been part of it, or at least it's just like, hey, if you want a player to be benched or have a different role anyway, maybe you're more motivated. Whereas if it's Anthony Rizzo and you have a weak lineup and he's off to a strong start. Now, obviously, having him play through this was not helping the team in any way because he couldn't hit. He couldn't hit, yeah. But if they were thinking, oh, man, like, judge is out and we have no lineup here and surely he'll turn it around one of these days, right?

Right. Then you might just be a little less inclined to take a really hard look at it because you don't want to be without that player, even if it's in their best interest. I mean, Ken Rosenthal wrote about and Rizzo alluded to also just how Rosenthal had gone up to him at some point during that stretch and had said, do you feel like you're coming out of it? And often players will put a positive spin on it and say, yeah, you know, I've been working on some things and I feel like I'm just one adjustment away and things are going to click.

And Rizzo was just like, no, I don't feel like I'm coming out of it at all. wrong with your mind because you're dealing with a post-concussion syndrome issue that you might just need a mental day, you know, meet a rest day at that point, regardless if you can't see a way out of this difficulty that you're having. So, yeah, I don't think that reflects very well on the Yankees. And they've been dealing with another situation with a player this week, right? Domingo German, who has now gone into treatment for alcohol abuse, right? And has been dealing with that, evidently. And I've seen some people say, you know, how did they not know that this was happening? Who knows, right? I mean, I certainly don't know.

There are players and people who are dealing with substance problems where no one else knows. They're just able to kind of keep that under wraps when they're in public or around other people. And this all came to a head when Hermann evidently was intoxicated and came into the clubhouse and sort of ransacked the place. And that was the incident that led to his immediately getting treatment and it seems like they've handled that the way you should so that kind of situation should they have known who knows should they have stepped in and intervened i don't know i don't know enough to know but this rizzo situation it seems like yeah like there there are times where at the very least they they failed to be proactive in in the way that you would want a team to step in to protect and help a player.

But also that it may have gone beyond that, at least in the recent, you know, post there's something wrong with me here. And yet I'm still in the lineup incident. incident yeah yeah it's i mean like particularly when it seems like it is the result of something that happened on field where you have like an inciting incident that and here i'm referring to rizzo where you would just think like yeah we're gonna keep an eye on that you know let's just like keep an eye on that for for now especially once he started to struggle so badly i mean again I'm not a doctor, so I don't know that if I were one, I'd be like, oh, well, he's not hitting well. So, clearly, he has a concussion. Like, guys don't hit well for all sorts of reasons. But to your

point, like, it seems like he was able to identify, even if he wasn't able to or didn't articulate specific symptoms until later, like, he was able to identify that this felt different than other times where he had been sort of struggling at the plate. So, yeah, it seems like you got to just be a little more vigilant there. I don't know. So, I hope he's okay. I mean, that's, like, the most important thing is, like, is this guy going to be, you know, in better shape to be a person? is to land back at the exact same place that they're at now, it seems like this should merit further investigation because you have to know if there's a way that they could have done, either they being the Yankees or, you know, baseball's protocols,

if there's a way for those to do better to sort of protect a guy against something like this happening again, you got to do it. Yeah, it's great that they have the seven-day IL and all of that, and they have made important-day IL and all of that. And they have made important needed changes in that respect. But yeah, these symptoms can be insidious sometimes, I guess. It's not just, you know, you cut yourself and then the cut heals and you look and say, oh, yeah, no cut anymore. It's just like it can linger and it can recur and it can affect you in subtle ways where you might not even know that that's what's happening. So it's scary stuff. I was thinking about head injuries specifically because

a friend of the show, Mark Simon of Sports Info Solutions, recently heard voicing the part of Steve Cohen in our Shohei Otani training game. SIS tracks the number of pitchers who get hit by a ball and have to leave due to injury or have the game significantly disrupted. And, in fact, our surprise guest later this episode had that happen to him once very severely in his career. But apparently Austin Adams was hit by a comebacker and broke a bone in his ankle. And he's out for the season. And according to Sports Info Solutions, that's the 15th time this season that a pitcher was hit by a ball and had to leave or had the game disrupted. And apparently over the previous two seasons, that happened 14 times combined.

And here we are with 15 times this season, just roughly, what, two-thirds, a little more than two-thirds of the way through. I don't know whether that means anything, but Mark brought it up to me. And I think they only have these numbers going back a few years. So, like, 2018 was fairly high, 19 times that year. 2019, only 10 times. 2020, shorter season, only five times. And then six times in 2021, eight times last season, and then 15 times already this season. So it's on pace to be a record. And I was trying

to puzzle out why that would be. It's not the clearest trend, so maybe it's just random and these are just fluke events. But the theory I came up with, and Mark said someone else had also suggested this, is that maybe because of the shift rules, because of the positioning restrictions, that pitchers, perhaps there's more of a hole up the middle now, right? I mean, even though guys play like almost even with second base in many cases, there is a higher success rate on grounders and liners getting through the middle now. So I wonder whether consciously or subconsciously pitchers are like, oh, I don't have a fielder back there who's shifted over and who's going to get this ball that's right back through the box. So I have to make an attempt at this instead of ducking out of the way. Right.

I guess that could be. And then 2018, there were more of them, but I guess the shift was a little less prevalent then than it was in the past few seasons. So that's my only explanation, if there's actually signal there instead of noise, which would be an unintended consequence. Everyone's always worried about pitchers getting hit by balls. The balls are hit so hard these days, and it's just a catastrophe waiting to happen. So I wonder whether that is a byproduct of that and unintended consequence of the positioning restrictions. It seems like a

plausible explanation to me. So last thing I wanted to say before I stop last year, we've been talking a lot about the trade deadline and we talked about how there weren't really that many impact moves by trade deadline standards. And that was quantified by Dan Szymborski, right, who ran his annual which team helped or hurt itself the most at the deadline. And gosh, I don't want to say it's much ado about nothing. It's not. But in terms of affecting the playoff race and the standings and the odds and everything, it really is sort of small beans relative to how much attention we pay to it. You know, like the Rangers, who I think were the consensus winners of the deadline, like they went for it, they went all in, they had the biggest impact.

And that is what Zip's dance projection system says also. But the change was 6.4 percentage points of playoff odds. So they went from 71.2% to 77.6%. And then that translates to a one percentage point increase in World Series odds from 3.6 to 4.7. And this is like undoing all the trades and accounting for wins and losses and everything just to isolate the impact of the deals that each team made. So they're the big winners, almost doubling any other team's impact from this and kind of a drop in the bucket. It's like, you know, if you won a game and your division rival lost the same day, that might be similar to the impact of your trade deadline winner, right? And we don't track daily fluctuations in playoff odds. We focus on it on that day because it's a big

news day and players are moving around and it's disruptive for them, as we will discuss later in this episode. But in terms of disrupting the entire playoff picture, it's not actually that meaningful. And like the Mets at the bottom, now granted they were long shots already, but their change in playoff odds, they went down 9.4 percentage points and one percentage point in World Series odds. So those are the extremes. You could add one percentage point to your World Series odds, Those are the extremes. You could add one percentage point to your World Series odds, which I guess, granted, as a percentage of your World Series odds is fairly high. Because if you're talking about going from 3.6% to win to 4.7%, well, that's meaningful, I guess. But it's not that huge a difference for as big a deal as we make of it. difference for as big a deal as we make of it. And down on the farm, the minor league-centric substack, they also did an analysis of this and they looked using the steamer projection system,

the projected net fan graphs were acquired over the rest of the season. And again, the Rangers, just over two were acquired in projected war over the rest of the regular season and the mets a little more than three subtracted as are the white socks so that's what we're talking about we're adding like two wins maybe over the rest of the season subtracting three wins over the rest of the season those are your your big impact moves at least at deadline, which again was probably more muted than the typical deadline. And of course, any playoff impact you get is not quantified by the net war edition, but is pretty important too. I think that this was a relatively quiet deadline. And I think that both analysts and fans, okay, that's why I'm about to do three things. So there's more than both, right? And teams are thinking about the potential October impacts of moves like this in a very real way and in a way that isn't going to be reflected in the like making the postseason odds. But, you know, it's hard to win a World Series and it's hard to make moves that really dramatically shift your World Series odds around, you know, deadline or no. So it's hard. You know

what? Baseball. Yeah. I did, by the way, look up Dan's posts from the previous two deadlines, which were more active and the magnitude of the difference is pretty similar. 2021, which was a wild deadline. The biggest gain he had was 8.7 percentage points in playoff probability and less than one percentage point in World Series odds. And then last year looks like about seven percentage points in playoff probability. I think that's just the nature of the deadline, because that's the nature of baseball. You're usually talking about maybe a couple players over a couple months.

Still fun to follow, though. All right, time to stat blast. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to days to past. All right. Here's a question that comes from listener Alex, who says the Rays broadcast had a graphic

showing that Isak Paredes has the longest active pulled home run streak with all 43 of his career home runs being hit to the pole side. Second place was Colton Wong with 27. This is another home run streak related stat blast. Is this streak significant? What's the longest a player has gone into their career before hitting an opposite field home run? So I submitted this question to a friend of the show, Russell Carlton of Baseball Perspectives, and he used his RetroSheet database to get an answer here. Some caveats and methodological notes here.

This is looking at 1950 to 2022. But as you go back into the 70s, Russell writes, and before, data completeness gets spotty. And there are some home runs missing and some games missing, or at least like the play-by-play is missing. And then he notes that data on where the home run was hit to is also a bit of an adventure. So from 1991 onward, we have at least some notation for all of them. Going back further, we get to some seasons with 25% missing. We know it was a homer,

but we have no idea where. The standards to which they reported the data were also variable, knowing how RetroSheet does this. For older games especially, they would read the newspaper account. It might say, home run to left, and that's the only document we have to go on. Then there's the issue of left center. For the purposes of this, I counted left center or right center as polled as appropriate. When left center becomes center field is a

judgment call. It's a deep philosophical question that we won't wrestle with right now. He also says that for the polled home run percentages in their career, so I asked him for the players with the highest and lowest career home run poll percentages as well, if there was no indication of where the home run went, he treated it as a missing data point. So the percentages are all of the ones that we have data for. And for the streaks, if there was a missing data point, he let that interrupt the streak. So the streaks are really only valid for the 90s onward. So all of those caveats noted here. The highest poll rate is 100%, but depends where you set the minimum here.

So the highest 100% career home run poll rate, the highest minimum number of career home runs is Omar Vizquel. So Omar Vizquel here, at least in the data, pulled every single one of his career home runs. Never had an Apo Taco. And that's 80 career homers. All of them pulled. And that is pretty reliable. We can trust that. pulled and that is pretty reliable. We can trust that. Now, probably the king of pulled homers among more prolific home run hitters is Johnny Damon. So Johnny Damon hit 235 career home runs

and 98.7% of them were pulled. So he had pull power, not much oppo power. And then it's guys like Tim McCarver and Doug Mankiewicz or Coco Crisp. You know, when I see Coco Crisp in my mind's eye hitting a home run, it's a pulled home run or Orlando Cabrera, right? I mean, these are guys who had some home run power, Jose Reyes, you know, but not. Ichiro is an interesting one. Ichiro, 117 homers, 97.4% of them pulled. Of course, the legend of Ichiro and his secret batting practice power that he could have deployed in games if he had decided to, right? If he had wanted to.

But he was not going oppo so much, it seems like, in games at least. Then I guess on the other end of the spectrum, the most frequent opposite field home run hitters, Mike Young. So this is sorted by poll percentage. Mike Young's poll percentage on his homers was 26.1%. So like three out of four of his homers were not polled, apparently, of 72 career homers. David Fries, another one, 28.3 for the data that we have, very low poll percentage. Joe Maurer, very low poll percentage. Ryan Howard, that's an interesting one because 382 career homers and 34.8% poll percentage. Now, that's a guy I think of as he had the power to take the ball out anywhere, right? So he did not have to pull to get it out. But I'll link to the full spreadsheet there.

But yeah, the highest, if I set the minimum at like 200 homers, Johnny Damon, Mike Lowell, Jimmy Rollins, a teammate of Howard's, Frank Thomas, not the big hurt Frank Thomas, the first Frank Thomas, a little less powerful Frank Thomas. Joe Morgan, Yogi Berra, Rusty Staab, Ian Kinsler. And then the low pull percentage guys, Clemente, Howard, Chris Davis, Joey Votto, who's still banging these days. He's hitting pretty well. Yeah, Derek Jeter, JD Martinez, Aaron Judge, actually 45% poll percentage.

Famous banger. Yeah. Richie Saxon. Some big guys. So if you were to have height and weight on here and kind of correlated, then I think there would be a correlation. You know, there are some guys who have enough poll power to get it out but can't necessarily get it out elsewhere. power to get it out, but can't necessarily get it out elsewhere. Like the guys who are hitting lots of opposite field shots or straight up shots like these are big guys with a lot of power. There's a clear difference here, the names on the list. And then for the pulled home run streaks,

Mike Lowell is the champion. So Mike Lowell mentioned in the previous list, the career list, 97.8% of his career homers, his 223, were pulled. And he also has the record. Apparently, he had 122 consecutive home runs from July 2nd, 2003 to September 29th, 2010. So more than seven years he went without hitting a home run that was not pulled. And then Jose Reyes at 112. Johnny Damon has the third and fourth longest streaks, separate streaks. He had a 98 homer streak that were all pulled from June 2006 to June 2012. And then he had a different streak from August 1995 to August 2002. Streaks of 98 and 85 homers all pulled respectively. Yeah.

The first of those streaks, the 85 homer one, was actually to start his career. So that answers that part of the question. Longest pulled homer streak to start a career, Johnny Damon, 85. And then Aaron Hill, Omar Vizquel. And I could go on, but I won't. I will link to the spreadsheets so that you can all check that out for yourself. All right. Thank you to Russell.

And here's a quicker one. This is from Kevin, who says, I'm one of the weirdos out there who throws left-handed and bats right-handed. I do most things in my daily life with my right hand, but athletically I'm almost exclusively a lefty, except I bat righty. Probably should have learned to switch hit. You probably know that only a teeny tiny percent of all major leaguers ever have been bats right, throws left, while the opposite is fairly common. We've talked about this. This is like a sinister right-hander they've sometimes called or a wrong-way guy. Or a weird-ass.

I call him a weird-ass. Right. It's not the most, none of those names particularly flattering. I remember hearing I mean it affectionately, Ben. I mean it in the kindest way possible. You delightful little weird ass. Right. Not to be mistaken with the way I talk about my cat.

I remember hearing on a TV call involving fellow weirdo, Ryan Ludwig. See, he can say it because he's one of them. Sure. He can call them weirdos. Okay. About a dozen years ago that there were only 50-ish guys in ALNL history with this profile. I believe Ricky Henderson is still the only guy in the Hall of Fame to do it. Of course, he is the legend. Imagine my surprise then, he continues, when my wife and I attended the Rangers-Astros game in Houston on July 26th.

Chaz McCormick was in the lineup, and I hadn't realized he was part of the fraternity. That was interesting enough to me. But then Jake Myers came up late in the game as a bunch of the Astros starters were pulled during the blowout. Jake Myers also bats right and throws left. How many other teams in ALNL history have had two throws left, bats right weirdos in the same lineup or roster? Side note, earlier in the game, I'd also noted that Robbie Grossman in the Rangers lineup throws left and switch hits. I consider that a fellow traveler, since even that is much more rare than throws right switch hitters.

So looks like the record for starters in a game, if you include the pitcher in a non-DH game, is three. So if you include that, for instance, September 27th, 1995, Giants against Padres, Mark Carrion, Sean Estes, and Dave McCarty were in that lineup. But if you exclude pitchers, even pitchers who were hitting, then McCormick and Myers are tied for the record. So, yeah, this is rare enough that just two is essentially tied for the record. rare enough that just two is essentially tied for the record. I can't easily search for the number of these players on a roster at any particular time, but if I remove the requirement that the player started the game, then the record for a team to play in a game is four if you include pitchers, which happened several times, or still two if you exclude pitchers, it's still McCormick and Myers. So yeah, this is a special time for the sinister right-handers, the weird asses, the wrong way guys out there. McCormick and Myers, the dynamic duo of wrong way guys

on the same roster. It is quite unusual. Sinister right-handers. I guess like in some ways it's better that they be called sinister right-handers because, you know, historically left-handers really got the business. They were accused of all kinds of nonsense. Yes. Right. Yeah.

And it comes from the, you know, the left and the Latin and the on the left side and the association with evil and everything. That's a bad rap, historically speaking. Bad rap indeed. I've actually stat-headed now the exact number of wrong way guys. So if we look AL and NL only, going back to the beginning, have to have made at least one plate appearance and had to have played more than half of their games as a non-pitcher.

That gives us 63 total. So yeah, it is a pretty exclusive club. And if we sort by career plate appearances or were, Ricky Henderson at the top, 13,346 plate appearances. And at the bottom, with one plate appearance, but a very famous plate appearance, Eddie Goodell. I don't think I knew that Eddie Goodell was a bats right, throws left guy. The second most valuable of the group, Jimmy Ryan, mostly a 19th century player, and Hal Chase, Prince Hal, a distant third.

Chaz McCormick and Jake Myers are already ninth and 11th on the career war list after not even three full seasons each. All right. Question from Alex, Patreon supporter. Aaron Goldsmith just mentioned that Luis Castillo's 98th pitch of the game was thrown at 98 miles per hour. That got me wondering. What pitcher, sometimes I'm like, how? How did that get you wondering? But I appreciate it anyway.

What pitcher has thrown the most pitches in a game where the speed of the pitch was the same as the number of the pitch in the pitch count. So it can't be that high. But what is the record? This seems like a record Zach Granke would try to break. Yeah, that's probably true if he knew about it. And we've done one of these on most different velocity readings, radar readings in a single game.

Granke came up then. I sent this one to Lucas Apostolaris of Baseball Prospectus. And the record, obviously, in the pitch tracking era that we have data here going back to 2008, is six. Six pitches in the same game that had the same miles per hour as pitch count number, right? Sure. So, for instance, most recently this happened, let's see, it's happened several times. So I guess it's been done by Freddy Garcia, Barry Zito, Jared Weaver, Edwin Jackson,

Ulyss Chassin, Bud Norris, and Mike Clevenger. So I'm just looking at the top of the list here. For instance, Freddy Garcia, he had on his 77th pitch, 78th pitch, 80th pitch, 82nd pitch, 83rd pitch, and 88th pitch. They had the same speed as the pitch number. And it looks like most of these, it is like 70s and 80s predominantly, which I guess makes sense. Like for Castillo to do it 98 at 98, obviously not everyone gets to 98 pitches at the start and not everyone can throw 98 miles per hour, especially on their 98th pitch of the game. So that is a little more unusual. Looks like the widest range here maybe is Edwin Jackson, June 17th, 2009. For him, it was pitch 77, 78, 82, 85, 93, and 95. So he's

the only guy who got into the mid-90s on these. But usually it's off-speed stuff, largely, which I suppose makes sense. So yeah, I checked one more thing here. I was wondering what the widest range within a single game was. So what's the biggest gap between two pitches that had matching speed and number in the same game? And on this sheet, Lucas gave me all the games with at least four matches. The widest range is Sean Chacon, May 6th, 2008. Apparently he had a 54 mile per hour, 54th pitch and an 89 mile per hour, 89th pitch. So that's a range of 35, which is by far the most by such a wide margin that it makes me wonder since that was early in the history of PitchFX, whether that was a data error. If so, second place is Shelby Miller, who on May 24th, 2016, threw a 70 mile per hour 70th pitch and a 95 mile per hour 95th pitch.

That's a range of 25. All right. And then this one was actually a listener submission. This was not requested. This was unsolicited, but it was sent to us by listener and Patreon supporter Anton, who did some stat blasting himself. And he determined, here's a fairly trivial but specific potential stat blast. August 4th, that's the day we're recording, is the day of the year on which the most major leaguers were born. 83. 83 big leaguers born on August 4th. So it was not just the day when Nolan Ryan became Robin Ventura's daddy. It was the day when many major leaguers fathers became daddies because they were born on that day. That was kind of a labored connection. But I think I hopefully made that make some sense. This is based on a StatBlast slash Discord post from episode 2004 when we talked about the relative age effect in baseball with August and September being overrepresented birth months among major leaguers due to age cutoffs in youth baseball. I think they are also just the highest birth months in general, but even accounting for that,

baseball players, at least in the U.S., overrepresented because of that effect. Accordingly, we'd expect the top day to be in August or September, which it is. This counts everyone with a birth date in the Lehman database. Baseball reference actually has 87. Among these players born August 4th, Roger Clemens has the most career baseball reference for 139, followed by Jake Beckley and Dolph Luque. September 22nd is next, with 79 players or 86, according to Baseball Reference. Unsurprisingly, February 29th has the fewest, just 14. Among all other days, April 30th is second lowest, with 33. And he even made a bar chart and a heat map style

calendar, which I will link to. So thank you very much, Anton, for supplying a stat blast. And lastly, thanks to you for suggesting a stat blast yourself, because listeners will recall last week you requested or suggested a stat blast on the players who have been traded most often at the deadline, the most deadline-dealt players in Major League history. And looked into this with the help of Ryan Nelson, frequent StatBlast consultant. And we went back all the way really to the beginning of there being a deadline, more than a century. And we use the specific dates and everything for great precision here. And the players who have been traded most often on the actual deadline day, there are three of them. Terry Mulholland, Woody Held, and Ron Vallone. Each has been traded three times on

deadline day itself. So that is the record. If we widen the window a little and we say, So that is the record. If we widen the window a little and we say, OK, within three days of the deadline, then it's Terry Mulholland. Then his total rises to four. All right. If we widen again, if we say, all right, what about within a week of the deadline? That's close enough. You'd still call that a deadline deal. Then Terry Mulholland is joined by Jay Happ, who was also traded four times at

the deadline. And finally, if we zoom out just a little more and we say, OK, what about within two weeks of the deadline? Which I think you would still say, hey, it's trade season, right? Yeah. It's trade deadline time. This was motivated by the approaching deadline. Then the champion is, alone in first place, J-Hap, with five such deadline deals. And under him at

four, we have Mulholland, we have Wayne Nordhagen, and we have Joachim Soria. But, all alone at the top is J-Hap. And guess what, Meg? I just so happen, just so happen to have Jay Happ right here. Oh, my gosh.

Well, our guest today was not traded this week, though he was on the move traveling back to his hometown to have his childhood field rechristened in his honor. The new name of that field is Jay Happ Field. And his name is Jay Happ. Jay, welcome and congrats on Jay Day in Peru, Illinois. Hey, I appreciate that. Thanks for having me. We're also joined by a fellow former member of the 2008 AAA Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, the inaugural Iron Pig season, Fangraph's lead prospect analyst, Eric Langenhagen. the inaugural Iron Pig season, Fangraph's lead prospect analyst,

Eric Langenhagen. Jay was a pitcher. Eric was an intern who, as far as I know, does not have any fields named after him, but we're happy to have him here too. Hi, Eric. Hey, how's it going? No, if there was one opportunity for me to have some field named after me,

it would be the basketball court at the playground where I grew up, where I also worked and then was the wiffle ball. I I ran kids afternoon wiffle ball in college, you know, so I was throwing a couple hundred pitches a day. Definitely like blew my cuff for sure doing that. Yeah, that's about as far as I've ever, as I've ever gotten. Long and Hagen court could have the whole family show up. You'll be signing for everyone. It'll be a great, great day. They named it after Frank Mulchin, who preceded me in that role as the Wiffle Ball guy.

Okay, so this is a realistic scenario. Well, we're not here primarily to talk about the 2008 AAA Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. Maybe that will come up later. But we're here to talk about being traded. And Jay, I'm sure there are some things that you miss about playing baseball, but is waking up one day in late July to discover that you now live in a different city and work for a different employer one of those things? The second half of those trades end up being kind of a good thing for me. But I remember at the very beginning, it was emotional and stressful. And I mean, it was still both of those things every time.

But I started to get used to it a little bit, I suppose. Yeah. Well, your trades spanned most of your career in more than a decade. So you were on both sides. You were the young guy getting traded. You were the veteran guy getting traded. So we'll talk about that. I'm sure this can't compare to, say, winning a World Series or having your hometown field named after you. But how does it feel to be the most moved player in MLB trade deadline history? news. I knew it was up there, but I didn't know. But I suppose I'm proud of it, I think. Yeah, well, right. I mean, you were traded five times at the deadline, six times in total. And I guess you could look at it glass half empty or glass half full. Someone doesn't want me or someone does want me. I mean, you were in demand, right? So that's one way to look at it.

Yeah, that's the way I prefer to look at it. Exactly. I'm wondering if you can take our listeners just through the logistics of being traded in the middle of the season. I'm sure that things varied team to team and that as you progressed through your career and were a more established veteran that the resources at your disposal were probably a little bit different. But what actually happens between the time when you get the call and when you arrive in your new city and then realize, wow, I don't quite know where I'm going to sleep a week from now? Yeah, that's actually, you know, and I've had all different sorts of scenarios of how it happened.

My first trade from the Phillies, I was in the clubhouse that came across the bottom line and before anybody even told me. So for about 45 minutes, it was being told to everybody, but really me officially. And then finally got called in and you pretty much just jump on a plane and show up and try to join the clubhouse as best you can. The one in from Toronto to New York, I was, we had an off day in Chicago and we're at the Lincoln park zoo. And then I got a call that said, you got traded to the Yankees and kind of pick up. And then you, you kind of talk to their contacts, the new team and set up a flight. And later in my career, it was more challenging because I had more family and kids to move and get them back to kind of, it's kind of on the families to get back and

pack yourself up and try to get to the new place. So it's stressful for them as well. Yeah. So the actual logistics of the flight and your accommodations and everything, is that the traveling secretary you're talking to? Is there like a ceremonial handoff between traveling secretaries? It's like, he's your responsibility now. Or someone calls you and says, you're on this flight, go here, then here's how you get to the ballpark. How does that happen exactly? That's exactly right, actually. It's the traveling secretary. So you'll get a call from, you know, either the manager, most likely the general manager of that new team welcoming you. And, and before that conversation ends, they say, we'll have our traveling secretary reach out to you and get all, you know, get you set up with all the information that, that he needs and, um, get you out of here to, to join

us as quick as we can, pretty much. Were there some things that through repetition, you and your family got good at or could decide quickly that it was, you know, because it was old practice at that point, you like got, made the transition more smooth? Just the expectation that, you know, again, there's been both times that I saw it coming and times that I didn't. But the hardest thing really is the, you know, I don't have time really to like pack up, especially if you're on the road, you have no time. You're basically going to live out of that suitcase, you know, for seven to 10 days, pretty much. Uh, it's going back and trying to get everything else in your home city together is the most challenging thing,

I think. Even though they do their best to help us with that too. If you don't have a family that can do that, that the club will provide some people that'll run over to your place and kind of pack it up for you. I'm curious, as you progressed through these trades and you gained more experience, there were obviously seasons where you were not traded at the deadline, but I'm sure saw teammates come and teammates go. Was there a time, especially later in your career when you had done this a couple of times, when players sought you out for counsel of how to adjust or how to get stuff moved around? Did you become sort of a mentor to the trade process for younger guys? Yeah, I think a little bit. I mean, we definitely had a lot of conversations. Guys, again, it can be very emotional, you know, the first time or two you go through it. I remember

that first time I cried, like I just had all these kinds of emotions. It's the club that you get drafted by, you never think you're going to leave and all these things. So people do, you know, have a lot of questions about how it works and all that. And we definitely have a lot of those conversations. Yeah, I did kind of want to go one by one, starting with that first one, which I'm sure at the time came as a shock, right? So July 29th, 2010, you're traded by the Phillies with Anthony Gose and Jonathan VR to the Astros for Roy Oswalt. So at least you're bringing back a name brand guy. But as you said, this is the team that drafted you, that you debuted with, that you were the rookie of the year runner up with,

that you won a World Series with. Did you have any conception that this was coming? And then the way that you just said you found out about it, seeing it on the ticker, not being told about it directly. I mean, what was that whole experience like? And then I guess, you know, going to a team like the Astros, this is just embarking on this tank slash rebuild, right? So it's very different after you've been

with a world championship organization. Yeah, definitely. That one I did not know. I didn't anticipate it had caught wind of it maybe the night before that something might be happening but never really at the time didn't want it to happen because i just love the my time there in philadelphia but that's part of it too we don't have enough we don't have any control over that so it's kind of on us to make that adjustment. And then going into Houston,

you know, was still a team that was kind of in the middle of the pack and in 2010, and we finished actually pretty strong, but that following year, 2011, we had a really tough season. And I think they, that's when they kind of started the whole tear down and rebuild situation. Do you appreciate the call at least being informed? Is it worse to find out about it because news broke and you were the last to know or far from the first to know? I mean, do you appreciate the courtesy call at least from the GM or whoever's making the move to say, hey, I got to break this news to you? And how do those conversations tend to go? hey, I got to break this news to you? And how do those conversations tend to go?

Yeah, I always appreciate that. And it's a hard thing nowadays. It seems like everything's in real time. I don't even know if they have the ability. The news is out there before it can almost even make the phone call, it feels like sometimes. So I try to cut them some slack. But it's nice to usually hear from the manager or the general manager from either side. That always feels good.

Generally, it's pleasant enough depending on how you're personally feeling about it. But that first one, that Philadelphia one, I was choked up. I couldn't get too much out. Over the years, they've got a little more transactional and just time to move. Yeah. I always wonder what players think of, you know, the, the news breakers on our side of things, because, you know, when you're trying to assign someone to write up a trade and analyze it, it's really useful to know something from Jeff Passan,

maybe before it's been reported. But what's the relationship like on the player side, not with the front office, but with those reporters? Is it antagonistic or do you just view them as doing their jobs? How does that go? Yeah, I mean, I think the best way to do it is understand that they're doing a job. And I, you know, I don't think intentionally doing anything malicious ever to, you know, hurt you or your family or cause stress. I think it's just, it's part of, part of the business, but yeah, you know, and having said that at the same time, we kind of use them too, to, to learn what's, what's going on. Cause they

seem to have a better know-how than us. So we're looking at websites and seeing tweets and things of that nature to kind of get the latest news. Do you have a sense of camaraderie with that group of guys you get traded with? I mean, the second time you're traded, the group is so big. Like it's such a massive trade,

just sheer number of guys. I can't see it being possible, but especially with that first one, were you tight with Ghost and VR already? Did you spend some time with those guys before you were dealt and have some sense of togetherness after you were dealt together? I didn't. Those two guys, I mean, I knew their names coming up,

but they were a couple years younger, and we hadn't quite played together. But it is one of those things, like you just mentioned, the names in the trades, I kind of always remember those guys because of the package or whatever the transaction was. So yeah, definitely. And then over the years playing against those guys, I always kind of had that in the back of your mind, that we were all in there together for sure. Yeah. It's hard to remember all the names from that second trade. So July 20th, 2012 traded by the Astros with David Carpenter and Brandon Lyon to the Toronto Blue Jays for a player to be named later, who turned out to be Kevin Comer, Francisco Cordero, Ben Francisco, Joe Musgrove, Carlos Perez, David Rollins, and Asher Wojciechowski.

That's a big deal. So in that case, you're going from a team that ends up winning 55 games and has a couple rough seasons ahead of it still to, I guess, not quite a contender, but at least a team that's not in the throes of tanking. at least a team that's not in the throes of tanking. So was that nice to get to a team that's at least, you know, making more of an effort to contend or what else went into that one? Yeah, I remember that one being real happy that Brandon Lyons was in there with me. He was a veteran guy that really kind of helped ease that transition. You know, going to another country to play, you just as a visiting player, you're always a little bit unsure, but that was an adjustment. And that's a city that I really came to love.

And I ended up going back there and in free agency a couple of years after that. But that was, that was a good one. It was a, it was like a breath of fresh air, you know, a new start. And that's how I started to try to view a lot of these trades as a new opportunity. out of a suitcase for seven to 10 days. And then I guess you can just keep kind of living out of a hotel for the rest of that season if you want to. Maybe it depends on your contract status and how far you are from free agency, whether you know you're going to be there for a while. But for someone who moved as many times as you did during your career, when do you decide, OK, I might be here for a while? I should look for housing. I should figure out where I'm going to live. Yeah, I think it's different for everybody. I know that year in particular, just I think it was close to the deadline or right on it. So it was a couple months left.

Probably wasn't going to make the playoffs. So I knew maybe like two months. I think I ended up just staying at like a residence. And that was still early in my career. A little bit later, I may have looked for an apartment right away just to be able to set your stuff up and be more comfortable. But like early guys who, you know, zero to three guys are trying to do what they can to save a little, save a buck. And then once you arrive at a new club and obviously the competitive situation that they're in is going to dictate some of this i would imagine but you know particularly in instances where you're being brought in to help

bolster a team that is a contender and is perhaps looking ahead to postseason play what is what does it feel like to be the guy coming in who's sort of bringing with him some expectations that he's going to help to fill a need or reinforce a rotation. How did that hit you? I really, I liked that part. I mean, there was some pressure involved in that, but it's also very much as the years go by and if you're brought in for that reason, it's just real easy to walk in the clubhouse. Guys are welcoming most of the time, happy you're there, happy to kind of form that as relationship. So I was always like, I just want to get out there

on the field and get that first one under my belt with the team to kind of just feel like, okay, you know, I'm part of this and I can provide some value. So that was always the exciting thing, especially if, you know, there's a chance for playoffs. That's, you know, I got spoiled early on in Philadelphia with back-to-back World Series appearances. And I remember all those guys at the time telling me, you got to, you don't realize how lucky you are. You play the whole career and don't even make the playoffs, let alone World Series. So I always knew that that was something that I was going to try to focus on if there was ever a chance in free agency or wherever, try to go somewhere where they got a chance to get in that playoff hunt. Yeah. I'm sure when you were traded later in your career, by then you'd been in baseball so long that everyone knows you or at least knows

of you and you've probably played with or against most of the people that you're joining. But when you're young and you're just going to an organization, is there kind of a awkward feeling everyone out process? I have to introduce myself. No one knows who I am. It's like switching schools or something. I need to make new friends. I mean, and it's the middle of the season, too. So these guys have been together since the start. You know, they were in spring training together, right? Maybe they played together for years and you have none of that shared history. So I'm sure it varies by the group of guys, but is that tough to overcome just being the new guy? Definitely it can be, you kind of hit it on the head there with, uh, you know, kind of being somebody that not everybody knows your name or your story or, or, you know, kind of being somebody that not everybody knows your name or your story or,

or, you know, what your expectation of you is exactly, or it might not be as high as, you know, maybe some of the other ones. It's, it's, it is challenging to kind of jump in there and be as comfortable as you otherwise would, because you just don't, maybe don't have that same confidence level going into it. window when you're in toronto from like 2012 through 2018 your innings count is huge your fastball usage explodes up above 70 percent and you're eating so many innings like you're one of the 30 most productive pitchers in the sport during that six-year window. Did anything change? Like after you got to Toronto, what were some of the developmental, like from a technical perspective, were there better or worse fits for you during the course of your career? And then specifically like during that phase in Toronto, why did you make some of

those changes? It's a great question. I think I really got along well with the pitching coach pete walker who's still there he was he was fantastic i felt like in a couple years prior to there i was maybe trying to be a pitcher that i never truly was as far as like my mix and everything trying to be a little more traditional you know maybe like a tom glavin who's thrown all of his pitches about the same amount you know the percentage usage and I feel like they didn't really put a cap on they kind of encouraged me to kind of to be me and throughout my time there and I was always trying to figure this out as a young player people didn't like my fastball because they were like oh the higher levels it's going to get hit and it was like that high spin rate perception being harder than it is. And just that vertical break, which we didn't know until later, the last five years or so

when all this stuff is coming out. So I was able to like utilize that. Whereas in other, the couple of years before I was maybe trying to do more of a two seamer or just not utilize that fastball because it wasn't as sort of encouraged. So the third deadline deal, you were actually traded by the Blue Jays to the Mariners in December of 2014, your one non-deadline deal. So you must've felt like, gosh, I have all the time in the world to figure out where I'm going to live. This is a luxury. But then you were traded by the Mariners, July 31st, 2015. So your first actual deadline day trade, I guess, to the

Pirates for Adrian Sampson. So this is the first one where you're really brought in mid-season as a rental who's going to hit free agency to reinforce a playoff team. So how long does it take to feel like you're a part of that team in that playoff run as opposed to sort of a mercenary or a hired gun? Timing is just everything. So I think A.J. Burnett had an injury and they needed somebody to come in. And that year, I think they had, you know, those three teams in the NL central one, like 101 99 and 98 games or something.

So that was just a lot of fun. It wasn't, that was actually easy. It was a great group of guys just, uh, you know, and we kind of just caught fire that those last couple of months. And it was a lot of fun there. And, uh, in Pittsburgh, we talked about the different clubhouse vibes and cliques and friend groups and everything. What about different managers? Because if you go from a team that has a player manager, let's say, or someone who's pretty permissive or hands-off, and then you go to a team with a disciplinarian, do you have to adjust your behavior? I guess by the time you get there,

you've played for so many different managers and the minors and everywhere else that maybe you're used to those changes. But in the middle of the season, is that jarring when you're trying to get a hang of the, I guess, the clubhouse vibes and the unwritten rules and the do's and don'ts? You know, you kind of rely on more of the other players to kind of get the vibe of what the culture there is you know you in all these trades you come in and you have a you know a meeting with the manager and that can be three minutes or it can be 15 it just however just to get to know and he'll he'll set some expectations and and stuff like that but really it's kind of you just look around and see what guys are doing. And, you know, you kind of learn more from them. I think that's what a lot of the really good

clubhouses have is doing things, you know, that are in line with the culture of that team. So yeah, mostly looking to the other players, I think. I guess related to that, what is it like establishing a relationship with a new catcher midway through a season? That is a great question because I continually talk about how important that was for me and what a challenge it can be to not have that spring training to throw those seven outings with the guy. Maybe he's going to catch four or five of those and you just don't have that. And I think it's really important for you two to be on the same page or at least have

a trust level of what he's capable of and what his reputation is behind the plate. So that's really important. Yeah. I guess you didn't get to use a pitch comm device. You could have just called your own pitches, but still. Was that the first trade where you really knew it was going to happen or you had a sense like, I'm the kind of guy who gets traded at the trade deadline because I'm going to be a free agent and there's going to be some team that wants me to help down the stretch here? And if so, was that a distraction? Because you will sometimes hear people say, oh, maybe he's not playing as well because the trade rumors are circling around him and maybe that's on his mind. Right. So was that something you dwelt on? clear expectation to be traded until the 2018 season when I was in Toronto. That one seemed a little more clear, just the direction they were going. And, but, uh, yeah, so I just, I, I, I think I was just ignorant to the whole thing and didn't think about it too much, but, uh, the thing about it is I, I must've liked something about it. Cause I feel like every, every trade that I've had those next couple months, for the most part, have gone well.

So I definitely enjoyed kind of jumping into a new situation and a lot of those playoff hunts. So that makes it even better. Yeah, so that's trade number four, July 26, 2018, traded by the Blue Jays to the Yankees for Brandon Drury and Billy McKinney. And I know you got married in 2014 and you have three kids. We both have daughters named Sloan. Great name. Oh, nice. I don't know how old they were or when they were born.

But at that point, how is that different being a family man getting traded than it was when you were still a single guy? What demands does that place on your wife and your kids? And do they have to relocate? How do you break the news to them? Yeah, that was the, so that was the one I had two at the time, two kids and my wife and I were at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. And I was seeing something online or somebody was sending me some messages. And I was like, I think we need to go home. And right after we cabbed back up to the hotel, I got a phone call that we were going to go to the Yankees. So then it's just logistically her trying to see who can help her jump up to Toronto and help us get everything sorted out,

you know, with the two kids and everything. So therein lies a more difficult challenge because you don't know, you can't really, I don't remember ever flying with my wife on one of these. It was always me just kind of jumping as quick as I could to whatever team. as quick as I could to whatever team. And I guess the final trade, July 30th, 2021, traded by the Twins with cash to the St. Louis Cardinals for Evan Sisk and John Gant. So at that point, I guess, are you just thinking, here we go again?

I'm an old hand at this. I know how this goes. That's your last season. I don't know if you knew at the time it would be your last season, but I guess appropriate that you got one more in there under the wire. Yeah, that one was also a surprise. I hadn't pitched very well. I thought maybe something would happen, but this one, I got a call the day of, within a couple hours of the deadline so i thought if something was going to happen it would have already happened i didn't think it would be a absolute deadline deal but um and that was interesting because we're actually

in town to play st louis so i went from the twins to st louis and stayed in the hotel room that I was going to have for a couple of days already. Then I just grabbed my stuff from the locker room, the visiting side and walked over to the home side of Cardinals. It was really strange. I had heard of that happening before, but that was a, it was a strange one. And, um, but again, one that worked out, I got to play for St. Louis, an organization I always admired. Got to meet some great friends and great teammates. So that was a highlight for sure. This, I think, always interests people when they hear about players switching teams and then switching numbers. And I will admit to not having a great mind for jersey numbers, but did you ever have any tense moments around

either getting the number you wanted or having to give something up when another veteran came in? You know what? I don't think so. I can't remember one. There was one time in Seattle that I requested a number from a coach, But I don't remember. He had a great number. He had 33, though. Come on, you got to leave that for somebody else. But I always wanted 33. I was always 33 if I could.

Yeah, you had, what, seven different numbers, right? And I guess if you couldn't get 33, you took 32 or 34. Yeah, I was always right around there, yeah. What about getting starstruck and entering a new locker room? Did that happen initially and then sort of go away? Were there ever instances of that occurring? I wouldn't say starstruck,

but I think just a great level of respect. A good case in point is going to the Cardinals and Adam Wainwright and Yadi Molina. I mean, it was fun getting to know those guys and, you know, having played against them for, for years and stuff. So it was nice to be on, on that side. And, you know, like I mentioned with that automatic, you know, comfort with a catcher where you just put a lot of trust in them, you know, that guy certainly fits the bill on that. Yeah. I guess when you come up as a rookie with the Phillies and you've got 44-year-old Jamie Moyer in there, then it's hard to top that when it comes to, like, veteran presence.

Oh, you're so right. And I still talk to Jamie to this day. He was amazing for just a wealth of knowledge. And, yeah, I actually just sent him a picture that I came across the other day. He's a great, great guy. So I guess just to put this all into perspective, I mean, it seems like such a strange thing, I think, to us that six times in your career, you were just traded with no say in the matter. Did you ever have a no trade clause, by the way?

Did you ever have any veto power or anything? No, I didn't. No. Okay. So six times in your career, five times at the deadline, you're just told, all right, you live and work here now, right? And I guess this is just something you take in stride as a professional athlete. It's such a strange job and a great job in many ways. And you take the things that aren't so great to get the things that are. But, you know, you get drafted by the team that drafts you. OK, I'm a Philly now. That's where I play.

This is where I'm going to live. And then they tell you, well, you're an Astro now. OK, I'm an Astro now. I mean, I think a lot of us who have, quote unquote, normal jobs, more common jobs, you know, we move, we change jobs or careers at some point in our lives, but usually of our own volition to some extent, right? We have some say in the matter. So I guess you just accept that to the point that it doesn't even seem strange, but I don't know whether after the fact, now that you reflect on it, it, it seems highly unusual. It definitely is. And I think I understood that in the moment,

but it was kind of like, you just, there's no option. It's like, I want to do this. I want, you know, I want to play and, you know, I think it probably builds some resiliency and a little character I'd like to thank and maybe being well-adjusted. It's not all bad. There's some uncomfortable moments of it, for sure. But that's the sport we chose to play. So we're stuck with it. Yeah.

Were there ever moments where you changed teams and a check gets lost in the mail or something? I don't know whether direct deposit was already in place by that point or not, but I always wonder about that, especially if a player is playing for a team and his old team is still paying him, right? He's still under the old contract, but he's playing for a new team. It's like, how do the logistics of that work? And do you ever have to just call HR or something and be like, yeah, I didn't get my deposit this month because I changed teams and things got messed up?

Yeah, definitely. That can happen. A lot of times too, it takes like a pay period or two for the direct deposit to get linked in or however that whatever the terminology for that is. But so then you get some physical checks. So then you're like walking around with this check and you're like having to go to a bank to like physically cash it. And they're just like, I feel like we should be beyond having to do this. But, you know, it's just it is what it is till you get in their system. But yeah. Yeah. So I guess we've exhausted our trade related questions. I did want to ask you about Cole But, yeah, yeah. that closes the book on former 2008 Phillies. You've all sailed off into the sunset at this point. So I guess if you could share any memories you might have of coming up and being his teammate for the first few years of your careers and some of the moments you had on and off the field, and

then also how it makes you feel that I guess he was the last one standing and now you're all former major league players. Yeah, kind of sad to see. I did notice that today. I wasn't sure what his status was the last few years. I think he's been battling some injuries maybe. But yeah, I mean, Cole was incredible incredible what a great career he's had he was like the first guy that I saw who dominated with a non-breaking ball usually fastball breaking ball one of the two or a combination of those but he dominated with the off-speed pitch like really nobody I had seen before and his confidence in that change-up is incredible. So he just had that ability. And he was obviously a huge part of that franchise for a long time in the Phillies and won some big games for them.

So a heck of a career. Really, really nice guy. Great teammate. Always smiling. So I think kind of a sad day for a lot of baseball fans, but probably Philly ones in particular. It was just such a crazy time. So I was from Allentown, basically one of the suburbs of Allentown, Catasauqua. And so being a college freshman in 08, going to college in the city at St. Joe's and then like coming home for that summer of 08 and being like an intern with the Iron Pigs.

It was a ridiculous time period because that franchise was totally new. Like the building was entirely new. The front office had come from minor league baseball all over the country and just kind of, in a lot of cases, ended up living together, just trying to patch this thing together in real time. I'm curious if your experience there in 08, especially like at AAA, could you see that that was happening? Could you see how things were kind

of held together with scotch tape and just like sleepless nights by people who were trying not to screw up every day did you sense that that was going on around you not at all you guys really uh no no and that's what and that's what you know what it's it's part of like everything else in life and i i think about this like we can get so wrapped up in like what it's looking like or what people are thinking and like i'll have a bad game and i'll be like the world thinks i'm the worst player in the world and most of the people like i didn't even see that didn't even notice that because they're doing their own thing and they're busy with whatever so it's funny that you say that because no

i must have just been you know focusing on the baseball and yeah, having no idea. But that's kind of funny that you tell it like that. Well, it was, I mean, there was an instance where like I had to doctor a flex fit hat to make it look like a true fitted hat for a rehabber who's like hat size we didn't have. It was all kinds of craziness. But like, I mean, that first night that we had anything at the stadium at all was one of those like the season hasn't started yet. The AAA team is going to scrimmage the big league roster. And to have the big league team there on the night when it was the first time any of us had done any of our jobs. And it was just a totally full ballpark and there wasn't enough parking. It was a shit show and it was freezing cold.

But like I'm there with my best friend from high school, like doing this job together, you know, a ridiculous, incredible summer. But yeah, you've got to look back on it like glory days, right? Yeah. Well, there's something about it that was like worse than now and something about it that was better than now and more relaxed. But I think you threw a no-no in a seven inning, like the first half of a doubleheader that year.

I was not at work that day. I'm curious, did anybody make a sick defensive play that saved that no-no that day oh i'm sure i mean i'm i i don't remember specifically the outfield but i'm guessing there's some laser beams the third base that's that uh that were made i'm you know, I was throwing a lot of cutters then and into righties. And I feel like that left side of the infield got some, some balls smoked at them. But, you know, usually there is, I don't think usually there's, there's one at least, but to get you through. And then how about from the, the world series parade? That's the other thing that like, I was at a group core of like, and we're talking the most menial interns at the other thing that like i was at so a group core of like and

we're talking the most menial interns at the iron pigs right like i'm 19 years old i'm grilling hot dogs i'm doing like stuff with the trash and occasionally it's you know more glamorous than that you're in a mascot outfit or whatever it's fun but you know i'm like the lowest level intern in the core of us went to the parade and like you were the Iron Pigs dude who was on the postseason roster. And so like we made a sign. But I'm curious if you remember any of that stuff from the parade and what that, you know, couple hours was like, if you can remember it at all. It seems like Burl can remember it. I was surprised he made it to the parade.

We had a couple of fun nights in the city after that. Yeah, I'd never seen anything like that, and I had no idea what to expect. I'd never seen seas of people like that. I say it to this day. It was a highlight or one of the biggest highlights of my career was going on that parade. I mean, it just seemed like it was lasting. I couldn't believe from start to finish the amount of people. It was just unbelievable. And, you know, I don't know, to me, I don't know how anything would compare to that parade-wise. Unfortunately, I haven't been to another since, but just unbelievable. Of course, I remember that. I'll never forget it.

They didn't throw you a parade in Peru last weekend? No parade. No parade. No. One more trade-related question that just came to me. Was there ever a time where you changed teams and your new team either requested or recommended that you do something differently on the mound? Because that will happen sometimes, especially now. You know, you have so much data that goes into these things. And sometimes a team will identify someone who they think should throw more in a particular location or they should throw more of a certain pitch type, right? And then you acquire that guy and maybe you sit him down and say, hey, we'd want to suggest some changes, right? And some players are more receptive to that than others. So I wonder whether that ever happened or whether your new team was always just like, hey, we want

you to keep being the guy you've been yeah i think definitely both the last several years they and it's not so much they're like hey this is how i think you need to pitch but it's more like here's what we see your strengths are and like we sort of label them or number them you know on like uh certain situations maybe like this is what we think your best pitch would be, but they never go across the line and say this is how you have to pitch, which is merely suggestions. And I think that's a tough thing in baseball now,

making sure that line isn't crossed so that people, guys feel like they can still, you know, pitch their game. Right. Well, this was really enlightening and informative and fun. Thank you very much for retracing the many steps of your career with us here. And I hope you enjoy the portion of your life where you can go where you want to go and live where you want to live.

No one will tell you that you have to move. Well, thank you for having me. I had fun doing this. All right. Thanks to Jay. And thanks as well to Eric, who when he found out Jay Happ was going to be on the podcast was like, can I come? Yeah. Because, you know, fellow former Iron Pig. So how could we not have him?

And I know difficult time for Eric and other former Phillies fans who grew up around that team at that time that Cole Hamels has now called it a career. I mean, you know, Cole Hamels still looks great, obviously, but time comes for us all. I mean, I said to Michael Bauman, just RIP your youth. And it was a tough time for him, too. So condolences to all the Phillies fans who had that remind them of their mortality. But fun to talk to Jay. Earlier this week, I talked to Declan Cronin, who was a player who got an opportunity because of trades at the deadline.

And he got promoted. And now we talked to someone who was on the other end of those things and was in a trade and filled us in on how that goes. And now we will wrap up with the future blast, which comes to us from the year 2042 and from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. baseball. The big news in 2042 was the one-game rebellion started by veteran-designated runner Haley Swanbaum of the Mets and soon embraced by many players who wanted their game to be free of the constraints of social media. Swanbaum came into the game in the top of the second, and there was a buzz from the crowd as the 14,000 in attendance and the tens of thousands at home and around the country realized her be there was down. And so were her biometrics, her mic, her contact lens pairing, all of it was gone. The fans in the park and at home were forced to watch Swanbaum take a lead,

taunt Cubs pitcher Franco Martinez, and then take off as he started his windup, she was safe. The crowd was quiet, many fans turning their smart glasses off and on to reboot or checking their watches or phones wondering what happened on the play, though it was clear she was safe by a foot or more. There was a delighted roar from the crowd as they came to realize Swanbaum had stolen second. Fines were levied and some fans in front offices irate, but the phenomenon spread. And by the time of the All-Star Game in July 14th, 2042, in a show of solidarity, all of the players played the first inning of the game unplugged from any social media. Yes. Yes.

It's like a Luddite uprising here. Or maybe it's just protecting our privacy move. We're going back in time. We're switching off all the devices. We're offline. The social media rebellion didn't affect the game on the field as an 18-year-old Trent McCauley, one rookie of the year for the Rangers with some sparkling play at shortstop and a terrific.341 batting average, helping the Rangers make it to the divisional finals before succumbing to the Yomiuri Giants, who remain dominant in the Asian division. The San Francisco Giants, in the first World Series to match up two teams with the same

name, beat Yomiuri in seven. McCauley, of course, was just at the beginning of his remarkable career. More to come on Mr. McCauley. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon. Macaulay. Simon, Steve Pierpaoli, and Adam Fugate. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, plus monthly bonus episodes and playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site.

If you're not, guess what? Good news. You can still contact us via email at podcastatfangraphs.com. Send us your questions and comments or send us a theme song if you're musically inclined. We will add you to our intro and outro rotation. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can follow Effect effectively wild on Twitter at EW pod, and you can find the effectively wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild.

Shane McKeon is back from vacation. So thanks to him for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. Bye.