Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2049: Seattle Slays

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s week away, Julio Rodríguez’s hot streak and the Mariners’ surge, and the White Sox firing Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn, plus a grab bag of topics that caught Ben’s attention while he was in Sweden: the Dodgers signing Kolten Wong; a Cubs adult-diaper ad; an oddly ricocheting […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2049 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined again by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, returned from his European adventures. Ben, how are you? I'm okay. How are you? I'm glad you're back. I'm well. You know, I always feel lucky to count so many fun folks as baseball pals. But, you know, you miss your co-host when he's gone for a week. So it's good to have you back, bud.

Yeah, it was tough for me to listen to you talk to a different Ben on Effectively Wild as I was listening to that. It kind of screwed me up mentally as I was hearing you talk and then sometimes say Ben and was unable to respond. Or I guess I was able to respond, but you couldn't hear me. I couldn't hear you. No. Did you enjoy it the two times that I accidentally called Bauman Ben? Yes.

Yes, I did. I appreciated that. I felt bad about that. Yeah. Well, I had a nice time. Sweden was nice. I'm a blonde guy named Lindbergh, so I fit right in. And I think you called it the cold north on one of those episodes. Did I?

It was actually quite temperate. It's often quite cold, as I understand it. Yes. But at this time of year, I think I picked the perfect time. In fact, it was so temperate that Europe's aversion to air conditioning didn't even bother me that much. That's how cool it was. Europe's aversion to air conditioning didn't even bother me that much. That's how cool it was. I will admit to not really knowing what they were working with. I guess, you know, it's the northern hemisphere, so it would make sense. It would be warm or at least warm for them. But I'm glad that you had a temperate experience.

It continued to be hot here, although we got a little reprieve by getting, you by getting the tail end of Hillary. So it got cooler, although after you had returned. So really irrelevant to my Ben-less experience, the temperature. What did you eat while you were there? Did you eat anything cool? Did you eat meatballs? Did you eat jam? I did. I did eat some meatballs. Yes, I guess when in Sweden, eat as the Swedes do, at least meatball-wise. So, yeah, had some good food, saw some sights, met some ringer colleagues. It was nice. Didn't see a ton of baseball, I must admit. The time zones made that challenging, even for me.

Although Shohei decided to skip his start while I was gone, which was courteous of him. I guess he knew it would be tough for me to follow from afar. So I didn't miss that. I also did not miss many outs by Julio Rodriguez, from what I understand. Oh, Ben. Oh, Ben. I'm so glad you're back, Ben. You know, we didn't really talk about Julio, even though he was hitting well while I was navigating a Ben-less podcast, or at least a Ben Lindbergh-less podcast.

But then this heater, Ben, can I tell you about this heater? You want to hear about it? Please do, yeah. You want to hear about it? And I want to say the following. You know, we recorded our trade deadline podcast. And I, you know, I had some words for my Seattle Mariners. I had some harsh words.

Were they disproportionate to the impact of trading a reliever? I mean, look, one could assert that, and they would not be out of line with their assertion. But I had some words. And then a funny thing happened. The Mariners have just been like really winning a lot of baseball games lately. Yeah, I noticed. I'm worried that your absence from the United States had some cosmic effect on their play. But you've been back for a couple of days and they gave the White Sox the business yesterday.

We'll talk about what business the White Sox have gotten up to, I guess, later. But, you know, for a while, it looked like these Mariners, down in the mouth, bound for an October spent largely at home. And that might still happen. It might still happen. It is August 22nd. Much baseball remains to be played between now and when the bell closes out the season. But these Seattle Mariners, Ben, as we record on Tuesday afternoon before really the start of any of the relevant games here, they are in a playoff spot. They are a game up

on the Toronto Blue Jays for the final wildcard spot in the American League. And that's, you know, that's exciting enough on its own. A normal person would be satisfied with that. Someone who remembers the rant that she issued to this front office, the challenge really to do more. But Ben, I'm in danger of getting greedy here. I'm in real danger because as we, again, record, they are two games back of the Rangers in the American League West. They are only half a game back of the Houston Astros, having really given those

Astros the business over the weekend. An Astros team that looked at times, you know, hapless, addled, enraged. They had a closed door meeting. That's when you know things are going bad. The Yankees and the Astros, closed-door meetings. You never want one of those. You don't generally want one of those. You want an open-door policy and not a closed-door meeting policy. And there have been concerning signs since then. You got starting pitchers with velocity down.

You got all kinds of problems, including the Seattle Mariners. And, you know, much can be said about the Mariners over this last little stretch. I believe when I edited Jay Jaffe's piece on them on Monday, he informed me that they have the best record in the American League since the All-Star break, it seems possible, or from August 1st. You know, who could remember what I edited a day ago? But, well, you know, a lot's gone right.

But one thing has gone really bright, and that's one Julio Rodriguez, Ben. That was a lot of throat clearing for me to get to the main event here, but the main event is spectacular. Now, there are a couple of ways that we can slice this, and I'm going to offer two to you, and then if you have others, fantastic.

Julio had the day off yesterday, earned it. You know, he had done a lot of work, so he seemed like he was due for a day off and he got one. He has had a little bit of a hitting streak. I don't know if you know. I'm going to give you the big hitting streak, and then I'm going to give you the on- hitting streak and then we can talk about other stuff so you know he has hit safely in every game since august 13th over that stretch so this is the 13th to the 20th he hitting 524 535 786 274 wrc plus you know, he has six stolen bases in that stretch. Five doubles, two home runs, 13 RBI, 22 hits. 22 hits, Ben. And you're like, that's incredible. And then you are like, I'm going to indulge a fun fact stretch because this is fun. And I have some facts. Oh, yeah. He was a font of fun facts. Font of fun facts.

So he had a four-game stretch where he recorded at least four hits in each of those games, in one of them against the Kansas City Royals, five hits, five for five night. In that stretch, going from the 16th of August to the 19th of August, hit 773 hit 773. 773. He had, you know, 1136 slugging. He had a 453 WRC plus.

He only struck out 13% of the time. He had an 882 BABIP. He was reaching base. There was a stretch where he was 14 for 17, Ben. Just a man on fire. A man grabbing the Seattle Mariners, putting them on his back, and carrying them to, again, but I know that when you look at the wildcard contenders in the American League, many of them have a much harder remaining strength of schedule than these Seattle Mariners. These Seattle Mariners indeed have one of the easiest remaining schedules. Yeah, so you're no longer content with a wildcard. It's division and title or bust.

No, I'm working my way into that. I'm tempted, but I'm working my way into that. I'm tempted, but I'm working my way into it. The way that I put it the other day was that I am looking at remaining strength of schedule bought back into the Mariners. I am not, the Trident is good, actually, bought back into the Mariners. I continue to think that these Mariners, they're, you know, are they good? They're good right now, you know? And sometimes that's enough. You know, sometimes it's enough to be good right now. Yeah. Yeah. The fun facts that got all the ink with him were the 17 hits in four games, right?

Which was an ALNL record, at least. 17 hits in four games, right, which was an ALNL record at least, and then the four consecutive four-hit games, which was the first time in about a century that that had happened, ALNL at least. The interesting one that I saw that Jason Stark and his helpers dug up was that he reached base on 17 consecutive balls in play, which is sort of a weird one. One of those balls in play was an error, but still. He's fast. Yeah, it's tough. There was some weird spin on that one, but it's very tough to do that even if you include errors.

And in fact, the closest comps that anyone could come up with in recorded history was 14 games. I think Tim Salmon at one point had a 14-game stretch. So Julio surpassed that easily. So again, it's kind of weird because it's only balls at play. But still, it's a pretty impressive sounding streak. But still, it's a pretty impressive sounding streak. His season line is now up to 278, 336, 462. His Woba and his ex-Woba are really right on top of each other at this point.

Which was not the case early in the season, right? Yeah, because there was always a sense that he was getting a little unlucky, right? And his wars were okay because he's great at defense, too, as it happens. But it seemed like there was some equalization that had to happen there. Yeah, he has noted that there has been a swing tweak,

so he's changed some stuff up. But yeah, it always felt like, okay, this is a guy who has a high floor by virtue of the fact that like you said he plays very good center field defense excellent base runner and those things help and and then it was like he's gonna kind of turn on the jets and now he has turned on the jets and what jets you know so i am full of joy and resentment in equal measure because, you know, it's nice when my family roots for the Mariners. You know, it's nice when the Mariners are doing well.

I like it when the Mariners win. I do feel like the potential exists for me to be pulled in like Al Pacino in the third Godfather and then just like destroyed emotionally. That has been my baseball experience for the large part. So it would be surprising if it were something else, but I'm enjoying this 70 and 55 team. Now there's, there's stuff that they will have to continue to navigate, right? Like Brian Wu is back. Exciting. Emerson Hancock now on the 60-day injured list. So that's like less good. They're bringing in street free agents on Major League deals. So there's some depth concerns still to be had,

but it is nice that they have been scoring runs in addition to preventing runs. They had good pitching in the beginning, and it just felt like it was unfair to ask the pitching to be perfect all the time because it's not always going to be perfect all the time. And it felt like that was what was being asked of them. And now they can be a little less perfect because they're actually scoring runs. And, like, guys are, you know, it's not just Julio.

I mean, like, Julio over the last month has, like, 195 WRC+, but, like, Cal Raleigh is hitting lately, and Ty France is hitting lately, and Tay Oscar is sort of kind of hitting. Not really. It's still not the best right there. You know, Eugenio Suarez only has 102 WRC+, over the last 30 days, but he does have four home runs. So there's something to be said.

Played a really good defense, Eugenio Suarez, you know? To my eye, I'm like, Eugenio, well done. So, anyway, you went to Sweden and the Mariners were like, that's a spicy meatball. Wait, that's the wrong... We should talk very

briefly, and then I will stop talking because our listeners are like, hey, man, we've listened to you for the last week. We've heard very little from Ben. The Mariners highlights are definitely guys like Julio and the pitching staff and, you know, the big dumper. Yes. Oh, yeah. He's hit lots of homers lately.

Yeah. Ten home runs in the last 30 days. There's so many. He might be responsible for Rickon losing his job. Some of those, like several of those home runs came yesterday. It wasn't just him, to be clear. No, it wasn't just him. But, you know, you have the big names.

But for me personally, the fact that we have now not one but two guys who are just very into being Italian while on the base pass. It's very exciting. Don Canzone is doing, he's doing the hands, Ben. He's doing the hands. And meanwhile, I get to watch Paul Seawald in person in the desert. It's very strange. Very strange.

That's right. Best of both worlds. It's like he never left. Yeah. Well, I'm excited for you. This is very exciting stuff. And now you have Here Come the Warm Jets by Brian Eno stuck in my head because you were talking about Julio's jets and they must be warm with how hot he's been. He's actually like a top 10 player in baseball by Fangraph's War right now, which would not have shocked me if you said that at the start of the season that that would happen.

But he's started slow. So he has certainly made up some ground. Being as hot as he's been lately will do that. So, yeah. Seattle Mariners, perennial playoff contender. I guess it needs to be probably more than a couple seasons to qualify as perennial. And they also have to do it, Ben. They also still have to do it.

And you know what they haven't done yet? They haven't done it. Not yet. Not yet. Could be true. Not yet. Well, I guess we can transition to Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams and the White Sox, right? So we have a changing of the guard here. This is a long tenured two-headed head of the baseball operations department there. Kenny Williams, president of the White Sox, general manager Rick Hahn. They've been the leadership team of this baseball operations department for many, many years. In fact, Kenny Williams is one of the very longest tenured execs there is. Is there anyone longer than Brian Cashman and Kenny Williams? I think after Billy Bean has sort of been bumped up out of baseball operations, I guess

Ken Williams as team president is also not strictly a baseball operations head. So I guess we could quibble about departments and definitions. But point is, he's been there for a long time, long enough that when the White Sox last won a World Series, he was the one who put that team together. So, I mean, he played for the White Sox in the 80s. He started scouting for them in 1992. It's been 30 years, more than 30 years,

since he was in a non-playing capacity for them. So, this is momentous news. more than 30 years since he was in a non-playing capacity for them. So this is momentous news. I guess it's not completely out of left field, obviously, because we have talked about the White Sox plight not too long ago, right? I don't even know if there's all that much new to say about the White Sox because we kind of could see this coming, at least in Han's case, I think. When we talked about the White Sox, I think it was episode 2039, I may have mentioned

that Han seemed like the likeliest candidate of all the GMs of all the disappointing teams that it was hard to see how he'd hang on there. And he didn't. They didn't even want to wait till the end of the season or the end of August for that matter. Yeah, I guess on the one hand, why not just like get on with it? You know, like if you're if you know that this is the decision that you're going to make, you clearly you're past the deadline. You don't have postseason business to sort out you only have post-season business to sort out right it is i guess a little bit funny to come

on like a random tuesday but you know there's probably some marginal benefit to knowing that that seat is a vacancy if what you're going to do is really do a real search to see, you know, do we want to promote someone from within or do we actually want to bring someone externally into the organization and let them, you know, sort of take a hand at, I guess, your next teardown and rebuild, which you have to consider yourself to be firmly in if you're the White Sox. So, it's a little bit of weird timing because if nothing else, these tend to hit on like Friday afternoons. But there doesn't seem to be much reason to, I don't know, to wait. And if you're hoping that the person you hire is going to be instrumental

in making offseason decisions as soon as possible, you may as well get started. Although like you're going to probably have to wait a little while because a lot of the people you're going to want to talk to have jobs right now. Right. Yeah, that's a slight problem, I suppose, impediment to hiring someone already employed. Although, you get a head start on the off-season, who's ever available, then you get the first mover advantage. So yeah, I mean, it's what happens or what typically happens when a team has a lot of promise and goes through a rough patch and then emerges on the other side and it seems like it will be back in the playoffs year after year. And then that doesn't happen and everything just completely falls apart. And it's not just the

results on the field, but also all the clubhouse stuff that has surfaced, right, which calls into question leadership decisions. So not unforeseeable. I guess all of this is happening while Jerry Reinsdorf is the latest owner to make noises about leaving, right, which is, I guess, the thing that all the cool owners have always done. But these days, Milwaukee is doing it and Chicago is doing it. And of course, Baltimore is never ceasing to do it. The owners of those respective franchises doubt anything will come of that. But meanwhile, it's like we might not even stay where we are. And also, we have to hire new baseball operations people now.

So, yeah, there will be change, but it is perhaps needed change as far as we can say from afar without actually being in there and hearing what is happening and knowing as much as the people involved know. Right. Ben, I have some upsetting, breaking news that is on my beat in a number of different ways, which is that Julio has been scratched from tonight's lineup due to a stomach illness. Oh, no. I hope Julio will get better soon, but how long do you think it takes before I start getting mentions about this on Twitter? Shocked it hasn't started already, honestly. Yeah. I guess if he's not in the game, then I don't know if that, hopefully that decreases the likelihood of you getting tagged in tweets about that because he'll avoid any unfortunate accidents. Yeah. Or at least we won't know about them. Yeah.

I mean, hopefully. Hopefully we will not know about them. But anyway, be well, Julio. They need you. But maybe not against the White Sox. While I was listening to the guest hosts, who were, of course, all wonderful, and thank you for keeping the trains running. But I enjoyed all of those conversations, except there was one part of the Bauman episode where he started talking about like conferences. I blacked out for a while.

And then Cole Hamels and Felix came up after that. I perked up again. You snapped back in. Yeah. For a while there, there was like a little dead spot in my retention, I think, of what was being said. But I'm sure it was wonderful. But I kept a little document where I would just jot down certain things, some responses to things that were said, and some just, oh, maybe we should talk about this when I get back. And some of those things

you have already discussed because you got your finger on the pulse. So I wrote down at some point like, oh, the Dodgers are good. We should talk about the Dodgers. And then you had Craig on to talk about the Dodgers. And I wrote down prospect promotions and you talked about prospect promotions. And I wrote down Hassan Kim. Boy, he's having a great season. And then you talked about that. So who needs me? But I did have a few things

that I can relate here. When Sam returned to the podcast after his first absence, he then caught up on things that Jeff and I had talked about while he was gone. And so years later, he would respond to banter topics on those episodes that he was finally listening to. So I feel like that's sort of what's happening here. When you talk about the Dodgers, you know how we played the game with Jake Diekman and we projected how good he would be with the Rays and could they fix him? And you and Craig talked about how the Dodgers just seemed to have either fixed or ridden the positive regression wave with some of the guys they acquired at the deadline. It occurred to me that if we wanted to play our the Dodgers magic game like we did with Diekmann and the Rays, that Colton Wong might be a good candidate.

like we did with Diekmann in the Rays, that Colton Wong might be a good candidate. Although, I don't know if he'll actually get playing time, which is a complication. But if he were on the big league roster, then we could say predict Colton Wong's OPS. And we could gauge how confident we are in the Dodgers' ability to just make players good again because he has not been good, not good at all. In fact, perhaps part of the Mariners' recent surge has been that they have been Colton Wong-free. I guess that has not hurt because he produced a.468 OPS as a Mariner. So that's a test for the Dodgers. Now, Colton Wong's been quite good in many previous seasons. He was even pretty good last season. So I certainly didn't see this coming. But that would be the ultimate test, perhaps, given how hard he has struggled this season.

a trade and you think, I know, like, I know how that's going to go. You at least have a, feel like you have a sense of like how far the error bars stretch, you know? And I thought I had that with Colton Wong. And then, and then I didn't, Ben, you know, I'm sure the Mariners front office feels sort of the same way about it, but, um, he was really quite bad. I don't think that the guys that they have brought in are really that much better just from a pure, true talent perspective. It's hard, no offense to him, but it's hard to get really enthusiastic about Josh Rojas. but it was so bad. So it's nice to not be looking at the middle and field going like, Oh God, we've got to see, I've got to see what this is like again.

But yeah, it would be, it would quite be something. I don't know that they will have opportunity or need to call him up, but he's sitting there, you know, doing ready to go in the minors. I assume that's your team. Confusing.

I guess it's, it's tougher probably to snap your fingers and sprinkle some player development dust on a hitter midseason than a pitcher, I would think. Just because with a pitcher, you could always theoretically pick up a pitch or maybe someone's been messing around with a pitch and then you just change their hand position and you have a breakthrough bullpen session with all the cameras and trackers hooked up and suddenly it's a good pitch or you just tell them hey this is a good pitch you should throw it more or you should throw it higher or lower or whatever it is and that can make an immediate difference whereas with a hitter of course everyone's constantly tweaking mechanics but it's a little tougher to do an overhaul just with the muscle memory of a swing and just how hard it is to practice these things. Again, maybe it's getting easier because better pitching machines and ways to gauge your performance, but got to be tougher to turn around a season midstream for a hitter than a pitcher. Yeah, I would think so.

I mean, like, not everyone can be Julio, right? Right. Yeah. But I think that it's very common for us to see hitters, you know, tweak something, shift something in their swing. The persistence of that improvement is where the challenge is. It's not hard to get a guy to adjust minutely. It's to have those changes be both positive and sticky,

which is a weird combination of words to put together. But the one I'm choosing mid season, I think that you bet you're right. That it's just a lot harder to, plus you're like, you're out there every day, you know, whereas for,

for pitchers, particularly starters, like you have all of this built in. It's not downtime, like they're not doing stuff, but this is the kind of stuff they're supposed to be doing during that time, right? So, yeah, I think it's more challenging to make those adjustments on the fly and then particularly hard to have them stick. But, you know, I don't bear i don't bear colton wong any ill will you know i hope he figures it out like he i thought was a good player as i said many times during the offseason and then again upon the occasion of literally paul c walt being traded

i wish that they had done more but i think that like the good version of colton wong is precisely the kind of player that a contending team needs, where it's like you're not going to win because of him all that often. But having good complementary players who can guard against injury and can kind of pick you up when someone else is in a slump, know, maybe not incredibly valuable from a war perspective, but in terms of your roster construction, absolutely necessary. So I, you know, I don't know. I wish it had gone better for him, but like no one from that trade is doing particularly well. It's just sort of, you look at it and you're like, eh, well, would it, would it have been better if Jesse Winker were still around? No, arguably not. So here we are.

You and other Ben talked about the delight of local ads on baseball broadcasts, the plumbers and the pipe fitters and so forth. Yes. And there's one that I think a couple people have called our attention to, but we haven't discussed. called our attention to, but we haven't discussed. And this is in the genre of a sponsored ad. So it's not between innings or during breaks, but it is triggered by something that happens in the game, which is always a fun one because it can be tough to make that sound natural. The segues, the introductions of those sponsors are not always seamless. But Pat Hughes on the Cubs broadcast this season has been— That's right. That's right.

I forgot about this. He's been doing North Shore adult diapers ads. Oh, yeah, sure has. Boy. And the thing about them is that they are activated by opposing pitcher walks. Yeah. And so when an opposing pitcher walks a batter, I don't know if it's every time, but Pat Hughes will say something like, bases on balls by opposing pitchers are brought to you by North Shore adult diapers, providing maximum confidence against even the most severe control problems.

Wow. severe control problems. And this is, you know, broadcasting legend just received the Ford C. Frick awards this year, right? It's a Hall of Famer or at least as close as broadcasters come.

Yeah. And I guess he's showing why he's a Hall of Famer with how natural, how practiced and polished he makes these ad reads. But it's not like you get to the pinnacle of your profession, you win that award, and

it's like, okay, Pat, you don't have to do the North Shore Adult Diapers ads anymore. No, you still got to do the read. Yeah, no, they're probably paying for the honor of Pat Hughes reading North Shore Adult Diapers ads. Yes. And they found a hook. They found a tie-in. They sure did.

And this is just something that broadcasters have to deal with. Do, yeah. It adds a little idiosyncratic touch to the broadcast, you know? It's like something that your fellow fans know and will always remember. And you will probably, to your dying day, remember. To your dying day, remember, you know, when you're wearing the adult diapers yourself, you will probably remember the North Shore adult diapers ads that were on Cubs radio broadcast in 2023. It's funny because, you know, I don't want Eagle Hardware, Eagle Hardware and Garden, which did get acquired by Lowe's. And like if you've ever seen the commercial of Edgar, like it's a light bat and he makes a little lamp.

Yeah, that's an Eagle Hardware and Garden commercial. And there's one with like Randy Johnson on like a riding mower. He's prepared to murder someone. And, you know jay buehner did one about fertilizer and so like there there were a bunch of these but i don't remember adult diapers ever being like and you know someone someone did a brainstorm and they're like i'm gonna do a swear so you should believe the swear but like somewhere in the advertising brainstorm they're like okay we can't say for when you think you need to shit the bed. Like, they couldn't say that because like, first of all, you don't want to make light of people dealing with incontinence. Like, that's a, you know, that's a medical condition.

People deal with that as they age. So, like, you don't want to make light of people's situation, but you do want to joke a little bit, right? Like, there is a joke being made. joke a little bit right like there is a joke being made but yeah adult adult type are slick you know sometimes people deal with stuff you got to have product for that um and you got to advertise it because how would you know which ones are the right ones you know you're dealing with a tricky thing you feel probably a little embarrassed about it you're you're conscious of your google searches google doesn't work anymore, you know. So who else can you trust but the baseball program?

Right, exactly. Yeah, that's a trusted voice, Pat Hughes. Some of the things I jot down become less relevant quite quickly, and then they're not really worthy of discussion anymore, which I guess is nice. We strive to make the podcast evergreen or as close to evergreen as it can be. We want it to have a little bit of a shelf life. But for instance, I wrote down Jonathan Singleton Astro's debut, right? Because Jonathan Singleton, he showed up with the Astros. I guess it wasn't his debut. It wasn't his first game, but I think it was his third game with the Astros. We may have talked about him when he was briefly up with the Brewers earlier and it was like, whoa, Jonathan Singleton's back and he didn't last long. And then he got cast away from that organization, picked up by his original organization, the Astros. And then he had this big game on August 11th where he hit two home runs. And it was like, wow, look, this is cool. Things come full circle.

Jonathan Singleton made good, right? All the struggles that he went through and the early extension and all the rest of it. And now that was a while ago. And since that game, Jonathan Singleton has gone one for 25. That's less good. Yeah, it is. It's a lot less good. I guess he's walked five times, but 30 plate appearances and a 240 OPS. So now that two homer game doesn't seem quite so exciting, or I guess it's still a highlight, but it no longer

appears to augur great things to come for Jonathan Singleton as an Astro. It was not the beginning of a hot run. Although, you know. He hasn't Julio'd. He hasn't Julio'd. But who knows? Maybe he still has that in him. He just needs to, you know, warm up a little bit more. I was like, why don't I remember Singleton hitting two home runs? And then I was like, oh, that was the day that I traveled to go to Jordan's wedding.

That's funny. Well, that'll do it. Yeah. And similarly, I was going to marvel at the fact that Dallas Keuchel is in the major leagues again. Oh. And for a first place team, no less. Funny story. Yeah. And then Dallas Keuchel goes out.

Wouldn't I have looked silly if I hadn't been in Sweden and I had questioned why Dallas Keuchel was on a big league roster of a contending team. And then he went out there and through what, six perfect innings or something, gave up a hit six and a third against the Pirates. And granted, he struck out three, but that was three more than he had struck out in his first two starts for the twins combined because his total number of strikeouts in those starts was zero and this was like a vintage keitel performance where of course he was never really a strikeout artist he was like a soft contact good control ground ball guy and that's what he was in that game. And I know that I guess he got another chance because he went to driveline, right? And it was like, you know, lots of chances for former Cy Young award winners. But I know we talked about him last year because it was like, how many teams are going to give Dallas Geichel a chance when he has a nine plus ERA. It's like, okay, it didn't, didn't work for the White Sox. It didn't work for the Diamondbacks.

It didn't work for the Rangers. The merry-go-round continues. Then the twins pick him up despite riding high in the AL Central. And it kind of. Damning with faint praise. Yeah. If you can ride very high in the AL Central. And he had a,

a decent first start, but it was like a eight hits in five innings, two walks, no strikeouts, like smoke and mirrors kind of thing. And then second start, he lasted one and two thirds, gave up six earned runs, two walks, no strikeouts. And it was like, we're throwing him out there again. Okay. And then he totally shuts down the Pirates. So I don't know. I guess eggs would have been on my face if I had said they shouldn't keep starting him.

Although I'm now admitting that that's what I would have said if I had been there. And to be clear, I am not really moving off my position of Dallas Keuchel. Still possibly not a big league quality pitcher anymore. But for one day, yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, give it time, Ben. You know, give it time. It's all about where you set your arbitrary end points.

You know what would really give me confidence in the Dodgers player, Dove Machine, if they fixed Dallas Keuchel. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's a challenge for them. But it's big of you to admit these takes that would have been bad had you offered them and just end up offering them anyway. That's confidence. Yeah. I also missed another Miles Michaelis-related controversy.

Did you? This was, I mean, this was one of the sillier. So you talked about Mason Wynn's call-up. Yes. And Mason Wynn got call-up. Yes. And Mason Wynn got his first hit. Yes. And Pete Alonso had a little brain fart, right? Yeah, he made a mistake.

Yeah, he tossed Wynn's first hit ball into the Cardinals crowd. And he felt terrible about it. And he apologized profusely, right? And Michaelis was pissed. Michaelis was yelling at him, riding him from the bench. I don't know if he had been on the mound that day, which I don't recall whether he was. Probably he wasn't. But who knows what hijinks he would have gotten up to. Yeah. I was going to say he probably wouldn't have risked ejection. Yeah, no, we know.

We know it's not in his character not to take that risk. Listen, once he's got a bee in his bonnet, he's got to get that bee out of his bonnet. Yeah, and not only did he keep apologizing and clearly felt bad about it, but he sent an autographed bat to win and a bottle of tequila. Like nice tequila, yeah.

And importantly, they got the ball. Yeah, they got the ball back. They got the ball back. So no harm done whatsoever. This sort of thing will happen. And I don't think Wynn was mad about it. He said, you know, accident. He thought it was funny, he said.

I don't think Miles Michaelis thought it was funny, at least in the moment. I don't know what I don't know how his sense of humor functions, but I don't think it was working at that time. Here's what I have developed as my sort of working theory of him and just like people in general. It does feel good when something has happened to you that makes you sad or angry or uncomfortable to have people stick up for you. You know, I think that's a really nice feeling that we all enjoy where it's like that, you know, this person has my back. Also, the flip side of that is that like, it is good to take your cues on sort of how to react to a situation from the person most proximately involved. And like, now granted, Mason is a rookie.

It was his first hit, right? He's probably, you know, aware of like the social protocol of baseball. Maybe he doesn't feel comfortable raising a stink. I think it's perfectly acceptable for a teammate to say, hey, like, oh, we got to get that ball back. But here's the thing. When was the last time they wanted to recover a baseball and haven't been able to recover a baseball? When was the last time they wanted to that if you're a Cardinals fan, you're really excited to see him. And like he might be a really, you know, potentially important piece of this of this Cardinals team as it tries to like steer out of this skid. And, you know, he doesn't pitch anymore. So his ability to help with that is somewhat limited.

But like, you know, he he's an important guy but also like he's not such an important prospect that the person who accidentally gets his first hit ball isn't going to give it back for a signed bat and a you know shaking the hands for the gram like come on dude relax especially in their home park right cardinals fans not going to want to deprive the player of that ball almost certainly not it might be worth something someday because i guess there probably aren't that many first hit balls on the market just because players always get to keep them. But still, if you're a Cardinals fan, are you really? I mean, you know, you're entitled to the ball if you want to hold out for some extra merch

or tickets or whatever you're well within your rights. But I think it's better for the world if Mason Wynn has that ball than if it ends up on eBay or something and and what did Miles Michaelis think so the the mlb.com story said that this incensed many of the Cardinals players namely pitcher Miles Michaelis who angrily barked at Alonzo from the tuckout not literally I assume although the man has eaten live lizards, so I wouldn't put barking past him. But what did he think?

Did he think this was like an intentional flight? I mean, this is a fraternity of players. They all have their baseballs, their first hit milestones saved by other players. Obviously, they want to pay that forward. And I'm sort of surprised this doesn't happen more often because how is Pete Alonso supposed to keep track of like, oh, that, I mean, it's on the base coaches or the bench, right, to notify them. It's not like they

can keep track of, oh, this guy just debuted. This must be his first hit, right? So you default to muscle memory and you're just going to toss it into the stand. So someone has to stop him. And I guess that just didn't work this time, right? But obviously, no spite on his part. Yeah, I think, again, take a cue from the person whose quote unquote problem it is. And like, you can say, hey, oh, wait, we got to get that back without being like, there is a vast conspiracy. He didn't say any of these things, so I don't want to, but it's like, well, you're right.

What was the thought? Like, there is a vast conspiracy to deprive. I was about to do an impression and I don't know that that's a good idea. So, because like, whose voice was I doing? I don't know, Ben. I don't know whose voice it was. I didn't really do any voices while you were gone.

You know, I try to keep that to the immediate film. But anyway, it was almost, it was both almost certainly and so obviously just a goof. You know, like you said, just a brain fart. Say, oh, I gotta go get that. I bet they got it back before the game was even over. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm glad it had a

happy ending and i i hope miles michaels has simmered down forgive it and forgotten i think you know when you're in the middle of a a season that is not going well particularly a season you thought would go well i understand being a little touchy Like I get being a little grumpy But like Take a breath Dude like Meditate or read or something Like you know

It's gonna be okay You just let Say oh Gotta get that And then you know what You're gonna They're gonna do that They're gonna

Some Some clubby is gonna go Up in the stands And be like okay Let's do our barter And then is gonna go up in the stands and be like okay what let's do our barter and then that cardinals fan as happened is gonna be like give me a side bet and then or whatever i don't know what the fan got but i assume he got like a sign something or other and probably got to stand with mason win and like take a picture anyway silly there's also a another play i don't know if this caught your, but I just sent you the video and we'll link to it on the show page.

But there is a Inside the Park home run by Luke Raley. Yeah. Yeah. This is so funny. It was, right? This was in San Francisco off the wall in Oracle Park. So it was like out to right field, right center, and it caromed off the bricks out there that are angled. Multiple times.

Yeah. And whenever there's an inside the park home run, something weird probably happened, but just a lot of weirdness happened on this play. Oh, yeah. And yeah, it kind of caromed off the bricks and then it like bounced along the top of the wall for a while. And it just eluded the outfielders who were chasing it. Kevin Cash, Ray's manager, said that was really cool. It looked like a rat running across the top of the fence, which was very evocative. Good description. I would like this sort of thing to happen more, I think.

Unpredictable bounces, I think, are good. I mean, I guess it injects some randomness into the game. So if you want to see the best team win and true talent show out, then I guess you want fewer weird bounces. But weird bounces are pretty fun. And there's a lot of uniformity in parks. I mean, obviously, you used to have more multipurpose cookie-cutter stadiums that were sort of the same everywhere. But I think there are probably fewer weird angles than there were in the early days of ballparks being squeezed into whatever real estate you had. were in the early days of ballparks being squeezed into whatever real estate you had.

So I think we probably have fewer plays like this, less potential for plays like this. And having seen it, I think I want more plays like this. I want to see more rat balls. More rat balls. I agree. I think that we have a lot of very normal play. You know, we have a lot of very normal play most of the time. And while I know there is an ongoing controversy this season about hits versus errors,

like in general, big league fielders, they're really good. They get to the ball. They get the ball where it's supposed to go. Does it always get the guy out? No. But like generally, they're doing a pretty good job. There is strong survivorship bias there, right? But we should have some weirdness.

And because there's so much normal, like we have room for it. I think it'd be fine. I think it'd be fine if we had more weird. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That error controversy has continued to be discussed. has continued to be discussed. We did a stat blast on it and concluded,

Ryan Nelson concluded, that there didn't seem to be any smoking gun there, that errors have just been on a very long, gradual, downward trajectory, and that this season isn't extraordinary

given what has happened in the past. And then there was an athletic article about it that relayed some comments about people saying, huh, that should have been an error. Why was that a hit? And then Russell Carlton at Baseball Prospectus, he did his own analysis

and independently came to the same conclusion of our stat blast, which was basically that there really doesn't seem to be anything there, but everyone's convinced that there's something there, which I guess it's become a confirmation bias thing where like if you hear that this is a thing or you think this is a thing, you're bound to see some play at some point that seems like it backs up your hypothesis that there's some kind of conspiracy that MLB instructed the

official scorers to be more lenient to pump up batting averages. I mean, it just, I don't want to deny it. I don't know for 100% positive, sure, but it sure seems like there's nothing really that extraordinary about what has happened this season specifically. Yeah, my position on this remains that I think there was probably always more hit-to-error squishiness than we really noticed. there's like a you know an explanation that makes sense as a motivation to do it even though i don't think it's what's going on which is that like the league has incentive in this year in particular with new new rule changes to be like see offenses up it's so great and so i think it has found a nice narrative to sort of graft onto but i i think we we probably just you know i think we probably just always had some some give there that we are only now aware of i don't know i'm not i it's funny that i'm less sympathetic to conspiracy arguments in baseball after living through the banging scheme, you know, because

we had a genuine conspiracy, a real one, you know, and yet I often look around and I'm like, you know, so I don't know. I think it's fine. I also wrote down just a few player names like, hey, look at him. What a season he's having. We haven't talked about him for a while. And a few of those are players who were traded for each other and analyzing what has happened since. But also some guys that we just haven't really discussed and maybe should give a moment to, particularly the Tigers young hitters, Riley Green and Spencer Torkelson. Yeah, Tork. How about that? Yeah, Tork has been quite good.

He's been torking lots of baseballs lately and Riley Green as well. I guess Green, I know they have just moved to an outfield corner to make room for Parker Meadows, who is maybe even more gifted defensively, although Green's been fine, too. But he's really hit, right? I mean, last season was a huge step back for the Tigers, it seemed like, because they were supposed to take a step forward and then they definitely did not. Because they were supposed to take a step forward, and then they definitely did not. And the way that they failed to take a step forward well Green has done on the whole this season. Those guys are looking like potential middle of the order bats for years to come, which is what they were projected and drafted to be. So that goes a long way to making you optimistic about the Tigers. They almost overtook the Guardians the other day. They're not that far behind them in the AL Central, which again,

not saying that much to pee in the running for second place in the AL Central, but it's progress. It's progress. And there is still like a lot, clearly a lot of work to be done there to sort of stabilize and course correct on the pieces of that rebuild that haven't worked the way that they wanted them to but like if they go from looking around at me like nothing that we did here worked at all to like hey some of our young position player guys are like figuring it out now and are actually quite good like that's meaningful you know it doesn't get you to the postseason but it probably saves a lot of people their jobs if nothing else you know yeah and Tarek Scooples back right so the the pitching staff is kind of coming together

after all the injury absences Matt Manningning, you know, all those guys who were gone for a while. It's like you can kind of see it rounding into form potentially, right? So, and then you look ahead to next year and some other guys could be back. So, yeah, I'm not saying like get super excited for the 2024 Tigers, but it's definitely a positive step. Yeah, it's more than nothing. You know?

You know who's also a good hitter? Kerry Carpenter. He's quite a hitter. Yeah, how about that? It's so weird. Baseball's great. Truly, no better sport to my mind. Kerry Carpenter. If I had told you, Ben, if I had told you that Kerry Carpenter was on that Tigers team at the beginning of the season, would you have been able to conjure a picture of his face in your mind?

No. Yeah. I mean, me either. Me either. And yet here he is doing stuff. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that same bucket of players who were highly touted and had a little bit of a failure to launch and then have had not the sophomore slump but the sophomore surge, Bobby Witt Jr. with the Royals, right? I mean, we haven't had cause to talk about the Royals a whole lot lately.

But he's been a bright spot, right? Just on both sides of the ball. Like, he's been a bright spot right just on both sides of the ball like he's he's hitting well he's like a five win player according to fan graphs which is not just the fact that he's been 20 above average wrc plus wise but but the glove right the glove has been very good yeah just a huge huge turnaround by many metrics i believe right it was like, can he stick at shortstop? Like, are they jerking him around here? Should they move him? Should they commit to him? And they have committed to him and he has rewarded them. was the franchise player. And then last year, again, like, you know, league average bat in your rookie season, your age 22 season, he was still overall roughly a league average player. But, you know, he didn't have the splash kind of debut that you expected for someone who was one of the top prospects in baseball, if not the top prospect, and then just looked unqualified to play that position for a while.

Yeah, he sure did. And again, another guy with really tremendous base running value, not just the number of stolen bases, although 37 is nothing to sneeze at, but he is just a good base runner. So yeah, I hadn't, to your point, really had reason to talk or or even watch the Royals and then the Mariners played a series against them and I initially was like wow look at these Mariners losing a game to the Royals that seems bad but um a lot of it had to do with Bobby Witt Jr. and I was like wow these really kind of turned it around how exciting it's good when it's good when young

guys you know can do that and be what we thought they were going to be, not just because it makes us look smart, but, you know, it has to be very satisfying to them and to their families. Yeah. Yeah. I like the rebuild that looks like it's gone off the rails and then maybe it kind of starts coming together belatedly. There's a lot of work to do. You could talk about the Nationals too, who just extended Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez because they've been kind of competent.

They haven't been terrible. They're giving the Mets a run for their lots of money in the NL East, and part of that is about some of their young players, right? Like C.J. Abrams, another shortstop who was like, this is not going so great. And it's gone a whole lot better lately.

And they have a few guys like that, right? The Josiah Grays of the world. So, again, you know, encouraging. Just much, much more work to do. It's much, much more work to do. But that's the sort of development that you want to see in a season that you sort of write off at the start when it comes to competition. Right. This is like what you are meant to do with seasons that you go into knowing you're not going to really compete for much of anything other than a better understanding of the skill level of the guys that you have on your roster.

I mean, I remain skeptical of their player development. I do think that they are still behind. I think they're behind in a number of ways, but it does seem like a couple of the guys who they have who weren't doing great have been able to at least put it together for a little bit. You know, we want to see Abrams do it for longer than this. But I also just think bit you know we want to see abrams do it for longer than this but i i also just think you know sometimes you look at these guys and you're like cj abrams is so young he's so young you know he was young and he was even younger when he was asked to like fill a fernando tatis junior shaped hole in a padres lineup? Like sometimes guys are just young and it takes them a little while because they're like they're the age of like college draftees, you know, they're just young. They're so young.

So it would be it would be nice if it worked out. And also, I know that JD Martinez just went on the IEL, but it struck me that he and Justin Turner are having almost identical WRC Plus seasons, at least, which was amusing because basically the Red Sox and the Dodgers just traded aged DHs. Yeah. It's like, we'll take yours and you take mine. And then they've basically had the same season. So it's like, could have saved yourself some trouble. Everyone could have just stayed where they were, right? But instead they swapped.

And so Martinez has a 125 WRC plus and Justin Turner has a 127 WRC plus in more playing time, to be fair. But those guys in their mid to late 30s, still doing okay and doing almost identically, which is amusing given the way that they essentially switched roster spots before this season. Do you think that Justin Turner misses Kiki Hernandez? Do you think he's like, I want him back to L.A.? Because, you know, if they hadn't switched guys, then in the first half of the season, Justin Turner would be like, I miss him. But then in the second half, he would have gotten him back. And that would have been exciting for him probably.

Yeah. Well, I guess they got to do a timeshare. No one got to hug Kiki all season. Yeah. Well, I guess they got to do a timeshare. No one got to hug Kike all season. Yeah. And I guess my man, my man, Joey Manessis, you know, look, he's a major leaguer. He's... Oh, the shifting of goalposts, the relocation to another county of goalposts. My goodness. There was a time when I exclaimed in a fit of exuberance that he was the best player in baseball. Yeah, you did say that.

Joey Manessis. No. Walk-off three-run digger. Stop it. Walk-off three-run shot. Oh, my gosh. Meg, he's the best player in baseball. Perhaps that day or that week he was, but not so much this season.

However, he's held his own, you know? Yeah. He's been a barely above league average hitter. Yes. And entering last season, you probably wouldn't have forecasted that. So he has not kept up his hot hitting from last year, but he has held his own. He has more or less justified his roster spot. For a player who came up at an advanced stage, nothing was expected of him.

I think he has already banked more playing time than anyone would have thought. And he's left us with many memories. And hopefully there will be more to come. I mean, he started very slow this season. Oh, yeah. It was really quite grim there for a little bit. I was scrupulously avoiding discussing Joey Menezes for a while. And now I'm just venturing out. I'm mentioning his name so

clearly he has salvaged his season. So if I were to look up some splits and some arbitrary end points, I could probably pick a date since which he has been quite productive. Could crash a tail. Yeah. Yeah. It's a respectable slash line right now. Respectable. It's a respectable slash line right now. Respectable. Ben, you know, I think it's – no one says that exuberance has to be purely rational. You know, do people remember you delightedly comping him to literally Juan Soto? Look, like, I remember.

But the fact that we haven't gotten any emails about it suggests that our listeners took the same approach that I took, which was to see how Joey Manessis was hitting. Go. Ooh. And then be like, oh, my God, tell him. Because, like, what if you didn't know? You know, what if you had sort of been distracted by being an editor and a father and a husband and you just, like, didn't know how he was hitting? Then I'd be, you know, I'd be the friend. I'm doing air quotes because what kind of friend would I be if I did this? It was like, you know, Ben, you know who sucks? Joey Manassas. And then you would be devastated. You'd be so upset. You'd be like, I've been so busy being a dad. I didn't

even know. Right. Yeah. Let me live on in my blissful ignorance. Right. Yeah. Like why spoil your good day? You know, I didn't say he'd blissful ignorance. Right, yeah. Like, why spoil your good day, you know? I didn't say he'd be better than Juan Soto forever. You did not say that. I pointed out that he was more valuable than Juan Soto after the trades last season, and that will always have been true. Yes, you know. Whatever happens now. You were just saying facts, and you made no predictions.

You did not, I think, confuse anyone with your understanding of the relative true talents of those two players. But I just didn't want to say anything. I'm glad you noticed, though, because, you know. Yes, yes. It would be embarrassing if you hadn't noticed and you had been at a dinner party in Sweden and then you were like,

you know who's the best player in baseball? Joey Manessis. And then they would have been like, I'm not going to do a Swedish accent because I'm going to sound like the Swedish chef from the Muppets and that feels offensive. But they would be like, I don't know, we got a solar ring right now

because this guy thinks that Joey Manessis is the best player in baseball, and that's not real. So I'm glad you know so you can avoid embarrassment. Also, saw a headline that Bain Capital bought Fogo, the famous Brazilian steak. Fogo de Chão?

Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, apparently for $1.1 billion. $1.1 billion? $1.1 billion? Yes, it was bought five years ago for $560 million. Wow. So inflation unadjusted. It has basically doubled in that time.

And I don't know how much of that to attribute to Eduardo Escobar. I mean, some of it. Yeah. He certainly provided a lot of publicity and promotion, as have we inadvertently by talking about his relationship with the steakhouse chain anyway. The stab blast brought to you by Spago Di Gio. No, I'm kidding. I just, I hope that nothing will change for his sake under new ownership. Yeah, I'm nervous for him. When I saw this, my immediate concern was just don't change anything. Yes. Just like keep the menu the way that he likes it and everything. Yeah, I'm nervous for him. He's not having a great season, so he really needs to be able to count on some things.

And so I hope it's not different. This is hardly unique to Seattle, but there was a run of a couple months where it felt like Anheuser-Busch was just buying every local brewery in Seattle. And you were like, well, they'll distribute to other parts of the country. That's cool, but it's probably not going to be as good. And you just had to sit and wait until something changed. And then you're like, is this really different? Does this space dust actually taste different than it did before? Was it ever really good? I don't know. You know, it was really, it's a dark time, but I can get Elysian beer down here, which is, you know, it's, is it the best beer in the world, Ben? No, it's not.

But it is a good beer, you know, at times. So, the Staplast brought to you by Elysian beer. It's good sometimes. Also, just revisiting the Sean Murphy trade for a moment. Oh, yeah. Do you think that Oakland wants that one back? Yeah, the William Contreras trade also. Yeah.

Because that was the thing, right? We were all like, okay, Atlanta got the best player here. They got Sean Murphy. That's very good for them. And they managed to land themselves William Contreras in this deal. And we wondered, why is he even in this trade? Like, why are the brewers involved, right? The A's just, they really, really, really wanted Estuary Ruiz, evidently. And so. They wanted Estuary Ruiz. Yeah. Yeah, they sure did.

And so the brewers emerge with William Contreras and also Yoel Payamps, who has also contributed to their season in an important and positive way. I mean, that has worked out in the way that I guess we all thought it at the moment where it was like, how did they engineer this? Why are you even involved in this? And somehow you're sneaking out of this, not so much with Yoel Payamps, but William Contreras. And those guys have been among the most valuable players on a Brewers team that has needed every win. Yeah, it is a weird thing. I don't know enough about throuples to make a joke here, but I was just like, how are you involved with this? This isn't your exchange, is it really? But yeah, you're right. They just really, they really wanted So that's a reality of Ruiz. But those catchers, man, they're both quite good. And Contreras is like a really good framer now. So that's exciting.

Do you think he has to be thrilled with where he ended up? Not that the Brewers are the only organization that have been known to help guys improve their framing, but they are one of the organizations that is known for that. And that had to have been exciting for him. Once he got over the initial shock of the trade, if he knew that about them, I wonder if he was like, oh, cool, this might be really good for me.

I might really advance because he really has. You don't want to buy into a single season's worth of stats too much, but you just have so many framing opportunities that, like, that stuff stabilizes pretty fast. So, I don't know, man. Cool. I'm on the baseball reference page for the team now, and this would not even factor in framing, but Contreras and Pajamps are third and fifth, respectively, in baseball reference war on the Brewers. And look, some of that is about the rest of the Brewers.

Yes, absolutely. But they have had good productive seasons. So it's not just about that, but it is at least a little bit about that. Yeah. Brewers were leader Christian Jelic, who, you know, I don't know if we can call it a bounce back. I guess we could call it a bounce back. Not a bounce all the way back, but a bounce to where he was before he briefly became the best player in baseball, right?

Back to what he was in Miami, which was a solid player. And if he were doing this without that 2018 and 2019 bit where he was amazing, then we would all be saying, oh, look at steady Christian Jelic still churning out the solid seasons here. So that has helped too. Even if he's not going to be the same guy that he was pre-knee injury, he has managed to get back to being a pretty good player. Yes. I know that I'm sure that every ballplayer is like, I want to be described as steady.

I want to be described as solid. No, I'm sure that he has to be thrilled with how this season has gone, at least relative to the recent ones. So, yeah, it's been a boon. And, you know, Corbin Burns is good again now. So they have some guys, but they don't have as many guys as some other teams. Yeah.

Analysis. And also, I just wanted to put a pat on the back of the Blue Jays, who are, I think, quite a good team. I can, like, feel a looming but. That's a good phrase. They stand to miss the playoffs as things are currently constituted because of those Seattle Mariners who have bumped them out of a wildcard spot. And look, they have a plus 62 run differential, right? If they were in a different division, a different league,

then they would be riding high. They'd be sitting pretty. And as it is, they may find themselves on the outside looking in, even though they will probably be better than at least a few playoff teams, right, which will be quite frustrating if it happens, it certainly could be avoided. They could quite easily leapfrog the Mariners or the Astros. They're right behind them. But if they were to miss out, someone's going to miss out, right? Someone's going to miss out in that race.

And it will be a better team than some other teams that make it, which, you know, will happen sometimes. But this year it could be especially striking. So I don't know if we just need some radical realignment of some sorts to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen so often. But yeah, someone's going to get screwed. But yeah, someone's going to get screwed. What are your general thoughts on that as an endeavor? Because I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to a playoff qualification system that doesn't really worry about division and is just based on record. I think that that would be fine. I think that would be fine.

But I know that there are folks who like want to, you know, break up the East. And doesn't it just feel like, you know, you're putting a lot of store in being able to predict like which divisions are going to be good and bad forever. And maybe the Central has earned that at this point. But do you do you feel a need to break up the East? It's a cartel. It's a conspiracy cahoots. Get the Blue Jays out of there. Get them out.

Yeah, I'm open to it, I think. I certainly like the more balanced schedule. I would welcome even more balance. Just keep balancing even better. But, yeah. But, Ben, you have to stretch to do that. Yeah, well, we can, I guess, avoid that dispute. But yeah, I would absolutely be open to it. There are some things geographically and competitively that don't make that much sense aside from the fact that they've worked that way for a while, right? So now that we have very few distinctions between leagues other than just traditional alignments,

I don't have any great objections to doing some logical rearranging at some point. Some logical rearranging. Yeah. Interesting. Is there anything you care to say about the latest comments by Angelos of the Orioles, who has been a recurring figure on the podcast this year? Not so much because of the Orioles' success, although we have certainly talked about that, but because every time John Angelus opens his mouth, we are all aghast by what comes out. My first thought is that please stop referencing your books if you're not going to show us them, especially once you said you would show us them initially and you still get to show them to us. You would show us them initially and you still get to show them to us.

Part of me wonders about the confidence that money brings to people because he – I wouldn't say that like his conversations with media members ever go especially well for him. Like there is a spectrum of bad that he exists upon. But like I never come away being like, he crushed it. Like he crushed it like really nailed it john you know like you got it so i wonder about him thinking like yeah keep talking to you guys and it will improve my reputation and standing within the broader baseball community so like i find that a touch perplexing. I think that the idea that the owner of a team that has run such low payrolls for such a long time is talking about how hard it is to make ends meet is a bad politician. Like that's the only framework that I can really put it in. It's like, you've been running at times embarrassingly low

payrolls. Your current club is playing as well as it is because it is largely made up of players who haven't even hit arbitration yet. You are like a prime example of being a beneficiary of a system that lets teams kind of coast without investing in their clubs. And so, you know, hush about it. And the thing I always want to say to these guys is like, if it is so burdensome to run a baseball team, if it is not, if you truly believe it's not financially remunerative, then sell the team, you know, sell the team. The Orioles are worth a lot of money we we should continue to remind people that literally the kansas city royals sold for a billion dollars

and i don't say that to knock the good people of kansas city to be clear and i don't say that even to knock like the royals but that is a legitimately small market team and i know that baltimore exists in a crowded media space but like you have a beautiful ballpark. You have a great big league club. You have an exciting farm system. You have all the pieces in place to make a lot of money. And I know that your TV stuff is still completely, like, borked and bum-fuzzled. But, like, you really don't have anything to complain

about you're in a great situation and if you can't look at it and see it that way then sell the club and make a couple billion dollars and then we don't have to hear from you ever again you know like these options exist and part of what always puts the lie to these guys' assertions that it's a bad business is that they stay in it. Yeah. They stay in it. They stay in it for a long time often. And if that sucks for you, then sell the team. Let someone else enjoy a very exciting, fun club that I'm rambling a bit here.

But part of it that also bothers me is that you look at that club as it is currently constituted. And I wish that this offseason we could say, like, the Orioles, you know who they're in on? Otani. We're probably not going to be able to say that because there's no way that they're going to offer that guy the money that he deserves. that they're going to offer that guy the money that he deserves. But like the part of it that is so frustrating is that if you look at them this year, like their estimated payroll, not their luxury tax payroll, but their estimated payroll is like $65 million. Their luxury tax payroll, we estimate to be around like $86 million. They have so many good, very good young position players. They could have spent some money and not just the little bit of money they spent and been in a much better position than they are right now.

Or they could have consolidated some of their farm system and gone out and traded for good pitching. They have the tools at their disposal to improve the big league club, and not all of them would even cost that much and he he wouldn't let them do it and you know elias maybe didn't want to do it but you you hire a guy like michael elias because he thinks about payroll the same way ownership does so all of that to say like i just don't need to hear from these guys anymore i mean i hope it's instructive to people that like this is this is what he thinks of you right he thinks that you aren't gonna look at that and be skeptical of it that you'll just take all those assertions at face

value and move on with your day and then you know, if the Orioles get bounced out of the playoffs early because their pitching isn't very good, it'll be like, well, what could we do? That's what they want you to buy. And you don't have to buy that. You're all smart people. Yeah. When he's talking about how they'd be underwater if they signed someone to a $150 or $200 million contract, First of all, they were one of the more profitable teams last year because they weren't spending anything on payroll, obviously. And also, you don't pay the player $200 million for one year.

You pay for over many years, so it's not as many millions over any single season. And also, yeah, the franchises appreciate. So even if, oh, the horror, you lose a little money in a single season, which he's in no danger of doing, I don't think, then you'll make it up ultimately if you ever decide to sell. Worst case scenario is you walk away with many billions because he inherited this team. I just, I don't know, it's hard for me to put myself in the mindset of a billionaire and someone who has always been that. But when it's like he's got this good deal already where they're just going to get hundreds of millions

of dollars and yet they want more, they don't just want that. They want the whole package, not just the public funding, not just the extension of the lease, but also just the whole shebang and the real estate deals. And of course, you know, he will talk about revitalization and how profitable it's going to be for everyone

and how many schools and programs he's going to fund, right? But we know that that never really seems to happen. And that was said to have been the goal with Baltimore's prior revitalization. So if they're there with their handout, looking enviously at Atlanta and these other places, it becomes incredibly transparent at some point. And it's just sort of double speak. So we'll link to the article if you want to have the adventure of trying to parse this. This was a Tyler Kepner interview for the New York Times, but you could add it to a long list of Angelos interviews in this season alone this year alone that have not gone great

for his reputation yeah it's just um you know if you mean it show show us the books you know show them yeah that was really the lack of self-awareness for him to throw out a hypothetical where he was like if i were to sit you down and show you the books, it's like you said you were going to do that. Like you said you were going to? And you didn't do it. It's like, oh, you just reminded me. Didn't we, weren't we supposed to get a look at those? And, you know, he of course knows that half of public facing baseball writers are lawyers and the other half worked in finance. Like they're're gonna look at those and be able to say exactly what's what and so like he knows that's why he can't show them because he knows he's he probably you know if if they really showed what he says they did he would show them to you

because then he could say look shut up here are. But I'm skeptical that they say that because he hasn't shown it to us yet. And give them to me. Give me. Yeah. And lastly, I must issue a response to other Ben who had the audacity to come on the show and trash my approach to predictions.

I mean, just the gall. If I placed any stock in my predictions myself, I might be offended. Well, this was my point. No, his point was that my approach to predictions is boring, which of course is completely true. In fact, that's the point, partially. I sort of endeavor to be boring in my predictions just as a protest against the entire act of making predictions. At least that specific sort of prediction, just because I don't think I really have any value to add when it comes to I think this team is going to be good or bad. I don't think I'm especially prescient when it comes to that. And the thing is that Ben's approach of, well, this should be fun and interesting.

Well, I'm in favor of things being fun and interesting. But also if part of the rationale is that if I pick something that no one else is picking and then that turns out to be true, then I get to brag about it a bit, right? I'm the person who made that pick. I would not loathe. I would be reluctant to even crow about it because then I would be opening myself up to examinations of my whole record, my history, which no one will do, I guess. So there's that. So if you do want to just maximize your exposure and ability to brag about things. I guess it works both ways, where if you go out on a limb and predict some probably good team to be terrible, then you could get dragged for that too. But whenever I see, oh, so-and-so picked this team, no one else was

picking them, often you look at their other predictions and it's not like they nailed them top to bottom, right? It's like they got other stuff wrong and probably the previous season and the next season their predictions wouldn't be better than anyone else's so it's like we're all kind of throwing darts and sometimes you happen to hit one and i guess if you throw the darts at a different target then you make yourself more noticeable than you would if all of the darts that you throw are clustered with everyone else's darts, if this analogy makes any sense. Yeah. I mean, I think you're not required to like it. I think it's fine to not want to do something simply because someone told you that you have to. That can make people bristle. But I think I will just say that you've made a

strong intellectual case for why your predictions are just not necessarily remarkable. But I think you just don't want mean menchies on Twitter. And you know what? That's fine too, because those aren't fun. Mean menchies? We don't like mean menchies. Yeah. You know, I'm not a tout, right? No one is following me because I'm telling them who to draft on their fantasy team or anything. That's not really anything I've ever done. I'm not sort of making my money, making my bones on picking, making predictions that are beating the market, really. I don't think anyone's really coming to me for that. I mean, if they are, I've driven them away long ago, I guess.

But also, I feel like my strength, if I have one, is often with the retrospective analysis. It's like, oh, how did this happen? How did this happen? Yeah. Why did it happen this way? Explaining something that has happened. Right. As opposed to predicting something that will happen, which, you know, I've probably done from time to time, but I don't think most people are typically good at that.

On the whole, we're all pretty bad about predicting the future. Even the experts in a given field tend to be bad at these things. So I'm not telling you, trust me, sign up for my picks, right? Subscribe to my picks because I'm going to beat the spread or whatever here. So I'm not even pretending. I'm not even aspiring to be prescient. And also, I think there is some value in having a record of what the consensus was, because if you took this to its logical extreme and everyone were doing it other Ben's way, right, where we were all picking not what we thought was most likely to happen, but what we thought maybe had a chance to happen. And, hey, this will spark some discussion.

And if it does, then maybe people will remember that I predicted that. Then it'll be chaos, right? I mean, we won't know who we think will actually win. We won't be able to have surprise teams anymore. It's helpful, I think, to be able to look back and say 27 out of 30 people picked Team X and look, wow, they defied the – I'm not naming any particular fan graphs writers or rigor writers or staff prediction posts. I'm just saying when we can look back and say, hey, everyone was sort of in lockstep here and they all thought that

this team was going to do it and then it turns out that this other team did it, then you can accurately assess and say, oh, this really was a surprise. Like this really did come out of nowhere, you know? And I think that makes it more enjoyable. Whereas if we were all kind of going for the cloud and all using different criteria to pick, right? Because if I make a prediction, a preseason prediction, then that's the thing that I think is most likely to happen. Now, if I stray from what I think is most likely to happen to what would be fun, or what would be surprising, or what would be most memorable, then how can you even assess

what the criteria would be, right? It'll just be pure anarchy. We will lose track of what predictions were and suddenly nothing mean. And so I think there is still a strong pull toward consensus because I think most people, their desire when they are making predictions is to be right. And I think that the number of people who are making a lot of quote-unquote clever picks, right, are like you're going to exercise some discretion with that making a lot of quote unquote clever picks, right? You're going to exercise some discretion with that because if you constantly do that, people aren't going to come to you to look at your picks.

They're going to be like, why are you picking the A's to win the West? That's wild. That's not supported by any fact. So I think we will move toward consensus anyway. And we do have a, we have something of a sense of a preseason expectation and consensus record because we have the projections, you know? Yes, that's true. So we have something.

We got something, Ben. And look, you know, I don't like being yelled at in my mentions either. Yeah, I don't like being yelled at in my mentions either. Yeah. I didn't say the Mets are going to miss the postseason, even though I should. There are mentions that might make me feel bad, but you picked Team X to be good or bad, and it was the opposite of that, would not make me feel bad because I put so little stock in my ability to predict those things that I would just say, yeah, gosh, I was way off on that one. People shouldn't ask me to make predictions anymore. I don't know what I'm talking about. That is not what I'm not going to like fabricate a mean mention for like play acting purposes. But that suggests to me that you

have only interacted with the kindest people on Twitter because to think that a mean interaction around a prediction would be, you said it was going to be this team, buddy. It was that team. It's like that's not how. Yeah, but that's not phrased quite that way, I guess. No. Let me tell you, when people decide to get nasty about sports stuff, the sport of it all tends to get left by the wayside very quickly

and other aspects of your personhood become the target of the comments. So, yeah, I think that's how the internet works. If you have the hot take about the team, if you're the outlier, then you are sticking your neck out and then everyone with that fan base will remember that you were the one who predicted that thing and then they will train all of their attention on you, right? So, that probably just hasn't happened to me because I'm not that guy. Right. You're not that guy. Yeah.

And I'm not a takesmith either, you know. I know why it's called being a tout, but we didn't say that out loud one time and go, that sounds dumb. I'm really going to do that. I'm going to call them touts. You know, tout, people tout trout. It just sounds stupid. As they always say, if people are providing their picks for things publicly, then perhaps

they're not that reliable because the people who are not broadcasting their picks, maybe they're the ones making the money. Or maybe not. Lots of them are also losing money. Oh, because they want to save their pick to themselves? Right, they don't want to share this gold that they're sitting on. For gambling purposes? Yeah. Is that why they do it?

I do feel increasingly out of touch with our industry, Ben. That's maybe a longer conversation than we want to have today, but it's one that, you know, I thought a lot of deep thoughts while you were gone. I was like, oh, what's Ben eating? What's the weather like in Sweden? What is the future of sports media? You know, I was really wracked with like the big questions. Just idle musings. Yeah. Well, I'm back. Mike Trout's back. Mike Trout's back. All is right with the world. Yeah.

I'm back. Mike Trout's back. Mike Trout's back. All is right with the world. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, personally, I'm more excited that you're back. It's only because, boy, was I nervous I was going to upload the podcast to the wrong channel. I was so nervous, Ben.

I was like, well, it's not that complicated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've made that mistake myself. Yeah. All right. Well, we will wrap up with the Future Blast, which comes from the year 2049 and from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball.

Rick writes. continued their mastery of the American League, making it to their third straight World Series, dispatching the Nashville Rays handily in the ALCS after romping to a 112-win regular season and enjoying a smooth ride past perennial postseason regulars. Oh, there's that perennial postseason regular term that I mentioned earlier, the Omurri Giants and the surprising Seattle Mariners, who'd struggled to hang on to a wild-card berth and then ran off a five-game winning streak

before bumping up against the Colonels. Louisville's power-laden lineup was led by all-star Jonathan McLeod, who started hot with 15 home runs in April, only the second player to hit that many in April, joining Austin Riley, who'd done it in 2040. McLeod finished the regular season with 65 homers. For the second year in a row, however, the Colonels lost in the World Series in six games, this time to the San Antonio Missions. It was the first time two of the 2042 expansion franchises had met in the World Series, and the Missions' pitching and base running, led by designated runner Olivia Garcia, was too much for the Colonels. Garcia, who'd stolen 131 bases in the regular season, kept up that pace in the postseason, winning the new Golden Spike Award for Most Valuable Designated Runner. After winning the Golden Spike and the World Series, Garcia returned to England to rejoin

Arsenal WFC. One of the top assist leaders in the women's Super League, Garcia had two assists in her first matchback, much to the delight of her football followers. Yay. All right. Well, after we recorded, the Mariners won again. No Julio, no problem. I mean, it would be a pretty big problem long term, but it wasn't tonight.

They were just a game out of first place. As you may have heard, we had a nice new intro theme today that came to us courtesy of listener Daniel Leckie from Grover Beach, California, by way of New York. Thank you very much, Daniel. Happy to add it to our intro outro rotation. And if you're musically inclined and want to join in, you can email us your version at podcast at fangraphs.com. Another person who emailed us there was listener and Patreon supporter Dan, who responded to a couple topics on episode 2043. We talked about how the pitch clock might not be cutting down game times quite as well later in the season relative to last year as it was earlier in the season. We were speculating about

where those extra minutes creeping in were coming from. Well, Dan has a good explanation for that. And he also weighed in on our discussion of whether it would make sense to have a left-handed catcher. So he says, it has become my new pastime to check the time of game when I check the box scores each night. And I too have noticed that game times are creeping up. I have a theory. I think pitchers have become more comfortable with the pitch clock and now let it run down closer to zero on each pitch than they were at the beginning of the season. If we have 300 pitches in a game and they use four extra seconds per pitch, that is 20 extra minutes. My guess is it is closer to two to three extra seconds per pitch, which would be 10 to 15 minutes of additional game time. Just a thought. And I think it's a good thought. Fangraphs has a stat called pace,

which is what it sounds like. It's just measuring the time between pitches on average. And if I look at that on a league wide level, split it up by month, then in March slash April, the average time between pitches was 18.3 seconds. In May, 18.5. In June, 18.7. In July, 19. And so far in August, 19.1. So just a little itty bitty uptick. And it makes sense maybe that as pitchers have figured out how long they have, that they haven't felt quite as rushed, allow themselves a little more recovery and strategizing time. Dan also wrote, I nearly died on the hill of left-handed catchers. I so wanted there to be one in MLB. And when my left-handed son played a little league, he was a very good catcher. The hitting coach he used to go to was partnered with Gabe Kapler for a while. And we used to have heated debates about it. I said it would have to be someone who hit like Buster Posey, such that a team would need to look past their right-handed catcher bias to make it happen, but that it eventually would. But then they instituted the Buster Posey rule, as it's sometimes called, although as Grant Brisby always points out, Posey's injury, not the proximate cause. With that rule,

catchers can no longer block the plate and now often have to rely on a sweep tag for runners coming in. This is considerably easier and better for a right-handed catcher. A lefty would need to cross his body in an unnatural manner and, more importantly, in a slower manner to tag the runner. For that reason alone, I think my pipe dream is dead. I hope not, but good point that I hadn't considered. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Brian Hines, Robert Cope, Richard, Jim Pergolizzi and David Michalis. Thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangrafts memberships, and more. Check it out, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site, but any old listener can contact us via email, send us your questions and comments at podcast at fangrafts.com. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild.

Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. As you can hear, I'm a tad under the weather, but I hope to be back to talk to you soon. Someone certainly will. Glad I haven't forgotten how to do this outro after a week away. Thank you, as always, for listening. Can you effectively sort through All of the stats and players in your head Isn't it wild to repeat them To all of your indifferent family and friends They'll keep you company, they'll see you next time. bats hide It's effectively wild

So stick around you'll be well beguiled It's effectively wild Like Nolan Ryan was sometimes Ryan has sometimes.