Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2051: Bunts and Balks and Passed Balls, Oh My

Episode Date: August 27, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about how late it is in the season and a fan’s exuberant reaction to the only known unassisted outfield triple play in major or minor league history, answer listener emails (15:17) about Shohei Ohtani 2.0 and whether “bulk guys” could stave off extinction for 300-game winners, Stat Blast (38:11) […]

Chris Davis 247 tattoos are the new mnemonics. Scott Boris nautical analogies are tragedies. Keep them honest. Vroom vroom. Here's your primer. I'm Beef Boys, Baseball's End, Roger Angel, and Super Pretzels. Lillian's Ask the Dio and Mike Trout hypotheticals. Waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic eruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction. Hello and welcome to episode 2051 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you feeling? I'm feeling not too bad. I'm feeling better.

Yeah. Okay. Coming out of the COVID now. Okay. I did have a realization today. It suddenly struck me that it's getting fairly late in the year, baseball-wise, that is. We're in the dog days here. And, you know, there's still, what, five weeks, almost five weeks of baseball left.

But we've reached the stage of the season where not-so-serious injuries are described as season-ending. That's always a milestone. It's like, oh, we're getting there now because that would not have been season-ending. Yeah. That's always a milestone. It's like, oh, we're getting there now because that would not have been season-ending earlier. I just saw an MLB trade rumors update about a Royals reliever named Jake Brents, whom I had not devoted a lot of thought to this season. What?

He actually, yeah, no, I haven't really dwelt on Jake Brents. Brents? For a good reason, I guess, which is that he's been out all year. He had Tommy John surgery last year. And so he's been on the road back from that. And he started a minor league rehab assignment last week. But now he has sustained a lat strain. And so they're shutting him down for the season with a season ending lat strain.

So we've reached the season ending lat strain stage of the season. I don't know whether that's because he's also coming back from elbow injury or not, but lat strains, sometimes they can be a minimum stay on the IL. Sometimes they can be an extended stay. But the median, I guess, is probably long enough that at this point you figure, yeah, I guess you're done now. So this is like the lat strain stage. And then you get to even more minor injuries the last few weeks of the season.

It's like any sort of strain. It's a season-ending calf strain. It's a season-ending. I mean, Mike Trout had a calf strain that lasted forever and ended his season. But, you know, for most players, season ending, leg strain, season ending, whatever it is, minor injury, you do get to a point where every single injury is season ending. And we're coming to that point. We're not only at that point, but we're like at the point where in a little bit here,

like the minor league season will just be over. Yeah, that's right. You know, you'll have, if you're going to do any kind of rehab, it's going to have to happen on the complexes. Although the complex championships are ongoing this weekend. So, you know, you're going to have to come down and hang out in the, it's not instructional league anymore, Ben. They're the bridge league now. I don't know, man. We're doing stuff down here.

About 80% of the way through the regular season, 79.5%. So it's not too late for some teams to change their fortunes, as we will discuss later in this episode. But yes, we will get to Meg's Mariners later on. Yeah, my Mariners. That's right. Yeah, you're reclaiming them now that they're doing well. You bandwagon Mariners fan. Yeah, I know. Fair weather for sure. There hasn't really been such a thing

as a bandwagon Mariners fan for decades. I mean, there hasn't been a bandwagon to board for a while, really, unless you count late last year, I guess. Anyway, we have some emails to answer. I have several stat blasts, but I have one extremely non-topical thing to tell you about that I read about and was charmed by, so I wanted to share it with you and everyone. This is definitely a past blast here.

This comes from 1911, but it's a story about the only known unassisted triple play by an outfielder in the history of major or minor league baseball. So this was documented in a recent edition of Craig Wright's newsletter, Pages from Baseball's Past, which I always recommend, baseballspast.com. Past, which I always recommend, baseballspast.com. And the originator of this triple play, the instigator, was a player named Walter Rosie Carlisle. Rosie was his nickname. He didn't have a long major league career. He was only up in 1908 with the Red Sox and he got into three games, but he played for almost two decades in the minors and played in the Pacific Coast League when that was a really big deal. And he was a very talented defensive outfielder. So on July 19th, 1911, there's a very well-documented and celebrated play

that he was the center of. So here's how it happened. In the sixth inning, the Los Angeles Angels were poised to break up a 3-3 tie with Carlisle's Vernon Tigers. L.A. had Charlie Moore and George Metzger on first and second when Roy Aiken came up with nobody out and knocked the ball toward center field. Here's an account of the play. A low fast fly sailed out over the second baseman's head. It had so little rise that it looked more like a liner than a fly.

If ever anything looked like a safe hit, this was it. Moore on second and Metzger on first took one look at the ball and lit out like a team of scared jackrabbits. As the ball cracked from the bat, Carlisle started in from his station in center field on what looked like a team of scared jackrabbits. As the ball cracked from the bat, Carlisle started in from his station in center field on what looked like a hopeless effort. The ball was flying so low and was headed to hit the ground so fast,

the catch looked impossible. But Carlisle, with one last effort, put out both hands and went down headfirst, catching the ball just off the ground. Carlisle's momentum was so great that he rolled over and over on the ground toward the diamond, but like the trained athlete that he is, came up on his feet. So that's how the Los Angeles Times described that play 112 years ago.

From there, Craig writes, it was just a matter of presence of mind by Carlisle. Seeing both of the disbelieving runners pass second base, Rosie ran and tagged second base for the second out Wow. Wow. just to this play and even included a diagram to help explain what had happened. Wow. Part of it, I guess, is that he was playing so shallow that he was able to do that.

And outfielders played shallow those days, dead ball era, right? And he probably made the catch two-handed diving because it was hard to hang on to balls with one hand with the gloves that they used then. But this is my favorite part. This is why I read it. The play itself was spectacular. But this description from the times of the crowd's reaction to the play. Okay. What happened in the grandstand and bleachers was like an explosion.

The fans stood up and shrieked and flung their hats. Which, by the way, the fact that people don't really wear hats anymore, at least like formal hats, the kind that you would fling. I guess we could fling baseball caps, but you don't really see people fling them to celebrate. Right? Wait, what kind? Are they wearing like top hats? Yeah.

Well, you know, this is 1911. So, you know, you see old timey baseball photos. Everyone's wearing hats in those things. They are all dressed up to go to the game. So, you know, you got your Homburgs and trilbies and fedoras and pork pies and such. So I don't even wear hats or want to wear hats. But I feel like we've lost out with the flinging of hats. the flinging of hats because probably a baseball cap wouldn't sail so well as a 1911 men's hat would have sailed. But that would have been like you could have done a good huzzah and flung your hat. And these days you don't do that really. You might do a rally cap, but that's about it.

Ben longs for the days of saying, pip-pip-trio! but that's about it. Ben longs for the days of saying, Pip-Pip-Trio! Yeah, Pip-Pip-Pourree and Huzzah and all those exclamations. So now this is the best part. Down in the boxes, one excitable fan seemed to get an attack of insanity.

He jumped up and down and yelled, It's the greatest play in the world! It's the greatest play in the world! He began grabbing the other men in the box with him and shaking them as a rat terrier does a rag doll. He flung himself almost headfirst into the next box and thumped the nearest man over the head. It's the greatest play ever made in the world, he shrieked. After a while, he quieted down and smoothed out his clothes, straightening his hat and his tie. He sat back in his chair and remarked in a serious, earnest, confidential tone to his next neighbor,

we have just seen the greatest play ever made in the world. Wow. That's my favorite fan reaction. Yeah. He just completely lost it, just disassociated for a moment and just was shrieking, it's the greatest play in the world. disassociated for a moment and just was shrieking, it's the greatest play in the world. And then he calmed down and was soothed and straightened his clothes and yet reiterated that it was just the greatest play ever made in the world. He toned it down, but he did not change his initial

reaction that it was the greatest play ever made in the world. And he had a decent case, right? I mean, it's the only time that it's ever happened before or since, as far as we know. So I respect his reaction to that. Like it was maybe a little bit over the top with the like thumping people in the head, but it was not a disproportionate reaction. Like that was arguably the greatest play in the world. So he was not wrong necessarily.

So minus the thumping, I feel like we should all aspire to react as appropriately in the moment to that because we're all prone to hyperbole and we'll say, oh, that's the greatest play ever, right? But it's usually not the only time that that type of play has ever happened or may ever happen.

This guy, he assessed the moment for what it was right like he he was appropriately excited he could have kept his hands to himself but the shrieking i think was entirely appropriate that if you're ever going to shriek about something and declare something the greatest play in the world it would be the only unassisted triple play by an outfielder ever. I mean, he nailed it. Yeah. You make a good case. Yeah.

No thumping people on the head, though. I agree. Like that part, you want to rein in. Yeah. But it was actually not a hometown crowd because the game was played in L.A. And so Rosie Carlisle's team was the visiting team. Yeah. And so this guy, probably it went

against his team and yet he was still so excited that, that this had happened again, which I also think is commendable too, because sometimes you've got to tip or fling your, your hat, right? If, if the opposing team makes the greatest play ever in the world, then you got to give it up for them. Yeah, I think you're right. It warms my heart when we see fans just be like, look, we are, some of us, just baseball fans. This is bigger than the fortunes of one specific team. I think that is commendable. Yeah. Yeah. We're just, we're all prone to recency bias and presentism and thinking that what we're

seeing is so spectacular. And usually in baseball, a lot of spectacular things happen, but almost always you look it up and someone did it a hundred years ago. It's happened before at least once. Right. So, but this guy, he sensed that this had never happened and might never happen again. And he just lost it for a little while. He just blacked out.

But even when he settled down and calmed down, he still reflected on the fact that he'd just seen the most amazing play ever in the world. Now, here's an incredible coincidence that Craig also notes. So Roy Aiken was the batter who hit that ball that was caught. And Craig notes, no third baseman has ever turned an unassisted triple play in the major leagues. It happened once in the minors on May 9th, 1912, less than a year after Carlisle's amazing play. after Carlisle's amazing play, the third baseman for the Waco Navigators in the Texas League got an unassisted triple play after catching a pop bunt that was intended to be a squeeze bunt.

Incredibly, that third baseman was none other than Roy Aiken, the same guy who had hit into Carlisle's unassisted triple play. Stop it. He has a talent. He has a very specific set of skills. Yeah, well, I guess he has this lightning strikes twice sort of skill to be involved in unassisted triple plays that are unprecedented. But in this case, he started it. He was the fielder, whereas he hit the ball in the Carlisle play. Gotcha, gotcha. Either way, he was a key participant in both of those singular plays within a year of each other.

Do you think that he looked around to his teammates and was like, you guys, this is uncanny. Like, I feel like I've been here before. I'm having deja vu. I mean, he must have mentioned it to people, right? I wonder if the fan from the first game was there also. Oh my God, it's the greatest play in the world again. I can't tell if this is greater or not. It feels like I think you should leave Sketch.

You go around like, you guys! Right, yeah. Maybe actually I overreacted the first time. Maybe that wasn't so great. This happens all the time, apparently. Anyway, yeah. I wonder what Roy Aiken made of all that. Yeah.

But love baseball history. It's so weird. So many things have happened. Almost everything has happened once, but sometimes only once. Sometimes only once. If it is that one time, then you've got to be that guy in the stands who's telling it. That's why I've talked about Shohei Otani so much. I been this this raving guy saying it's the greatest player in the world it's the greatest player in the world and not thumping people on the head but definitely

shrieking sometimes and uh i think it was appropriate in otani's case too i finally watched uh i think you should leave ben i feel like i understand all the internet now yeah oh wow okay it doesn't i mean like not it doesn't over several weeks it you know it took a while um but i feel like i i understand the internet now like in retrospect i'm like oh that's what everyone was joking about okay yeah yeah you can make so many references and get so many memes now oh yeah all those memes those memes. Yeah, that's great. If I'd known that, I could have referenced Stanzo brand fedoras and fedoras with safari flaps when we were talking about hats before.

Really opens up a whole new realm of references. All right, I've got a few emails and then a few emails that prompted stat blasts. So we've gotten so many Otani questions and it's bittersweet now, although he continues to play and hit a really hard double on Friday and also walked three times. So the Shohei Otani show continues at least for now in some form. But I think this question is still valid. This is a question from Mark in Pasadena who said, Wanted to send you a question I've been wondering about.

It's got Shohei. It's got alternate universes. It's a bit pedantic. I figured it was right up your alley. Wow. And he says, Clearly in my mind, Shohei Otani is the best baseball player to have ever lived. He can pitch, run, hit, and even demand massive amounts of money from sponsors and baseball teams alike.

Truly a legend in the making. So we have to ask ourselves, who could be better? Is there any way a player could reasonably and meaningfully exceed what he's done? What would he need to do? Is there any way we can expect someone to come along who is demonstrably better that would introduce Shohei 2.0 to the world? Not just a slightly better hitter or pitcher, but meaningfully better, however that looks?

Would they need to also be a starting shortstop, a relief pitcher on off days, the coach as well as a hitter slash pitcher, a GM who can do it all? It seems like the structural factors around player management, risk of injury especially, this was sent, I believe, before the most recent injury, would almost make it impossible, but I would like to think slash hope in the 2081 offseason

or an alternate universe where maybe talking about Player X as Shohei 2.0. So who could be better or how could he be better? Well. Turn an unassisted triple play in the outfield. Sure, yeah. I mean, if we are taking Otani as like that baseline, right, and then sort of like Voltroning skills on to him, you know, we might start with a guy who, yes, is a starting pitcher

and takes the ball often and pitches really well. You know, one easy way to do it would be to Voltron Otani's best pitching seasons and best hitting seasons together and just have like a souped up version of him. Right. His offense from this year, his pitching from last year. Right. And then you're like, oh my gosh, incredible. But that feels like it is sort of still of a piece. still of a piece. So yeah, I think you start with a guy who's able to be a starting pitcher, take the ball regularly, pitch very well, and then maybe you add actual defensive value to the offensive profile, right? And like, honestly, just getting him out from under the DH penalty is huge there, I would think. So is that a thing that

a team is likely to entertain? I'd submit probably not because there's a reason he DHs now. Yeah. Even if you're not worried about the heightened risk of injury, once he's in the field versus just DHing, like you're surely concerned about fatigue and wear and tear and that sort of thing. But let's imagine Otani. And now I'm going to struggle to not imagine literally Otani, which makes some of the next sentence especially fun to say. But imagine the better than Otani,

who looks like Otani playing shortstop. Like, I mean, now I want that, you know, give it to me. You know, you could imagine him at a non-catcher up the middle position because you wouldn't want him to catch because even though, you know, you have a guy who might have like tremendous defensive value based on how catchers are used these days he would he'd be hitting a lot less presumably although maybe they dh him on the days he doesn't catch but like at some point a guy's just exhausted right so you could have him play

a position and have him play a premium position play it well and you're like wow look at this guy that would be one obvious way to do it i do struggle to think that that would actually happen just because again you get tired man you just get tired yeah if it were current otani except that he instead of dhing played outfield or even yeah first base although no one doubts that he could do that right right? I mean, there are doubts that he would hold up, that he wouldn't get exhausted doing that. And that was the issue with Babe Ruth, which is my only reservation whenever someone says that Ruth never did what Otani has done in terms of regularly being a two-way player for the amount of time that Otani has done it,

which is true. There was only like a year or so when Ruth was really doing both on any kind of regular basis. It was more like he was a full-time pitcher, and then he became a full-time hitter, and there was a fairly brief transition where he was doing both all the time, and Otani has done that longer, but that's probably because, I mean, it's harder in a lot of ways to do it today because it's just tougher competition, but it's also easier to do it in that he can DH and Ruth was not able to DH. And that was what he said at the time that it's just, you know, he was tired, like he would not have held up under the strain.

Whereas if he had had the option to DH, then maybe he would have done it longer. But no one doubts that Otani has the skills to play those positions, which is why I question whether that's a good enough answer. Like, yeah, now maybe if you said shortstop or something i wouldn't doubt otani's ability to play any defensive position really i mean who's more athletic than he is right like he doesn't have the reps in the infields but are we gonna say he he couldn't play shortstop if if he had tried i don't know he's just so huge she is Yeah. Although there are some pretty huge short stops these days. There are some huger short stops, at least vertically huger, right? Yeah.

So, yeah, like, I guess, you know, health is a skill and durability is a skill. So if someone did have the skill to be durable and available enough to play a defensive position on every day, even when they weren't pitching, then I guess that would be different, even if Otani we know could play outfielder first baser or whatever, if he set his mind to it. But I wonder if there's anything else that is just like, even Otani couldn't do it, like he doesn't have the skills to do it because that's sort of what sets him apart from any other player now it's not just that he's like more durable than anyone it's just that no hitter who's good enough to be a big leaguer possesses an arm

good enough to be a big league pitcher and vice versa right so the only thing i can think is that like if he were a player manager also which wouldn't enhance his wars right it wouldn't be captured in that but yeah but it it would be something that i mean i guess you could technically make anyone a player manager but some of them would be very bad at it and would have no inclination, no predisposition, no talent for that. And it would distract them from their play as well. Again, I don't know why you would do this, but if you happen to have someone who was just an off-the-charts leader and tactician and also the best player at everything, or

even was a coach of some sorts, I don't know, maybe, maybe that there aren't that many ways you can be better at baseball that Otani is not. He kind of has all the boxes checked in terms of tools and skills. Right. So yeah.

Yeah. There aren't that many options, I suppose. What if he were, he did everything he does now and he was like the pitching coach, but then would he take himself out of the game? I mean, he basically does already. I guess that's true.

He pretty much says, I'm done. I want to stay in. They just kind of let him do his thing. Yeah, he knows. He's self-aware. It's good. Seems like it. Hopefully. I know some people have been like, should the angels have been more careful with him? Should there have been earlier MRIs? You know, they kind of trust him to know how he's feeling. And he wasn't feeling pain from all accounts from his accounts. So I don't know.

I guess there's not that much harm to doing an MRI every now and then. You don't want to do one constantly because the hassle and the expense and also every pitcher's arm is always damaged to some degree. So yeah, I was going to say, like, I don't think that they, my sense at least, I could be proven wrong, of course, but my sense at least is that not that they were deviating from like standard practice around that stuff. I don't think that there are many guys who even guys who have had injury issues previously who are getting like preemptive diagnostic check in MRIs. I don't think that that happens very often. I think you do it when there's an acute reason to at least that's my sense.

Maybe I'm wrong. Often, I think you do it when there's an acute reason to at least that's my sense. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it should happen more often than it does. But I don't know that it would happen just for feeling a little fatigued. Right. Or I'm having some cramping. I mean, he was having cramping in multiple parts of his body. So it wasn't just his arm.

And you can imagine why he would get tired or dehydrated on a hot, humid day. can imagine why he would get tired or dehydrated on a hot, humid day. And it's not like a blister or a fingernail issue has anything to do with a UCL, unless it leads you to throw in a different way that injures your UCL. But yeah, I don't think most teams would say if someone complains of a little bit of fatigue that they would send you for an MRI. And on the day we're recording, Perry Manassian, Angel's GM, said that the Angels suggested that he have an MRI after he left to start with cramping in his finger and that Otani declined to do that, which is the other thing. Even though there's no radiation involved with an MRI, most pitchers aren't just going to want to get MRIs willy-nilly whenever the team wants one.

If they're not feeling anything that's concerning to them, then they may not want the state of their arm revealed to their employer. And who knows if it would have shown anything if Otani had gotten that then, or if it was already too late. I don't know if teams or players should be more proactive about that than they are already. Anyway, Mark's answer, the question asker, he also supplied his answer. He said it would be that since there's not really a high likelihood any organization would let anyone play additional positions, fielding or pitching beyond DH and starting pitcher, the only other way for Shohei 2.0 to achieve greatness is by demonstrating a third legendary tool, their mind.

So, yeah, I guess this is sort of what I was saying. They'd have to do some combination of the following. Become a winning durable manager. Win a World Series as a manager, possibly multiple. Become a GM and draft the next great two-way player in the fourth round, of course. Own a team outright with the wealth acquired from their $750 million contract. If they do all of this, they become the greatest sports person of all time in any sport. Doing this would demonstrate their ability to surpass even themselves despite the shackles of injury avoidance and physical limitations.

So I guess he's not saying at the same time. Right. But after they're done playing, then they go on to be an incredible manager or they go on to be a great owner. So, yeah, if you can daisy chain these things, if you can string them so it can be sequential instead of simultaneous, then yeah, I guess if Otani were to retire and then he became a Hall of Fame manager or something, or he went on to own a team and was acclaimed as

a great owner, you know, like if Michael Jordan had been a great owner instead of a disastrous owner or something, you know, like that kind of. Oh, yeah. Even more of the goat. So, yeah, something like that. That'd be pretty good, I guess. It really didn't go great. No. It didn't go great.

All right. Question from Danny in Palo Alto. I was watching the Dodgers and Ryan Pepeo on Thursday, and while the team dashed my hopes of seeing a five-inning save, it did spark a question in my mind about pitcher wins. Yeah, who cares, right? The Dodgers elected to use an opener, followed by a long man for the first four innings,

and intended to use Pepeo, a starter by trade, for the majority of the game, while Pepeo only threw four innings and came to use Pepeo, a starter by trade, for the majority of the game. While Pepeo only threw four innings and came into the game with a 6-2 lead, he was given the win by the scorekeeper. This made me wonder if teams decided to commit to pitching in reverse, could they make it easier for their no longer starters to rack up wins? By the way, do we have a name for this new non-starting starter? Long man is fitting, but is already a reliever designation. Bulk arm. Yeah, bulk guy is kind of the, I think that's the standard term, right?

But he continues, these pitchers would no longer be required to pitch a full five innings. And since they come in later in the game, are more likely to be in the game during or after the decision. A team that committed to this fully could increase the likelihood their non-starter is considered in decisions and over the course of their careers accumulate more wins. With starters pitching shorter into games, could this be a way to bring back the 300 game winner? So I suppose so.

Like people have talked about how Ray's style pitching usage may depress arbitration salaries sometimes. But win total wise, I don't know that it necessarily does. Like if you're a bulk guy who's pitching that way often instead of starting games more often, I don't know that you're that much less likely to win games. But maybe there are other ways that it could affect it. You know, if you were games started for comps or something or innings potentially, this has come up. I wrote about this long ago and I think I talked to Ryan Yarbrough's agent or something and there were some concerns about this but i do wonder about that if you had like a all opener setup yeah and you just had a bulk guy who could be the leading candidate to get wins without having to go deep into games would that help i don't know i also wonder like

how if you're thinking about it from an arbitration perspective like i know that the arbitration boards tend to be well you know variable in their knowledge of things but if there's like a if there's like a staff-wide strategy like that like is there an understanding like surely you as the agent are going to say so this is how they deploy their staff and like don't penalize my guys for this or that. Or if you're the bull guy, you're like, wins are the most important statistic in baseball. Let me tell you why here are all of mine. But I, I feel like you would be able to, if you're the agent, like articulate where that sits within the, you know, the broader pitching firmament, you know? Yeah.

I think Yarbrough and Ryan Stanek actually coined Bulk Guy. They had to come up with some name for this because they felt left out, right? Yeah. So that's a claim to fame, I guess. fame i guess brian stanek also is the guy that is on the raise bottle opener opener that i have and you push a button on the back and brian kenny's voice comes out it's a it's a fascinating little artifact of a thing that that jeff was kind enough to procure for me does he say kill the wind or something what does he say he He just explains like what the opener strategy is. Okay.

But it's, you know, Stanek as the opener on a bottle opener. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good. I was like, hey, Jeff, I don't ask for much, but will you get one of those for me? And then he did. And it was nice of him.

And then I also asked him to get the Mike Zanino Florida man bobblehead. And he did. And then I got the flu and couldn't go to winter meetings. So, Jeff, sorry if that's floating around your house unnecessarily. And if you gave it away, well, I understand. I'll link to my article where I talked to Ryan Yarbrough's agent about this. It actually doesn't seem like he was so concerned. Anyway, I don't really lament the possible extinction of the 300

game winner. I don't know that that bothers me that much. I know that people have declared the demise of the 300 game winner many times in the past. And there have been periods where decades have gone by between them. And then there's a fl flurry and then it's we'll never see one again and then someone always ends the drought this time i'm not sure that anyone will i think it's gotten more legitimate as a concern and people forecasting the extinction of the 300 game winner just because of the way that pitchers are used now i mean you don't make as many starts and you certainly don't go as deep into games. And we've stat blasted about that before. Pitchers, starting pitchers just involved in fewer decisions than they used to be. So I don't see how there's any way that it's not getting harder. And if Justin Verlander doesn't get there, certainly no one's likely to do it. Now,

there have been times where people weren't likely to do it, and then someone did because they ended up defying all the predictions or they were a knuckleballer who pitched forever or whatever. But it's getting harder, and I would not be surprised if there's not one after Verlander, if he's able to do it. And it's somewhat unlikely even that he does, though realistic because he keeps on trucking. You know, somewhat unlikely even that he does, though realistic because he keeps on trucking. But if that goes the way of the Dodo, well, a lot of things in baseball have, you know, their innings thresholds that we'll never see anymore. And, you know, 400 game winner. Right. Sure.

So it doesn't bother me that much. It's a sign of the times. But I guess it's something that endured for a long time, right? I mean, throughout baseball history where that was seen as a milestone, at least for many decades. People considered that something special and all these round number milestones that used to mean something and in some cases have been devalued because too many people accomplished it. It got too easy to accomplish it or it became impossible. And people mourn that. But, yeah, this isn't what I'm losing sleep over one way or another. Yeah, I think that there are.

I'm sure that there are exceptions to this that I could I could come up with if I sat and thought about it for a moment. But like my attachment to particular recurring statistical markers doesn't tend to be about them, like sort of in and of themselves so much as like, do they suggest a shift in like the narrative of the sport that is concerning to me. So like when I think about pitching milestones and markers that I'm like, sad to see go, they tend to be because they suggest like, we're losing the starting pitcher as a main character or, you know, stuff like that, where it's, it's about, you know, the storytelling part of it that we're losing more than, oh my gosh, like this particular guy constructed this particular way. I mean means so much to me. It's less about that than like, what stories are we losing or not able to tell as often that we, we like and help kind of anchor us in the sport.

So it tends to be my criteria for assessing those things. And so in that respect, maybe like this is indicative of that. Yeah. Yeah. But we've, we've talked about the about the decline of the starting pitcher protagonist. So that is, this is part of that. This is an offshoot of that. It just occurred to me, what if the next phase of Shohei or the more impressive than Shohei, he's fast, but he's not that great or prolific a base stealer.

After I mentioned that he had basically ceased to even attempt to steal bases sometime early this year, he then resumed trying to steal some, and he has stolen 17 in 22 attempts this year, which is not bad. But he topped out at 26, and that was in a season when he was caught 10 times he's obviously as fast as anyone or has been as fast as anyone but he has not been one of the better base dealers in baseball so what if you had Shohei and all of his other skills but also a league leading base dealer so that he's going constantly, which, again, would be additional wear and tear on the body and would make it very difficult for one person to do all those things. But if you did have someone stealing like Acuna this year or whoever's leading the league and also doing all those other things,

that would be not immensely more valuable but but even more sensational yeah it would be like a cool it would be a cool thing i don't think you're ever going to replicate the wow factor of what otani is doing with like base running but we're if he were himself and he stole 40 bases like that would be really cool that but this is all i don't know i think the two-way thing at the level he's doing it is just so special that it's hard for me to think about how do i how do i create a better version of Otani that doesn't just start with like Otani, but he's made of adamantium, you know, and it's just indestructible. And so you can layer on escalating versions of his existing skill set in a way where you're like, whoa, you know, it's hard for me to think of an alternative to that. Yeah. Until Bobby Witt recently surpassed him, he was leading the AL and I think also the majors in triples and homers, which is always a fun thing. Yeah. If you

can lead the leagues in both of those things, that is rare. And that also speaks to the power speed skill set. Yeah. Bobby Witt, the prince who was promised. Mm-hmm, yeah. All right, I've got several stat blasts, some of which will hopefully spark some banter, so let's play the song. 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 today's stat blast.

All right. To kick off this complicated stat blast, I'm going to start with an email from a listener who sent us a stat blast, which I always appreciated. We usually do our own stat blasting or with the help of our stat blast consultants. But every now and then, a listener takes it upon themselves to do some interesting research that is worthy of this segment in my mind. So this is from Evan, who sent this a little while ago. He said, as I write this email and as we record this podcast, both the Yankees and Cardinals are under 500. It's been well documented that the Yankees have gone 30 years without a losing season, but the Cardinals haven't had one since 2007 either. but the Cardinals haven't had one since 2007 either.

Yeah, Yankees, 1993, their last losing season 30 years ago. I was wondering if this type of concurrent streak was common, and it turns out to be quite rare. Here are a collection of fun facts about streaks in the standings. First, the Yankees and Cardinals have both had winning records for each of the last 15 seasons, 2008 through 2022. This streak is tied for the longest in MLB history. The Yankees and Cardinals were also both winning teams from 1939 through 1953, while the Orioles and Red Sox were both winners from 1968 through 1982.

And I've got to think it is harder for that to happen now, probably, right? Just because the league as a whole is better, and you've got free agency and no reserve clause and all sorts of other developments. So they have both had impressive runs. And I know that hasn't seemed to make it much easier for Cardinals and Yankees fans to swallow this season. They haven't seemed to be like, you know what, we've had it great lately. So who are we to complain? But yeah, they have had nice runs. Second fun fact, the longest streak for two teams as concurrent losers belongs to the Orioles and Pirates, who both had losing seasons every year from 1998 to 2011. So that's 14 years that they were both losing teams at the same time.

Third, every year between 1916 and 1990, one or both of the Yankees and the Giants had a winning season. In those 75 seasons, the Yankees had 11 losing seasons that were all paired with winning years for the Giants. Wow. 1960 to 1990. That is a long time. Yeah. Either the Yankees or Giants were winners in all those seasons.

All right. The longest streak of opposing fortunes for two teams, so one is above 500 and the others below, happened from 1990 to 2012. That's 23 years for the Yankees and Pirates. Pittsburgh was the winning team of the duo from 1990 to 1992. And then the Yankees took it from there. All right. So a little bit of imbalance. And then the final fun fact here, the current cardinal streak of finishing in front of the Pirates in 23 straight seasons is in serious jeopardy. Ben Clemens mentioned that when he was on with you. And that was also the subject of one team finishing above another team in its division or in its league prior to the divisional era was the 1932 to 1965 Yankees over the A's. However, Evan notes here that even that is not the longest streak of one team finishing ahead of another if we don't have any kind of league qualifiers, if it can be either league. From 1918 to 1964, that is 47 years, the Yankees finished with a better record than the Phillies each season. That's a very, very long time.

It's a very, very long time. Whenever I look back at the golden age of baseball, supposedly, quote unquote, or earlier, when you just had the Yankees utterly dominating the game competitive balance and this is unfair and we have to stop this runaway team. I mean, the degree of dominance, like the Yankees, obviously, they still have institutional advantages that have helped them have this extraordinarily long streak of winning seasons that is potentially about to be snapped. But, you know, there have been years where they haven't made the playoffs and they haven't won a World Series since 2009. It's not the same degree of dominance. You can't be that dominant in baseball now. And people look back at those sepia-toned seasons and know it's the golden age and baseball was never better and more popular. And I mean, that's true in some ways in that it was a more popular sport

relative to other sports and pastimes, although not in terms of attendance and drawing people to go to games. But people, I guess, tend to fixate on like the New York teams doing extraordinarily well at the same time and Willie Mickey and the Duke and all of that but things were really bad for some teams that were just awful for decades and completely

non-competitive whether it was like you know tanking philadelphia a's teams or like the st louis browns or the washington senators or whatever like teams were just terrible for decades on end. Yeah, bad, bad, bad, yeah. So those things, like, we lament non-competitiveness now and tanking now, but, gosh, the imbalance between the haves and the have-nots and the wins and the win-nots, it was worse during the so-called golden age. Yes, for sure, 100%.

All right, well, thank you to evan for sending that he even sent along some some data and some spreadsheets so we will link to that he also says he just realized that neither the rockies nor the marlins has ever finished with a better record than the yankees that is that's in jeopardy this year so yeah wow Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Geez. Oh, Yankees. Oh, Yankees. They've been quite bad. They've been really very bad. Yeah.

And it's felt bad watching it, you know? You know, sometimes you watch a team and you're like, oh, how are they not better? And then you watch the Yankees this year and you're like, yeah, makes sense. Tracks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Susan Waldman was caught on a hot mic the year and you're like, yeah, it makes sense. Tracks. Yeah. Yeah. Susan Waldman was caught on a hot mic the other day just saying like, this is boring.

Yeah. Watching a game, which I'm not sure she would not have said knowingly. Like, you know, she can be critical of the team and how it's played. She's a straight shooter. Yeah. Right. So, you know, it wasn't like, ooh, this is embarrassing, although maybe it was embarrassing. You know, even teams that don't suspend their broadcasters always for saying not even very negative things about the team perhaps don't look kindly on that.

But it is true. And, yeah, the Yankees were spared the indignity of 10 straight losses for the first time since like over a century, I think. But they had their first nine game losing streak since 1982. Yes. Yeah, which doesn't sound like that long a losing streak to me. Nine games and that's more than 40 years ago. But those have been good years for the Yankees mostly. Even in the 80s when they didn't win a World Series, they had the most regular season wins

of any franchise. So, yeah, it's good to be the Yankees, except for this year. It's also good to be the Mariners, and that takes us to our next step last year. I'm so afraid. So, just was kind of curious, and so was one of our listeners, Andrew M., one of our Patreon supporters, who posted in the Discord group in the Stat Blast channel just to wonder about how extraordinary it is that the Mariners have made up as much ground as they have in such a short span of time. So July 19th at the end of games, they were 10 games out in the AL West. And then after games on August 25th, they were tied for first. And that is a span of, I think, 37 days and 33 games.

And they made up 10 whole games in the AL West standings. So Andrew wanted to know, has a gap of 10 games in a race ever been closed quicker? And Ryan Nelson, frequent StatBlast consultant, find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. He looked this up. I think he looked it up for division races specifically, although there have been notable other instances of teams making up ground quickly, like the 2011 Cardinals, who finished 23-9 over their last 32 games. And they came all the way back from a 10.5 game deficit to win a wild card on the last day of the season, that wild legendary last day of the 2011 regular season. And they edged out Atlanta. last day of the 2011 regular season, and they edged out Atlanta. So a 10 and a half game deficit they made up, which I think was the largest comeback after 130 games in a season. So that

was special. But like 10 games in a division race at any point in the season is also pretty special. The 1951 Giants, the famous comeback kids who will be mentioned in the future blast soon. They didn't close that quickly. One of our other listeners was noting in the Stat Blast channel that they made up like seven and a half games over the same time frame or the same number of days, just in August and September rather than July and August. That was Xander S. who noted that. But the record, according to Ryan, is the 1982 Dodgers. So the 82 Dodgers on July 29th, they were 10 and a half games back. And then on August 10th, they had sole possession of first. So July 29th to August 10th, they went from 10 and a half games back to sole possession of first.

That is pretty extraordinary. That has not been equaled and probably will not be, I want to say. You know, if we play an infinite number of seasons, then maybe. But that NL West had a pretty wild finish that year. But during that span, the Dodgers went 10-1, and their divisional opponent, the Braves, went 1-12. And so the Dodgers made up a 10.5-game deficit in 11 games, which is really ridiculous. Really ridiculous. Yeah. So that barely can be beaten, really. And part of it was that the Dodgers played the Braves twice. They played two four-game series. Then they lost one game at Cincinnati, took the final two in the series in Cincinnati.

Then they came home, swept the Braves in four games, and then took two more off the Reds at home. And next thing they knew, they were in first place. There were four walk-off wins in a span of five games during that stretch. Just totally wild. I mean, I hope that people were flinging their hats and declaring this the greatest comeback ever made because it was, in a way at least. The catch is that they did not end up winning that division. So they finished 88 and 74. They finished second in the NOS to the Braves.

So the Braves got the last laugh. They edged them out by one game. So yeah, not a happy ending for those 82 Dodgers. Yeah, so that has some bearing maybe on these Mariners, right? So the Mariners, I asked Ryan, like, okay, where would this rank in terms of making up 10 games in your division as quickly as the Mariners did it? And in terms of games, I think it took the Mariners 33 games, and that would be tied for the sixth fastest catch-up time. So you had the 82 Dodgers, took them 11 games. You had the 93 Red Sox took them 20 games. 2014 Dodgers took them 21 games. The 95 Seattle Mariners took them 25 games. 2005 A's took them

26 games. And 2018 A's took them 33 games. Lots of second half surges for the A's during that period as well. So the disconcerting note here for these Seattle Mariners is that of those six teams I just mentioned, only two actually ended up winning their division. Although one was that previous Mariners team in 95. Famously, famously. The 2014 Dodgers also won their division, but those other four did not. So they had those surges and, you know, a lot of things have got to go well for you to make up that much ground in that short a time. Everything's got to go well for you.

Things have got to go very badly for whoever you're making up ground on. Things have got to go very badly for whoever you're making up ground on. And that can be a bit fluky and lucky. And that doesn't always augur a division title. So will it for these Seattle Mariners? I don't know. I don't know, Meg. I feel so stressed.

I feel so nervous. One of the things that happened that assisted in this, this rise, this rise up the, you know, like the, the Mariners, they had a three game set against the Houston Astros. They swept them, they swept them in that set, you know? And so that happened. And then like, um, the Texas Rangers have just been having a real rough go of it lately. They're on a, an eight game losing streak, which has been arguably more important to the Mariners fortunes in terms of getting to the tie that they're in with them right now. My other team helped by winning two. The Diamondbacks, they won two and the The Diamondbacks, they won two, and the Rangers lost.

They lost a three-game set to the Brewers. They lost two against the Twins. It's just, can you count on that continuing? Ben, I don't know. I don't know what we can count on. What does this mean, Ben? I don't know. Yeah. I saw this is the first time that the Mariners have even been in a share of first place this late in the season since 20 years ago today, August 26, 2003.

It's a long time. And you asked me before we got on mic, you're like, is that true? And I think I said, yeah, I think that is true. is that true? And I think I said, yeah, I think that is true. And even if it weren't, even if it had proven to be not true, it feels true, Ben, you know, I won't say you accused me, you joked about me being a Fairweather fan earlier. And I think that the Mariners have been a team that it's been really easy to be honest about them, you know, as a fan. I think fans, they make little deals with themselves about how honest they want to be about their team. But when your team has been mostly pretty bad for most of your life,

it's easy to be honest about them, you know. You can even end up being fatalistic when you don't necessarily need to be. I'm sweating. It's just like, look, some of what has happened here has been just like a really well-timed heater by Julio. It's been other members of this offense. We don't have to rehash all the things I've said about Seattle lately, but, you know, like Cal Raleigh's hitting really well

since the All-Star break. And Ty Francis had his moments. And Eugenio hasn't been on fire, but he's had some good situational hitting that has been really helpful to these Mariners. And they traded their closer. And their bullpen's been good. They've enjoyed kind of ho-hum starting pitching candidly. But it's been fine. It's been good enough.

It's been strong when it's needed to be. Now you could look at them and say, uh, maybe it's concerning that Bryce Miller was struggling the way he, he did yesterday against literally the Kansas city Royals, although they've been hitting kind of okay lately. And as we've noted, Bobby White Jr. Prince was promised. Like he's just having a great little run here. So like, look, there's reasons to feel very nervous that don't have anything to do with the crushing history of this at times thoroughly bad ball club.

And often just like a boring and mediocre bad club. But like sometimes just like really objectively thoroughly bad. yoker bad clip but like sometimes just like really objectively thoroughly bad but um but right now right now ben yeah they are i think pretty good you know i think they're doing okay i think that this is not just smoke and mirrors this is not just good luck i mean like we we think at Fangraphs.com, a site that is committed to statistics, that they are at the moment a game beneath their Pythagorean expectation and three games worse than their base runs record suggests they should be. Yeah. And in fact, the Mariners have the highest odds of winning the division, according to Fangrass, just barely. It's a 37.5 chance to win the division. And for the Astros, it's 36.6. And for the Rangers, it's 25.9.

That's a real race. I think that we are maybe, until perhaps recently, we have been a little stingy when it comes to the Rangers. Like, I think we've been a little stingy. But maybe it's right now. You know, maybe it's right. And I have never been accused of putting my thumb on the scale, but mostly because I think the people who visit Fangraphs, like,

know how our playoff odds work, even if, you know, the people who run team social media accounts sometimes struggle. But if anyone out there is wondering, does Meg, you know, sprinkle a little something in the sauce? Is she putting, you know, coffee grounds in there? Is she putting, you know, is she throwing a salmon into the odds in a way that, you know, tilts them for the mirrors? into the odds in a way that you know tilts them for the mirrors i want those people to listen to how miserable i sound right now because ben you know i got a little taste last year of like

what postseason action was like again and it was painful even when it was going well like even during that blue jays series i was a puddle on the floor a lot of the time. Really miserable to be around. Yeah. I was struck by this last year, too. Like when we had Ben Gibbard on, who I'm hoping will be joining us again sometime soon. So I guess we should keep some of our Mariners powder dry here. But it seemed like he was absolutely miserable that the Mariners, it's like he barely wanted to talk

about it because to talk about it might conjure some sort of disastrous collapse, right? I was like, are you sure you want this team to make the playoffs? Are you happier now than you were when they were just completely out of it? Every year? Yeah, it is very unclear. Dramatically not clear.

So anyway, they've got a good shot. I mean, the thing is that this is not their only way to make the playoffs. We have a bigger playoff format now. There are wild cards, right? Wild cards. You know, they're like 80% chance to make the playoffs. Just to make the postseason. It's got to make you feel a little bit better.

Yeah. I just know, I know a couple of things. I know that my capacity for anxiety, like as a person is very high, just like bottomless well to fill up. And, and candidly, it would be nice to have my anxiety and consternation focused on a baseball team instead of like you know climate which is what's been filling up that tank lately unlike the you know water reserves in the state of arizona just like you know here i am being myself on mic but um but i think it would be it would be so nice for so many people i know just in my life who have really stuck it out with this uh stupid team at times

for decades to have you know like a to know that they're gonna get get more they're gonna get more time with this team that they might get more post-season time in their ballpark, Ben. Because here's the thing, and look, I'm going to contemplate something and then I want all the Mariners fans listening who are furious that we're talking about them this much and potentially engaged in jinxes which aren't real but feel so real. They feel so real, Ben. Here's the thing about where things stand right now

you're right that it's not as if it isn't as if the only way for them to make the postseason is to win the division but here's here's some true facts right now the Baltimore Orioles are 80 and 48 right and the Tampa Bay Rays we should should note, are 78 and 52, right? So it seems likely, it's not locked in, but it seems very likely that whichever team emerges from the East is going to be the one seed in the American League, as well they should, right? They've been playing some really tough baseball

in the East all season, good teams. Baltimore's pitching is bad, but that's neither here nor there. Felix Bautista might be hurt. That isn't relevant right now, which would bum me out so much because he's been such a joy. But to the East, probably the one seed. The Minnesota Twins are leading the Central at 67 and 62, right?

They are the only team in that division above 500. They are very likely to be the three. They are going to be the three, which means that they will not get a bye. So, Ben, what if this Mariners team wins the West? And then they get a first round bye. They get to sleep. They get to rest. They have all these young guys. They got all these young pitchers, some of whom only just now tasting big league action this season. They are coming up against prior, you know, innings limits. They are likely experiencing fatigue. I watched Bryce Miller last night and I was like, you know, his velo is still good, but this strikes me as a young man who is maybe a little bit tired. What if they get to rest? What if they get to rest? You know, and what if you have a fully operational, fire breathing Julio, you know, and a big dumper, you know, and then you have a rested, quite good rotation and bullpen.

Like, I just, look, I'm not saying it's going to happen. It probably won't. I am setting myself up to feel so sad. But then, you know? It's an exciting prospect. It's an exciting prospect. Ben, you know? It's an exciting prospect.

It's an exciting prospect. I'm just here to say that it's possibly quite exciting. And I am sweating just contemplating it. And the air conditioning is on. So it is not because it is hot here. Although it is, once again, pretty hot here, Ben. But I'm just saying, Mariners, you know, what if you helped me keep more pressing in terms of their both urgency and also potential impact anxieties at bay until like the end of October? That would be just be I'm just saying it would be.

Ben, they do seem like a dangerous postseason team. And when people say that, I think they usually mean they have a great top of the rotation and maybe a good back of the bullpen, right? Because you can use those guys more often. And when I say that, I don't mean that it improves my outlook for the team in the postseason that much because postseason is just so fluky and random and all we can really do to predict who will have successes, like who are the better teams. And so if you are maybe a better postseason roster than you are a regular season roster, then yeah, that probably improves your expectations, but slightly. It's sort of swamped by just the randomness of it all. So yes, I guess I would say that I would want to face them in the postseason less than I would want to face them sort of over the 162 game schedule, right? I mean, there are other teams that are just better regardless of whether they're optimized for

the postseason the way that the Mariners are or not they're just better anyway they just have better players right so that that overcomes that that advantage but but it could be a slight advantage i'm gonna bring myself back down to earth here like this is a team that is voluntarily starting mike ford as its dh against straight-handed pitching right this is and he has hit right as well this year but like ben like, Ben, it's Mike Ford. You know, like, this is a team that is in the Brian O'Keefe business. And, again, not for long, hopefully, because hopefully Tom Murphy comes back in a selfie, but, like, Brian O'Keefe, right?

This is a team that is, like, you know, volunteer. Like, I like Dominic Canzone fine, and I know that, like I, I let, I like Dominic Canzone fine. And I know that like at some point, hopefully Jared Kellman comes back and is healthy and maybe productive, but like there's vulnerability here. There really is. Yep. It's fun for Mariners fans and also agonizing seemingly.

Yeah. Yeah. Is it fun? Like fun is such a subjective concept, you know, fun is a, it's fun to win retroactively. It's fun after the fact, when you have one, you know, fun is a... It's fun to win retroactively.

It's fun after the fact when you have won. That is fun. But it's a fun race for neutrals also in that But the point is there's no other division where the third team is seen as anything better than an extreme long shot, whereas in the AL West, all very legitimate contenders still so we'll see we'll see what happens we'll return to the topic of the mariners soon i'm sure it's just it felt i will say i'm gonna say one more thing then we can be done because people are like at least she should at least it's not look it's not babs butthole right we've we're we're on the upswing here, but so is Babs. But, you know, it felt like it might be real. It might be somewhat legitimate when they swept the Astros. Like when that happened, I experienced a shift in my feeling about them.

And I was immediately overwhelmed by anxiety afterward because it was like, oh, God, this might be real now. I'm going to have to watch this stupid team for maybe another month, you know. But you're looking at the AL and Texas looks vulnerable. And I'm going to talk myself into such disappointment. Oh, God. But anyway, here here we are. We can move on. OK.

All right. I mentioned a moment ago that the Yankees hadn't lost 10 games in a row in more than a century. And I just want to provide the specifics here because the last time that that happened was 1913, which was the first year that they went by the Yankees, at least officially. They were the Highlanders until that year. So that's how long it's been. 1913, and they were saved from the indignity of a 10-game losing streak by Aaron Judge, the one-man team hitting three homers. But just to put that into perspective, I think, again, the cardinals are sort of a distant second fiddle

to the yankees when it comes to franchise success and i think they have not lost 10 games in a row since 1980 which is the second longest that any team any franchise has gone and 1980 was a very long time after 1913 right and i think only four teams have not had a 10-game losing streak this century. I mean, it's what I was saying, like nine or 10-game losing streaks, they're not fun, but they're not that extraordinary. You know, like they happened, right? But for the Yankees,

the 10-game losing streak has not happened in 110 years, which is, that's ridiculous like i i don't that might actually be more impressive to me than all the stats about their winning seasons or their lack of losing seasons or the consecutive winning seasons that they've had dating back to 94 right like because you can have a good team that'll have a fluky losing streak, but they have not even had a fluky losing streak that got to double digits since 1913. Like, how did that just speaks to the fact that they've had so few prolonged periods of losing and of being a bad team? I mean, that's the standard that they've set. They just really have not lost a lot. Also, according to the New York Post, August 5th, 1967 is the only previous time after August 1st that the Mets and Yankees have both been alone in last place. They may both finish in last place this season. Really a banner year for people who are sick of New York exceptionalism. All right. Let's keep blasting along here. Here's a question from

Reggie, Patreon supporter and former Patreon guest. A couple nights ago, the Marlins hit back-to-back-to-back homers, which we have dubbed back-to-back-to-belly against Houston. An AP story noted it was just the second time Miami had hit back-to-back-to-back or belly homers, the first being a famous comeback against the Cardinals in August of 1998. I asked Stathead if there was a way to search this out on their site, and there's no easy way to run this down. What I wanted to know was the last time this had been done for each team, and if there are any teams who have yet to turn this trick. I know the record is four straight homers, and I know that the Red Sox and Dodgers did this in the 2000s and the Twins did it, I believe, in 63 or 64. Knowing what other teams' histories are with this would be fun. I have no memory of either Texas-based franchise doing this since I began following baseball in 1986. So yeah, as for the four straight homers, that I think has only happened 11 times in

major league history, according to an MLB.com piece from last July. It first happened in 1961, June 8th, when the Milwaukee Braves did it. And then, as Reggie mentioned, the Twins did it in 64. Cleveland did it in 63. Wildly, it didn't happen between the Twins doing it May 2nd, 1964, and the Dodgers doing it on September 18th, 2006. Wow. So no team hit four homers consecutively between May of 64 and September of 2006, even though it's happened several times since then. So that surprises me slightly. But

the question was more about back to back to back three consecutive homers. And Ryan looked this up and he found all teams have done it at some point. Of course, the Marlins had gone the second longest time without doing it. So unless they have done it this season, he writes, and I don't think they have, the Padres have not done it since 1997. So it was the Marlins not having done it since 98, the Padres not since April 1st, 1997. And then the longest drought for any other team is the Red Sox. It looks like July 7th, 2011. So it's been a very long drought for the Marlins until they did it this year.

And for the Padres especially, it just seems like Marlins and Padres, they're always the teams that it's like they went the longest without doing the thing or they haven't had a person do the thing. Right. Like no hitters, cycles, right? Like the Marlins hadn't had a cycle until Luis Arias did it this year, right? It was the first ever cycle in Marlins history. And the Padres, of course, hadn't had a no hitter for so long and they hadn't had cycles. It's like those teams, I mean, it's, you know, it's not even like the fact that they were expansion teams at various points because every team has done this thing since they've both been around. So that's not the excuse here.

But it's like they haven't had a lot of really extraordinary players. I've written and talked about the Padres' lack of superstars before. They had Winfield and Gwynn, and Winfield left. Until these recent Padres teams that have been star-studded, they typically haven't had a whole lot of stars. And the Marlins have had some isolated teams with stars, but mostly not so much. So I don't know if it's that or just flukiness or what. But yeah, it always seems like those are the teams not having those really notable, historic individual performances.

Weird. Yeah. All right. Weird. Another quick one. This is from Ryan who writes in to say, I noticed that in 1987, Paul Molitor finished fifth in AL MVP voting,

but was not an all-star. Has anybody ever won MVP without also being named an All-Star? If not, what's the closest anyone has come? And Ryan did a little research on this and also found an answer from Stack Exchange that is still helpful here. So, yeah, this has happened since the 94 strike year, including that year. The following players have done this. 1996, Juan Gonzalez, which is amusing because that's one of those notorious MVPs. Like, how did he win MVP?

Well, power numbers, lots of ribbies, right? And this was before war, and that was what you were voting on. But funny that he was not an all-star that season. I don't think I had to recall that that was the case. 1999, Chipper Jones. 2006, Justin Morneau. 2007, Jimmy Rollins. And then very recently, Bryce Harper in 2021. He was not an all-star in his MVP year. He really turned it on after the all-star break. Not that he was bad before it. But yeah, it can happen.

You have to either be hot after the all-star game or you have to be blocked at a position by an all-star or something. Or maybe you're just unavailable to play in the all-star game. I mean, I guess if you were named or selected to the team, that would still count. So that wouldn't be why you wouldn't get this. But yeah, it can happen. It's weird and fluky when it does, but it does. All right. Question from Andrew.

Andrew says, Reese McGuire just bunted for a hit on a 3-0 count with no outs and the bases empty. Though Alex Bregman was playing far off the line and it was a perfect bunt, rolling down the line and bouncing off the third base bag and into foul territory, and though McGuire is not a very good hitter, I still assumed that this was a bad idea. The odds of a walk were surely higher than those of a successful bunt, but it did make me wonder, with the bases empty, to avoid ambiguous possible sacrifice attempts, what is the most frequent count on

which to attempt a bunt hit, and where on the list does 3-0 rank? Is it, as I'd guess, last among the non-two-strike counts? So the short answer is yes, 3-0 is the least common count to bunt on aside from the two strike counts, but I do have additional detail. So I just looked from 2022 to 2023. So this universal DH era we're in here, looked at this on Baseball Savant, which lets you look up attempted bunts and foul bunts and missed bunts and also successful bunts. And by successful, I just mean you got it down in fair territory. In terms of like how uncommon it is, 3-2 full count is the least common. There's only been one bunt attempt unsuccessful and one successful bunt on 3-2 over these past two seasons, according to Savant. So that's like 18,313 pitches per bunt attempt.

So that's quite uncommon. The only two examples that I found, Trent Grisham struck out on a foul bunt attempt. This was all, by the way, with bases empty. So I didn't filter specifically for like bunt for a hit versus sack bunt. You're not going to be sack bunting with the bases empty. So these are all bunts for hits, surprise bunts, right? So Trent Grisham, just this month, actually, August 23rd, he struck out on a foul bunt. He bunted it like way up high, straight back behind the plate.

It was strike three, obviously. And then Josh Rojas successfully singled on a bunt ground ball on a full count on September 3rd, 2022. So the full count bunt, that is the weirdest. But after that, it goes 2-2 count. So there it's 5,189 pitches per bunt attempt. And then it's the 1-2 count, 4,870 pitches per bunt attempt. And then the 0-2 count, 3,566 pitches per bunt attempt. So of course it's going to be the two strike counts, because if you're not sacrificing, you know that if you're not going to get the bunt down, if it's fouled, then with two strikes, it's going to be a strikeout. So you have to either think you suck at hitting, or you have to be unable to hit for some reason or you

just have high confidence that you can get that bunt down. No one will be expecting it at least because it is very unlikely but other than the two strike counts yes 3-0 is the least common situation for this to happen so only one attempt that was unsuccessful that I found and one actual bunt, which is this Reese McGuire one. So it's one bunt attempt per 3,403 pitches on 3-0. So that is the least likely to happen except for two strike counts. And the only other time that it had been attempted here was actually just recently. These were within days of each other.

Brandon Belt of the Blue Jays on August 2nd attempted to bunt on 3-0. He fouled it to the side, but he tried. But this Reese McGuire bunt, I'll send you a link so you can look and I'll include it on the show page. It's pretty. I like bunts. I like bunts for hits. Bunts for hits are really nice. People too often conflate sack bunts and bunts for hits. Sabermetric people are not necessarily down on bunts for hits. If you pick your spot and there's an opening, like this time Reese McGuire tried it. There was a big hole over there. Yeah.

You can't have a full shift these days, but there was definitely some degree of shift. The third baseman was in almost shortstop position and the shortstop was basically playing behind the bag. And it was a pretty bunt. Went right down the line. Actually, it might have been better like if it had squibbed past the bag. I guess it wasn't going fast enough for him to get two bases on it. But it was perfectly aimed, hit the bag, and no one was expecting it on 3-0, obviously. So, yeah, it was smart because it worked, obviously.

If he hadn't been able to get it down then it probably wouldn't have been so smart because you know maybe he would have walked and he's not the greatest hitter so that that changes the calculus but it's very pretty very very few plays i think are as satisfying as picturesque as a well-placed bunt for a hit when no one's expecting it, right? Yeah, I mean, I think that it is satisfying because it often involves some amount of speed and we like that, or it involves the feeling of the defense got too cute and we like that too, you know? Right, yeah.

And then in ascending order of bunt attempt frequency, after 3-0, it goes 2-0, 1-0, 3-1, 2-1, 1-1, 0-1, and 0-0. Makes sense. If you're going to bunt, might as well try to bunt early in the count before you get to two strikes or closer to two strikes. So with 3-0, you had an attempt every 3,403 pitches. On 0-0, you have an attempt every 200 pitches. And I'll put that breakdown online. Lastly, to tie a bow on this, one thing I was reminded of as I was doing this analysis, it's hard to bunt, at least to bunt successfully. So in total, these past couple seasons, bases empty situations, there have been 633 bunts that actually got down in fair territory,

and there have been 929 attempts to bunt that didn't actually lead to bunts that were fouls or foul tips or misses. So more often than not, the pitch is coming in and you say, okay, I'm going to try to bunt here. You're not even going to get the bunt down. Gotcha. And then of the 633 that actually got down in fair territory,

301 of them were outs, almost half. And then 332 were hits or errors, non-outs. So even if you get it in play, you have like a 52.4% success rate. And if you take into account all the ones that weren't even put into play, then the success rate on a bunt attempt is more like 27%. And that's in situations where the batters thought, I can get a bunt down here. So they had some bunting experience and maybe they thought they saw an opening in the infield. This is a skewed sample and still it's barely more than one out of four attempts actually leading to you getting the bunt down and not having it result in an out. And now without overshifting, it's probably even tougher. So yeah, if you're not someone who has bunting skill or experience and you're trying to bunt

adeptly enough that you could get a hit out of it as opposed to just bunting it right at someone, good luck with that. That's part of the reason why, sadly, we did not see bunts defeat the shift. Instead, Rob Manfred did. Quickly, because you and other Ben, I think, may have brought this up when I was away. You were musing, idly speculating, wondering about Box, right? Because there was some buzz about Box being enforced more strictly this year. What with the new step-off rules and everything.

I might have been with Craig, not other Ben. Yeah, it was one of those episodes. But you threw out there our box up. Have there actually been more box after the word that there would be more box vigilance? And yeah, there have been more box. I could just answer your question in the affirmative. Wow. More box. So there have been 176 box so far this season, and there were 122 all of last season.

So we are actually, this is already the most box in a season since 2010. And as mentioned earlier, we're only like 80% of the way through the season. It's the highest Bach rate since 1997. So yeah, it's been like 25 years since Bachs have been as common as this. They were way more common during a time like in the late 80s, early 90s, when they decided we're actually going to try to call Bachs on all the things that technically seem like Bachs. And then they were like, oh boy, this has got out of control fast. we're actually going to try to call box on all the things that technically seem like box. And

then they were like, oh boy, this has got out of control fast. And ever since then, we've all been just agreeing to disagree on what a box is and largely ignoring some of the rules about box and mass confusion. Like this year, there's been a box every 3,232 pitches. Last year, there was a Bach every 5,808 pitches. So that's more than a 40% increase in the Bach rate. But to put that into perspective, 1988, the year of the Bach, there was a Bach every 610 pitches, which is more than five times this year's rate and almost 10 times last year's rate. So this is a lot compared to last year, nothing compared to when we were toddlers. But yeah, lots more box this year, but it's not something that I've noticed all that often.

Clearly, you were wondering whether there even were more box. So as a total, there haven't really been that many more box. It's still a real rarity. So if you do the league- wide numbers, they're up, but not so much that you would probably notice like, wow, my team has been bucking a whole lot.

Bucking a whole lot. Maybe it's because we all struggle to say the word buck. We do. You end up like kind of swallowing part of it. Yes. Yeah. Bulk. Bulk.

Bulk. Yeah. It's like Arnold Palmer. And you're like, I sound like I've had a couple every time I say that. Arnold Palmer. Yeah. In addition to all their other woes, the New York Yankees are leading the majors with 12 box this season. Really? Yeah. All right. And then this is what I got curious about. So Gunnar Henderson, the other day, he had the opportunity to cycle and he opted not to. I'm sure you saw this, right? He went beyond first base when all he needed was a single and the cycle. And he said, no, I will not cycle today. I am capable of getting to second base and I'm going to prioritize taking the extra base. I will pass up the cycle. And people were surprised that he had done this. His teammates were incredulous. Like

they were up there like, Gunnar, what are you doing? You could have cycled, right? And I'm reading this SB Nation post that says Baltimore Orioles DH Gunnar Henderson will have to make baseball history another day. Gunnar Henderson of the Baltimore Orioles passes up joining an elite club. And I would argue he made history that was even more special by deciding to do what he did. And he joined an even more elite club by passing up the cycle. Wait, wait. Is like cycling just on its own an elite club? Yeah. I mean, that's debatable too, right?

I don't know whether it's exclusive enough that you could call it elite but yeah but i would argue that the club he has joined by voluntarily deciding to issue the cycle that is actually an exclusive club now part of this i i think i don't know whether in his case it's like you could say it's like eyewash it's like you know i'm i'm mr hustle right? Like I'm so gritty. Like I put the team ahead of my own personal accomplishments. Like, you know, Orioles manager Brandon Hyde is talking about the grit and grind of our guys. And then Henderson, you know, he said that he knew about this. He said it kind of went through my head before the at-bat, but I just play the game hard.

A double, the opportunity was there. That was just the way I play. Wasn't meant to be. And this is a game that the Orioles ended up winning 12 to 1, you know? So it wasn't like he really needed to take that extra base, you know? Or that anyone really would have faulted him or given him a hard time for staying on first, but he just decided he was going to go for it. And I wanted to look up,

well, how many times has this happened? How many times has a player passed up the cycle when they had the opportunity for it? So I asked Ryan Nelson to look up all the cases on record where someone had all of the hit types except one, and they came up again, and then they took an extra base instead of staying on the base that would have given them the cycle. So, you know, they stretched a single into a double, they stretched a double into a triple. We excluded home runs because, you know, they stretched a single into a double. They stretched a double into a triple. We excluded home runs because, I mean, I guess technically you don't have to round the bases if you hit a ball over the fence. But that would be weird. So this particular case that Henderson did, and that has happened 17 previous times, as far as we can tell.

Now that's an exclusive club, right? He's the 18th member of the, I don't know what to call it, but the passed up the cycle club. I decided not to, right? I just took- The Bartleby, the Scrivener. Yeah, I prefer not. Right. Yeah. I mean, even just the game he had was a more exclusive club because now instead of having a homer and a triple and a double and a single, he had a homer and a triple and two doubles. That's that's harder to do. That's more impressive. That's another extra base hit. Right. So there have been far fewer players who have had this Gunner game. I think he is the 44th player to have at least one homer, at least one triple, and at least two doubles in a game. Whereas that's going back to 1901 in Stat Head, whereas he was like the 299th to do it since 1901 to have the cycle. So again, I think it's much more special what he did. So the club that passed up the cycle, the Bartleby the Cycle Club, I don't know,

this is 17 strong before Gunnar Henderson. And by the way, a lot of big name players here, which makes sense because we're talking about players who were capable of having at least four extra base hits in a single game. Rogers Hornsby did it in 1916. Wally Berger did it in 1930 and 1935. So he's the king of passing up the cycle. Joe Medwick did it in 36. Grady Hatton did it in 1947. Al Kaline in 56. Willie Mays in 1958. Eddie Matthews in 1962. Willie Stargell, 1973. Johnny Grubb in 1982. Bob Horner, 1985. Kevin Bass, 1987. Daryl Strawberry, also 1987. Demetri Young, 2003. The Meat Hook. I feel like Dimitri Young has the highest percentage of mentions where you also mention his nickname. Has anyone ever said

Dimitri Young without also specifying that he was nicknamed The Meat Hook? I don't think so, or Dummy Hook. I felt a powerful pull to say his nickname when I said his name. I felt a powerful pull to say his nickname when I said his name. Connor Jackson, 2008. Dustin Pedroia, 2008. And most recently, I believe, until Gunnar Henderson did it, Sam Fold, current Phillies executive. He did it on April 11th, 2011. And I found a story from April 2011. Tyler Kepner at the Times, the legend of Sam Fold. And it leads with when he

was a single short of the cycle by doubling in his last at bat. Although, can you really call that a single short of the cycle? It's like a double too far for the cycle. But there's a Fold quote. He said, I've had people say, say you know that's why you're a great player you hold up the integrity of the game and i just kind of laughed because for me it was a no-brainer and i think for anybody else it was a no-brainer that was an obvious double and you just play the game the right way yeah it would be more of a neat accomplishment to hit for the cycle but ultimately it doesn't really tell a whole lot i don't even think it is more of a neat accomplishment. I am here to tell you that this is a neater accomplishment to pass up the cycle and take the

extra base as long as you're not doing it to make it look like you're Mr. Gritty Grindhardt and you're playing the game the right way. But there's something to that. I mean, frankly, I would want to take the extra base just because I'd probably be pretty obsessed with my stats if I were a player. Like I'm obsessed with stats of other people. So if I were a player, I don't know, I might have to like not look at my stats because I would be so obsessed with them. But I would probably be unable to resist that temptation to the point that it would probably impair my performance. that temptation to the point that it would probably impair my performance. But like in the long run, I mean, maybe it'll help your fame and recognition a little more to get the cycle, but like getting that extra base, adding a total base, getting your slugging percentage up, that's

probably going to help you more. I mean, I guess most teams are looking at like expected stats and how hard you're hitting it and everything and whether you take second or not, it's going to be the same. But it'll help your base running stats. I mean, stats that will actually affect how you get paid. You know, you're going to make more money for getting the double, I think, than you are for getting the cycle probably unless, I don't know, like you sign a bunch of autographed pictures of when you got the cycle or something like that, right? Maybe in the long run at card shows, I don't know. But yeah, in terms of just like juicing your stats, I think it probably helps more to take the extra base. Yeah. I think I'm also just betraying like how little I care

about cycling as a thing. Cause I'm like, yeah, of course you take the extra. And you know that there would be someone, if he like intentionally put the brakes on to get the cycle, who'd be like, I can't believe he's not liking out the double. What are you going to get the double? You know, like it feels like the sort of situation where if what you're using to, to help you make your decision is the reaction of others it's just gonna be wildly

divergent depending on what matters to the baseball fan in question so yeah just like to hear extra base i just wouldn't i when you said like there are things about entering an elite club i was like oh has he done this a bunch of times before in his young career and now he can take you know the lead in some important way the mere entry to the cycle club it doesn't it just doesn't strike me as elite and maybe i'm miscalibrating the the frequency of it happening but i i just wouldn't especially if you're if you're someone like him where you're both very good and really early in your big league career i just wouldn't i if i were him i just assume i'm gonna cycle at some point in my career i would just assume i was gonna do that maybe i

wouldn't yeah yeah and again maybe i'm really out of maybe i'm out of touch you know with the the cycle community that could be true but um i just would be like yeah take the extra base so it seems like obvious just take it just do that yeah that would be like, yeah, take the extra base. So it seems like obvious. Just take it. Just do that. Yeah. That would be the thing you should do. Am I principal Skinner in this case? Am I out of touch or is it the young people?

You play the game the right way. Yeah. I don't know. Of the 17 previous cases, seven times we're stretching a double into a triple, 10 times we're stretching a single into a double. triple 10 times we're stretching a single into a double and i guess it kind of depends how obvious it is like whether you're deciding to to pull up on an obvious double or like you're really going for it on what would be a 50 50 play there have been plenty of times like you know famously like jeff fry for instance in 2001 just like clearly hit a double and then just stopped at first to get the cycle.

Ironically, he's turned into like a play the game the right way guy on Twitter. But, you know, that kind of thing is common. But if you could kind of camouflage it, I don't know if it were a case where you could just like walk to second and you decided not to. That's maybe a little bit different from like, oh, it could go either way right right and i'm deciding to hustle or not but yeah i don't know i applaud gunner here not for playing the game the right way necessarily but the way that i would play it i think just purely selfishly right and and again like he didn't need to do it for the Orioles because it wasn't a close game. I looked at the margins here and it wasn't the widest margin in any of these cases,

like the Al Kaline case in 1956. It looks like his team was up by 12 at the time. And then when Daryl Strawberry did it, his team was up by 11. And when Sam Fold did it, his team was up by 10, I think, unless these are the final scores. I'm not sure if these are the final scores or when they actually did it, but those were lopsided games.

One of the Wally Berger games was a 10 run game as well. My last point on this, I said Rogers Hornsby did it in 1916. I don't know if you can give him credit for it. Not the greatest guy. Definitely was not doing things the right way around the game,

but he might not have known that the cycle was a thing at that time because I don't think it was. The first citation, the earliest citation for cycle in Dixon's Baseball Dictionary comes from September of 1933. So that's the earliest that they could find a reference to the cycle the way that we know it today. So when Wally Berger was doing it in 1930 or Hornsby was doing it in 1916, I'm not sure that they were conscious that they were passing up something that had a designation that anyone would have cared about.

It would be funny if it went the opposite way, though, and like they were like sort of ill-advisedly stretching a double into a triple and then they get back to the dugout and our teammates are like, what are you doing? And it's like, no, no, no, this is going to be really big yes someday someone will care about this yeah go with me on this one yeah the first mention i washington post september 27th 1933 it says fox one of six jimmy fox cycled in in august of 33 i think and this was late september of 33 washington post comes out and says, Jimmy Fox, athletic slugger, is one of only six players in all major league history to hit the cycle. That is, get a single, double, triple, and homer in four times at bat in one game. That's the first reference, the first known reference to the cycle.

And that seems completely wrong. Yeah. That can't possibly be right. And that seems completely wrong. Yeah. That can't possibly be right. One of only, there were eight cycles that season alone. So I don't know what it means, but he's one of six in all of history to hit for the cycle. I thought maybe it meant the natural cycle, doing it in order.

But he didn't do it in order when he did it. He didn't get single, double, triple homer. And it does say in four times at bat in one game yeah i was just about to say is it because of that but he had five at bats in that game oh he did do the cycle in his first four so i don't know if it was like specifying that you had to do it within a span of four or in your first four or something but i'm i'm guessing it was just wildly wrong because like 1933 how are you going to look that up yeah i feel bad for them because it's like

this was more than a month after he did it i think so i'm imagining someone like combing through whatever musty records existed at the time like i i mean the the hall of fame didn't even exist then i i don't know how you would have possibly answered that question in 1933. But I'm imagining someone like pouring through all old records for like a month and a half. And they're like, it's the sixth time it's ever happened. And it happened eight times that season. And they just didn't know because you couldn't look it up easily. I don't know.

Anyway. All right. The last one. So this one has kind of confounded me, and I'm open to your theories and listeners' theories for this one. So this came to us from Andrew. Help me out if I'm missing something incredibly obvious or if this has been written about. Wild pitches have been roughly on a steady increase for decades, but in 2022, they fell off steeply. On its own, maybe just a weird blip in the data or maybe more wild pitches were being

scored past balls. I then looked at past balls and those declined too. All the discourse has been about things that will increase wild pitches, increased secondary stuff usage, banning of sticky stuff leading to loss of control, one knee catcher setups. Instead, the issue has improved greatly and suddenly. What happened in 2022 for as inconsistent an effect as the sticky stuff ban has had? Did it actually prove pitchers wrong and lead to a decrease in balls going past the catcher? So this is something that I've talked about before, the fact that wild pitches and pass balls were increasing. I often lump that together with hit

by pitches, which were also increasing. And I was thinking, well, you know, pitches are just being thrown harder these days. It's harder to get out of the way or get in the way if you're a catcher. And then, yeah, the one knee catcher setups as catchers have gone to more of a framing oriented setup, although J.J. Cooper has been on this beat at Baseball America that this has been a big thing of his. He has pointed out that the one-knee catcher setup does not actually seem to increase wild pitches and pass balls. He's looked at catchers who catch that way and not.

He's written like three articles about this. Yeah, this is his making sure that people understand this dynamic properly is his anti-zombie runner, put it that way. Exactly. Yeah. So it's done the trick, at least for me. I'm a convert to his way of thinking. Yes.

But more breaking balls being thrown, right? And for all those reasons, it seems like, okay, yeah, wild pitches and pass balls. And also like greater emphasis on getting strikeouts. And so, you know, you try to get chases, you waste pitches. And also just more pitches being thrown in general, like more pitches per plate appearance. So if you're just looking at totals as opposed to rates, then those might increase too. But I had not noticed that this had reversed itself seemingly, not really with hit by pitches, which are maybe down a little bit, but not much from where they were a few years ago, but wild pitches and pass balls suddenly dropped off last year and have remained at that lower level this year. I'm not totally sure why.

So I looked at this on a per pitch basis and I combined wild pitches and pass balls. You could do either. They both declined pretty significantly, but I combined them because often the distinction between them, it's kind of tough to tell. Same idea, right? Wild pitches are much more common than pass balls. But if you combine them, 2021, it was 321 pitches per wild pitch or passed ball. Okay. Essentially the same in 2020, 323.

And then last year, it dropped off to 385.5 pitches per passed ball. So that's an increase or decrease, depending on how you look at it, of more than 60 pitches per passed ball. depending on how you look at it, of more than 60 pitches per pass ball. And then this year, an even rarer occurrence, 397.8 pitches per wild pitch or pass ball. So we're talking more than a 20% drop off in something that tends not to be that volatile. And just to put that in perspective a little bit, this is the lowest it's been in quite a while so 2021 had the fewest pitches per wild pitch slash pass ball since 1996 let's say and then 2023 has the most pitches per wild pitch slash pass ball in the pitch count era going back to 1988 except for 2005 there were a lot in 2005 for some

reason. But other than that, it's like the lowest, it's the rarest. So I don't get it. We've gone from like historically common to at least in the past few decades, quite rare, relatively speaking. What's going on here? I don't know, Ben. I don't know either. I don't know. Like my instinct was to attribute it to changes in catching, but then I read JJ's stats and I was like, clearly I've been proven wrong. My instinct is incorrect here. Maybe all the catchers are just really good. Suddenly, yeah. I mean, I was talking to Zach Graham about this and he mentioned maybe

it's the Adley-Rutchman effect. Like Adley arrives, suddenly that skews the whole league-wide stats. It's probably not that. No, probably not that. Andrew said it could be the sticky stuff and it could be, right? But 2021 was when the sticky stuff enforcement went into effect. And that year, the rate of wild pitches and pass balls was still very high. Not higher than the previous year, really, but not lower either. Now here's maybe the best evidence that it's sticky stuff related. I broke this down by month in 2021. And as you'll recall, the sticky stuff enforcement started in earnest on June 21st, but pitchers knew it was coming, so the spin rates had already tailed off before that. And the first couple months of that season did have more wild pitches and pass balls than each of

the subsequent months after the sticky stuff enforcement started. And I thought, well, maybe that's typical. Maybe there are just usually more pass balls and wild pitches in the first couple months of the season. It's cold and catchers and pitchers are getting to know each other and maybe pitchers don't have their best control yet. So I looked at 2017, 2018, and 2019 and I compared the wild pitch and pass ball rates in those seasons before June 1st and after June 1st, and there was actually very little difference. Whereas in 2021, there was a pretty sizable difference. The thing is, though, that even after the sticky stuff enforcement started

and even after the wild pitch and pass ball rates fell, they still didn't fall close to as low as they are now. So it wasn't an overnight, no sticky stuff, fewer passed balls and wild pitches kind of cause and effect. It was more like wild pitches and passed balls were even more common early that year, maybe because pitchers were just weaning themselves off of the sticky stuff or going cold turkey. Could it be that, you know, maybe pitchers got used to sticky stuff or they started using rosin or whatever's legal. Maybe. Because you would think.

I mean, pitchers were all like, oh, you can't take the sticky stuff away from us because we'll just be drilling everyone. We'll have no control. It'll just be utter wildness and we'll be hitting people and throwing the ball away. And that really hasn't happened. Walks aren't up. Hit-by-pitches aren't up. That was overblown, I thought, and it has proved to be. But could it be like if you were using some super sticky stuff,

maybe sometimes you would have such sick movement that it would then go wild, like it would get stuck to your finger basically and you'd throw it wild, or it would move so wildly that it would get past the catcher. And now without the most egregious sticky stuff, now there are fewer of those that are just like unblockable or uncatchable. Or maybe if you can't use the spider attack, then you don't have the same confidence that you can control those pitches. And so you're more conservative with your pitch locations. Maybe. Maybe it would be.

Maybe. Counterintuitive if taking the sticky stuff away led to fewer wild pitches and pass balls. But I could see that happening because I felt like a lot of that was just pitchers. You just got to get used to it. Like Rosin should be fine. You can throw a baseball. It's okay. It was like a psychological thing for them that they were used to having the harder stuff.

But it could also be that a new baseball was introduced, right? Like a deader baseball. Now, there were complaints about the grip of the new ball. There was a Washington Post piece from last May about inconsistent grip and inability to get a grip, right? Although, I mean, if the seams were higher, it seems like that might lead to a better grip potentially. So maybe pitchers just weren't used to it. So if it's not the new baseball or adjusting to the sticky stuff, then I really don't know what it is because it's not like it just happened this year with the rules changes and everything that happened last year. So I'm somewhat flummoxed by this, but very intrigued.

Yeah. Ben? We've stumped the hosts. So yeah, if you have a better explanation than the ones we just threw out there, then let us know. All right. So we will wrap up with the future blast, which comes to us from 2051 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, while new baseball played on with its two hour, 15 minute time limit for each game in 2051, MLB did put some memories of old baseball on display as it celebrated the 100th anniversary of Bobby Thompson's home run off Ralph Branca so that fans could all enjoy the shot heard around the world and the famous Russ Hodges call that the Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant. And they're going crazy. That is not exactly how he said it.

The famous home run came at the 2-hour 28 mark of that game. So in new baseball, it couldn't have happened. Nonetheless, a reenactment of that dramatic moment at the July 2051 All-Star Game in San Francisco's Artificial Intel Stadium used lighting, smoke and mirrors, and an amazing holographic display to turn the ballpark into the polo grounds for a 20-minute ceremony complete with Dodgers batting practice pitcher and coach Rafael Romero wearing a replica Ralph Branco uniform to throw a first called strike and then another fastball to new giant slugger Dominic Roskam in his Bobby Thompson replica uniform. Roskam, acquired in the offseason from the Mariners, launched one about 10 rows deep into left

as the other actors ran the bases, stood to watch the ball sail out over the wall, or crowded around home plate to welcome Thompson home as a digitally remastered Russ Hodges call filled the stadium. It was quite a moment for baseball nostalgia, as some 85 million watched or felt or heard or sensed the reenactment. There were ironies everywhere from the packed house at AI Stadium—the crowd had been a relatively small one at the pole grounds for the original event—to the admission by MLB that Thompson's famous homer wouldn't have happened with new baseball's clock ending the game with the Dodgers in front at the 2-hour, 15-minute mark. Still, it was the highlight of the season for sure, reminding baseball fans worldwide of the sport's long history and its many exciting moments. It's a lot of pressure on Romero and Roskam there to hit a home run that resembled the Bobby Thompson home run on the first swing there. I mean, I wouldn't want to be in that situation.

I would never want to be in a situation where I'm expected to hit a home run, Ben. I would reject all of those situations. We answered a listener email once about like, could you just reenact a game? Just have everyone just go through the same motions that people did in some previous famous game. And I think we concluded it would be very difficult to pull that off. It would be really hard. Yeah, I think it would be quite difficult. All right. A few updates for you. Meg mentioned that Felix Bautista had gotten hurt after we recorded. It was announced that he was placed on the injured list with, quote, some degree,

unquote, of UCL injury. Not good news for the Orioles. We've reached the point where lat strains are season-ending. Well, that could certainly be season-ending too. To partially quote John Ralphio Saperstein, UCLs are the worst! You said it. Though it doesn't seem to be hampering Shohei Otani at the plate any.

My wife is at the Mets-Angels game as I'm recording this. He's already doubled, tripled to tie Bobby Witt in triples, and broken an LED board with a foul ball. Couple walks, couple stolen bases. I couldn't join her because I'm still in the COVID isolation window. Thanks, COVID. Costing me a chance to see a good Otani game for once. And after we recorded, the Mariners had themselves a good game too.

They beat up on the Royals 15-2. Even Mike Ford got in on the action. Couple hits, hit a home run. That's another day in first place for the Seattle Mariners. Jeff Passan noted on Twitter that Friday was the first full scheduled day this season when there was not a single pitch clock violation. So that's cool. That's progress. It's been decreasing since the start, as expected. And two follow-ups from last time. We talked about that Jay Kuda tweet about how the official mlb rules define the strike

zone by the top of the pants meg of course noted that the rules in the cba are somewhat stricter than jay may have believed about the necessity of wearing pants but christian wrote in to say i wanted to bring up another aspect to the jay kuda inspired pantsless batter strategy that wasn't mentioned on the pod only the top of the strike zone is tied to the position of the pants that's right it is the upper boundary that's supposed to be the midpoint between a batter's shoulders and the top of the uniform pants when the batter is in his stance and prepared to swing. And so, Christian says, that means that if a batter had no pants, only the top of the

zone would be undefined as opposed to the entire zone. This would logically mean, yes, very logically, that the strike zone would extend infinitely upward, making the pants removal quite a bad tactic, unfortunately, very logically, that the strike zone would extend infinitely upward, making the pants removal quite a bad tactic, unfortunately. Good point, Christian, or certainly a point. And we also talked about Steven Strasberg's retirement. We noted that the financial terms of the agreement with the Nationals had not been announced. However, there has been some reporting on that from Bob Nightingale. Consider the source. but Nightingale reported that Strasberg would continue to be paid $35 million annually through 2026, with about $11.4 million deferred each year, plus $26.6 million in 2027, 2028, and 2029 in his owed deferred payments. The contract was not insured. That much was previously reported.

So yeah, financially speaking, Steven Strasberg's going to be doing just fine, but it's obviously not how he would have wanted his career to end, and all the money in the world can't always buy you good health and a pain-free existence, which is what I'm sure he's hoping for primarily and what we're hoping for for him. We're also hoping that you will consider supporting 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. Andrew E. Wilson, Lucas Apostolaris, Jason, Mike D., and Zubas. Thanks to all of you. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site, but anyone can contact us via email at podcast.fancrafts.com. Send us your questions or responses or suggestions. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Email at podcast at fancrafts.com. Send us your questions or responses or suggestions.

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