Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2057: Unlimited Power/Speed

Episode Date: September 9, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the NL wild card race and Dodgers starting pitching, then (17:24) answer listener emails about league-sanctioned spies, the best second jobs for an MLB player, a clairvoyant catcher, celebrating obscure records, switch-hitters and pitchers with reverse splits, existential fandom crises, selective fun-fact framing, oddly aligned MLB logos on […]

Upstairs Dance Inventory, they both mean a lot to me That's why I love baseball Special Ganties preview series pitching is pure poetry That's why I love baseball Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild, Effectively Wild, Effectively Wild Baseball Podcast. Hello and welcome to episode 2057 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm okay. And I have a question for you. Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm okay. And I have a question for you. Which of the NL wildcard contenders would be the most fun as a playoff team? We're going to piss some people off here. Some fans of the teams that we declare not the most fun.

But we talked about the AL West race yesterday. So I figure might as well talk about the other real interesting multi-team race that's going on here yeah i like how you're like we avoided a weird cul-de-sac in our our intro and so let's make people angry in a different way you know yeah let's uh jazz it up okay well i guess let's first define our terms you know like any good pair of podcasters would. As we are recording this on Friday, late morning my time, afternoon your time, the wildcard standings are as follows. The Phillies in the first wildcard spot up five games on the last wildcard spot. Then we have the Cubs and then the Arizona Diamondbacks

who moved back into wildcard position after yesterday's results, they are currently playing one another. Big series. Big, big series. And they have another series in Arizona, I believe, next weekend. Might have to go to that, Ben. Might have to be going down to chase for that. And then just outside of the wildcard action are Miami and Cincinnati, each a half game back. And then if we want to be generous, the San Francisco Giants, two and a half games back.

Yeah, we can be generous. It's not that generous. Generous-ish, you know, ish. It's generous-ish. That's so hard to say. So we consider those six teams the wild card. Yeah, I think so. And I'm talking even specifically, I guess, about the last spot because I figure the Phillies are pretty safe bet at this point. And I guess the Cubs less safe. They're three games up on the Diamondbacks, but they're a pretty good team. They're a pretty good team they're a pretty good team they have the best run differential of any of those contenders by quite a bit and we talked about that early this season it's nice when you know sometimes the team starts slow but you point out hey they're they're beating up on people sometimes at least they've got that good run differential going it doesn't always work out that things turn around, but it has in their case.

Yeah, and it doesn't always guarantee that they are the team with the best record in their own division as it currently stands. They are plus 97 in the run differential column, Milwaukee only plus 24. But here we are. So I think you're right to say that they are probably safe enough to avoid consideration. Okay, fine. So we're really talking about Arizona, Miami, Cincy and San Francisco. Yeah. Well, I think I'm going to offer what is probably not a controversial take that Cincinnati is probably the most fun of any of those? Yeah, that would probably be the consensus at this point. Yeah. Yeah. For multiple reasons, primarily Ellie, but also a bunch of other good Reds rookies and Joey Votto. Joey Votto. Sentimental return to the playoffs in what could potentially be his last season,

I suppose. But to see him get back to the playoffs with the Reds after being the Cincinnati lifer and sticking it out there and now doing it with a whole new group of young guys as the veteran mentor that would be that'd be a fun postseason storyline yes yeah so I would take them number one for those reasons that you just highlighted and then I would probably take Arizona second yeah I don't know if Jordan Lawler listens to our podcast, Ben, but we opined that he had a big glove to fill in the wake of Nick Ahmed being DFA'd. And did you watch any of the Diamondbacks-Cubs game from yesterday when he made his debut, Ben?

Not live, but I saw the highlights. I saw his hit and his nice play. Yeah, he had a nice little spin and throw play. So, you know, it's... Ahmed-esque, maybe. Ahmed-esque. I'm sure he's like, I am like a really good prospect. Why am I being put in conversation with... But yeah, he had a nice little debut. You know, he had another play where earlier in the game where like you could see he was getting his sea legs a little debut. You know, he had another play where earlier in the game where like you could see

he was getting his sea legs a little bit. And then he, you know, had that nice spin and throw the bottom of the inning where he got his first big league hit in the top. So like what an inning

for Jordan Lawler. But yeah, I have quite enjoyed that Arizona team. Part of that is that I do have the reference of having seen some pretty bad D-backs baseball in person in the first, you know, two seasons that I was living here in Arizona. But, you know, you can't discount a team that has the presumptive NL Rookie of the Year and that has gotten good play out of Quetel Marte and has, you know, Zach Allen and Merrill Kelly and his celebrity lookalike face and now is bringing up guys like

Lawler to try to really get them cemented in that third wildcard spot. So I guess Arizona, number two, I feel like Miami and San Francisco distant to those two teams in terms of their fun. And poor Miami is potentially much less fun now, even if we had recorded this part of our conversation earlier in the week. Because they have, you know, Sandy Alcantara went on the injured list. And so did Jorge Soler. Yeah, big blows. They almost got perfectoed yesterday, so that seems bad. You know, if you're trying to find fun, I don't think that you find it in a team that almost gets perfectoed.

I would say the Marlins are the worst of these teams, probably, just in terms of how good a team they are, how deserving they are of this wildcard spot. And they've been fun at times, but with those guys hurt and with Arise having cooled off, there's just not as much to compel me to pick the Marlins here. Yeah, I think that that's fair. Although, how do we feel about the Marlins as a collective versus, say, the offense of the San Francisco Giants, which has been so bad? It hasn't been good, like, really most of the season. And it's been particularly bad of late, if I'm given to understand our leaderboards correctly. They are in the second half, and we understand the loose accounting of second half, right? Thank you. That pedantic aside, 29th in baseball in WRC Plus in the second half. I think 29th just by batter war in the second half. It is pretty embarrassing that the Rockies are dead last by WRC Plus in the second half. Colorado, what's good? What do you—man, you need a Randall Gritchick.

Yeah, that does not surprise me. It doesn't, but boy, it still surprises me, even as it doesn't surprise me. Because you just figure enough weird stuff would happen, of course, that that team would be able to hit some. Even if it's just weird. Even if it's weird hitting, Ben, you'd expect there to be more weird hitting.

I mean, I know WRC plus accounts for Park and whatnot, but so that Giants offense has been pretty putrid. So that seems bad. But yeah, those two teams real race to the bottom, honestly. Yeah, I find the Giants less compelling, certainly than the two teams that we just talked about. And I know that Harrison is up now, and obviously Bailey has had his moments this year. He's got a concussion currently. But yeah, there's just not as much that makes me excited on the San Francisco roster. I'm sorry to say, sorry Giants fans,

but it is fairly unremarkable in my mind. They've stayed in it. So kudos to them. But yeah, it hasn't been great lately. Like the bullpen's got some fun guys and Logan Webb's good. They got a bunch of wacky arm angles out there. So there are things to like. But yeah, it can't quite compare to the Reds and Diamondbacks sexy prospect onslaught. So yeah.

And I guess you could say that like, yeah, the Reds will be back, right? Like they're just starting their run. Maybe they just promoted all these guys. They're like slightly ahead of schedule. We're all surprised that they're in this position and that they're managing to stay in it. So maybe you could present a case that they'll get their chances in upcoming seasons. And so maybe it would be better for one of these other teams that might not be positioned to be a perennial playoff contender to win while they can. But no, I'd rather see the Reds or the Diamondbacks.

Yeah, I think you could make the same argument about Arizona. I think that they are less ahead of schedule. They're further along. Does that make sense what I'm trying to say? But, you know, their hot start certainly surprised a number of people, including me. And I'm a believer. I won't say a truther because that implies a lack of success that I don't think is accurate. But certainly, yeah, they've exceeded many people's expectations. Maybe they just wanted one of my postseason predictions to be dead on the nose. And so they'll make that third wildcard spot and they'll be like, Meg, we got you. we got you yeah well that race could come down to the wire because i don't know that i see any of those teams going on a great run and pulling way ahead maybe maybe three of them could just go on a terrible run and fall behind but yeah yeah i don't know if any of them is going to separate themselves by a huge amount though you never know but you never know that could be one that we're still talking about going into the last week of the season, which would be nice to have some uncertainty at the end. It's going to keep things juicy and spicy going into the final week, like a well-braised piece of meat.

It will be satisfying in that way. Well, we will seamlessly transition to our next topic, which is Dodgers pitchers updates, right? Not good Dodgers pitchers updates. No, they are. Dodgers pitchers updates, but no, they are. Well, I guess we should take them separately because they are bad for very different reasons. Yes. And I might argue that while the Walker Bueller news is bad, if the lens through which you are viewing it is the the Dodgers postseason aspirations, I would would maybe argue that it is actually good news in terms of what it means for sort of the care and consideration we give to pitchers. So I think it's actually,

there's a silver lining here, which is that the news we are referring to is that Walker Buehler has been effectively ruled out for the rest of the season. He didn't suffer any setbacks, but I think that he and the Dodgers have just determined that he's not going to be ready in time and that they do not want to rush him through the remaining bits of his rehab coming back from his second Tommy John, that it would just be, it would be too much too soon. My understanding is that the velocity really hasn't been there. And so they are effectively ruling him out for the rest of the season.

And that means that this is a Dodgers rotation that is going to be pretty dependent on a bunch of young guys and like half of Clayton Kershaw, right? Who is dealing with his own sort of persistent injury stuff, not severe enough that he has been taken out of the rotation here. But, you know, we have heard from, well, more from Dave Roberts about the state of Clayton Kershaw than from Kershaw himself.

I think the last time he spoke to the media, he insisted that he was fine. But Dave Roberts told Assembled Media onuesday that kershaw was quote pitching through continued left shoulder trouble but he's going to play through that injury down the stretch so you know you got like a not fully operational clayton kershaw lance lynn who has looked pretty vulnerable of late ben have you been uh been hanging out with Lance Lynn's line in the last little bit? Because it's not been the best. Of late and also of not late.

Of earlier. Of earlier, yeah. For most of the season, we could say. Yeah, he had a couple good starts for LA in the initial weeks after the deadline, but things have looked worse lately. One of those was against those Rockies you just mentioned. And I think another one was against the A's. Yeah.

And that may have played a part. Yeah. But lately it's been less good. And less good. So on Wednesday, for instance, he gave up eight earned runs on seven hits to those Miami Marlins, who we just talked about being kind of like underwhelming. Three home runs in that start. Not the best, Ben.

It's not the best. So they will be reliant on Kershaw and Lynn. And then their young guys. So Ryan Pepeo, who almost perfectoed the Marlins, so land a contrast down in Miami for LA. And then Emmitt Sheehan and Bobby Miller. So there's that situation. I don't know. I am sure that Walker Bueller, given his druthers,

would like to pitch again and would like to help out this team. But I think that you, I don't know. I'm somewhat encouraged that they decided it would be too much. JJ, if you wrote for us about sort of recent Tommy John trends and, you know, he was alarmed in that piece about the timeline that was being proposed for Bueller's return from his second TJ. So I like watching Walker Bueller pitch, but particularly for a guy who has yet to reach free agency and get like really paid, I think it's better for them to be cautious. And, you know, there was definitely going to be increased scrutiny on their handling of Buehler in light

of how Gonsolin was handled this year. So I think that this is probably the right decision. You know, again, not a doctor and all of that, but I think it was eyebrow raising when they were like, he's going to come back. And we were like, really? Well, Bobby Miller's very good. So that's a start. Yeah. Ryan Pepe almost no hit the Marlins.

You know, I mean, perfecto the Marlins almost. He almost did that. So I think everything's yeah yeah they're they're piecing it together I mean they've gone into playoffs very shorthanded and trying to cobble together pitching staffs and other times they've been set up better and it still hasn't worked out for them so who knows maybe losing much of the rotation going in with a bunch of rookies and injured Clayton Kershaw, maybe that'll do the trick.

Yeah. So they, you know, they will be dealing with how to piece that together and continues to sound as if the situation with Julio Arias is just not good and not getting better. There's additional reporting from ESPN today that thankfully this has not been released publicly, but that there is video of the incident between him and his partner and that it is in the possession of law enforcement. And so he remains on administrative leave. There hasn't been a change to his official designation, but the updates that we are getting as the official sort of police investigation proceeds don't seem to be casting this moment in a different light which i don't

think we had any expectation that it would but um yeah disappointing to have those suspicions confirmed i never quite know what to say here but yeah yeah it just it really stinks so that's the latest there yep yeah all right well we started answering some emails last time and I have some leftovers. Not that they're inferior emails in any way. We just didn't get to them. So we can get to them now. And I have some stat blasts for the end of the episode as well. All right.

Maybe we can talk about these two because they're kind of a pair and they were prompted by i think a comment that you made a few episodes ago so oh no not in a bad way i'm sorry just preemptively sorry for whatever it is yeah preemptive blanket apology just i'm sorry here's one from andrew who says i'm a young lawyer with an avid interest in baseball meg's banter about shohei otani having Here's one from Andrew who says, and we talked about a two-way, two-way player who was a two-way player in multiple sports and then we talked about a two-way, two-way player who was ambidextrous and also does what Otani did and then you brought up maybe just you have a full-time non-baseball job

in addition to not like an athletic job, just whatever, you're holding down some other kind of job. So Andrew says, inspired by that, I have an acquaintance who is in-house counsel for the Phillies and one of his tasks involves non-disclosure and privacy for the purpose of stealing other teams' competitive secrets. For this, we can assume the spies would at least potentially be successful, and teams would not face any penalties for stealing. Would this be better or worse for parity in the game? Oh, how interesting.

Where do we draw the line with the spying? Is this like a, if you're caught, we will deny any knowledge of you? Is this like everyone knows that this is going on and it's league sanctioned, right? That's what the question said. So you're just allowed to employ spies. Presumably you're not allowed to break the law. We can't have league sanctioned law breaking. I don't think that's the way the law works. Not in theory, not in the letter of it. So this must just be above board tactics or in legal gray areas. I mean, we're not talking about Chris Correa hacking here right that that doesn't qualify because uh that will land you in jail so right this is just you know light light spying this is just it's like hijinks basically just there's a little taste of spying but but not like a little light a little light trees yeah um what do i think it would do for parody i mean i i suppose it would be silly to think it wouldn't accelerate the adoption of trends somewhat i think it kind of maybe depends

on what those trends are and how closely they are tied to and dependent on like the installation and use of technology so if what the spy notices is like a new grip you would think that that would catch fire really quickly i mean i think that that tends to catch fire really quickly now um the transfer of grip knowledge is probably among the most both pervasive and and fastest moving bits a ip mostly because players talk to each other and then they're like hey have you ever tried doing this and they're like whoa maybe i should and then like and then it works and it's like wow joaquin benoit changed my whole career. So I would think that that would continue it and get it working and customize it. Like that stuff actually takes a little, can take a little bit of time and so if there was something like that where it's like this is really useful maybe it ticks up in terms of adoption because you know

it's useful and you go like hey i want that you know a new thing give me that app but you still have to like get it up and running and that can take a little while and sometimes involves like hiring people and that takes hiring people ben boy that's a process it's yes it's uh it's a real time suck um a good one but like a real real time suck so i think it would improve it or improve like it would accelerate it some but i think it would really depend what it is and it might still take longer than people would anticipate does that feel fair? Yeah, I think so. I don't know how big the advantage is. Well, if every team's spying, then I guess are some just more underhanded than others? I guess you'd have competitive

advantages, just better spies. But are they willing to push things more than other teams spies is there just no change to parody whatsoever because everyone has spies so you're just i guess that would still improve parody because some teams just might not have anything to to spy on or to steal from it's like i'm the spy assigned to the Rockies. I guess I can just go on a beach somewhere because they don't seem to be doing anything that would be worth spying on. Oh boy, we're really piling on the Rockies.

Yeah, giving them a hard time, the business. Sorry, Rocky Spence, this episode, but yeah. Giving them the business. You all know. They're like, we're aware, you guys, Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. There's some effort to protect intellectual property. I wrote about this, I think, back in the wake of the Correa stuff and talked to some front office people about it. And obviously, there are non-competes and things like that. And you're you know signing ndas and stuff i don't know

how restrictive that can be and probably depends on where you are but it's tough to protect some secrets because if it's manifesting on the field then you're gonna see it right you know if if someone's suddenly throwing a new pitch it's like, everyone's throwing sweepers all of a sudden. Well, you don't even need spies. You just need StatCast and some data analysis. Yes, right. So that's all kind of, you know, once you bring it out onto the field, it's out there for everyone to see. I guess there could be ways that you could get an advantage on the field and people might not know how you're doing it.

But that's pretty tough because everything is tracked and quantified and analyzed and broken down these days. So tough to hide it. So there might be player development practices that could be improved. But yeah, there's just so much movement among organizations. Just players are constantly changing teams, talking to teammates with other organizations, employees, coaches, data analysts, people move around. A lot of people are on short one-year contracts in many cases. People who work in front offices are in the minors, certainly.

So it's tough to protect something that's a huge advantage for very long. So I doubt it would make that much of a difference, really. People are already spying on some level, right? You might not have a full-time spy, but you're advanced scouting other teams. What's an advanced scout if not a spy sort of right so now you could have like a double agent maybe if you if you turn a front office analyst right or or you you sneak one in somehow you you get your your double agent front office analysts hired like teams sometimes are protective if you're an entry-level front office person you might not get access to the entire database and all those reports and everything. So they might seal you off anyway.

But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was just about to say, I wonder how much more compartmentalization of information there would be if this was sort of a known factor you had to account for. Yeah. Counterintelligence. You'd have to have a full-time counterintelligence people. Yeah. Wow. It would be weird. I don't, you know, as in so many areas of life, I don't think we want like MLB Pinkerton. Say no to that i think is maybe our yeah our takeaway here probably be a fun tv show i watched a lot of spy shows so a baseball specific spy show i mean

i guess you got mo berg this would be like a bunch of mo bergs basically employed by by baseball teams for less important reasons than world war i II and just like stealing trade secrets, not state secrets, which is a pretty significant difference. I hope people appreciate that the way that we are expressing solidarity with the writers on strike right now is coming up with really terrible TV ideas to underscore how important it is that, you know, you pay TV writers well, because otherwise you're getting the, you know, Otani country lawyer show. And who really wants that? I mean, I do. But like, would most people? No. Well, that relates to this next question

from Marcus R. in Brooklyn, who says, I'm now wondering what the most beneficial or perhaps least detrimental full time job an MLB player could have would be. Obviously, the dynamic is different. MLB teams play six to seven games a week and often will not have a day off for weeks at a time. Field players and relievers, even those seldom used, are expected to be at every game in case of emergency. Starting pitchers might be most suitable for another gig, usually having four days between appearances. But the need for access to coaching and catching on their bullpen day and essentially doubling the travel of the already grueling MLB season might be too much to bear physically and lead to exhaustion. Unless you had like the late career Roger Clemens plan where it's just like, I'll show up on the days I'm supposed to pitch.

The rest of the time I can have my second job. supposed to pitch. The rest of the time I can have my second job. Starters often cite rest and recovery as the most important aspect of their routine and its disruption could be catastrophic. Therefore, the job must be remote or otherwise mobile. However, it is well documented the toll a sedentary job can take on your body. We would know nothing about that. I can't imagine sitting at a desk for eight hours then trying to play nine innings at shortstop in the majors. My pick for a job that might actually be beneficial is a yoga instructor. Oh, yeah. Okay. could only be a positive addition, but I'm also not familiar with the intensity of yoga at its highest level and whether it might also wear out a player over the course of a full season. Wanted to see what you two thought viable side careers for big leaguers.

Well, I think that the obvious answer is podcaster or like influencer. Some of them do that already. Yeah, which I'm given to understand is a job. So I would say something like that. We could encourage them to be writers, but then they'd all turn into weird little guys. And, you know, I don't know, maybe only the relievers, you know, they already have the disposition of a writer, that combination of weirdness and self-loathing. Nate Fryman wrote for Fangraphs, right? For a while. He was good at it too. Yeah, he was. I know. Former Effectively Wild guest. I guess that was post-playing career, right? But still. It was post-playing career. And, you know, he followed the proud tradition of many

of Fangraphs' writer in that he got hired by a team in a way that I found exciting and irritating simultaneously. So yeah. But yeah, I think that if you were engaged in one of those jobs where you have a good deal of flexibility in your schedule and could kind of pop in and do it for a little while and then be like, oh, I got to go throw a bullpen now. Sorry. Later. That would be fine. And to your point, you know, there are plenty of big leaguers who sort of dabble in the podcasting arts on the side just to make things, you know, hard for the rest of us. So I don't know why I'm inviting further baseball podcast competition, Ben. Like, what am I thinking?

Russ Stripling and Mookie Betts and Ian Happler. Walter Buehler. Yeah. Everyone's got it. I mean, it's a trend across sports now. Who doesn't want a podcast? But you guys, you get to play the game. We only get to talk about it. Let us have that. Yeah.

You've already crowded us off the field at some point in our athletic careers. You were someone like you that ended our dreams in many cases. So now you're coming for us in the athletic careers, you were someone like you. Yeah. Ended our dreams in many cases. So now you're coming for us in the podcast space too? I mean, look, we're the major leaguers of baseball podcasting. They're the amateurs. They're the pretenders here, although some of them are quite good at it. Yeah, some of them are annoyingly good at it. Yes.

Yeah. And they know so many people, you know. Yes. They have a lot of player contacts because they are players and also they can talk about being players which we cannot talk about unless we have a player on the podcast so but like are they calling octogenarians they're not ben they're not doing that you know we still can are they answering questions about Shohei Otani, country lawyer by day, baseball player by night? I mean, not yet. They could be, but not yet.

Not yet. We've still got that corner. Yeah, we've got that. So yeah, and sometimes players will become commentators if a player's season is over their team isn't in the playoffs you'll see a chris archer or someone like that will become a you know kind of a yeah a trainee for a future post playing media career right and joey vato is basically an influencer himself sometimes you know he's or has been at least on all the socials so all the socials i guess that would be the that's i don't know if that is even considered a career but that's

something that a lot of them already do on the side just for fun and clout but but yeah if it's like a regular job not just like i'm already famous, so I'm going to be an influencer because I have influence just or taking advantage of the baseball career to become a media member. Yeah. Then, yeah, like yoga instructor or personal trainer, remote personal trainer, some kind of, I don't know. Yeah. Remote instructor. You're giving lessons. You're already working out and

staying in shape. So it's not a ton of extra hassle on your part. So that's probably the most obvious one. Or like Declan Cronin of the White Sox, recent Effectively Wild guest, who basically has a second job. He's an instructor. He's one of the bigwigs at Tread Athletics, which, you know, so in the offseason, he'll be down there and he'll be working with players and working on his own stuff. And then we'll consult remotely during the season. So that's something that you could do flexibly. And that would also be an advantage for yourself. It's not just a disadvantage, but if you're staying up on the latest technology and training tools and player development techniques, then you can potentially improve your own performance, which you could do if you were a fan graphs writer too. Maybe if you were studying the data, slicing and dicing, looking at some graphs,

then perhaps you would recognize some areas in which you could improve so that's a different sort of skill set but it might be advantageous or you could do like what um what ryan lotus in the uh st louis cardinals org is doing where he's like a front office analyst by day player by night i mean that might be that might be cheating right because you're like two you're kind of too close to doing the same job like it's a it's another baseball job but it seems like a like that would be that would be one that would be a way to do it yeah yeah that'd be the least disruptive what what about i mean you you can't do an office job you can't do like a nine to five you could you could mean, players will sometimes if they're on the outs, if they're trying to make it back, if they've given up on

their baseball career temporarily, how many stories have we heard about so-and-so was a Uber or Lyft driver, right? That kind of thing. Something you could squeeze in whenever you have time. I don't know why a major leaguer who's making major league money would be motivated to do that, but maybe they just like driving and chatting with people who get into their car. Who knows? Maybe they like that. So that sort of thing, you know, gig work, right? It would almost have to be that kind of thing just to fit it into the regular schedule of a big leaguer. Yeah. And you know, it's like, you want those guys to not have to have a second job right like the whole like whenever people will tell the story he drove uber in the off season you're like this isn't a happy story and this is a this is a sad story this is a bummer story

so you don't want guys to have to do another thing but also the question presupposes that they're doing it. So we're coming up with ones that they might do. You know, that's the thing we're doing. I don't think the questioner wants it for anybody. I'm not impugning anyone here. Just saying. We don't want them to have to work a second job.

It would be nice if they could just do the one job, you know. But maybe they want to have a podcast. Yeah. If you're at least comfortable in your roster spot, then you're doing okay financially. All right. Question from Nick. Let's say there is a catcher with the very limited power of prophecy. He can see 10 seconds into the future.

Not enough time to say buy the winning lottery numbers, but enough time to realize when his pitcher is about to give up a big-time hit. However, assume that calling a timeout is not enough to disturb the current timeline. He must make a mound visit in order to pluck the threads of fate. Naturally, the catcher would need to choose his spots so as not to arouse suspicion or burn up the team's limited mound visits, so these visits would likely occur in late and close games. This would also mask any suspicious excess mound visits, so these visits would likely occur in late and close games. This would also mask any suspicious excess mound visits, as it isn't unusual for catchers to call a mound visit in tight situations. How big a difference would this catcher make? I imagine, given how there are

usually only a handful of high leverage moments in a given game, his pitcher's clutch scores would go way up. How long before people notice that his team's bullpen has ERAs much lower than expected compared to when the backup catcher starts? Would it draw suspicion if he calls two mound visits in a row when he realizes that his first visit failed to prevent the imminent walk-off home run? This is a silly little idea that's been rolling around in my head for a couple years. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it. Glad we could get it out of there after years. This reminded me, sometimes I will be reminded about ancient email questions that

just spark some recollection because we've answered more than 3,000 questions all told, and they're all recorded in a spreadsheet linked on the show page. There were way back in the day we had some similar questions like this. I remember one episode 1038. I looked this up. I didn't remember which episode was. I was about to be so impressed and also terrified. It was from another Ben who said, let's say there's a position player whose true talent level is exactly replacement level, but who can see 0.1 seconds into the future, how many war would this player be worth? So this is a much more modest form of prophecy, just 0.1 seconds. But I guess they're not limited by mound visits.

I don't really recall the answer, but I think we suggested that that would be pretty useful. I think we suggested that that would be pretty useful. There was also one way back in episode 81 where a Kyle said, you're a manager for an MLB team. You're partially clairvoyant, allowing you to look into the future and foresee every major hot and cold streak for your players. For example, you know exactly when your six war superstar is going to be mired in a two for 20 slump and when your backup catcher will hit four homers and 16 plate appearances. for 20 slump and when your backup catcher will hit four homers and 16 plate appearances do you take advantage of this superpower by sitting your superstars for a week at a time and playing the hottest bench player in his stead or do you try to compromise for fear of the public backlash when you bench your superstar after a hot streak so i'm saying we've had players we've had questions in this vein before but yes that was in the original sam era and the jeff era so this

is the meg era answer. And it's been many, many years since those answers. But we get a lot of questions where it's like so-and-so has this mystical advantage. How do you use it without giving away that you're a witch or wizard and then forsaking the advantage because everyone will be on to you and will burn you at the stake, or at least that's how I always envision it ending. And you say that probably wouldn't happen anymore. And I say, I'm not so sure about that. Yeah, my answer on how freaked out and reactionary to literal magic people would be has changed over the years. People seem way more afraid of stuff that seems fine um lately so maybe maybe this time i'd go like yeah you should keep that to yourself but i think that of the scenarios that you have

alluded to this this strikes me as both the the most if we assume that the consequence is death, if you're discovered, that this strikes me as both the most useful and the one that has the greatest plausible deniability, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, I think if you could look that far into the future and you knew that a guy was going to give up a big home run or, you know, a basis clearing double or something. Now, the question and my answer of value sort of presupposes that you would be able to offer a meaningful intervention to that, right? That not only does the disruption of the timeline occur when you take a mound visit mound visit don't know where i'm from anymore um but they i mean you the guy still has to throw a pitch after that right and you would you would hope that that pitch would have a better outcome even if it

still isn't like an ideal one but i think that we like we acknowledge as a community, as a sabermetric community, that there is there is an unquantified but real amount of value in game calling. And so I think we would just say like, oh, this guy, you know, like, wow. Now, we don't know the counterfactual in this scenario. Right? Like, we don't know how bad the result would be without the mound visit. So, like, we might not be like, well, the alternative, we wouldn't be able to say, you know, that pitcher was going to give up a three-run shot and then, you know, pick a catcher, Ben, pick any catcher. Gabriel Moreno. Okay, great, because we're sticking with the wild card thing here, right? I was thinking of young Diamondbacks, great. Because we're sticking with the wild card thing here, right? I was thinking of young Diamondbacks, yes. Yeah, and so Moreno goes out there and he says to, I don't know, we'll say to Ginkle, he's like, hey, don't throw that pitch because if you do that, that's going to be a three-run shot. And of course, he wouldn't phrase it that way because he is afraid of being burned at the stake, which I mean, if you're going to pick a team in a state or people might be weird, you know, like Arizona is not like the worst one to pick. So less in the valley, but you know, you never know. So anyway, all of that to say, we wouldn't know what the alternate timeline looked

like. But to the questioner's point, like all of a sudden you would have like a really, you would probably see a meaningful improvement in in everyone's performance and if you know what you're able to see is like the big game-changing plays like maybe in a pretty dramatic way and then we would just be like you know everyone really liked moreno when he was coming up we thought he was a good defensive catcher and his game calling as he has progressed through the majors is just really superlative, you know, and that's what we would say. And we'd be like talking to him a bunch about it. And, you know, I think because the vagaries of that are still not quite quantified, like he would just be able to give us answers that would be plausible, but would obscure that he is a literal warlock.

He'd be able to talk about his preparation and how he's looking at the hitters that are coming through and how he's really thinking hard about how the different pitches of his staff play. And my sense is that, as an aside, that Gabriel Moreno is doing all of that now. I think he's a good catcher so i bet he is doing a version of that and he would just be sprinkling in literal magic to enhance an existing study and skill set uh so i think it would be pretty valuable and we he'd get away with it you? No stake burning would have to take place here. Whereas, like, the manager, well, I don't know. A manager could probably attribute, like, benching a guy who's doing well but has played a bunch lately to, like, you know, I just want to give him,

you know, it's like load management. And we'd all be like, oh, yeah. Sure. We've heard of that, you know? I think that we would search for a lot of answers before we would be like witchcraft. You know how it's witchcraft. Like, I think it wouldn't be that obvious. It's not enough.

I'm back around to thinking that this isn't a thing that people really have to worry about that much. Not in this case, I don't think. More than they used to, we will say. But also less than they used to a long time ago. Yeah. I mean, it's all about the timeline, yeah. Yeah, but no, I don't think this would be very easily detectable. It wouldn't happen enough times per game.

And most of the time, if you're going out there, the next pitch is going to go the pitcher's way anyway, or there's not going to be a disastrous outcome, because on most pitches there isn't. So it wouldn't be that obvious. And yeah, yeah you just hear the pitchers sing the praise of the catchers and their game calling and how well they work with guys and and we wouldn't really know the difference between them and someone else who didn't have the supernatural power although i guess if they are using pitchcom how would they then justify needing to go out to the mound? Like if they know

that, okay, if they're calling the pitches, if the catcher's calling the pitch and he sees in the future and says, oops, yeah, that was a bad, bad call. I should call something else. But in this scenario, I guess he still has to go out to the mound. So his pitcher would probably be like, what are you doing out here again? Why are you you why do you keep coming out here? You could just call the pitch and he'd have to invent reasons why he needed to be out there. If the pitcher is calling the pitch on pitchcom, then it would be justifiable because, yeah, then you could go out and have to talk him out of the pitch that he's about to call. Well, try this on for size. I think I know the way to do it. The way to do it would be to say I was worried about the pitch clock,

you know, because that does happen. You know, I was I was watching my Seattle Mariners and Jeff Sullivan's Tampa Bay Rays yesterday. And I think if I remember correctly, that like Cal Raleigh went out there at one point with Munoz on because it was about to be like a pitch clock violations. We went out there to do a mound visit just to spare them the violation because they had mound visits to burn. Now, you wouldn't be able to do that every time. You know, some of it would have to line up. But if you establish your reputation as like a really good game caller and you have this great dynamic with your staff, like I think you'd be given. They'd be like, I don't know that I would have come out here. But like Gabby knows, man, like he just has such a good sense for this stuff.

Yeah. Like if Yachty went out there, no one would question why Yachty was there. It's just like he's Yachty. He can come out here whenever he wants. And he often did. Right. Yeah, he sure did.y. He can come out here whenever he wants. And he often did. Right. Yeah, he sure did. So I think people get away with it.

I do. They've actually cut down on mound visits. That's one of the recent changes in AAA along with the strike zone change and the pitch clock change that we talked about. They're cutting the maximum number of mound visits in AAA games from five to four with an extra one allowed in the ninth if a team has used up on its mound visits because they're trying to cut down on the number of times that the catcher doesn't end around on the pitch clock by calling for a mound visit.

Why, Meg? Because of the exact strategy you just described. I'm so surprised. Yes. So they're way ahead of you here. So if they keep cutting down on mound visits for that reason, then that will endanger our clairvoyant catcher's advantage. But for now, it would be very bad. He's in the clear. For now, clairvoyant, Gabriel Moreno is like free and clear. You know, there's just so little magic left in the world, Ben.

You know, and we keep imposing on it with technology. Why do we do that? Okay, question from Zig, who says, I was watching a random Dodgers-Marlins broadcast from July 2022. Just something to do for fun, I guess. This is actually a catcher-related question, too. When a stat came up on the broadcast that I thought would be interesting to email about, I didn't bother to email about it until now, which is potentially descriptive of how interesting the stat actually is. So I guess Zig was watching this game actually last July and just got around to emailing us about it. So after one of the at-bats, I remember the Marlins broadcaster

saying something like, and there it is, and described that Jacob Stallings, Marlins catcher, had passed Johnny Bench for most consecutive catcher innings without a passed ball. It may have been to start a career. I don't remember. I think it was actually very memorable is that. I think it was consecutive games without a passed ball. I believe it was like 224 games without a passed ball. I believe it was like 224 games without a pass ball. I thought this was interesting because I remember the announcers seeming to do this call with a flourish as if anyone was following this record chase.

How impressed should we be with the record that Jacob Stallings set? How can we appreciate something like this that provides relatively marginal player value but is still a fairly impressive record? Yeah, I would celebrate that. If you're the 2022 Marlins and you're Jacob Stallings, who did a good job catching a Cy Young winner, but other than that, you know, offensively, the contribution was not great, then why would you not celebrate that streak? That's a pretty cool streak. And I guess this was another manifestation of what we talked about recently with the wild pitch and pass ball trend. I guess Jacob Stallings has been part of that. In fact, Zig said, P.S. I wrote this out just days before your conversation about both pass balls and the aesthetics of Acuna's play relative to the value that stolen

bases generate. So yeah, not a huge amount of value, but something I would be proud of if I were a catcher, right? If I didn't allow a ball to get by me, a pass ball at least, I'd feel pretty good about that. Yeah, I think that's a perfectly fine thing to celebrate. Now, we tend to be more enamored with catcher defense than your average bear. Yes, that is true. So our tolerance for this might be higher, just like from a baseline perspective, than other people's. But like, that's a real

thing, and like an unequivocally good thing to avoid doing. So yeah, I think that that's fine. Plus, you're passing Johnny Bench, one of the best catchers ever. This is a record that it stood since the mid-70s. It's pretty impressive, right? So it's one aspect of performance.

But yeah, I would shout it out. And yeah, team broadcasts, local broadcasts, people track things that from a national perspective might not be super compelling. But what are you going to talk about on a Marlins broadcast last year? So I don't know if they were doing a countdown to like, I guess they were, and there it is, right? I mean, it's not the most exciting highlight or record to set. It's just like, it was not a pass ball. He caught the ball, therefore it's a record.

But it's kind of anticlimactic in a way or not climactic but but yeah totally worth mentioning i think that that's cool you know and i i like records like that because a lot of unglamorous things are really important to baseball and really hard and i think it's good for us to talk about them. I really want people to understand how hard baseball is. I was thinking about this yesterday. Sorry, I'm going to go on a tiny tangent, and then we can move on to another question.

But I was thinking about this yesterday, again, while I was watching my Seattle Mariners play Jeff Sullivan's Tampa Bay Rays. Ejioforo Suarez made a totally routine throw across the diamond to get a runner at first base. It was totally routine. It was not, you know, it was like a good throw. It was on the line. You know, he stepped into it. He made a clean throw, like, but unremarkable, you know, wasn't a particularly speedy runner, right? And I'm sitting there and some of this has as much to do with my own level of physical fitness and strength as it does anything else. But I was like, I wonder if I could get the ball across the diamond without one hopping it. You know, I sat there and I was like, I don't know if I could like this is an easy thing for me to test. So I should just go do it. But I was like, he does that all the time, you know, and that's he doesn't think anything of it. And that isn't actually hard. But like like it would be hard for me. And so I don't know.

I just I do think that in general fans, we have embarked on a new era of people being honest with themselves about their own like physical ability relative to professional athletes. But then sometimes, you know, you'll still see dudes on Twitter. It's almost always men. Sorry, it's not always men, but it's almost always men being like, I can do that. And I'm like, I don't think you could, you know, and something harder see dudes on Twitter. It's almost always men. Sorry, it's not always men, but it's almost always men. Being like, I could do that. And I'm like, I don't think you could, you know, and something harder than what I just described, to be fair. But I think that it's good for us to continue to have the conversation that like baseball is hard and it's pretty cool

that these guys do it as well as they do. We don't have to be overly enamored with it. We don't have to be Pollyanna-ish about it. But like, I think it's nice every now and again to pause and go, that was easy for him. How hard would it be for me? Harder. Yep. You know?

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Sam just wrote about Joey Votto's recent Twitter prompt about how many hits could you get in a full season of Major League Play appearances. There were some wild answers to that question. Yes. Right.

There were people who thought they could get hits. And Joey Votto said, no, you can't. And like many of them. Yeah. Right. So. wild answers to that yes right there were people who thought they could get hits and joey vato said and like many of them yeah that's right so and jacob stallings uh has three pass balls this season so you got to celebrate these things while you can because the streak won't continue forever right yeah all right question from aaron mad Wisconsin, says, I've been thinking about switch hitters facing pitchers with extreme reverse splits and just saw Drew Waters, a switch hitter, strike out hopelessly from the left side against Mark Leiter Jr., a pitcher with extreme reverse splits. pitcher would it be crazy for a hitter to come up as a switch hitter not based on the handedness of the pitcher but based on the splits of the pitcher instead would there be too few instances of this scenario to warrant overcoming the potential unease of facing a hitter from the opposite side of the natural advantage yeah i think there would be few that would yeah it would be worthwhile to overcome that there have been cases the Rays

have done this Joe Madden did this at times where he would start a reverse platoon advantage lineup against a pitcher right like if uh if a pitcher had the handedness where you'd think oh I'll start a righty against a lefty or something but, he would forsake the platoon advantage because that pitcher's stuff, whatever it was about his repertoire, like something about his individual pitches, platoon splits suggested that he would be more or less vulnerable to those things than the typical pitcher. So specifically, I think he would stack same-handed hitters against change-up pitchers. A pitch with a reverse platoon split. And that was not necessarily based on the splits of the pitcher, because platoon splits of all kinds can be pretty finicky, and you need big samples to really trust those, especially like reverse splits.

Yes. Yeah, that was what I was going to say. Yeah, true reverse split people yeah you would have to have a good indication based on their pitch types that this is someone i want to do this with and if you're a switch hitter to reverse it would probably i think not be worth it because you're unfamiliar facing people from that side and then who knows that could screw you up in subsequent plate appearances. So I might just not mess with it. Yeah, I think that my answer is the same.

I mean, like, I do think that a good deal more information and much more specific information goes into matchup decisions now than like 10 years ago. And even given that, all of the things you just said, I agree with. So I think people overestimate the stickiness of reverse splits. It tends to be a more fleeting phenomena for most guys than I think a lot of people appreciate. Yeah. Though it is less rare for pitchers than for hitters. Question from Nick. For years, I've been a big soccer fan next to enjoying baseball, the kind of fan who watched every game and knew every player in the league. Lately, I feel my interest and love for the game fading a bit,

and I basically just only follow my favorite club, while I'm almost tuned out of what happens in the league and with other teams. Have you ever had that existential crisis with baseball? Or I guess if I could add any others, Bored, in your case, since you watch more than one. If so, what have you done to rekindle your love for the game? So this may have come up on a Patreon bonus pod at some point, but have you had any period where your interest in baseball, your attention to baseball flagged? And if so, what did you do to get out of that funk? I have such an unhelpful answer to this question. I went to grad school.

Yeah. I mean, I've talked about this, I think, both on the Patreon pod and on the main feed here, which is that, you know, when I went to college on the East Coast and then lived in New York working in finance in the years after. My attention to baseball was not non-existent, but certainly relative to now, very minimal. In part because I was a Mariners fan and their games started late. And when I was in college, I don't remember exactly where in its progression MLB TV was, but that was not a thing I was aware of. And I wasn't so rabid of a fan that I would have been like, yeah, I'm going to spend money games when the Mariners would go play like the Yankees, but not like it was not a daily necessarily a daily activity for me at that time. And then when I went to grad school, I had a more flexible schedule and sort of was like an hour closer to the Pacific time zone and and had a lot of friends in grad school who were big baseball fans. And that sort of constellation of factors put me back on a more regular regimen and a regimen that I think even exceeded the frequency of me watching before that. So yeah, my engagement with baseball,

especially while I was living in New York, was more reading about it than it was watching it, honestly. So I'm not recommending that anyone go to grad school. That's not the project here because you might end up being a PhD dropout like your old friend Meg. But yeah, that constellation of things was a big part of it shout out to my friend thomas the rabid tigers fan who was like let's watch baseball and i was like oh yeah i can do that can't i it was nice of him to point out to me this way of following a sport that nick is describing as a reduction in his interest is is the baseline for a lot of fans, right? This is the base state. You just follow your favorite team and barely pay attention to it.

That may be what most fans do, honestly. Yeah, I think that's right. So A, maybe it's okay to do that if you're still enjoying it on that level. Yeah. If you're happy this way, if you miss it, if you wish that you were still an even more rapid fan, I don't know if you can force it.

Maybe it just needs to come back and maybe you need to take a little break. Maybe that's okay, right? Absence makes the heart grow fonder. less baseball focused professionally because it is something that can burn you out if you're doing nothing but baseball constantly and you're writing about baseball and you're talking about baseball and you're editing baseball year in and year out i know that sounds like a dream job and for many people it is but any job can burn you out or or reduce your love for the game or change what initially got you into that. So the fact that I've had the freedom at the Ringer and Grantland and elsewhere to pursue other interests. And if I'm not super motivated to write something about baseball, I don't have to,

I can write about something else. I still get my baseball thoughts and feelings out there with Effectively Wild. So I still have this outlet. So I think if I were sort of forced into a baseball box exclusively, that might have caused my attachment to fade. when he came back from his semi-baseball hiatus, you know, and he just had that season where he just followed the Giants. It happened to be like a super incredible, exciting season. So that'll get you back into things if you were dealing with a bit of burnout. But maybe it's that. Maybe you just take a break and you come back as more of an old-fashioned fan, the kind of fan you started as. And maybe that is then the gateway to get you back into being even more into it. Or maybe not. It's okay to like things more or less. And for that

enthusiasm to ebb and flow throughout your life, it would be strange if it didn't, I guess, to some degree. Yeah, I think that there isn't like an objectively right way to engage with it. There's only the way that works best for you, you know, and it like you said, I don't think it has to be a you're not you don't need to aspire to it being like, unchanging and consistent throughout the course of your life. I don't think that that's required either. So I don't think that that's required either. So, yeah. Yeah. All right. And a question from Russell, Patreon supporter. The other day I got into a debate with some friends that started with a tweet by Jay Kuda.

So many discussions and debates start with tweets by Jay Kuda. Should we have Jay Kuda on this podcast? Maybe. To get to the bottom of this brain that is constantly sending these tweets. the bottom of this brain that is constantly sending these tweets. It's simply a tweet where he writes number of other MLB teams that are within 600 miles of their home stadium, with the Pirates, Reds, Guardians and Tigers showing 15 and the Mariners with zero. Russell says my hesitation was with what data was presented versus what was left out. And this is where our debate began.

And by the way, I'm sure this tweet was meant to be innocent, so it wasn't really about the tweet, but the implication of it. As it turns out, Denver is exactly 603 miles from Kansas City. So he chose 600 miles because that was the maximum he could go where only one team had no other team near them, presumably. Additionally, the Astros only have one team within 600 miles of them, the Rangers, so why weren't they on the image with a one next to them? I felt this tweet was a bit deceiving, as it was leaving out pretty relevant data. My friend's side of this was that this tweet was simply giving facts, and it doesn't matter

what data points were shown and which weren't. Another example would be, I'm making up numbers here, Otani has 15 home runs since the All-Star break, which is more homers than four entire teams have. If I heard this, I would think Otani has been on an incredible tear. But what I didn't say is that 10 other players have 14 homers since the All-Star break. That spins a totally different story in my eyes. Now it sounds more like those four teams are playing terribly, and that 14 or 15 homers by one player is not out of this world. teams are playing terribly and that 14 or 15 homers by one player is not out of this world. I feel in these situations, you need to show all relevant data or else you're weaving the story you want to tell. What are your thoughts here? Is it fair to leave out data to tell your story, even if showing all the data would change the narrative? Well, look, you're always leaving some data out, particularly in a tweet, because you only have so many characters. But I do think that the spirit of the complaint here is one that I think we tend to agree with. It's part of why we sometimes are unimpressed by fun facts.

I think that it's good for folks to think about like what there's the literal information one is communicating and that is almost always in service of a broader point. And you know I think it's good to think about are we leaving someone with a false impression based on what we choose to include versus exclude and very often this is irritating because like you don't necessarily have to work very hard to make the point you want to in a way that is perhaps more descriptive and and like hues closer to reality so like to use this tweet as an example and again i think that the idea that this was probably just like a dashed off thing that he found interesting is probably right. But if the point you want to make is, wow, the Mariners are sure far from everyone, you can just make that point.

You know, you don't have ways that you could construe that information to emphasize the point that like Seattle is really tucked up in there and it's far away from from most teams and that even their their closest big league trip is maybe farther than some teams farthest big league trip, right? Like that would be a way to convey that information. And I think probably with a bit more fidelity to the truth. So I think it's good to think about that stuff. This seems like a very low stakes example of it. And so I don't think it's a big deal, but I think this is something that I think people are just well-served to think about as they communicate information because so many are playing fast and loose, Ben, with all kinds of things. And it's, I think, good to have your baseline be, I'm going to try to convey this in a way that is literally true and also sort of within the spirit of truth also you know it's like you want it to be both literally and meaningfully true is maybe the distinction to draw yeah so yeah this one i don't think is even really trying to hide the ball here i think it's uh pretty obvious what it's doing because we know that there's a team within some number of miles of the Mariners. So the fact that it chose 600, okay, maybe we didn't know that 603.

But still, you had to figure that was probably chosen for that reason. I mean, maybe I'm just so conditioned to think of fun facts and try to spot any kind of trickery that my mind immediately goes there. But it's still valid, I think. I mean, yeah, okay. So the difference, you know, Denver is 603 miles from Kansas City. Yeah, it's, you know, okay, fine. But it's still making the case that some teams are far away from others and some are close to others, which is very valid and true. Right.

So and the fact that it doesn't show the teams between zero and 15, I think is OK, because we know that there are a lot of teams between zero and 15 with that number of teams within 600 miles. This is only a handful of teams mentioned on this graphic. So all the other teams must be somewhere in the middle. So again, like I feel like most people would not be misled by this one in any significant way. But certainly, it is emblematic of the way that fun facts often distort the truth in some way or present some favorable version of it to make it more interesting.

And we've talked about that many a time on the podcast over the years and the refrain of all fun facts lie. Or even when we just talked about Julio being the first player to have two consecutive 25, 25 seasons to start his career, which sounds super impressive and it is impressive. But then I thought about it and thought, well, yes, but that's because a lot of players only have partial seasons in their first season so they take themselves off the board here it's not first two full seasons it's just any length season but it's

still worth saying i think it's still worth tweeting and pointed out it's still it's kind of cool now there are some that are actively misleading and deceptive and are trying to spin some narrative that is not really true in any fundamental way or is actually confusing you. And that's bad. But there are many times when you can always assume, if it's some extreme performance and there's some minimum playing time you're setting, performance and there's some minimum playing time you're setting, it's always like, you know, the closest to that minimum is going to be pretty likely to be the most extreme performance because it's the smallest sample. So if you're setting the minimum there, you probably set the minimum there for a reason. It's not lying. It's not incorrect, but that's the way that you can make

it fun. So I think on the whole, we enjoy fun facts. It's in the name that it's fun. They're not all actually fun as they're purported to be, but many of them are fun. And if they have to put their thumb on the scale slightly, not egregiously, then I'm okay with it. And as long as not too many qualifiers and we all know what's going on here

and no one's trying to hide anything from us. So, yeah, I don't think before you share any stat, you have to provide how every team and every player performed in that stat, right? I mean, there has to be an economy of presentation here too. So yeah, don't leave out something super relevant that would completely change the interpretation of this. But you can remove what is not clarifying, at least. Yeah, yeah. Okay. This has a visual component.

So you're going to have to pull up the email here. And I will provide a link on the show page and in your podcast apps to the visuals here. This is from Taylor in Tampa. You can search Dairy Queen in your inbox and depending on how many emails you get from or about Dairy Queen, it should come up. I found it. Taylor from Tampa says, I went to Dairy Queen yesterday and got a blizzard. It came in this cup. Whoa.

And Taylor provides two pictures of the cup right so the front and back i can't stop thinking about how these teams are organized on this cup so the cup and mlb is some kind of official partner of dairy queen right so or dairy queen's the official whatever the heck of mlb so this is the official dairy queen ben it's right there like of all the dairy queens this is the official one so it's just okay it says actually on the cup dairy the official treat of mlb that's wow the official treat that's that's something all right lizard the official treat or yeah maybe i don't know all of the are all of the dairy based treats at dairy queen the official treats then it would be treats with an s much to think about the cup says summer's

sweetest lineup and then it just has the logo of seemingly every mlb team but taylor says it seems entirely random am i missing something it's clearly not by league or division or region or seemingly anything one would naturally think of. Is there anything here? Is there any sense to this? Taylor seems very bothered by this. But yeah, like looking at one side, it's like Diamondbacks, Cubs, Cardinals, Astros, Orioles, Blue Jays, Padres. And then the bottom, White Sox, Yankees, Marlins, Guardians, Nationals, Braves, Phillies, Angels, Dodgers. Now I'm trying to spell things.

Yes, spell things or my mind is trying to pick out patterns. It's like, oh, Angels and Dodgers are next to each other and Cubs and Cardinals, their rivals, or Orioles and Blue Jays are in the same division. Does this mean something? Yeah, what? The close encounters are. On the other side, it's Brewers, Royals, Reds. Okay, so like that's the mid, those are all. Twins.

Yeah, but a bunch of Midwest, right? Midwest. Rangers. But then you go to Texas. Which. And then you go to Boston. And then you go to. Yeah, Red Sox, Mets.

Queens. Pirates, A's, Giants. See, like A's and Giants are next to each other. Right. Is that a coincidence? And then Pirates, A's, Giants, Tigers, Rockies, Mariners, Rays. Hmm. Probably if you just randomly distributed them, there would be, by coincidence, there would be like, oh, division rivals or oh, same city, right?

So it may be just that we are fooled by randomness here and there's no actual method to the madness. Yeah, because like... I feel like we're code breaking here. Jeff Luna is going to walk in. I don't know. We'd have to like submit this to some sort of algorithm. We'd need the baseball spies to come in here and tell us whether there's any real relationship. baseball spies to come in here and tell us whether there's any real relationship.

There's clearly not. It's not like in precise geographical order or division order or league or anything super obvious. Well, and it's not like, remember how there used to be the like natural rivals concept? And I think that like that still exists, but now we have a balanced schedule. So you're playing every team anyway. But like some of these are maybe natural rivals, but not really. Like the Rockies and Mariners have been natural rivals at some point. They were for a while, but I think it's still mostly Padres Mariners. I don't know.

I think that we're looking for a pattern in a thing that is just random. I think it might just be random, Ben. Why would they do it like that? Why wouldn't they make it make sense, Ben? Yeah. And I wonder if it is random, did they do like a random number? Did they just say this would be random because you know when humans try to simulate randomness they don't have to do it right right it's like they end up imposing an order of some kind yes there's an inadvertent pattern there's you like try to make it more random than it would be in real life where you would have some coincidences. So, or maybe they just thought this was the most aesthetically pleasing layout of logos.

I have no idea. I've got nothing. So if you're an official Dairy Queen source, we have someone on the inside here, let us know. And otherwise we will post these photos and you can all practice your cryptography, get your algorithms and ciphers out, and you can try to figure out your Enigma machines on this and we'll see if anyone comes up with anything. Oh no, I'm going to be really thinking about this. Well, you keep staring at that. You'll see these logos like floating on the ceiling as you're trying to sleep, trying to rearrange them to mean something.

All right. One last question that will segue into the stat blast here. So this is a question from Patreon supporter Sean of Sulphur, who says, Shohei 2.0 follow-up. Listening to the chat about how another player could be more impressive than Shohei. The topic of durability came up, which is maybe one of the most realistic ways I think a future player could be as impressive, but through a different skill of just playing every game. Such players are also a rarity today.

My quick Google sheet is telling me the most recent season in which a player has played at least 162 games for the third time in their career is 2017 for Alcides Escobar. But two of those three Ironman seasons are less than one fangraphs were each. Yes, it is true. There's more load management, fewer qualifying players. For three or more two plus win seasons playing every game, we need to go back to Prince Fielder in 2013 and Itro in 2012, both of whom had four seasons playing every game at two plus wins of value.

So that brings me to the actual question. How many consecutive seasons of two plus wins playing every game at two plus wins of value. So that brings me to the actual question, how many consecutive seasons of two plus wins playing every game would a player have to accomplish before they are equally as impressive as Shohei has been so far and a Hall of Fame lock? And like our earlier question, this reminded me of some ancient questions that were answered during, I guess, the Sam and Jeff eras too, because episode 596, we had one, let's say you've got a guy who hits 200 with a 550 OPS for his whole career. How long would he have to play and how good a defender would he have to be to make the Hall of Fame? And then episode 1254, we had one about Bartolo Colon and he had like 46 baseball reference war at the time. And so if he could just keep pitching two

war seasons as long as he liked how long would he have to pitch until he was hall of fame worthy right so this is like the compiler question although this one has the wrinkle of you're an iron man too and i guess eventually you're you're breaking cal ripken's record for consecutive games. So that'll help you get in the hall. If it's just like, how long could you be average and make the hall or even less than average, but you just play forever, right? Like if you're just kind of a freak of durability and you just have the longest career ever, like, is there ever a point at which you become Hall of Fame worthy?

You'd become legendary. You'd be in... You'd probably satisfy the fame part. Yeah, you'd be in like the Shrine of the Eternals and the Baseball Reliquary. And, you know, you'd be like a famous player.

But I don't know that you would get in the Hall. Now now if you were racking up to war every year you're in and you're out and you're playing for 30 years right and suddenly you're at like the career war threshold that still probably wouldn't do it i guess you could get to a point where your career war is so high that even though your peak war would be quite low you could still have a a jaws that that could justify you getting in like if you just play for you'd have to play for like 50 years you have to play for so long you have to play for so long that i don't know that you would clear the threshold yeah so but if you played every day every day that

people would probably say you should stop playing every day maybe you would be better at baseball but but they would say that yeah break one of the most famous and sacred and considered tough to break records in baseball that that you know like that goes on your plaque so so that might get you in if if you were decent and you never missed a game and set that record, I think that might get you in. That would not be equally as impressive as Shohei Otani ever, I don't think. Now, I mean, ever, I guess we're getting into witchcraft and wizardry again here. So if you don't age and you never die, then that would be impressive. Yeah. I think that if you didn't age and you never died, the baseball would not be the first thing that would be mentioned in your not-obit.

No. Put it that way. Right. Yeah. So if we're talking realistic lifespan here, but you just, you come up young and you decline really late and you just push it to 30, 35 years or, you know, I don't know. You play from like age 18, like into your mid 50, you know, like you could, if you're like having a 40 year career and you're not missing a game and you're adding value bit by bit by bit, then maybe, maybe that does it. If you're actually like decent and not bad and still just like, if you're replacement level, I don't think you're ever going to get there.

But if you're an average player, maybe. Yeah, now I'm just thinking about, I don't think I'd want to be immortal then. See, I, you know, I'm open to it. You know, I know that there's a lot of fiction out there about, oh, it's actually, it's a curse, not a blessing, right? Now you're just, the fact that we die and we know that we'll die makes every moment precious. And if we didn't have that knowledge, then we would just laze around and we wouldn't be able to take pleasure in anything. But maybe that's just something we tell ourselves

because it's comforting and there's no alternative. I would reserve judgment until I'm actually in that situation because I have liked being alive thus far, and I think I'd like to be alive a lot longer. So I think I would be willing to take someone up on that offer. Maybe I'd lose my lust for life eventually, but I think it would take quite a while. There are a lot of things I'd like to learn and do and see. So I say, immortality, don't knock it till you've tried it. But maybe eventually I would get less

interested in baseball to answer an earlier question if I were immortal. Yeah. And eventually, even if you maintained your interest, you'd have to get a new podcast host. Yeah, I guess that's true that would be sad yeah yeah because i don't want to live forever i i like living to be clear this isn't yeah everyone it's fine but like forever no i i am you know i like having my one you know human life my one one just the one okay right. So that leads me into the stat blast. Does it? I mean, not really.

It would be incredible if it did. Well, it was going to until that brief detour. Sorry. You know, another cul-de-sac. A little digression into the slog to rigor mortis there. So it was going to segue because we were talking about compilers. And I was kind of curious about trying to quantify compiling, like who's a compiler, which is something sort of derogatory, you say, about someone who was good, decent, played for a long time, but was never really great. And they're just kind of tacking on to their numbers.

Or sometimes it's someone who was great, but then enters their compiling phase. So one way I think you could quantify this is by looking at the difference between wins above replacement and wins above average. So we don't talk about wins above average that much. War is useful in some ways that wins above average is not. There are some applications for wins above average as well. You have to say wah, though, which is, that's tough, you know. which is, that's tough, you know?

So you have like theoretical, like methodological issues, but really your concern is an aesthetic one here, right? This is about the branding being bad. It is, yeah. Which is saying something because you'd think that war would suffer from a branding perspective. Right, no.

It's been great for Edwin Starr and for people who like to make the same joke over and over again. But, yeah, I don't want to be going wah-wah like a baby all the time. Wah? Wah? I guess. I don't know. Anyway.

Yeah. No. So the reason why these are different, like the advantage that war has over wah is that it accounts for the difference in playing time. Because if you're an average player every year, but you're average year in and year out, like this player we were just talking about, you're going to have a wah of zero forever. Right. And so your wah will be the same as someone who played one game and was average in that game like there's there's no way to distinguish between someone who is averaged for a really long time and someone who's

averaged for a short time whereas war gives us that tool obviously someone who's average every year there were is climbing, even as their wham stays the same, because there is real value to being average. Now, it's also helpful to compare to average sometimes, too, if you just want to say, was he above average? Well, that's helpful also. But if you want to assess career value, then you kind of got to take the playing time into account and you can be a positive contributor just being average or even

below average but better than replacement level right so i got a data dump from baseball reference kenny jacklin just sent me every player's wah and war career and i just compared them so there's a number of ways you could do this you can't just subtract wah from war because then you're gonna get some all-time great players just because their wars were so high they were really good but they also played forever so cy young and walter johnson and warren spawn and pete rose and henry aaron and ty cobb and babe ruth nolan ryan that's not so fun. So I was going to just like divide war by when, but that kind of gets complicated because you can have a positive war and a negative when,

then you're going to get a negative. See? Can you ever have a positive when? Not really. This is the problem here. But to sort of adjust that a little bit, I did war minus wah. And then I did that over war.

So I will put the spreadsheet online. But basically, the higher the number, the more of a compiler you are by this metric. Right. So it depends where you set the minimum here. Like I set the war minimum fairly high because otherwise you're just, you're going to get players who you've never heard of and aren't really all that interesting, right? So if I set no war minimum, then it's going to give me Mario Guerrero, an infielder from the 70s who had .01 career war and negative 8.2 career wah. So that's not what we want. If I set a minimum of

10 career war, then I get Sean O'Collins, Doc Kramer, Charlie Grimm, Joe Dugan, Bill Buckner, Alcides Escobar, again, Eric Karros. all of those guys had more than 10 war and wans of below negative 10, a little bit better, but I want to go higher. If I set the war minimum at 35, that's, you know, like halfway, more than halfway to a hall of fame caliber career war, but I'm looking for the guys who are really the compilers in that group. So, for instance, top of the list, we have Kid Gleason, right? So Kid Gleason, 41.8 baseball reference war, but negative 2.2, wah. That's the highest war by anyone with a negative wah.

So just not really a standout, not really a star most of the time, but stuck around for a long time and managed to keep racking up war without ever getting into positive territory and wah. He's probably better known as the manager of the Black Sox, but he was actually a two-way player. He was a pretty good pitcher, but he was a position player for longer and he wasn't much of a hitter. So he played more than 20 years and just kept compiling war without Wang. And the second player who comes up on this list might be the perfect example because this was the criticism of him. Harold Baines shows up next on this list, right?

Like kind of classic compiler. That's the knock on Harold Baines. right like kind of classic compiler that's the knock on harold baines so yes harold baines 38.8 war but 1.8 when so there were certainly some years where harold baines was above average well above average but on a career basis not so much but he played for a really long time and was solid and dependable and so he racked up almost 40 war with barely any win. And just the other names on that list, Earl Whitehill, Jerry Royce, Chili Davis, Omar Vizquel. That's kind of a classic one stuck around forever.

Sad Sam Jones, Doyle Alexander, Bill Mazeroski, Charlie Huff, Ron Fairley, Bob Friend, Mickey Vernon, Rusty Staub, Dave Parker, Steve Garvey's down there, Lou Brock. If I raise the war minimum to 40, then you got Gleason and Vizquel and Sad Sam Jones and Bob Friend and Staub and Parker and Brock and Rabbit Moranville. If I raise the war minimum to 50, then you've got Jim Cott. That's why it took him a long time to get into the Hall of Fame, because, you know, he stuck around forever, but maybe didn't have the peak value or the star value that people were looking for. So 50.5 career war, 12.8 career wah. And then you have Harry Hooper, Sam Rice, Jack Powell, Veda Pinson, John Ward, Don Sutton. That's a good one. Tori Hunter, Waite Hoyt, Tony Perez, Tommy John, Frank Tanana, Johnny Damon, Orlando Cepedis, Pete Rose, of course, stuck around forever, Luis Aparicio. I'll link to the spreadsheet.

I think this is a decent way to quantify compiling. If I lower the war minimum to 20, you get Tommy Corcoran, Tommy Davis, Raul Abanez, Bobby Lowe, Tony Taylor, Larry Boa, Jermaine Dye, Orlando Cabrera, Garrett Anderson, Melky Cabrera, right? So you can set it wherever you want and you can play around with it. And I'll just give you the opposite as well, the anti-compilers, the guys who had the highest wah relative to their war. And here I'll say that you had to have at least 20 wah, but no more than 45 war. So not a ton of career value, but a good amount of above average value anyway. And these will be guys who had short careers or have had short careers, but managed to

compress a lot of excellence into them. And at the top of the list, you get a bunch of Hall of Famers from the Negro Leagues who are here just because they didn't play enough league games to have high career war totals. So Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard, Mule Suttles, Judd Wilson, Ray Brown. But if I stick with AL and NL players, and let's keep it to the modern era for this. We get Jacob de Grom, Aaron Judge, Charlie Keller, Brandon Webb, Carlos Correa, Carlos Zambrano, Shohei Otani, Kevin Kiermaier, Steven Strasburg, Alex Bregman, Troy Tulewitzki, Lenny Dykstra, Garrett Cole, Buster Posey, this is baseball reference war, doesn't include framing, Jose Ramirez, Francisco Lindor, Gil McDougald, Lorenzo Cain, Tommy Henrich, Jose Rijo, who is quite good but had many Tommy John surgeries,

Andrelton Simmons, Bryce Harper, who's about to play his way off this list, J.D. Drew, Jesse Barfield, Wally Berger, Cliff Lee, John Carlos Stanton, Nomar Garcia-Para, effectively wild legend Ned Garver, Marcus Semien, effectively wild legend Eddie Stanky, Hack Wilson, Darling Marte, Christian Yelich. You get the point. So yeah, that is a way to quantify compiling. Nothing wrong with compiling, but there's

a big difference sometimes between war and wah. Wah, wah, wah. And then, this will be quicker, this is a question from Ryan, who said, on a recent episode of the pod, there was discussion of Ronald Acuna Jr.'s 3060 home run steals accomplishment.

It certainly is impressive, but I wondered who had the most combined homers and steals in a single season. Being a Cincinnatian, I first thought of Eric Davis's 1986 tally of 27-80, totaling 107, but eventually got to Ricky Henderson, who exceeded that several times, actually maxing out at his 1982 season of 10, 130, 140 total. It's hard to imagine, but has anybody topped this? And the answer is no. And that is why it is hard to imagine. So no, Ricky had so many steals and, you know, some power to boot, decent power, good power, that 140 for Ricky in 82, boot decent power good power that uh 140 for ricky and 82 that's number one but his lead is is not large so i went back to 1886 just because fangraphs had complete stolen base data back to 1886 and so 1887 you got hugh nickel who had 139 and arlie latham same, who had 131 and Charlie Comiskey had 121.

So, you know, this was an era effect. Tons of steals. Very few homers, of course. Shouldn't really even count that because in 1887, they counted it as a stolen base. If you took an extra base, if you just went first to third on a single, you'd get a stolen base. So it wasn't until 1898 that we got the modern steel definition and then the other modern player ricky asks 1974 lou brock he had 121 and then it's ricky and ricky again 83 and 86 billy ham, the original, sliding Billy Hamilton in 1889 and 1891, and then Vince Coleman, 1987, Coleman again. So it's like late 19th century guys and speedsters from the 70s and 80s, or Maury Wills, 1962, he was at 110, and then Ricky again. Eric Davis is on the list, 86. He is, I guess, 19th.

That's the one that was mentioned there. So Reigns is on there. Ty Cobb. Acuna shows up. And obviously he's still adding to this, but he's at 33rd on the all-time list, which is pretty good. It's obviously going to be dominated more by steals than power at the top of the list, just because people have had 100 plus steal seasons and have not had 100 plus home run seasons. You have to go down a ways. I guess 98 A-Rod is the first one that's a real power season,

and Acuna this year too, but 98 A-Rodod he had 42 homers and 46 steals so that's 88 that actually I wanted to look while I had this data in a spreadsheet I wanted to to see how these players stacked up via Bill James power speed score james uh this was in the 1980 abstract i think he came up with this power speed number which is it's like you know combines home runs and stolen base it's the harmonic mean of those so it's like two times homers times steals over home runs plus steals. And so it awards you for having a lot of each, but also a similar number of each. And we now have a new all-time leader, single season leader. If Acuna can maintain this, he is now at the top of the list because the all-time single season leader was that 98 A-Rod season when he had 42 homers and 46 steals. So a power speed number of 43.9.

And Ronald Acuna now with 34 homers and 63 steals as we speak, he's at 44.2. So he has surpassed A-Rod. Obviously there's a little more lopsidedness there with him, but also just more total because he has more steals than A-Rod had in 98. So that makes up for the lack of symmetry. So yeah, Ronald Acuna could be the all-time power speed season. And that feels right. That feels appropriate. We've been watching it. So yeah, he should be. And after A-Rod, it's Alfonso Soriano in 2006, Eric Davis again in 87, and then Ricky in 86, Barry Bonds in 96, Kent Sacco in 88, and then Bobby Bonds and Barry again and Eric Davis and Soriano. I'll put this full spreadsheet online. And to end, I'm reading a submission here. And to end, I'm reading a submission here.

This is someone who not only sent us a Stat Blast stat, but signed up for Patreon to send it to us and call it to our attention. So thank you. Yeah, John Fleming, who sent us this stat that was of interest to me. John writes in to say, wanted to let you know of an extremely effectively wild fun fact I've been tracking ever since I discovered it two years ago that has continued to be true. For the last 12 seasons, the St. Louis Cardinals have had a different leader in baseball reference war, not wah, but war, for each season. Starting with 2011, it goes Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, Matt Carpenter, Adam Wainwright, Jason Hayward, Carlos Martinez, Tommy Pham, Miles Michaelis, Jack Flaherty, Paul Goldschmidt, Tyler O'Neill, and Nolan Arenado.

At the time I discovered this fun fact, the Cardinals trailed the Padres for longest active streak by one season, but thanks to Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado, the Cardinals now stand alone. It seemed unusual when I noticed this fun fact that a team as perennially successful as the Cardinals, 2023 notwithstanding, would have one of the longer streaks, and their company near the top of the list would suggest that it is. While there are a handful of fellow 12-season streaks, only three streaks have gone longer, all three representing infamously shaky organizations. went 14 seasons, the 1903 through 1916 Boston Braves, where they spent the first 11 seasons of the streaks well below 500, and the 1937 to 1950 Philadelphia Phillies, whose final season of the streak was their lone winning record, plus World War II player attrition likely played a factor. But by far, the longest streak in MLB history of unique war leaders was so long that

it spanned three different cities. The Philadelphia slash Kansas City slash Oakland Athletics went 23 consecutive seasons with a different war leader from 1950 through 1972. With all due respect to podcast legend Bobby Shantz, the 1952 war leader, the A's were largely unstable and unsuccessful during this time, and relocation of the Athletics did little to turn around an organization that did not commit to spending enough money to field a competitive roster because when it comes to the A's franchise, time is a flat circle. During this period, let's remember some guys or mention some guys we've forgotten or never knew. Starting in 1950, ending in 1972, we have For right now, the Cardinals are in danger of not extending their lead. As of the time I'm writing this, Paul Goldschmidt leads the team in war,

though number two on the list, Lars Neutbar, is just.2 war behind, despite multiple IL stints this season. And with Goldschmidt slumping and Neutbar about to return from the IL, Neutbar is providing me some entertainment while I hopefully wait for Adam Wainwright to reach 200 career wins like it's the Great Pumpkin. So just checking in on the Cardinals' war leaderboard here, we have number one, Paul Goldschmidt. It is. He is ahead of Newt Barr by 0.1 war. it is he is ahead of Nupar by.1

war so Arenado was their war leader last year just barely and so it'll be a different guy again I guess it'll be Goldschmidt this year so this is a fun stat and John sent me a full spreadsheet with the longest all time

streaks and the longest active streaks there are 16 total streaks of 10 plus years the Cardinals being the only active streaks. There are 16 total streaks of 10 plus years, the Cardinals being the only active one. Tied for second among the active streaks are the Mariners and Blue Jays with seven each. The former likely to fall

with Julio repeating as champ while everybody in the top 12 in war on the Blue Jays would extend the streak. Wow. That's a lot of turnover at the top of that war leader board. Yeah, how about that? So yeah, you can see why it would be bad to have

a different war leader every year. You might think, hey, a new standout star every year, but no, it probably means that you just had no one who was good year in and year out, and that's not great. You just had no consistency and you were selling off your good players.

So yeah, the A's have an active six season streak that will continue because their leader last year was Sean Murphy. The Reds have an active six season streak that will continue because their leader last year, I guess, was Luis Castillo. There's the Cardinal streak.

And then there's the Orioles have an active six season streak, but their leader was Rutschman last year. And yeah, then you have the Blue Jays and the Mariners whose streak will end and the Giants also have a six year streak and that will be extended because Carlos Rodon was their world leader last year in better times for carlos rodon so thank you john all right just been here now and i have just received the future blast and so i will share it with you this is from the year 2057 and from rick wilbur an award-winning writer editor and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. Rick writes, the 2057 season was notable for the continued embrace of enhanced players, with virtually all players opting in at the start

of their college or minor league careers for tissue engineering. As the enhancements filtered down through high school and little league baseball, the FDA stepped in to question the advisability of the selective procedure for youth players, the great majority of whom wouldn't be playing college or professional baseball, much less reach the top leagues in their countries. Parents and players argued that if they didn't get the enhancements, they definitely would not reach high amateur or professional baseball. The issue remained contentious for younger players, even as the adult players profited from the enhancements, not only as players, but through social media endorsements of one enhancement center or another. In the middle of these worries, a highlight of the 2057 season was the success of Elvis Marley, who had an outstanding sophomore season for the Cardinals, winning 21 games with an ERA of 1.54 to capture the Cy Young Award.

of 1.54 to capture the Cy Young Award, possessed of an enhanced cutter in the mid-90s, a sharp slider, and a tantalizing changeup, Marley had been a fine pitcher in two seasons of AA ball, then spent some time out of the game with gender-affirming surgery and recovery in post-transitioning rehab before joining the Cardinals in AA Springfield. They had an outstanding front half of the season before being called up to the big club in September of 2056, and then then in 2057, staked their claim as the best pitcher in the league. All right, a few follow-ups for you here. One, after we recorded, Ronald Acuna homered again, his 35th.

So he is raising that combined home run steal total even higher, and his power speed number as well. And an update on another Rays Rehabilitation Project pitcher we've been tracking, Zach Littell, cruise ship lover, former undistinguished reliever, now starting pitcher. In 11 starts for Tampa Bay, he has a 3.83 ERA with a 1.11 whip and almost a 10 strikeout to walk ratio. That includes a couple of opener games, but since he switched to the rotation for real full-time on July 30th, eight starts, 3.86 ERA, 30 strikeouts versus 4 walks, decent 4.31 FIP. Go figure.

I think this might surprise me more than the Jake Diekmann sans. Also a few responses to recent discussions. This one's from Peter who says, in regard to the ongoing what is an impressive throw discourse, I keep thinking back to the Manny Machado throw where he's playing for the Orioles and bobbles the ball at third on the backhand and then fires a four-seamer across the diamond to first. I think this is one of the most impressive throws I've watched, and I realize the reason I like it so much is that the ball does not drop at all, so perhaps velocity may be important when assessing the aesthetic of infield throws, but even more so could be spin efficiency and vertical break. I think back to Kyle Seeger as

a Mariners fan, and I never had an impression of him having a good or bad arm, but I do remember his throws sort of being two-seamers with arm-side tail over to first from third, and never had that clothesline, frozen rope look that Machado's famous throw had. Yeah, I think that plays a role. I mentioned that the trajectory, the arc, plays a part in the impressiveness. Also, a few responses to our discussion of where you would hide the smaller base if you were trying to sneak a 2022-sized base onto the field. At which base would it be easiest to hide it and pass it off as the same size as the other bigger bases? Sid, Patreon supporter, says, So if you were trying to hide a smaller base, I don't think you could do it at first or third. The peg that goes into the hole in the ground is in the geometric center of the base. The hole is set so that when the base is put down, the edges of first and third are both lined up with the foul lines.

If you put a smaller base in, you would see a gap between the foul line and the base. David, Patreon supporter, mentioned that. Also noted that the crowning of the base is much different this year, so players would definitely notice that. That's true. Still might be tough to tell from afar. And JG White, Patreon supporter, says, I think my answer for the one small base hypothetical is second because of symmetry. If you're the umpire catcher, you might see the difference between first and third as compared to the dirt cut out in lines.

Second is far away and has fewer points of reference. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Joe Bannon, Michael Mendoza, Marcus Cleaver, Kate Kraske, and Tiffany. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only,

monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and so much more at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. But anyone and everyone can contact us via email, send us your questions and comments at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod,

and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. One, two, three, four! When I'm riding the bus We're going for a walk weekend and we will be back to talk to you early next week Don't wanna hear about picture wins or about gambling odds

All they want to hear about might shout hypotheticals And the texture of the hair on the arm going out of one's head Gross, gross Gimme, gimme, gimme Effectively Wild Gimme, gimme, gimme Effectively Wild Gimme, gimme, gimme Effectively Wild This is Effectively Wild